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Alan Goodman Two Questions About Race Analysis

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Segregated proms. This term probably brings to mind the various societal norms of the 1960s such as signs with the words “colored” and “white”. This term might have been seen in history textbooks when talking about Jim Crow Laws or might have been spoken by your grandparents when describing their days in high school. However, this term is not as outdated as you might think. In 2001, Taylor County, Georgia made national headlines when the news broke that this community still practiced hosting segregated proms. As an alumna of Taylor County High School, it was hard to imagine the stir my rural community must have created. The concept puzzled me. I’d asked various members of my community, black and white, how they had been fine with practicing …show more content…

In his article Two Questions About Race, Goodman criticizes the written works on both Armand Leroi and Sean Thomas by giving evidence through biology and society how their views on race are (in the case of Leroi) lazy, and (in the case of Thomas) mistaken. Goodman makes the very power assertion that “real human suffering may result from poor conceptualization of human variation. Yet, race is real as a lived experience.” I agree with Goodman’s statement, as it brings to light the fact that though race is not real in terms of science and biology, race is real because humans made it …show more content…

The idea of race is not natural. The idea of one group of people being superior to another is not a new one. Humans have always been able to find themselves superior to other humans whether it is in regards to religion, nationality, or social class. The institution of slavery in the United States of America could be argued as going hand-in-hand with race. However, when slavery came to the Americas, the idea of race had yet to be formed (Race the Power of an Illusion episode 2). In fact, religion and wealth were major factors in determining a person’s place in society by the time the first Africans came to Virginia in 1619. The color of a person’s skin was irrelevant. (Race the Power of an Illusion episode 2). Poor, white, indentured servants were the main means of labor in the colonies at that time. Gradually, the idea of using race as a means of status began to spread, as fewer poor Europeans were willing to travel to the Americas. Black became associated with slavery, and slaves found themselves on the lowest level of society. In truth, it was very easy to use skin color to determine status. At one glance, you were able to determine a person’s status. Moral? No. But easy. Race became a very easy, very effective hand to play if you were white. It automatically bolstered status in society regardless of religion or social

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The concept of race has been around for a long time. Little did I know it was something that people created unconsciously. The film, “Race:The Power of an Illusion III” talks in depth about how race became a thing. For starters we know that the whole concept started when immigrants starting coming to the United States for freedom, opportunity, and the ultimate American Dream for them and their family.

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Origins of Race DBQ Race was an idea founded in the mid-17th Century in Europe that expanded across the globe and brought the idea of enslavement of other people who were seen as “inferior” from different countries like Africa and sold for labor. This brought up justification and reasons for race which continued for many years. Race was considered a group and category that was used to “organize” people and people had many reasons for justifying it. The origins of race being justified and defended by others depended on economic reasons, which is on the slave trade and others becoming wealthy from it, which led to social reasons depending on your status and where you came from during this time period for example if you were a

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522 Words | 3 Pages

Throughout the development of the colonies in America, slave trade grew to be a significant source of labor in primarily southern plantations within the late seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. During the era, with slaves being condemned to be considered socially inferior by law, and the increase in demand of goods such as rice and indigo, the slave labor force became a notable source for southern plantations in the eighteenth century. Slaves and people of color had always been considered to be socially inferior even before the colonies existed. With a sense of paternalism in Great Britain, people have always believed that those considered slaves,or servants rather, were second class citizens, and these people needed to be suppressed for their own best interests.

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21). America first saw the growth of the idea of race when slavery had come along, as well as, the extermination of the Native Americans after Columbus found the now United States; but before that, race was not important or similarly used in most societies (Alexander, 2012, p. 23). It is noted in the book that the racial caste system became concrete by the Mid 1770’s, and subsequently, minorities were consistently looked down upon while being viewed as inferior due to older beliefs from decades before. Slaves and minority workers were considered a lesser group, lacking intelligence and overall the ability to be similar to a white person (Alexander, 2012, p. 25). Even more concerning, is that Alexander discusses that the Constitution was perceived as colorblind because it never used the words like negro, yet it was made to keep blacks and whites separate (Alexander, 2012,

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1084 Words | 5 Pages

The children born into slavery knew no other way of life, and were often taught from a young age to accept their inferior status as people of color. This normalization of slavery made it easier for white people to justify their ownership

