There’s more to it than Meets the Eye

It was mid afternoon and I was waiting for my next event, so I joined the audience on the bleachers to watch the men’s 100M sprint. In this particular heat there were two Asian men, three White men, and one African American. I tried to spark conversation with my teammates to ease the suspense of the impending foot race. “Who do you think will win?” My friend Roberto responded quickly, “The Black guy of course”.

It would have been ok if he just said “the black guy”, but why did he add “of course”? The phrase indicates that Roberto, like many others, perceived differences between the White and Asian men versus the African American. There’s this idea that certain races allow for advantages that other races don’t possess. Not just the misconception that African American athletes will always win, but also that Asian students will always get the highest grade. Society has come to believe that race and biology are intimately connected.  In “The Difference Between Us”, microbiologist Pilar Ossorio states, “There’s as much or more diversity and genetic difference within any racial group as there is between people of different racial groups”. Ossorio is saying, contrary to popular belief, a group of African Americans can have just as different DNA between each other than they can with White people. This statement is supported by concrete scientific analysis led by Cold Spring Harbor’s lab professor Scott Bronson. Bronson facilitated an experiment with a group of diverse students, each student thinking they were most like others of the same racial category. However, to the students’ surprise, the idea that those of the same race would be genetically similar was disproved. Nicholas Wade further supports this idea in Time magazine.

Wade, a former science editor at The New York Times explained, “Exploration of the genome has shown that all humans, whatever their race, share the same set of genes. Each gene exists in a variety of alternative forms known as alleles, so one might suppose that races have distinguishing alleles, but even this isn’t the case”. Wade’s research, in conjunction with Ossorio’s statement, is the new reality of race- that there is no difference between us.

Before becoming aware of this reality, I had seen myself as just a regular white woman. Because of my race, I didn’t get to partake in special cultural traditions or have various talents that other races might have. There’s somewhat of a loss of identity almost. However, the fact that race isn’t genetic has given me an odd sense of comfort. As Noah said from the classroom experiment, “We’re all just mongrels”. We don’t belong to one group or another; we are just all unique human beings. Though some of us might be more similar in appearance than others, underneath the surface we are all extremely alike. My race isn’t my identifier anymore because really, I’m no different than the next person. Knowing this has given me a sense of solidarity with everyone.

Dr. Alan R. Templeton, a professor of biology at Washington University, reiterates that "race isn’t a biological concept, and that unfortunately is what many people wrongfully consider to be the essence of race in humans -- genetic differences”. Just like when Roberto assumed that the African American would certainly win, he was rooted in the idea of genetic differences between races. Our skin color, our “race” cannot be our boundaries any longer. Like Denzel Washington once said, “I’m very proud to be black, but black isn’t all I am”. We are more than what meets the eye, yet race still persists in our society.

Despite the abundance of scientific proof that race doesn’t rest in a biological reality, the idea of race is perpetuated. In the second episode of “Race: The Power of an Illusion”, the White people were captivated by the “little brown people” on display at the 100th anniversary of Jefferson’s Louisiana purchase. Similarly, we are still today drawn in and caught up in the differences between all of us. As Justin Smith puts it, our fixation on the immediate physical differences between humans has caused the “perception of cultural-historical distinctness, along with the injustice and inequality that has gone along with this distinctness”. These differences have sustained a hierarchy of superiority. History has taught us that the blacks and others of color innately belong on the bottom, while whites comfortably sit as the superior race. Without the idea of race, there would be no reason for differing treatments among humanity. Thus, because there’s this hierarchy being upheld by the privileged whites, there will always be an issue of race.