Convince Me that Race Exists
Speech [By Luann (Suhr) Akaydin]
Human Family
by Dr. Maya Angelou
I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.
Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.
The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.
I've sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land.
I've seen the wonders of the world,
not yet one common man.
I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I've not seen any two
who really were the same.
Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.
We love and lose in China,
we weep on England's moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same.
I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
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Welcome ladies and gentlemen. Today I would like to talk to you about ‘race’ and the concepts we use to define ‘race’. What would you say if I told you that we’re all one race? Would you ask which race? Would you be happy if I said one ethnicity over another? Why is that? Why do we associate certain things with different ‘races’? I begin with this poem by Maya Angelou because she clearly shows what we see on a day to day basis. We see people that look different than us and assume they are just because of their skin color. We use this visual descriptor of ‘race’ to identify people and weed them out as different, when in reality we are all in fact, “more alike… than we are unalike” (Angelou).
What is race? Answers you may get are ‘your skin color’ and ‘your ethnicity,’ but what is it really? Race is a social construct. It was created as a social political concept and has no basis in biology. According to biology, race does not exist. Race is nothing but an illusion. The idea of race makes controlling people by government that much easier. If ‘Race A’ thinks that they’re better than ‘Race B,’ then they will fight amongst themselves and not realize that government institutes take their power from them. A distraction is always needed in politics. Whoever created the idea of race was very intelligent because it is the perfect distraction. It can never run out of possibilities. It feeds itself. If you point a finger at another race everyone is quick to jump on the bandwagon because the differences are clearly seen every day. An example of how race is not biological is seen in American politics.
Now let’s look at some statistical data of how we define race in the United States. The following chart is compiled from information found on the U.S. Census Bureau’s site in regards to citizens reports on their race.
Race is not biological. In the film, Race - The Power of an Illusion, Ossorio states that “race isn't something biological, [but it is] real… Race as we understand it, [is] a social construct” (Adelman, 2003). Race only has the meaning that we give it. Without our social meaning behind skin color, it is just skin color and nothing separates us because of it. Hammonds states that, “Race is a human invention. We created it, we have used it in ways that have been in many, many respects quite negative and quite harmful (Adelman, 2003)”. Although it has become strongly accepted as fact, race is actually nothing but an illusion. Race is a man-made barrier meant to keep some people outside the circle and some people inside the circle. Our differences in skin color do not show any scientific meaning behind them and that is why it is so easy for us to continually change a person’s designated race.
During the time after slavery a person was judged by their degree of ‘blackness’. A person with 1/8 black heritage was considered white in one state. A person with 1/6 black heritage was considered white in West Virginia, and a single drop of black blood made you black in Louisiana. In the article, Race-making in "The Mississippi of the North": The Indian-White Boundary in South Dakota, Thomas Biolsi reiterates the case of Plessy v. Ferguson where although Plessy looked white and had 7/8 white heritage, he was still considered black. Biolsi argues that, the “reputation of being white…is… the master-key that unlocks the golden door of opportunity” (Biolsi 1994; 4). Being considered “white” gives certain privileges. Black people were recovering from a time when they were defined as 3/5 of a person and didn’t have the same rights as white people. The blacks wanted to be considered white for the privileges it would provide them. A person could petition for whiteness in another state after being denied it in the last state. If race was biological, how could you ‘petition for whiteness’?
Native Americans had land that the United States government wanted and they were pushed onto reservations in order for the United States to gain this land. Since the United States had made provisions to them, at the time that they put the reservation system in place, the United States made loopholes to get their land. The United States could not take land from the Native Americans so they made it a statute that if you were one half white, you were white, not Native American. By encouraging Native Americans to mix and integrate themselves into white society the whites were able to strip the Native Americans power and their land from them easily. By taking away the legality of the Native American ethnicity from the Native Americans who had integrated within another race the United States government thereby took the rights of the Native Americans to get provisions and monetary compensation from the United States government. The government did not allow them the money that was entitled to them. This insured the United States could take their land, could tax them the same as any other Americans, and would no longer have to pay the Native Americans provisions for the atrocities that they had suffered at the hands of the United States government.
Native Americans are represented by racist depictions of them, even today, through marketing of sport’s teams, foods, and tobacco products which they are clearly not associated with. Ward Churchill’s article, Crimes Against Humanity, states that although “Julius Streicher… [was hanged for dehumanizing Jews” (Churchill, 1993; 369-370) in his tabloid, the racist depictions of Native Americans are still tolerated and even celebrated. Dehumanizing of one race is made to be more important because the condemning of a German citizen is much more accepted than for the United States to condemn its own people although they both do the same thing in dehumanizing another race.
The idea of ‘whiteness’ had now become subjective. The term ‘whiteness’ was instituted and manipulated by the government to get America whatever it wanted at the time. The term ‘whiteness’ was not awarded to Blacks because you have to keep a working class and it was thought to be easy to keep blacks down in the social hierarchy. The Blacks were here as slaves originally and they didn’t have anything else the United States could take from them. Blacks were used for cheap labor and weren’t seen as having any value. The Blacks had nothing to bargain with for their ‘whiteness’ because the United States had taken their rights and freedoms from them before they even set foot on the shore of the country. They wanted the comforts that ‘whiteness’ provided. Native Americans, on the other hand, had land. Land is power. America did not want to give the Native Americans money and to let them live tax-free on land they could use for their own monetary gains. By creating the loophole of Native Americans becoming white after one generation, they took power from them. So now Native Americans are easily converted to whiteness and blacks are not.
