Using The Shifting Grounds of Race by Scott Kurashige focuses on the role of African Americans and Japanese Americans played in the social and political struggle that re-formed twentieth-century Los Angeles. By linking important historical events, such as Black Civil rights movement, NAACP, and Japanese Alien Land Law, internment camps, Kurashige also explains the classical black & white separation to then explore the multiethnic magnitudes of segregation and integration. Understanding how segregation, oppression, and racism shaped the area of Los Angeles became a shared interest between African American and Japanese Americans living together within diverse urban communities. Using this newly profound empowered a mental state that prepared
Omi and Winant’s theories on racial formation are adopted by Kim to apply to his own theories. He uses the conclusions Omi and Winant made to make the basic claim that the concept of race is very fluid and loosely based. Therefore it is an ever-changing social construct. Most people consider race to be a specific category- something that is indefinitely distinguishable. However one of Kim’s main points is that we should strive to push ourselves away from the way of thinking that focuses on the particularities of race.
In the article “What We Mean When We Say ‘Race Is a Social Construct’,’’ Ta-Nehisi Coates asserts that the idea of race is not based on someone’s intelligence. People will always have a different opinion on intelligence. It is wrong to make the assumption that “blacks” are not as intelligent as “whites”. Coats says “There is no fixed sense of ‘whiteness’ or ‘blackness’.” He also explains how race is a social construct.
Race only requires some good guys with big guns looking for a reason” (Coates, p. 6). Race is just a social construct and “is an idea, not a
Scientific reasons for race and how it doesn’t correlate to race is shown in Document 5 that different human species should be divided into four groups based on their alleged characteristics and mark themselves with certain things like paints or garments. The document is trying to explain race and categorization of races through the people’s supposed characteristics and only using four groups, proving the correlation between race and scientific reasoning doesn’t work. Also, in Document 10, it’s explained that the four race categories are all “degenerate” forms to “God’s original creation,” and were classified biologically into different groups who were non-Caucasian. This document also explains that race and scientific reasoning does not correlate because it talks about how other races are “downgraded” versions of white and just split them into groups just by looks using colors, creating these unrealistic races with colors, without taking into account any physical scientific reasoning, proving there’s no correlation between race and scientific reasoning, that it was just led on by social and economic reasons. Lastly, in Document 11’s section, it explains that race doesn’t explain human variation and that us humans have a
The beginning of the book highlights the importance of race. Race was invented and assigned to individuals solely on their outward appearance. Most Americans unconsciously accept race as a product of Mother Nature. In reality, it has nothing to do with your genetics.
Many readers and historians refer to Islam as a prominent religion in the world for its values and principles. Islam prospered during what is considered the Post Classical period. It was a time of many developments and changes that effected the world. Afro-Eurasia was overtaken by Muslims due to military expansion, and Islam was expanding rapidly. Islam was a religion that caused controversy as it disregarded many of the concepts that had been established in the world such as polytheism, as it claimed that Allah was the only God.
Racialization First off, I loved that the article “Race as Biology is Fiction…” addressed a really important issue right off the bat. It is crazy to me how so many people don’t know that race doesn’t exist. Despite the fact that race does and only exists as a social construct, it does not exist in an actual biological sense, which is something I believe everyone should know. I remember being in middle school when my French teacher told our class that in France they don’t ask a person’s race because it’s not right. My French teacher was the one that first brought it to my attention that there is no such thing as race, that the only race is the human race.
Citizens may choose to ignore the judgement placed on them from other people as they go about daily tasks due to a large amount of pride in themselves. Therefore, if the term ‘race’ becomes retracted, an enormous amount of the population would be upset that they are just another person rather than declaring their background. Along with upsetting people, ‘race’ highlights the amount of diversity present in this world which is another positive aspect of the
The 1920s produced a highly egocentric generation in the history of America. Typical American literature of the time centered around wealth and success. This created an attitude of self-centeredness as well as a mindset focused on possessions and social class. However, with the release of one of her first successful books, The Good Earth, Pearl S. Buck brought some refreshing reality to American society.
George Best describes in his document how people often misunderstand what race is, thinking it to be the fault of the sun, but he describes in his novel that the dark skin of those who live to the south of him was actually a punishment direct from god for being cruel during the biblical flood, (Doc. 2) [B]. While this explanation relies heavily on simple stories, the attempt to describe why some are different through religion is a way to have people widely conform to modern conceptions of race; people always look to god [C]. In another document, David Hume describes that he believes those with white skin are inherently better than those with darker skin, stating questionable and untrue facts about there never being a major African civilization, see Ghana or Mali.
According to the film race is a biological "myth" and as outdated as belief that the sun revolved around the earth. Race is a concept that was invented to categorize the perceived biological, social, and cultural differences between human groups. Based on modern genetic science that can decode the genetic puzzle of DNA there is no significant genetic or biological differences between the races. Race is an artificial construct imposed by the ruling classes to justify first slavery and then segregation. One of the main findings concerning the genetic make-up of the students in the course was that skin color really is only skin deep.
One very important thing that this article covered is that race is a social construct, but it being a social construct does not make it any less real. I really liked the line “It’s real in the same way that Wednesday is real.” Oftentimes people will hear race called a social construct, and interpret it as saying that race is not real and therefore does not matter. But race is very real. It is just important to recognize the ways in which it is real and the ways it is not.
Among anthropologists it has become increasingly clear that the concept of race having a biological basis is fundamentally flawed. There a number of flaws with this concept of race. One issue is that features attributed to race, such as skin color, very across the globe in a clinal fashion rather than in uniform groups. Another issue is that there is more in-group variation within races than there is variation between races. Finally, human variation is non-concordant.
Journal 1 Article: - Staten Island teen dies from asthma while fleeing racist crew waving gun; ‘I’m gonna shoot you, nigga!’ This story is taken from New York daily news June 3rd 2016. Staten Island is one out of the five boroughs in New York City. Witnesses described seeing a young teenaged boy running from a group of caucasians shouting racial statements while waving a gun. He died from an asthma attack while trying to flee from the group.