Contemplating Racism Essay, Research Paper

From the beginning of recorded history, possibly before then, humans have found a necessity for classifying and categorizing every aspect of life. This need for order has been used to efficiently organize and clarify the endless details on Earth. This arrangement of objects in groups has also created a very sinister and volatile mindset that some people live by. This associative manner of classification has lead to the formation of beliefs in race identities, stereotypes, and superiority in the form of racism. Racism is contempt for people who have physical characteristics different from your own (Nanda and Warms 1). This concept is often combined with what is called racialism. Racialism is an ideology based on the following suppositions: There are biologically fixed races; different races have different moral, intellectual, and physical characteristics (Nanda and Warms 1). This is the ideal that many people engage in consciously and the way some people think without even realizing it. The only way to overcome this derogatory belief system is to define the meanings and misunderstandings of racial differences.

Race is the term for classifications of people based on opinions about physical characteristics and differences between groups of individuals. The problem with this is that these differences do not really provide distinctions between ancestral lineages. In fact, these subtle differences between so called races, like broadened noses, physical structure, and skin color, are the results of environmental circumstances encountered by early nomadic human groups as they moved and settled in new territories. These traits are the products of many thousands of years of genetic hit or miss. Some of these traits were beneficial to the individuals and some were disadvantageous for survival in the many diverse environments found on Earth. For instance, the most commonly cited difference between the races is skin color. This trait has been proven to be a direct result of survival and subsequent reproduction of offspring with similar traits. The light skinned Scandinavians differ, genetically, very little from their darker olive- skinned neighbors in Southern Europe. However, the fair skinned people would suffer more severe sun burns and run a greater risk of developing skin melanomas and carcinomas due to increased solar radiation at lower latitudes. On the other hand, the olive- skinned Southern Italians would probably be more likely to suffer from a lack of vitamin D, at higher latitudes, due to the decrease of solar radiation. As a fact of adaptation, each group would eventually begin to darken or lighten respectively to cope with these changes. This development can be seen in almost any group, over long periods of time, that moves to a location dramatically different from their traditional homelands. If any ?racial? group of people were to be scrutinized, it would be found that each so called race has within it a wide range of skin tones and colors. Do these facts make one group better than any other? No, since each group would experience some eventual changes to adapt to new environments one race would not hold any distinct advantage over any other race.

In order to be a racist, there must first be defined races. To those of us in the United States and most other places in the world, races are defined as Native American, white or Caucasian, Black, Hispanic, and Asian or Mongoloid. Conceptually it is important to recall that the classical race concept implies the existence of several collections of uniform individuals who comprise relatively distinct units. Individuals by definition are more similar to each other in each unit in all measurable parameters and any individual can serve as a representative of the whole group (Keita and Kittles 534). As previously stated, these groups do not contain identically representative individuals and concepts of race should not be held with any degree of confidence in its validity. The fact of the matter is that broad genetic similarities between individuals from different groups would overlap the defined boundaries of each race. Despite this fact, people still hold their racial prejudices and feelings of superiority.

The main reason for this perpetuation, in my opinion, is that racism begins in the home. Parents allow their misconceptions of race to influence the beliefs of their children. The effects of being brought up with prejudices against groups of people can vary from disassociation with individuals from different ?races? to the confluence of extreme hate groups like Neo- Nazis, Black Power organizations, and the overly publicized Ku Klux Klan. These groups have been sited for extreme violence, hatred, and the murders of individuals who were guilty of only being associated with a specific race. With a little thought about why we hold these beliefs we probably would come to the conclusion that these ideals are erroneous and ultimately damaging against obtaining a true sense of community in the world. The discrimination does not end with physical characteristics. Some people also believe in social, mental, and monetary superiority. By continuing any form of racism we simply give rise to the continuation of misconceptions by others. This is an unnecessarily cruel cycle that can only be stopped in the home. In reproducing the same tragic pas de deux over and over, we are caught in a vicious circle of vast proportions. A crucial element in that circle is our very failure to recognize that it is a circle, that we are all implicated in perpetuating it (Wachtel 1).

The concepts of race can now be seen as faulty notions of overzealous classification and ignorance of the facts. Now that we have come to realize this, many of us have begun to shed our preconceptions and to look at the big picture. How highly evolved can we be if we are unable to do away with this primitive thinking? Can anyone cast aside the result of years of reproduced and adopted beliefs? Perhaps no one is totally free of this mentality. Everyone can find a hint of this type of thinking in his or her mind through any contact with different people or cultures. It is a rare person who is not curious about the skin colors, hair textures, bodily structures, and facial features associated with racial background (Rensberger 57). As a result of this, we can only hope that by not tolerating this type of thinking in our children and not being part of it with our associates we can help make racism an unpopular and unacceptable way of life.

Works Cited

1.Keita, S. O. Y. and Kittles, Rick A. ?The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence.? American Anthropologist. 99 (September 1997): 534- 542.

2.Nanda, Serena and Warms, Richard L. Cultural Anthropology. Belmont, CA: West/ Wadsworth, 1998.

3.Rensberger, Boyce. ?Racial Odyssey.? Science Digest. (January/ February 1981) Reprint. 57- 63.

4.Wachtel, Paul L. Race in the Mind of America: Breaking the Vicious Circle between Blacks and Whites. New York: Routledge, 1999.