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Fallacy Of Race

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“Racism is man's gravest threat to man - the maximum of hatred for a minimum of reason.” - American philosopher Abraham J. Heschel. A world with no definition of race is a hard concept for many to grasp. Yet many years ago the world existed as so, long before the creation of race. Race is not natural, despite common assumptions, it is a social construct created by humans to categorize the world. Its concept was first used in colonial America during the peak of the slave trade industry. In the latter part of the 17th century the demand for labor grew enormously. It had become clear that neither Irishmen nor Indians made good slaves. More than that, the real threats to social order were the poor freed whites who demanded lands and privileges …show more content…

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. People may object “surely, I can see race with my bare eyes!” However, it is not race we see, but the superficial visible biological diversity within our species; variation in traits such as skin color, hair form and eye shape. This variation is not enough to justify racial classification. Our biological diversity is too small, and too smoothly distributed across geographic space, for race to be real. When scientists apply the standard criteria to determine whether there are subspecies/races in humans, none are found. In chimpanzees yes, but in humans no. Racial classification is unscientific. However, humanities scholars have their own justifications for race-talk. Many argue that while there are no biological races, there are social races. Race, as philosophers put it, is a social kind. This is not completely inaccurate, as race is a social construct, but the concept of race is still misunderstood and misused. The stigma around these social races needs to end and the illusion of race needs to be

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In his book, Wise agrees with the socially fabricated nature of race and even goes further to question how race had gained its weighty significance. He states, “Race has meaning not because there are ‘white genes,’ or ‘Asian genes,’ or ‘black blood’ or ‘Latino blood,’ but because it has been given meaning in the laws and customs of a society” (Wise 13). Following this reasoning, even if those being oppressed are not any different from the oppressor biologically, it is social circumstances which dictate the meaning of race. With the social terms of race in mind, Wise provided two definitions of racism: 1) “An ideological belief in the racial or cultural superiority or inferiority of certain people defined racially as members of a group” 2) “A system of inequity based on race, or perceived racial difference” (Wise 15). These definitions are important to keep in mind considering [according to a survey for CNN and Essence magazine] “only 1 in 9 whites believe racial discrimination against blacks is still a very serious problem” (Wise 31).

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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

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Common Assessment Essay Race is defined as people who have differences and similarities in biological traits deemed by society to be socially significant. Throughout American history, race has played a key role in shaping the formation of America. Wars were fought over race, and many died due to the color of their skin. Native Americans endured a significant amount of hardship due to what others thought about them. They were known as savages and murderers.

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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).

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When people rely on surface appearances and false racial stereotypes, rather than in-depth knowledge of others at the level of the heart, mind and spirit, their ability to assess and understand people accurately is compromised” (Jam A. Forbes). Throughout history, humanity’s judgmental perspectives of each other have been rapidly escalating. Those who think of themselves as superior have desperately gotten to a point of creating an artificial concept known as “race”. This fabricated idea has been used to segregate the “inferior” kind from the “superior” kind. “ Chyna and Me” by Joyin C Shih, and “Causes of Prejudice” by Vincent N. Parrillo are two literal texts that support the argument of race being a socially constructed term to outcast those who “do not” reach the social standards.

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(Cassidy & Grieco, 2001). The term race is often viewed by others as a social construct rather than biologic or genetic. Some view it as what one looks like in a physical feature or see race as a cultural difference. Race is a human Construct. Race is a made of categorization that’s based on physical appearances.

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We have marched on through history and have viewed race from all three of sociology’s main perspectives. And now, in the midst of the protests in Ferguson we are met once more with simple-minded people who know not of the definition of race. There is not a single chromosome in the bodies of whites that differ in the bodies of blacks. Race is a matter of pigmentation of skin, the amount of melatonin our skin holds, or the texture of our hair. Race is a social construct based merely on appearance, not on biological or genomic science.

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Koshiq Hossain Dr. Freund Americas II 2.26.16 Précis Assignment “Race”, groups of people sharing similar physical characteristics. Race is often mistaken as a biological concept, when it’s actually an ideology that was brought to categorize different groups in history. In Order to understand race, we have to understand what is an ideology. Ideology is an extensive vocabulary used to explain social experiences. Ideology is what forms a political view, and those views can be changed.

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The concept of race as biology is a unique topic, because while scientists have disproven the idea altogether, it is still believed to be truth for the majority of the population. Education is the only way to combat this idea, yet it is rarely mentioned in any classes predating college. Even then, the myth is often left to be debunked by humanities or social sciences, rather than in biological or genetics classes where it makes the most sense to be discussed. The ideal that race is a biological construct has played into racists ideals, and justification of segregation and discrimination, for centuries. If, as a society, we are to make progress on the lessening of the institution of racism, there needs to be a push towards understanding of the

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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.

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By taking this course, this fact has resulted to more questions than answers. The very fact that racism is a social construct that has devolved from the concepts of race and ethnicity does not perhaps signify the reality of the world. For people who have grown up in the same neighborhoods, attending the same schools, and partaking in the same activities, where does the hatred come from? Benedict (1945) defined racism as a natural selection of determining the superior race and subsequently the inferior race. However, biologically, human beings are characteristically the similar.

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The term race is used to classify people with similar traits that are generally viewed as inherently distinct by society. It is the process of grouping people based on shared physical, national affiliations, and even social qualities into categories. Some believe that race is a myth. This may be true when viewed from a socially constructed perspective, because race is a represented identity that was created to establish a type of cultural meaning and order. Although race may partially be drawn up from physical similarities within groups, race is not an intrinsic physical or biological quality.

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Race is comprised of a group of individuals who identify themselves and are identified by others, to possess comparable and distinctive

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Race exists as long as we believe it exists, but really, it's just a classification system developed by people. It has no meaning or value apart from what we determine it to have. According to researchers there is no genetics for division of human ethnicity, in the sense that different groups inherit distinctive physical traits for example hair, eye, and skin color, race is a reality. Race can be used in prejudice discriminative way to create a barrier, built within people’s minds in society. Which leads one race being superior to another and of there being pure races, race is a myth.

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Race, nationality and ethnicity Race and ethnicity are seen as form of an individual’s cultural identity. Researchers have linked the concept of “race” to the discourses of social Darwinism that in essence is a categorization of “types” of people, grouping them by biological and physical characteristics, most common one being skin pigmentation. Grouping people based on their physical traits has lead in time to the phenomenon of “racialization” (or race formation), as people began to see race as more of a social construct and not a result or a category of biology.

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