The Race Card Project
By Michele Norris
Tanya,
Manakin Sabot, VA.
My (adopted) son is biracial, his bio-father is unknown. I will never be able to connect him with his biological African American family. There is a void that I will never be able to fill for him . This breaks my heart as his mama.
Amelia G,
Kansas City, MO
In my anthropology class we learn that we all come from one common ancestor and that we only “look” different because of adaptations that helped us survive in that environment. In my sociology class we learned that there is more genetic diversity within a “race” or group of people than when comparing two different “races”.
Race has no biologic significance, race is a social construct. Please read the article titled: “We Should Abandon “Race” as a Biological Category in Biomedical Research. (It explains way better than I can, because race and ethnicity do have a difference)
At our core we are just people living on this planet. We started out in once place and started spreading out across the world. We continue to do so. We should be united by a goal to keep peace and our planet stable, but instead we fight with each other over arbitrary things. We can start to make the world a better place by showing compassion, understanding, and having a willingness to challenge our preconceived notions.
Edison LaCour,
Orange County, CA.
I am a product of a biracial marriage, or now with my newfound knowledge from my Biological Anthropology class, a multiethnic marriage. While race is a social construct, this has not stopped me from feeling it’s effects from society. Biologically, it is said that behavior is influenced by mostly by biological factors innate to that person through their DNA. However, I feel like sometimes society can have a large effect on a person. In my case, I physiologically display African-American and Hispanic qualities. However, growing up in primarily the predominantly white suburbs of San Diego and Orange County, I believe I grew up to be a product of my environment, reflecting my surroundings. So I believe that people have stereotyped me based on my physiological ethnic characteristics and have treated me with prejudice because I don’t fit the cookie-cutter mold of the suburbs or the private catholic school I attended. On the flip side of that, people question my biological ethnic heritage by saying I’m not black because I act white or that I “don’t act black enough.” I have embraced my ethnic identity as a man of Creole (African-American and French), Mexican, Irish, and other European descendants and learned to brush off prejudices from anyone. I know what I am, and will stay true to myself as long as I live.
Kimberly,
Pittsfield, MA.
My father, whom I don’t know, is black and my mother is white. I was raised in a White, Irish family. Growing up, no one in my family looked like me, but I never noticed until ‘Roots’ premiered on TV.
I had my son with a white man, so he is one quarter black, but is assumed to be Caucasian because of his appearance. My newly arrived grandson, is also white. And so for all these reasons, I spend a good deal of time (as does my son) trying to convince others that I was NOT adopted and that I AM a biological member of my own family.
In addition, there are two basic facts that I perpetually have to deal with; the fact that I am not white AND the fact that I am not black. People assume I ‘have the best of both worlds’ – in some ways; yes. There is a presumption that I am somehow less likely to be ‘ghetto’ or ‘hood’. My appearance often confuses people as to my origin, so they err on the side of caution. I am able to visibly tan, and have slightly less conflict with my hair. People find me more approachable than someone they consider ‘black’. I am often described as ‘exotic’ looking.
However, in other ways; no. I am still the target of racism, from both groups! Whites who do not accept others, recognize that no matter how ‘light’ I am, I am not ‘one of them’. And Blacks have a tendency to assume I ‘think I’m better’ or ‘act white’. There is a resentment from Black women, in particular about their ‘light skinned sisters’ stealing their men. But when I date white people, I am accused of ‘dissing my brothers’.
All this is based solely on MY OWN EXPERIENCES. But I believe that while I am a target for all the hate and resentment from both races, (and others), I also represent the future. Because that creamy beige, has become unremarkable. It could be a mixture of ANY ethnic combination, and so as more and more people become that color, the origins of it will become less and less important. …that’s my hope, at least.
Matthew Mark,
Aliso Viejo, CA
Skin color changes varies with the environmental conditions one lives in. Melanin is due to biological evolution and it is evident as people living near the equator have darker skin compared to people living near the artic. High skin pigmentation offers protection from skin cancer and sunburns. Body size and shape also changes due to environmental conditions and pressures. Modern man adapts with the environmental conditions as they migrate to different environmental conditions. Racism should therefore be a thing of the past and people should embrace diversity. People do not choose their skin color rather environmental conditions shapes skin coloring. White supremacy should not exist as if tables turned and the whites lived near the equator, the skin color would slowly change. There is need to address skin coloring to eradicate the misconceptions on skin color.
