These two statements on race from the AAA and the AAPA really put this conversation of race into perspective for me. Both of these important pieces of literature are informative and bring up a many points that stuck out to me.
Firstly, in the AAPA statement, one of the very first section’s mentions how in the past race categories were based solely upon things we could see on the outside, observable traits like skin color and head size. This is what I think a lot of people still think that race is based on to this day. If you asked someone what they thought of when you said the word “race” I have a feeling many people would answer “black and white people”. Like we learned from lecture, the original 5 races were only based on 60 different people. The idea of race from the beginning has been based on bad and unethical studies. Prejudice and racism are ongoing problems in today’s society. To me, I have absolutely never seen why this exists. Even as a child I could see that we are all humans, (as the author of this mentions that we are all homo sapiens and belong to the same species) and I always thought racism was something utterly unneeded.
It is important to mention the genetic piece of this. Like we discussed in lecture this week, the statement mentions gene flow and how we are constantly changing because of this. I got pretty angry reading the section having to debunk the problem of interracial marriage. I just cannot believe in 2019 there are still people who think they can dictate who marries who. The same goes for people of other genders and sexualities other than cis and straight. Even when the genetic science is brought up for the argument against interracial marriage, I am sure there will be individuals who still continue to think “races” should stay within “races”.
Secondly, the AAA statement on race. One of the quotes that struck me was “the idea of race has always carried more meanings than just physical differences”. The stereotypes carried by race are ever present even today. I enjoyed where they mentioned conditioning in this statement. As a psychology major, it always makes it easier for me to understand a concept if something from psych is brought into it. This also gives me a new perspective, and I can see how race and its implications have been conditioned into certain cultures for generations. I wonder how we can strive to fix the issue of race. Maybe spreading these statements more widely could help bring more attention to this huge problem we have not only in the US, but around the world.
When trying to explain the non-existence of biological race to someone who was unfamiliar, I would bring up facts from these two articles. I would tell them about the origins of race, the fact that it is socially constructed, and that we all come from the same species. I would explain race as an ideology as stated in the AAA article.
Hey Haley, I liked your blog and I also felt that the statements from the AAA and the AAPA made me think a little differently about the concept of race, and put it into perspective for me. In my blog, it was hard for me to figure out how I would try to explain the non-existence of biological race. I think your idea of bringing in facts from the articles is a great first step, however, I think that because race is something that is so ingrained in our society and it’s such a “normal’ thing to people, that even facts won’t get others to open their minds and think differently. I’m sure I’m playing devil’s advocate and that there are probably more people that will easily understand and/or accept the facts than I think, but I do think that this is a concept that will prove slightly difficult to explain.
I agree with everything you typed on your post. When I was growing up I was taught also to treat everyone the same regardless of their color or race. To this day I still do the same thing. The school that I went was very diverse. So, a lot of kids came from a lot of different backgrounds. When I was younger everyone played with each other and communicated with each other. When I got older some of those people started to only communicate with people that looked like them. There was also a bit of subtle racist conversation floating around in the school. I believe this can relate to that they were taught to believe things that weren’t true about people who were a different skin color then them.
I sent this response to the wrong post.
I definitely agree with your frustration on the ideology of race. Biologically, I think it’s nice and clarifying to really understand that race doesn’t exist, but we know why people have darker skin tones and why certain groups have certain genetic traits. It literally all just comes down to gene flow and the fact that humans mostly mated with people of their own “group” purely because they didn’t travel or move far from where they were born.
This is going to sound crazy, but my father’s side of my family is extremely conservative, especially back when my parents were first getting married in the late 80’s. My dad is Dutch and protestant and my mom is Polish-Irish and Catholic. My grandfather made a HUGE deal about my dad marrying outside his ethnicity and religion. My entire family is white, but apparently my mom’s family wasn’t the “right type” of white.
This is all to say that we’ve wrapped up so much history and culture and discrimination into race that it’s hard to even have a conversation about biological race because for all intents and purpose race exists in the history of humans and it means a lot to people in terms of identity.