What about Indians? Are they white? In Karen Brodkin Sacks article, How did Jews Become White Folks?, she argues the case of Bhagat Sing Thind. Thind had tried to learn from the case of Chae Chan Ping, a Chinese immigrant who was denied citizenship on the basis of eugenics. Thind’s argument was based on eugenics. He proved that according to eugenics, the science of the time, that, “Asian Indians were the real Aryans and Caucasians and therefore white [but] the court countered that the US only wanted blond Aryans and Caucasians.” (Brodkin Sacks, 1996; 81). The same science used to deny Ping citizenship was now completely disregarded to keep Thind from becoming a citizen as well. Even after proving his ‘whiteness’ to the court, it was not seen as truth. In the film, Race- The Power of an Illusion, the court ruled that, “Thind might well be Caucasian, the high court said, but he was not white”. Scientific proof or not, Thind was not getting the title of ‘whiteness’. The conclusion people came to from the outcome of this case was that, “whiteness was what the common white man said it was”. The idea of race was an arbitrary one because even when scientific evidence of the time was used to argue the case of race, it was dismissed. The science behind race was not a factual one; it was just an excuse to keep certain peoples down.
Though Europeans from North Western Europe were originally seen to be the only true whites, eventually other groups were allowed into the white category. Brodkin Sacks states that the 1940 census was a turning point by no longer separating the European races into white and not-white categories. They “expanded [their] notion of whiteness,” even allowing “Mexicans to [be considered] white” (Brodkin Sacks, 1996; 81). By saying “notion” this implies that it is just a thought or a belief. A “notion” is not accepted as fact by all people.
Spencer Wells is a population geneticist and director of The Genographic Project. He has been trying to prove that we are all related, scientifically, and that there is no biological basis to race. His study has accumulated facts from biological tests of DNA of people from different ethnic backgrounds. According to the film, The Human Family Tree, these genetic tests have proved that although we look different from each other, we actually have only 0.01% difference in our DNA markers. All of the females that have been tested carry the same mitochondrial DNA of this one female, scientific Eve, who lived 200,000 years ago in Africa. All of the males that have been tested carry the same y chromosome of this one male, scientific Adam, who lived 60,000 years ago in Africa. From the testing of this theory we can see that there is scientific evidence proving that humans, no matter their ethnicity, all stem from branches of one family tree with roots in the continent of Africa.
The percent of differences is really small to have so many divisions based upon this theory of ‘race’. Let’s look at a chart so you can see how meaningful these numbers really are.
Now let’s take a look at a percentage of the people Spencer Wells tests that are thought to be of African descent based on their genetic makeup.
If we’re all African then how come we don’t look the same? The film, The Human Family Tree, addresses these differences. The difference in people’s visual appearance, such as their skin color, is based on environmental factors that a set of people faced over a specific period of time. People closer to the equator were exposed to a very warm climate and developed darker skin and melanin as protection from the sun’s effects (Straughn-Williams). People further from the equator developed lighter skin so they were able to absorb more sun and thereby warmth in a colder environment (Straughn-Williams). There are no genetic determinants for skin color. Skin color is not encoded in your DNA, it is determined by environment through an evolutionary process.
Race has become accepted to the general public as if it were biological. People are raising children from a young age with racist beliefs and ideals, even racist propaganda though subliminal at times, promotes the idea of race to become ingrained in one’s head from a young age. Our ideologies as Americans are altered by our parent’s concepts of race and by the media that is around us. Seeing racist propaganda on a continual basis almost makes one immune to it, like it’s the way it’s been and so it always will be, but we don’t immediately realize that race is a very fluid concept, like language, always changing. Race is not defined by biology and society keeps changing the meaning of each race. This ability to weave in and out of your race based on the times and your location shows that race is not a definite. You may be white today, but who is to say you will be white tomorrow?
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Works Cited
Adelman, L. (Producer) (2003).Race - The Power of an Illusion[DVD]. Available from http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0149
Angelou, Maya.Human Family. http://www.ctadams.com/mayaangelou12.html. Web. 13 Nov. 2011.
Biolsi, T. (1994).Race-making in "The Mississippi of the North": The Indian-White Boundary in South Dakota. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Anthropology, Portland State University, Portland, OR, Portland, OR.
Brodkin Sacks, K. (1996).How did Jews Become White Folks?. In G. S. Gregory & R. Sanjek (Eds.), Race (pp. 78-102). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Churchill, W. “Crimes Against Humanity,” Z Magazine 6 March 1993:43-47.
Cohen, C. (Director) (2009).The Human Family Tree[Web]. Retrieved from
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/human-family-tree/
Straughn-Williams, Maritza. “Class Lecture”. Cultural Anthropology. LaGuardia Community College. Long Island City, New York. November 2011.
U.S. Census Bureau Website. “Race Statistics”. 2010 Census.
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html. Web. 13 Nov. 2011.