There is no such thing as "RACE" --- it is simply a social construct, not a biological reality
Terri
My daughter and son are college students. Each of them has informed me
that they are learning that there is no such thing as "black" or
"white" or "hispanic", etc. with regard to RACE.
Genetically, everyone is more alike than different. We are ALL about
99.5% similar to one another, genetically.
The formation of "different races" was really a construct that
developed in the US when the Europeans came here and wanted to
differentiate Europeans from Native Peoples and Blacks.
Now, thinking about society, politics, etc and what this "social
construct" has done, is pretty incredible as how we have all become
divided by race when, in reality, there is no such thing!
I invite you to read the attached article, forwarded to me from my
daughter through her Anthropology professor. I would welcome
comment/discussion on this and how it pertains to the psychology of
politics: voting, campaigning, voting issues, poll results, etc.
Terri
Why Race Isn't as 'Black' and 'White' as We Think
By BRENT STAPLES
People have occasionally asked me how a black person came by a "white"
name like
Brent Staples. One letter writer ridiculed it as "an anchorman's name"
and
accused me of making it up. For the record, it's a British name - and
the one
my parents gave me. "Staples" probably arrived in my family's ancestral
home in
Virginia four centuries ago with the British settlers.
The earliest person with that name we've found - Richard Staples - was
hacked to
death by Powhatan Indians not far from Jamestown in 1622. The name
moved into
the 18th century with Virginians like John Staples, a white surveyor
who worked
in Thomas Jefferson's home county, Albemarle, not far from the area
where my
family was enslaved.
The black John Staples who married my paternal great-great-grandmother
just
after Emancipation - and became the stepfather of her children - could
easily
have been a Staples family slave. The transplanted Britons who had
owned both
sides of my family had given us more than a preference for British
names. They
had also given us their DNA. In what was an almost everyday occurrence
at the
time, my great-great-grandmothers on both sides gave birth to children
fathered
by white slave masters.
I've known all this for a long time, and was not surprised by the
results of a
genetic screening performed by DNAPrint Genomics, a company that traces
ancestral origins to far-flung parts of the globe. A little more than
half of
my genetic material came from sub-Saharan Africa - common for people
who regard
themselves as black - with slightly more than a quarter from Europe.
The result that knocked me off my chair showed that one-fifth of my
ancestry is
Asian. Poring over the charts and statistics, I said out loud, "This
has got to
be a mistake."
That's a common response among people who are tested. Ostensibly white
people
who always thought of themselves as 100 percent European find they have
substantial African ancestry. People who regard themselves as black
sometimes
discover that the African ancestry is a minority portion of their DNA.
These results are forcing people to re-examine the arbitrary
calculations our
culture uses to decide who is "white" and who is "black."
As with many things racial, this story begins in the slave-era South,
where sex
among slaves, masters and mistresses got started as soon as the first
slave
ship sailed into Jamestown Harbor in 1619. By the time of the American
Revolution, there was a visible class of light-skinned black people who
no
longer looked or sounded African. Free mulattos, emancipated by
guilt-ridden
fathers, may have accounted for up to three-quarters of the tiny
free-black
population before the Revolution.
By the eve of the Civil War, the swarming numbers of mixed-race slaves
on
Southern plantations had become a source of constant anguish to
planters'
wives, who knew quite well where those racially ambiguous children were
coming
from.
Faced with widespread fear that racial distinctions were losing
significance,
the South decided to define the problem away. People with any
ascertainable
black ancestry at all were defined as black under the law and stripped
of basic
rights. The "one drop" laws defined as black even people who were blond
and
blue-eyed and appeared white.
Black people snickered among themselves and worked to subvert
segregation at
every turn. Thanks to white ancestry spread throughout the black
community,
nearly every family knew of someone born black who successfully passed
as white
to get access to jobs, housing and public accommodations that were
reserved for
white people only. Black people who were not quite light enough to slip
undetected into white society billed themselves as Greek, Spanish,
Portuguese,
Italian, South Asian, Native American - you name it. These defectors
often
married into ostensibly white families at a time when interracial
marriage was
either illegal or socially stigmatized.
