had an interesting discussion recently that I want to build off. we were not born with the perceptions we’ve created throughout our lives. in fact, my perceptions at this moment are vastly different than what I thought I knew five years ago.
think back to your earliest memories of race and of a particular experience you can remember that was a changing moment in how you thought about race. it may not be a first experience but it may be one that particularly stands out. it may not be a bad experience. not all racially motivated experiences are. but can you remember how these perceptions were socially constructed in your own life?
I remember back when I was seven or eight years old. i grew up in an neighborhood socially and physically constructed for immigrant families…. you know…. the type of neighborhood that when you’re driving around with a realtor, they’ll drive past the “white” neighborhoods, and into a particular community where they’ll stop and say “here’s where you should be” …. “here’s what you may be looking for.” yeah, those neighborhoods.
so all my friends were first either “first-generationers” or immigrants themselves. never knew what race was, never had a conception of color except that we were all different shades of something. then one year, my family and i took a trip out of the country and into middle-of-nowhere, USA. And that’s when I first felt it. you know…. it. that uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach when you feel like you’re on display. but at that time, i couldn’t place it. i didn’t have the vocabulary to articulate how i felt or the capacity to understand why i felt it. what i did know was that it was the color of my skin that made the difference.
-joy.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 5:44 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
And to be clear- race and subhuman categories of race do not exist…. except as rooted concepts in our minds. This excercise is merely to challenge these perceptions and how we came to know them in our own lives.
For a brief synopsis on connecting knowledge around the “the purpose of racism,” check the link below for a piece written by Immortal Technique.
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=4010185&blogID=319730610
I grew up in Cameroon, which is an Black African Country. While growing up, I lived with black people. But I had a white friend and I knew bi-racial people(black-white, asian-black). I have bi-racial cousins. With my friends, it was not a problem or a special thing to discuss about.
Then, 2 years ago, I moved to Canada. That is when I began to feel IT. I understood that your color makes a big difference. You can see or feel IT everyday, you see wonders on people’s face. They don’t like you even if they had never take the change to know you. They are full of prejudice just because of your skin color.
I think races exists because I feel IT, may be like you said it is just in our minds. What is it exactly? I don’t know. It depends on how each one define it. Do we classified it on skin?or on something else? I know someone who always says that there are as many races as they are people in this world.
Now there are open-mind people and they are some that are not. I think that is what really makes the difference.
I don’t think its right to say ‘race and subhuman categories of race do not exist, because that’s just plain ‘ol bull. Why is it okay to categorize everything else on this planet based on species and similar characteristics and so forth, but when it comes to humans all of a sudden its taboo to do so?
We know that there are plants in the world yes. Different type of plants that fit into different categories based on their similarites. There are different type of animals, bacteria, diseases, cars, batteries, pencils , pens, toothpicks…etc. WHY IS IT THEN OKAY TO CATEGORIZE EVERYTHING ON EARTH…from living to non-living but say it is utter rubbish to do so with humans when there are obvious differences that separate us (both internal and external). In that case, the whole science of biology needs to be washed down the drain; all sciences even. Since they all deal with what elements things in this world are made of, how they are categorize and how they function.
If I decided one dat that I will not believe there are any differences in, lets say fruits for example, because I feel oranges gets ‘discriminated’ against more than apples. Then do I actually shatter what distinguishs these two types of fruits? Will someone thereafter not be able to tell the difference between orange juice and apple juice all because of my new stance? NO and NO
Ignoring a problem never makes it go away. So choosing to ignore the fact that there ARE different types of races within the homosapien category of living organisims won’t make us all suddenly blend into a glorious michael jackson color and start singing koombaya.
Race is a factor for some still to this day. We can only change that by attacking the problem, not choosing the opposite.
But nehoo, unlike America, blacks are the majority in Jamaica (where I’m from), and most of the Caribbean for that matter; every other race is the minority. Speaking of which, it seems the word ‘minority’ as been automatically associated with black people. Because I had a convo w/someone before where they said somethign like ‘there are alot of minorites in Jamaica’. Naturally I gave ‘em a verbal bytch slap for such a comment
. But yeh, It’s mostly blacks in my country, PLUS, the thing about the caribbean is, as oppose to different races who live in America. All Jamaican share the same culture; despite race, we are all the same. Hence our national motto-Out of Many, One people. An asian-jamaican will talk and enjoy the same things as a black jamaican, white, indian…etc; America is a mixture of separate cultures.
