This week in class we read and discussed two readings from Miles and Winant. In Miles article every time he said the word race he would put it in quotes. I thought this was pretty interesting. It gave off the impression that he somewhat didn’t believe it or thought it was made up, which come to find out that’s pretty much what he was getting at. He introduced the thought that ‘race’ is something human beings made up so that they could categorize people in different groups. For me, it made me step back a bit and think how if people never came up with ‘race’ and classifying those who don’t look like us then it could be possible racism wouldn’t exist at all. Obviously everyone knows that there are people who have different colour skin or texture of hair or different shaped features. If they just saw it as being unique and went about their business then many issues from the past may have not happened. Miles wanted people to know that ‘race’ is just a social construct put together simply to manage groups of people by their physical appearance and that it was more of an idea than an actual thing. This of course started centuries ago and white males were always listed at the top of humanity. Not any type of white male though, because the Irish were just as much discriminated against as Africans. This was because of the shape of their heads, thickness and probably darkness of their hair. The most dominant male is those who resemble the look of Greek gods, strong chins and long noses. These thoughts that Miles talks about have truly have made it into the minds of almost everyone, with help of the media and advertising of course. He says it can only be changed by changing economic and political relations, which we all know is impossible, and why most ‘racisms’ continue today. It makes sense that the people who created the concept of ‘race’ wanted to categorize other into different groups, because it’s human nature to associate one thing with another and put objects (including people, places, animals, food) into groups. It’s organizing in a way, and that makes people feel better.
In my opinion the concept of race only has to do with what you “see” it has nothing to do with the personality of an individual, whether they are kind, mean, sensitive etc. It also has nothing to do with intelligence, and I think that is ironic. A person could be the smartest of the smart but still, because of their looks they could/can be judged and disregarded. In today’s society you don’t see racism as frequently or “in your face’ as you use to. Many people play pretend and think oh no it doesn’t exist, or only in certain places. That is until it starts to affect them or someone they know then they start to worry about it. I watched a show once where they discussed the issue of racism when talking about criminals. It is a fact that in Canada, most of the prison population is Native people or in the U.S, Black and Latino people. Shows like Cops, or the First 48 don’t help stereotypes when most of the people they arrest are of those three nationalities. In the show it said how on the news (or other similar programs) when there is an incident involving a white male they won’t show the man’s picture, they’ll just describe what happened. But if the crime is committed by a black male 4/5 times they will show a picture as they are talking about the incident.
Miles wanted people to know that ‘race’ is an ideology that someone many years ago created. He connected racism with sexism and nationalism as all being ideologies . They continue to be successful in a way because people believe in them to be an actual concept therefore new opinions, solutions, and objections are created about these ideologies everyday. They continue and repeat themselves as time passes.
No comments:
Post a Comment