In Mallon's paper, “Sources of Racialism” he attempts to explain how, when, and why we see people in different categories. This distinction – as the paper is titled – is called racialism. This is not to be confused with racism; racialism is just the perceived distinctions we believe to be innate about people. This thought process could lead to negative, racist misconceptions, but the assumption is not always negative. Racialism being rooted in racial cognition has been observed by its similarities to folk biology, the belief that there are always invisible differences in people, and the advanced understanding of visual markers of a particular group. It's not quite clear at what age we begin to actually process and have a deeper understanding of racial …show more content…
For a more clear concept, look to gender and the example about the raccoon painted and sprayed to look and smell like a skunk. If this mental process is as tried and true as Mallon believes it to be, in the case of gender, we would never be able to move past those characteristics that designate a human as 'male' or 'female', or simply known as secondary sex characteristics. When applied to transgender individuals, Mallon's statement about the raccoon-skunk could be regarded as completely offensive and misinformed. He implies that there is something – either race or gender – that is innate about our existence and that it cannot ever be changed. With the existence of people that transcend their gender, this notion that everyone classifies and defines people in the same manner or with the same understanding of classification seems wrong. Just as gender is a social construct that is hard to simplify, race is very much along the same vein and meets with strong, socially-instilled resistance when transcended or