Sunday, February 8, 2015

Blurred Lines

I, too, am torn between the elimination of the concept of race as we know it and conserving it.  As we’ve mentioned repeatedly in class, to instill the “color blind” theory right now would be to damage an existing population: race has caused minorities hardships, therefore if it is to ever disappear, it should not be until the members of each race are susceptible to the same opportunities and proportionately subject to harm.  Categorizing people has created more harm than good. I think race can be embraced among communities through traditions, but overall it has led to hierarchies and caste systems.  Ideally, appearance would be irrelevant and we would all take the time to acknowledge meaningful characteristics, but I don’t have that much faith in humanity.  I think we will always categorize people one way or another which means altering our ideas of race is necessary.  I don’t think we have to eliminate race to eliminate the ignorance surrounding.


As time progresses, people will continue to challenge the current concepts of race by mixing among themselves.  This will take time as there are still stigmas surrounding exogamy, but I’m interested to see how categories develop as we develop as the human race. I think we will still categorize biracial children by their appearance, but I think with more biracial people comes more acceptance.  If someone is truly racially ambiguous, then you cannot pin stereotypes to them.  If biracial people were as common as monoracial people, lines would be blurred, categories would be blurred, and perhaps more understanding of people as individuals would develop.  

2 comments:

  1. I agree that categorizing people by race has created a hierarchy since, let's be honest, this entire concept was created by white men who quite gladly put themselves on top. I also agree that we will probably always keep grouping people, even if by some miracle we do overcome the prejudices of race. It's just in our nature, I think, to try and see patterns and to group accordingly. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, though. If we are the ones that get to label ourselves, it can be more of an identification than a curse. So I am latina but I am also a Memphian (TN edition) and a feminist and an English major, etc etc. Maybe we'll always group ourselves (and even become attached to our labels, I think) but as long as we're not held hostage by a name someone else gives us (like the nasty prejudices that come with our race now) it might be fine.

    Hopefully you're right and the biracial children will help to put behind us the weird separations we've put up between us. I would hate to think that we'll just be dumb enough to come up with stereotypes and more prejudices for these new children. I myself an a big believer that having more and better representation in the media is what will help to do away with some of these old, completely ridiculous prejudices.

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  2. I also agree with you ladies. I , just a few weeks ago, made a post on facebook regarding what we learned in class. It said, "Who would've known creating catagories would be so helpful yet so devastating!". Some people didn't know what I could've been refering to but some did and agree as well. Seeing that eliminating it would cause a world of trouble (which is thrown out the window), it is imperative that we find a way to preserve the concept of race and remove the social bias attached to it.

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