Deb Kruse
Tucson, AZ
Yes, I am “from” somewhere. Born in Korea – adopted as an infant (3 weeks old to be exact). Yes, most of my family is white. Yes, I grew up on a farm in Iowa and have driven a tractor and a combine. Yes, I’m adopted. Yes I like Asian food – Mexican food too. No, I don’t remember anything about Korea (really, you just asked me that?) No I don’t speak Korean. No I don’t know who my biological parents are. No, I’m not really curious about it. And no, I can’t use chopsticks. So give me a fork, and don’t make any assumptions about who you think I am or how you think I should act or be.
Eric Kelderman,
USA.
For much of my life, people assumed I was Jewish. After I met my biological parents, I found out they were right — and wrong.
Ryan Harrell,
Holland, MI.
Our adoptive son, Tagg, clearly is not a biological member of our family. In his two years with us we have encountered the entire range of reactions from loving acceptance to ignorant comments to outright disgust and disdain. But through it all, the fact is that we represent the new reality of the hodgepodge of racial and familial identities that is the United States. And the most common reaction we get, whether at church, in line at the grocery store, or at a playground makes us laugh and enjoy the humor in EVERYTHING: “May I please touch his hair?”
#hollandnewtech
Tanya,
Manakin Sabot, VA.
My (adopted) son is biracial, his bio-father is unknown. I will never be able to connect him with his biological African American family. There is a void that I will never be able to fill for him . This breaks my heart as his mama.
Alessa Abruzzo
Philadelphia, PA
Biologically I’m Korean. Ethnically I’m Irish-German-Italian. I was adopted at 4.5 months old, at which point I flew from South Korea to the USA and into the loving arms of my parents who happen to be white. To put it plainly, I was raised by white people – My entire immediate family (and most of the extensions) are of European ancestry. I really hate having to go into the Asian enclaves of the city to do certain grocery shopping or go to certain restaurants. Conversations always start with questions. “You [insert East-Asian race here]?” (No to everything but Koreans.) “Oh, you’re Korean! You speak Korean?” (No, I’m adopted and my parents are white.) “Ah, adopted!” And then comes the polite nod, the comforting pat on the shoulder, the smile that’s supposed to tell me that it WILL be alright, even though it’s currently not. “You’ll find your REAL parents someday!” That’s the instant I’m reminded that race, what’s on the outside, is what’s “real.” Ethnicity is learned, culture is a side-effect of being around people. But race is skin-deep, which is as far as most people look at first glance. My parents can’t be real because we don’t look alike. Real is apparently over 6,500 miles away, in the faces of two people I’ve never really met. That’s race for you.
Clayton,
CA.
I spent a lot of my misguided youth playing video games into the late hours of the night. It was how I found solace in times of pain or loneliness. Because you can’t see another person physically when playing games — only their avatar — you really can’t tell what race someone might be. Certainly you can make informed guesses based on things you might learn about them, their culture, or the language they speak, but nobody can know unless you tell them. Not having visual perception makes for interesting interactions. It highlights some of the inherent biological biases people have, and the fact that it is something we should strive to overcome.
I have been dishonored and have had racism directed towards me recently in my life, and all because I am a young white female. I have gotten sour looks, disrespectful words, and mean gestures thrown my way because of this. Although I have not experienced a lot of this behavior, I still feel it is something nobody should go through. About a month ago, two friends and I were out walking, and we got ridiculed by a man, all because we were white. He said “Look there’s five dollars right here on the floor! Girls, look!” when we didn’t look, because we were smart and knew he was probably some drunk molester or something, he continued yelling and said “You don’t care, you know why? It’s because you’re white! You rich spoiled white girls! Don’t have a care in the world!” He kept yelling, but it was inaudible to me. That was the first time I have experienced racism firsthand, and have only seen events since. Like, being spit on by someone my age when I was camping with my friends, and being scowled at when I was in Mazatlan for having the only white family at a resort. This is why we need to teach the actual backing of race. This is why we need to educate.