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At the beginning, most of the slaves were indentured servants, who chose free labour in the colonies for several years over a death penalty. Those were mostly European, but in the seventeenth century, Africans were sent to Virginia to work as indentured servants. While some were able to gain freedom, others fell into permanent servitude, and by 1661, all black people in Virginia were considered slaves, and their numbers raised significantly. Nonetheless, slavery started as early as the 1530s in Meso-American colonies, as their aims with agriculture were much larger, and they had difficulty employing natives outside the areas where there had been large empires, such as Peru and Mexico. It can be argued that slavery in Latin America was not only more common; but also more brutal.

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648 Words | 3 Pages

The first African Americans brought to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619 on a Dutch trading ship were not slaves. They were simply indentured servants. Slavery slowly started to fill the colonies. ”By the turn of the eighteenth century African Slaves numbered in the tens of thousands in the British colonies.”

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o African slavery developed in the Chesapeake colonies due to a demand of labor in regions with agricultural economies. As tobacco prices dropped and indentured servants became unfavorable due to a growing number of impoverished freedmen, slaves became the optimal choice and replaced indentured servitude due to the struggling economy. Slaves could endure hard labor and work for long hours, unlike the indentured servants who could not survive in rice paddies with malaria-ridden mosquitoes. Indentured servants were too expensive to maintain and import while slaves, racism made slavery possible. The gradual change from indentured servitude to slavery introduced ideas of racism and the social class gap between whites and blacks eventually leading

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3136 Words | 13 Pages

In the mid-1600?s, most American colonies passed laws making slavery a more permanent system. These slave codes made offspring inherit the slave status. It made slavery more race based?any non-Christian coming to America would become a slave (most were black). Therefore, the whites

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283 Words | 2 Pages

With the inability of utilizing Native Americans in the early colonial labor force, skewed sex ratio of nearly 3 males to 1 female, and high mortality rates, plantation owners relied on the second most obvious source of labor, other Europeans. “Population growth, economic depression, and enclosures had worsened poverty and unemployment in England and produced a supply of recruits who were willing to sign an indenture, a contract by which they agreed to work for a term of four to seven years in exchange for passage to a set of new clothes, some tools, and fifty acres of land.” (Clark, Hewitt, Brown and Jaffee ). As a result, of these conditions in Europe, plantation owners had no choice but to create these poor European adults from various backgrounds as their servants. The first Africans to arrive in Jamestown was in 1619 as indentured servants.

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910 Words | 4 Pages

The first slaves that were brought to Jamestown, Virginia in 1619, were African. After this occurrence, slavery spread throughout the American colonies. This marked the beginning of slavery. They were brought to Virginia to help with the production crops such as cotton and tobacco. African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation.

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1033 Words | 5 Pages

If one thinks that these patterns of racial differences have a biological basis, if we see them as “natural,” racial inequality becomes just part of the human experience. This fallacy influences people to see racism and inequality not as the products of economic, social, and political histories but more as a natural state of affairs. What justifies the continued use of racial classification? Nothing. I argue that there are no races, only racialized groups; groups that have been misunderstood as biological races.

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One can no longer form his or her opinion of something if he or she knows nothing about it. One can no longer judge someone based on the color of their skin without knowing that person’s personal values. There are countless terrifying problems that face the world today. It is trivial that something as petty as race can get in the way of that. There is only one race: the human

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1489 Words | 6 Pages

The relationship between race and racism is due to the fact that there are racial categories created, in order for particular social groups to be on top of the hierarchy. For example, the white group, which is on top of this racial hierarchy, established the notion of race in order to benefit themselves, which has led to racism among other minority groups. The ideology of a group being superior than others leads to racism. Ultimately, race is the product of racism, and racism is not the product of race (25).

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738 Words | 3 Pages

Something that I would not consider a racial act but that might represent racial cliques is high school groups. In high school we would categorize the school into sections. The hispanics were always by the cafeteria, the blacks by a brick wall, the whites by the grass area and the asians by the science building. Obviously their was always different races blended in between all those sections but it was just a way we would see the school. There was rarely ever racial inequalities between all these groups but it just showed how although we say we are all equal and we should all get along we do the opposite.

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