I used to think that race was something like ethnicity. It was who you were, where you came from, or where your ancestors came from. Racism, I already knew was insulting, or stereotyping a certain “race”. Something I wasn’t so aware of was it’s history and how big of an impact it made on other people’s lives. I wasn’t aware of how people would try to make others feel less superior when really, we were all born to be equal. At a point in my life I have said something that generalized a certain “race”. I have definitely boxed people in categories based on the majority of what I see. I might not recall a specific time, but it’s happened and I now know that it’s not a harmless joke, it’s something people should realize is never ok. After digging into this topic and discovering the truth, I now know that race was never biologically real, it could never be proven scientifically. Race, is something that has existed socially for the longest time. It’s something that should never be accepted in our society yet, terrible things are still happening based on the color of someone’s skin. Racism has existed because of people, and hopefully it could be extinguished because of people as well.
Race Never Existed, but Racism Did and Still Does.
Race is not biologically real, but a social reality. We are all human and one equal race, and now it’s time to start acting like it. According to Alan Goodman, an anthropologist, and the president of the American Anthropological Association,“We all live in a racialized society. And individuals of color are exposed to it more obviously, with more virulence, more force, than others. Racism rests in part on the idea that race is biology. Then biology becomes an excuse for social differences.” All of our lives people have been treated like they are lesser than others just because of a simple thing: whether you were born with more color in your skin or not. This ludicrous thinking that our society has tried to jam into people’s minds will only get worse if we believe that thought. Recently the Los Angeles Times posted about the clashing of police officers and Native Americans protesting for months against a pipeline that is meant to cross their sacred burial lands. According to the Los Angeles Times, “Protesters said that those arrested in the confrontation had numbers written on their arms and were housed in what appeared to be dog kennels, without bedding or furniture. Others said advancing officers sprayed mace and pelted them with rubber bullets.” This shows that even today, people have been boxing others in categories that they are not and it’s time to realize that this still exists and it’s not ok. Despite the fact that race has never existed biologically, but socially, doesn’t mean that racism never existed. It has existed, and it still does.
