Notesale: Turn your study into money

Document Preview

Extracts from the notes are below, to see the PDF you'll receive please use the links above

---

How can ‘race’ be considered to have a history?

Introduction
In this essay I will be discussing the term ‘race’ and how it can be considered to have
a history
...
Firstly I will put
forward the various theoretical definitions of race, Secondly I will discuss my main
theme which is the enlightenment and how race was viewed during that time, I will
then move on to my main part of the essay which is to look at arguments for and
against race being a biological element/factor or it being a social constructsomething that is created by society itself
...
I will finally
conclude the essay by summarising all the points I have made to state my personal
view backed up by evidence on the topic of whether race can be considered to have
a history or not
...
Some of
these beliefs might not be very high-powered
...
But,
in relation to this simple ideational theory, all of these beliefs have the same property
or have come to the same conclusion (Appiah, 1996)
...
Race is often described as any distinguishable type within a
species, such as dark coloured and light-coloured variants of small mammals
(Feldman, Lewontin and King, 2003)
...
According to Stuart Hall race
operates like a language and it is discursive (Davis, 2004)
...
” (Bell, Grosholz and Stewart, 1996)
...
The logic
behind this view is that everything needs to have a label in order to fit in
...
While
some of Leroi’s argument adheres to this logic
...
The important question is why should a question be used
a concept when it has an underlying logic at odds with genetic evidence? Racial
categorization is undermined in order to fit the facts of “multiracial” people
...
” But in fact, there are
better much more useful and appropriate ways to discuss our genetic inheritance
than race; and ones that do not necessarily have “the problematic, even cruel,
history of the word ‘race’” (Thompson, 2006)
...
Progression from the beliefs of 17th Century Rationalists (‘reason’) a new
combination of previously separate philosophical traditions rationalism and
empiricism: only reason and observation will yield knowledge of reality
...

The Enlightenment notion of universalism was very important as science and logic
had a greater influence in shaping people’s ideas, there was the belief that everyone
was on the same level and had the same amount of knowledge
...
Rational and scientific thoughts transformed the understanding of

2

humanity’s relation to nature and society and established a new ‘science of human
nature’ hope to reform society rationally
...

Humboldt states that “whilst we maintain the unity of the human species, we at the
same time must repel the depressing assumption of the superior and inferior races of
men
...

The enlightenment not only led to Individualism when people started having their
own ideas and views but it also was a starting point for all knowledge and action,
there was also more freedom and toleration there was a call for an end to feudal and
traditional constraints on beliefs, trade, social interaction, it also led to secularism:
opposition to traditional religious authority (Eze, 1997)
...
This brought together
considerations that what we are likely to think should be kept distinct
...

Even though this is suggested that superiority wasn’t seen as a major factor
...


Race as a biological construct VS Social construct
Race, as Leroi and others use the term, has the purpose of genetic isolation
...
Once again, we are back to
social construction it is argued that it is a case of whether or not this is to be the
socially agreed upon way, especially within the academic community, to define the
diversity that does arise in every descent/lineage (Thompson, 2006)
...
Later on came the geographic subspecies concept, it can be
defined as a genetically similar breeding population that inhabit their own geographic
range
...
The argument that was projected was that
theorists claimed that even if non-human subspecies exist, there are no human ones
and therefore races don’t exist
...

Humans are too genetically similar to each other to justify dividing them into races
(Andreasen, 2000)
...
Phylogenetic classification, on the other hand, defines taxa, in terms of
common ancestry
...
however these explanations also have problems associated to
them
...

As Goodman has argued, "comparative judgments of similarity often require not
merely selection of relevant properties but a weighting of their importance
...
656)
...
Blumenbach also considered humans as

4

a single species, he agreed that bone structure, melanin, hair form and expression
could change with both climate and culture
...

Hegel argues that the difference between the races of mankind is still a natural
difference, the difference is very much connected with the geographical differences
of those parts of the world where human beings are gathered together in masses,
and these parts are called continents
...

