Sunday, October 23, 2016

Race: A social construct or biological creation

For hundreds of years, there has been some time of discrimination or racism due to racism. Whether it be in our own country or in another one,  multiple times one race has considered itself superior to the other. However, when taken a closer look at, race is dependent first on recognition of physical attributes. If you have brown skin you're Indian, if you have pale skin you're white. So, this way, it would be considered a biological construct.

However, the creation of the standards for race root from social construct. We have become so reliant on the fact that any we see now will fit into one of our categories that it's hard to see beyond that. However, a white person is truly part European. Many people who have brown skin aren't Indian but are instead from Bangladesh or Sri Lanka. This shows how limiting these boundaries can be, but we  would not be able to classify people without it.

On the other hand, when race is looked at as a biological creation only, all the stereotypes and stigma attached become separated from the person. This may be a good thing on many accounts, but when looking at history, events like the holocaust dawn on the fact that these stereotypes like the blond hair and blue eyes can create a distinction among the races.

There is also a lot more confusion that happens when considering religion and ethnicity. For example, in the graphic novel Maus, Art's wife "converted" after marriage from a French to a Jew, so she was drawn as a mouse. But in today's world, when a woman converts after marriage it usually refers to her religion, so in that sense, how can you tell religion by just looking at someone? By changing her religion, she in turn changed who she was and which is why she too was drawn as a mouse. Region, race, and ethnicity are intertwined and the relationship between them is up to interpretation.

Racism is a social construct. Racial recognition is based on social standards created by the biological creation. So, which should it be called?



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