Those of us who grew up in the 1950's and 60's read black-owned
magazines and
newspapers that praised the racial defectors as pioneers while mocking
white
society for failing to detect them. A comic newspaper column by the
poet
Langston Hughes - titled "Why Not Fool Our White Folks?" - typified the
black
community's sense of smugness about knowing the real racial score. In
keeping
with this history, many black people I know find it funny when
supposedly white
Americans profess shock at the emergence of blackness in the family
tree. But
genetic testing holds plenty of surprises for black folks, too.
Which brings me back to my Asian ancestry. It comes as a surprise,
given that my
family's oral histories contain not a single person who is described as
Asian.
More testing on other family members should clarify the issue, but for
now, I
can only guess. This ancestry could well have come through a
19th-century
ancestor who was incorrectly described as Indian, often a catchall
category at
the time.
The test results underscore what anthropologists have said for eons:
racial
distinctions as applied in this country are social categories and not
scientific concepts. In addition, those categories draw hard, sharp
distinctions among groups of people who are more alike than they are
different.
The ultimate point is that none of us really know who we are,
ancestrally
speaking. All we ever really know is what our parents and grandparents
have
told us.
T.McClure
Yes, we are genetically alike, but that's not what races are really
about. \
What really separates us, and yes, you can't deny that races are more
often than not separate in some way, is the difference in cultures. If
we were all the same, we wouldn't be majorly group by cultures, and
each culture usually has its own color.
Throughout history, it was that culture history, not some human
construct of racism, which separated us. I recommend reading "Guns,
Germs, and Steel" by Michael Diamond (I could have gotten the author's
name wrong). I supports my statements, although it goes into more focus
on HOW we were different. Why did the conquistadors come to the Aztecs
and not the other way around? That was the barrier. One civilization
was so far advanced from the other that one could cross a gigantic
ocean, whereas the other only slightly explored the coastal regions.
Also, the fact that the Aztecs simply succumbed to the Spanish,
thinking that they were a god, shows the civilization's naivity.
And that culture barrier is evident even today. Although the lines
sometime blur in some areas, it is not racist to think that blacks
listen to rap more than rock or country music. You can't try to be
politically correct and go with an "we are all the same, regardless of
color" approach.
Terri
Yes! What you are stating is IN AGREEMENT with the article above.
The term "RACE" is greatly misunderstood and a misused term.
In terms of genetics and ancestry: we are really all alike.
We use the word "RACE" to describe SOCIAL CONSTRUCTS and that is a
misuse of the term.
As the article above states:
"racial distinctions as applied in this country are social categories
and not scientific concepts"
It is not "race" per se that separates us, but the long history of
social division. From the point of view of genetics and ancestry ---
there really is no statistical difference between us.
I realize that this is a challenging concept to fully absorb, because
we are so used to thinking in such terms; but really it is an incorrect
way of sorting ourselves out!
We could sort people out by: the bald group, the freckled peoples,
those under 5'5", etc and it would make as much sense as sorting people
out by black, white, latino, etc.
I agree with this statement of yours:
"Throughout history, it was that cultures history, not some human
construct of racism, which separated us"
YES! That's what the article is claiming--- that we are separated by
social and cultural constructs NOT "race" as we generally use the term.
Oh! I am all for NOT being "politically correct" ! I hate that!
The usefulness of the article is really to point out that the term
"race" is misused and its misuse came about because it helped some
political or economic purposes by those who wanted to separate peoples
for economic or political dominance. It is fabricated and manufactured.
That is the point.
Are there cultural differences between peoples? Yes! Are there physical
differences? Yes! Are there different histories? Yes! Do these imply
"racial" differences? no.
Terri