Race: Biological or Social?
Race is not real. Forget what you know, and listen closely, because you have been taught fiction, not fact. This is fact, because race has no biological backing whatsoever. Instead, it is a manmade concept, that was created to segregate people from one another.
According to the American Anthropological Association, gene variation between ¨races¨ is almost nothing.¨Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic “racial” groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes.¨ This means that someone of Asian background and someone of Mexican background have more in common than two people of Asian background. They argue that ¨”race” as it is understood in the United States of America was a social mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to those populations brought together in colonial America: the English and other European settlers, the conquered Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide slave labor.¨ This means that race was created, not by nature, but by people who thought they were better than others. In the end, race is not a biological concept, but a social one, but, even if race is not real, that does not mean that the consequences aren’t. So, in conclusion, we should try to find ways to stop race, before it stops us.
Miriam Lennmark
Tampa, FL
If you want to really look at how race affects us, look at sisters. Sisters with the same biological parents, same home, same everything…except the color of their skin, hair, and eyes. Our lives are so different. She looks Caucasian…I look…well, brown. Most people will tell me I look Latin, but that is not a race. The way the world reacts to my sister is so different, yet our parents, the ones that gave us both our genes, are the same. When I take my sweet blonde, blue-eyed niece to the park people assume I’m her nanny. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that. But one thing that will always be the same for my sister and I is our heritage. We were born in South America and lived most of our childhood there. We’ve been so lucky to be able to take the best of both societies to become who we are today. I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Trinity University.
My research lab studies the evolution of lizard behavior, and we need a diversity of perspectives to do our best work. Racially diverse groups are more productive and more creative, and every one of my students brings an important perspective to our work.
Some experiences that I have had with race and racism would be that when someone would try to guess where my ancestors were from or my race. They would say white or places in Europe like England or Scotland. When I tell them that I’m one fourth Philippino, most of the time people don’t believe me a deny what I just said. Sometimes it takes a bit for people to believe me and face the fact that I’m one fourth Philippino. My six word memoir connects to what I just said. It’s about when I tell people that I’m Philippino they basically say my six word memoir to me. People sometimes don’t believe me when I tell them about my race. I’ve never had an experience with a racist person and it’s probably a good thing. I know that one thing that contributes to racist people is that they grow up around racist stereotypes or that they never learn the differences between stereotypes and how people actually are. As I’ve grown up I have learned the difference between stereotypes and the truth and how it can affect people. I think that it is good to expose kids to these harsh topics so they know about them and the different problems that arise from it. Also, if you start talking with them about it at a younger age they will feel more open to talk about race and racism.
Race Doesn’t Biologically Exist; How Race Came To Be.
Race doesn’t biologically exist. It was created by us humans to classify or put people into different groups according to where their ancestors are from. According to Science Daily, a biologist from Washington University In St. Louis says “Race doesn’t matter.” “In fact, it doesn’t even exist in humans.” According to Alan R. Templeton, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts and Sciences at Washington University, who has analyzed DNA from global human populations that revealed the patterns of human evolution over the past one million years. “There is plenty of genetic variation in humans, most of the variation is individual variation.” “While between-population variation exists, it is either too small, which is a quantitative variation, or it is not the right qualitative type of variation” — “it doesn’t mark historical sub lineages of humanity.” Using the latest molecular biology techniques, Templeton analyzed millions of genetic sequences and found that there are three distinct types of human DNA and concluded that, “in the scientific sense, the world is colorblind and that’s how it should be.” This is showing that there has been several changes between how people look over the past one million years, but not much change between populations as a whole. It means that the visual changes between us are too small and insignificant to mean anything. They’re just very minute differences that make us feel like we are very different from one another. This matters because we feel that if someone has a different skin color than me they are very different, when actually it’s completely false. Those changes are part of only 0.01% or less of our genes. In other words, we are 99.9%+ the same. Now you see that through evidence race doesn’t biologically exist. Race may not really exist, but discrimination still does. If you see people getting discriminated because of what they look like, make sure to tell the people that are discriminating the person that race doesn’t exist and that what we look like shouldn’t be a problem that some people have to face.