But onto the *IT* factor, have I ever felt it? Sure, not only from people of other race, but within my own race. Nothing worse that ‘inner-race racisim’ I always say
Saying that race is nothing more than poison deep-rooted in our minds is not ignoring the problem. But without explaining why, I can see how those words can lead to that presumption I guess. Of course I understand, at a surface level, that we are all different and that there is an intersectionality of oppression that exists today. One cannot ignore the fact, for example, that landlords would prefer to sell a house to a white, middle-aged woman who has children, then a young, single, woman of color. There are multiple identities even within “race” that make up who we are, how others view us, and how we are treated on a daily basis. I agree completely with this, and I make a living breaking down these barriers and confronting stigma and discrimination every day. That is NOT the point I am trying to make.
My explanation for that broad statement is rooted in the history of slavery and racism as we know it.
Racism is the institutionalized belief and law-backed ideology of racial superiority. And I’m speaking to the greater context and how it came into existence (not the one-to-one racism we experience daily).
It’s interesting because when people look at race and especially racism, they tend to look at slavery as though slavery was originally used to divide and conquer races. And it actually is relevant to the discussion because race has been re-defined and structurally placed many times throughout history. And there is a distinctive connection to slavery.
The word slave originates from the Latin word ’slav’ which described the people from the Slavic regions that were conquered and sold into bondage. The American version of slavery sought not only to redefine the institution, but achieved that by separating people from their history.
Marie, you mentioned that everything is categorized, and you are absolutely correct. And ever since the beginning of humanity people have always found methods of defining themselves and others so as to consolidate power in order to live in a state of perpetually declared and reinforced superiority. Not only in their eyes, but in the eyes of those they conquered. All those who’ve been held in bondage by their conquerors because of their so called race, nationality, religion or supposed lack thereof were actually instrumental in building the foundation of every aspect of that culture, the scientific advancements, political framework, and economic pillars. A nation is and has not been defined just by its citizens, but also very much so by it’s slaves. It’s not to get into the history of slavery, but to see how Racism was formed in modern times to justify it for an economic purpose. And it’s the inability to see these facts that reinforce continued discrimination today.
We still carry on the traditions of our conquerors…. aspects of their music, food, clothing, and racial bias. Where my parents are from, influence of the Spanish conquerers is embedded in the church, the music, the language, the arts, the buildings, the laws, MY LAST NAME….
To focus on the Caribbean, which you mentioned, those who were sacrificed to the slave trade were the basis for the entire Caribbean and New World mainland economic boom that provided the rise of these countries and more specifically the institutions that still govern them today. Whichever country was invaded, they were built on the backs of our ancestors so we cannot deny our people’s unwilling but unforgettable contribution to capitalism.
The word “slave” has become synonymous with “race” and “racism”. Slavery was redefined as, not the condition of a person due to war or the bounty of conquest (as was originally intended), but rather a genetic hierarchy and the idea of racial inferiority and hegemony was created, to cement it all together. What followed was what would set up the early excuses for different branches of races to be given different rights. And this all translates into the modern race problems of today.
The rise of Nazi Germany is a prime example of what a state could do in Modern times when using science to claim the superiority of one race over another. In the Congo, a century ago, King Leopold was able to convince almost all of Europe that he was conquering the Congo fr philanthropic reasons. The man was almost single-handedly responsible for 8 million Congolese deaths. And Europe bought into his false ideology with the notion of racial superiority and turning a “primitive” race into one that’s more “civilized”.
Our greatest mistake is to fight this on only one level. “Race” is socially constructed. Whether it exists in your life and my life on a day-to-day basis in terms of the racism and institutionalized discrimination we encounter on a daily basis…. that is our association and connection with race as we have come to know it. In our own lives, that is VERY real and my intention was not to render that insignificant. BUT we have to look at our past and how “race” was constructed, in order to fully confront it and challenge our false ideologies on many different levels. This is where we begin to address Racism, global racism, and the evolution of the slave trade by putting it into historical context.