In addition, it can be argued that we can now perceive where many theorists have
gone wrong in their reasoning about race
...
(Andreasen, 2000)
...
The second part of the thesis is an
explanatory one which displays the idea of race and tries to explain the origins and
beliefs in the biological concept of race
...
The third
part is a positive thesis about the status of race, many constructivists argue that race
is a ‘social fiction’ it exists due to people’s thoughts and ideas regarding human
differences, others argue that race plays a key role in social practices amongst
humans therefore the social reality of race cannot be denied (Andreasen, 2000)
...
They start
with the observation that race often plays a prominent role in human social
organization
...


5

However, Roseau suggest in his thesis the first discourse that “our souls have been
corrupted in proportion to the advancement of our sciences and arts towards
perfection
...
17)
...
Roseau and Diderot mention the
contradictions that lay beneath an enlightened society showing the shallowness they
found coexisting alongside intellectual refinement
...

Furthermore, Historian Barbara Fields argues that race only exists in our minds, in
other words race is an ideological construct understood in the terms of false
consciousness
...

It can be argued that nothing handed down from the past could keep race alive if we
did not constantly reinvent it to fit our own terrain (Winant, 1994)
...
Race doesn’t exist but it is made to exist due to people’s
notion on it
...

In other words, it is a matter of insight and how we perceive it, and I would add,
agreement on how to look at the data
...

You could study enough genes in many people and an individual could sort the
world’s population into 10, 100, or perhaps even 1,000 groups
...
This therefore suggests that there are
problems with race being a social construction and being scientific in terms of it
being biological
...


6

Challenging the concept of race
There are many arguments that challenge the concept of race, some theorists argue
that race’ is like a mirage which means that it is an illusion that is made visible also it
can be argued race isn’t grounded in biological difference
...
However, ‘race’ is made real to us in many areas of life popular discourse,
media-discourse, everyday life, politics, health, institutions, etc
...

In summary, our data and data from other studies (eg Levin 2000) have proven that
the classification of race plays a considerable role in the perception and depiction of
faces
...
Clearly it is not that we are unable to recognize other-race
faces or that we are unable to derive information from the incentive, as many other
hypothesis might suggest
...
This process may explain why people are less
able to recognize faces of another race
...

In addition, as we enter the 21st century critical race theory continues to grow and
flourish, this theory not only treats race as being principal to law and policy, but it
also looks outside the most popular belief that people hold which is that getting rid of
racism means to get rid of ignorance
...

Critical race theory contains an active element, it tries to not only understand ones
7

social situation but also to change it
...
Critical race theorists claim that race and races are
a product of social thought and relations, they relate to no genetic reality (Delgado
and Stefancic, 2012)
...
Critical academics have also bought attention to the different ways society
racializes different minority groups at different times, for example the media
scapegoats and stereotypes
...
This suggests that as time moves on the images portrayed of
different groups also change, where once they were shown in a positive light
changes into the media portraying them in a negative light (Delgado and Stefancic,
2012)
...
(2000)
...
S653-S666
...
A
...
Race, culture, identity: Misunderstood connections
...

Back, L
...
(eds
...
, Grosholz, E
...
(1996)
...
E
...
Du Bois on race and culture
...
New York: Routledge
...
(2004)
...
1st ed
...


8

Delgado, R
...
(2012)
...
1st ed
...

Deligiorgi, K
...
Kant and the culture of enlightenment
...
Albany: State
University of New York Press
...
Eze, E
...
(1997) Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader Oxford: Blackwell
Feldman, M
...
and King, M
...
Race: A genetic melting-pot
...
374-374
...
and Malpass, R
...
The Ambiguous-Race Face Illusion
...
(1997a) Vision, race, and modernity: A visual economy of the Andean
image world
...

Thompson, E
...
, 2006
...
Anthropology
News, 47(2), pp
...

Winant, H
...
Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press

9



---