Wherever I may go, my sister and I are always questioned about our ethnicity, we apparently look Native or Brazilian or Indian. I don’t know if I should be offended or flattered. I hate when people think of all maids as Mexican or Latina, it’s just rude. No one should be put under a generalization by ignorant people who are most of the time just confused. This is what is aggravating me the most, being on the dividing line, I am Mexican and White, listening to both ends talk about the other in devastating ways. When some of my friends ask me if I speak Spanish I say, “Does it look like I do?” The fact being that I am tan and like some Mexican food, shouldn’t make me a stereotype. I used to think I was just American or white. But now I know I’m also all of these wonderful ethnicities too, German, Irish, Mexican. I guess this is what makes me… Me.
“Race” is not real, just hate is…
Race will never be proven biologically. Race is a label people put on each other to discriminate the other. There is no cell in the body that can prove race is genetic or biological. During World War II the ideology of “race” and “racism” reached to Germany and led to a man exterminating over 11 million people. This man was Adolf Hitler. He believed that these people were of an “Inferior races” (e.g., Jews, Gypsies, Africans, homosexuals, and so forth). According to the Institute for Human Genomics, we share 99% of the same DNA codes with each other! So why are people so cruel to others just because they look different? This study shows that we should be able to stop racism and discrimination globally with these statistics and studies. In conclusion “Race” will never be biologically real, but it is still there under our noses each day of our life. I hope that our next generation will not have to grow up knowing the tragic word, that is Race…
This memoir to me means that we shouldn’t be just a label, that we should be ourselves and not let anyone judge us. I’ve heard that “Never put your hair down because you might get lice at school, and they generalize who has lice at school. This to me also means that I am not just a category in a race list, I’m a person who has feelings and can get them hurt. I use to think that words meant something that they didn’t mean but now i know that we have been using words that are racist and words that can hurt someone’s feelings really bad. One thing I have learned is that there are so many stereotypes that I don’t feel comfortable of talking about.
Race is a man-made biological stereotype word that society invented.
This fact is true because in the past , race started when the europeans came to America and started judging black people. According to the article “ORIGIN OF THE IDEA OF RACE,” it states “race is an invention and it was essentially a folk idea, not a product of scientific research and discovery.” This states that scientifically race is not a real word in a way because it’s proven scientifically. This article’s evidence supports the claim because it proves that race is not a word that was just already created, it’s a word that people made and got people hurt. Race over the years has hurt innocent people mentally and physically, race shouldn’t determine people; we should determine race.
I have not experienced racism. It’s as flat as that. My whole family are nice people and I have not been exposed to racism. However, I do know quite a bit about it. From the history of how racism came to be to the people who changed it for better and worse. My ethnicity is German because I was born in America and my family has lived here their whole lives too. A long time ago my ancestors came from Prussia, Germany. I enjoy studying other cultures and they are all fascinating. I love to travel and go to new places like Mexico, to learn the language, surf, and simply be immersed in their culture. I used to think that each person can be put into a category and can be defined as a person by where they come from. In reality that is not true and who you REALLY are is defined by what you are in the inside.
Race Is Not Real!
“Race is not a biological trait” says Michael Yudell, co-author of the Huffington Post and associate professor and chair of community health and prevention. It is in fact just a social construct created by people to separate others. If you look at just a person’s DNA you will not see anything that determines their race. This is because we are all the same species, (Homosapiens), and we all have slight differences that makes ourselves unique because of where we live and our choices. And in fact, we are NOT completely different people. This is because the differences we have are less than 6% and that is determined by the places we live in because of the conditions there. And also, our own choices, for example, how you choose to work out that one day and now you have more muscle and less fat. The fact is people should not be defined by ‘race,’ and instead by who they are as a person. So, why is this important you ask? Well, because race is social construct that society has built and puts people into categories and in turn this sprouts racism, and leads to a decline in our society. Don’t YOU think that’s important?
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