Spending today in my head, deconstructing the social constructed identity and label we call "Race".
Totally fascinating stuff. My Sociology professor is someone who is deeply involved in gender theories, sex, and race (she hates the word, and uses ethnicity instead as it goes into culture).
The lines just aren't there. Human beings are one of the least genetically diverse out of all the species. We are all human.. we are not "Black" "White" "Asian".. these are all just human variation. There are no genetic markers that are consistent across the races. The idea of Black athleticism (with its roots in the Eugenics movement, and the 1936 Olympics in which there was a backlash, trying to explain why the assumed 'superior' Aryan race didn't win a damn footrace, by explaining that Blacks are somehow less evolved???), the idea of Asian intelligence, the stereotypes that we perpetuate because we absorb what our society tells us we should be -- they do not exist.
I feel so vindicated. I remember being 8 years old, and argueing with a Lutheran minister about why Blacks are Black. His claim was that God made us fundamentally different. Mine was, that geography dictated more sun exposure and the body had to adapt by creating more melanin for survival.
Hot damn if there isn't a whole theory based on what I came to, at 8 years old. The Vitamin D Theory.
So, if that isn't shit to think on, I don't know what is. I love ranting about this kind of stuff.. the inherent equality, the mirror in what we reflect from our peers.. Race doesn't exist. I'm sorry, it does not exist. It's a goddamn social construct that has divided us as a species and is a concept that was put out there by racist white males in the 1900's explaining why it was alright to leave those with darker skin tones in complete poverty. Fuck that shit.
As a humanist... a lover of people... I feel this is something to delve deeper into. I love shaking others concepts of reality, and this is something to work on.
Totally fascinating stuff. My Sociology professor is someone who is deeply involved in gender theories, sex, and race (she hates the word, and uses ethnicity instead as it goes into culture).
The lines just aren't there. Human beings are one of the least genetically diverse out of all the species. We are all human.. we are not "Black" "White" "Asian".. these are all just human variation. There are no genetic markers that are consistent across the races. The idea of Black athleticism (with its roots in the Eugenics movement, and the 1936 Olympics in which there was a backlash, trying to explain why the assumed 'superior' Aryan race didn't win a damn footrace, by explaining that Blacks are somehow less evolved???), the idea of Asian intelligence, the stereotypes that we perpetuate because we absorb what our society tells us we should be -- they do not exist.
I feel so vindicated. I remember being 8 years old, and argueing with a Lutheran minister about why Blacks are Black. His claim was that God made us fundamentally different. Mine was, that geography dictated more sun exposure and the body had to adapt by creating more melanin for survival.
Hot damn if there isn't a whole theory based on what I came to, at 8 years old. The Vitamin D Theory.
So, if that isn't shit to think on, I don't know what is. I love ranting about this kind of stuff.. the inherent equality, the mirror in what we reflect from our peers.. Race doesn't exist. I'm sorry, it does not exist. It's a goddamn social construct that has divided us as a species and is a concept that was put out there by racist white males in the 1900's explaining why it was alright to leave those with darker skin tones in complete poverty. Fuck that shit.
As a humanist... a lover of people... I feel this is something to delve deeper into. I love shaking others concepts of reality, and this is something to work on.
If you look into how the brain categorizes things, using the theories involved in cognitive psychology, you find that it really likes labels. It makes it easier for the brain to process information if it can call things up by some common label, instead of having to analyze every single aspect of the item. The human brain creates bindings between different things so that it can call the information up quickly. There's a number of studies that have shown that when the brain is working with something that it has bound familiarly with some grouping, it'll pull them up quicker.
That leads to one of my theories about why we have so many labels and stereotypes for those labels. The human brain likes things that way, so people just naturally do it. That's why it's so hard for most people to "think outside of the box." The box is a comfortable place to be, so they have a problem moving outside of their comfort zone, because moving outside of their comfort zone means that they'll have to spend more time analyzing everything they interact with, instead of making snap pre-judgements.
That's why I've really worked to make my brain work harder. While I know the labels exist, why they exist, and how they can make things easier, I consciously make the choice to think about people, things, and relationships instead of just working off of pregenerated assumptions. It's my thought that if more people actually forced their brains to do a little more work, we'd begin to see some things like racism and sexism disappear....and besides, it would make my life as someone who lives outside of the box a whole lot easier.