What would you say if someone were to
tell you there was no such thing as biological race? Historically, for most people, such a comment
is one that lacks common sense and respect.
Is this not how we know who we are?
Is this not how we define ourselves?
Race, as we collectively understand it, is something rigid and fixed at
birth here in the United States. This
rigidity is based on the assumed biologically isolated origin of each “main
race” category.
Interestingly, The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines race in
several ways:
“…a family, tribe,
people, or nation belonging to the same stock; a class or kind of people
unified by shared interests, habits, or characteristics; an actually or
potentially interbreeding group within a species; also :
a taxonomic category (as a subspecies) representing such a group: breed: a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive
physical traits…”
The point here is the way race is determined to be pure-- and
that is by pure breeding. Recent
archaeological studies have made it irrefutably clear that humans have not been
subjected to the controlled breeding necessary to classify discrete “races”. So, in effect, because there are no
biologically pure groups of an entire race, there aren’t any direct ways to
link certain characteristics to just one group of people—the Human Genome
project proved this to be true as well:
Pure race just doesn’t exist. If
we can accept that there is no pure race, then we must accept Merriam-Webster’s
social definition of race as being how humans are classified. In his provoking essay, “The Illogic of
American Race Categories”, Paul R. Spickard, PhD, ushers us toward a direction
that we often dare not go: To question
head-on how is race defined in the U.S.
He observed that, “In most people's minds ... race
is a fundamental organizing principle of human affairs…” so here, Spickard is
calling in to question our ability to assert who we are without something as
hegemonic as race defined by U.S. law. I
say this because we are not born knowing what race we are; we are not born
feeling our “blackness” or “Japaneseness”; we are cultured and assimilated into
our respective “races”. This fact is
what makes race a social construct—the notion that we can be divided
into such categories is a social construct.
Thus, race exists
and then, it does not—it is an ongoing and contradictory process that we
knowingly and unknowingly maintain.
To further explain;
historically speaking, many religious, political, social, and legal
institutions have constructed race. In
2004, I went to see an exhibit at LACMA that featured La Castas (The Castes) paintings.
The Spanish Castas paintings are proof regarding the epistemology of
“race” and “racial intermixing”. At the
surface level, they are some of the earliest depictions of racial relations and
their families in a colonial society; but what they really spoke to was a
European audience regarding the “degenerate hybrids” that resulted and their place
in society. Four main categories were
claimed to exist: Espanol, Criollo, Negro and Indio. The sixteen resulting
“mixes” (Mulatto, Torna atras…etc) were defined as impure and tiered in
morality, ability and nobility based on the type of “racial mixing”. This system “showed” how Indians could
effectively become “white” by mixing with Spanish blood (read: assimilation and
termination of their own culture) and how mixing with “blacks” would take them
toward racial regression because they were associated with slavery. Defining race in such a way was critical to
“whites” remaining in a position to enforce their social dominance. The social dominance manifested as law that
enforced what was already claimed to be in existence.
Here in the United
States today, the law- writ large- echoes this racialization very closely in how it defines
race. The way race is socially
(read: legally) constructed in America
is synonymous with the term “boundary”. The
judges, lawyers, legislators, police officers and other officials all act to
construct race. They create, enforce and
maintain policy that shapes physical appearances; that disenfranchises and
impoverishes "nonwhites". By legally
constructing “race” and racialization; The United States has a direct way to
maintain racial scaffolding and prevent us from seeing this and facing it head
on.
However, not all
racial ideologies are destructive—there are those ideologies formed in response
to the racial status quo.
Asian-Americans, African-Americans all are sociopolitical ethnic groups
formed in response to a common shared experience and this can foster a sense of
trust and support—a movement that fights for social justice within their
communities.
Virginia Racial Integrity Act
Edith Wilson and the Pocahontas Clause
A Summary: The History of Eugenics
NikolaTesla's View on Eugenics
Virginia Apology for Eugenics
Virginia Racial Integrity Act
Edith Wilson and the Pocahontas Clause
A Summary: The History of Eugenics
NikolaTesla's View on Eugenics
Virginia Apology for Eugenics
