The Social Construction of Race

In the film Race: The Power of an Illusion Pilar Osario comments about how there is just as much or possibly even more diversity between people of the same race than there is between people of different races. Most people would have a hard time believing this statement because we are taught to believe that things that are put into the same category are going to be similar in many different ways or at least more so than they would be to something in a separate category. Genetically, it’s obvious that human beings are going to be similar when it comes to their general structure, but other than that it’s hard to believe that an African American person with dark colored skin and thick curly hair could be more similar to a white person with fair skin and light blonde hair than they are to another person of their same race. The way people look, as pointed out in the film, isn’t really a definite marker of how genetically similar people can be. For example, there is more genetic variability between identically looking fruit flies and penguins than there are between a human being and a chimpanzee.

The mistake people make that leads them to this misconception of racial similarity is that race is a biological construct, when it is in fact a social one created during the era of colonialism in order to justify enslavement of Africans and the terrible treatment of the Native Americans. If Africans and Native Americans were naturally inferior to whites then it made sense to treat them as outcasts, to enslave them, and to deny them basic human rights. 

Because race is a social construct people are constantly made aware of which racial group they would belong to. I identify myself as being African American, but I’m only really consciously aware of this when I am around other people. Over time, society has attributed certain qualities such as athleticism, intelligence, and personality to race when, in fact, many of those qualities are a result of both genetics and the environment. Society has stereotyped African Americans as being intellectually inferior, extremely athletic and as having loud and animated personalities. I would consider myself to be a more reserved person and I’m not really into sports which goes against the stereotypical behavior of an African American person. Because I don’t fit society’s standard of what an African American person is supposed to be people sometimes say that I am “white-washed” because I express qualities and interests that reflect what is considered to be stereotypically white. The frustrating thing about this is that I identify myself as being African American and I feel proud of being African American, but so many people say that I don’t “act black” or that I “might as well be white” because I don’t act a certain way or do certain things. But, as the evidence in the film has shown, race has nothing to do with qualities such as a person’s intelligence or their personal interests. These things are a result of a person’s environment and the way they interact with that environment just as a person’s skin color, something often used as a racial marker, is a result of their environment.

Race has no biological foundation and people have been using traits that can be traced back to a person’s biology such as skin color or hair texture as a determinant for traits such as intelligence and level of morality for hundreds of years. The idea came about in order to rationalize the terrible treatment of minority people during colonization and persists today for the very same reasons. White people profited from the invention of race. The proposed racial inferiority of other people allowed them to experience power and reap the benefits of having that power. White people were able to vote and own land as well as own the people who worked on that land. White people were able to determine who was able to come and live in America and, once they were allowed inside, they were allowed to determine what they could and could not do. Today, despite the claim that all people are equal in the eyes of the law, white people still benefit from the presence and belief in the existence of race. Race provides people with a scapegoat and allows people to think of each other in terms of “us and them.” It gives people an easy way out when explaining behavior and allows people to experience certain perks. Even though it’s problematic, race creates a sort of social organization in that it forms a hierarchy of people which then helps in determining distribution of resources and power. People like organization and the notion of race helps us to make sense of the world around us.

Once people are able to realize that a person’s biology is not a determinant of their race and that their race is not a determinant of more complex qualities there will be less tension between people. I think race is important and that it is helpful in terms of bringing people with common interests together. However, the way it’s viewed now separates people because a lot of the world holds this belief that everyone is so different from one another or that one group is more important than another when that really isn’t the case. Once people realize that we are all people who are made up of pretty much the same things and understand that race is something society has created, there will be more unity and less tension in the world and people will have a better understanding of themselves and of each other.