Race is a complex concept to discuss. Often, when people bring it up, they might wonder if race is real and what exactly race is. According to the textbook Essentials of Cultural Anthropology: A Toolkit for a Global Age by Kenneth J. Guest, “anthropologists view race as a framework of categories created to divide the human population”(Guest, 2018, p.120). It is seen through characteristics such as the color of one’s skin, eye shape, or facial features. Some people believe that race is based on genetics but despite multiple studies and DNA tests, there is nothing to support this theory. No special genetic differences exist in one race that doesn’t exist in another. Instead, race is a social and cultural idea constructed by humans throughout history.
According to the article, The History of the Idea of Race and Why It Matters by Aubrey Smedley, the idea of race was begun very early on when the colonies needed workers who could be easily controlled. By passing laws to restrict the rights of Africans and their descendants, they laid down the base for race. Africans were considered uncivilized and the Irish and Native Americans as savages. Around the end of the 1800s, those who were pro-slavery dehumanized African-Americans and considered them inferior. Even when slavery ended, African-Americans were considered to be so different from whites, that the differences were biological.
More and more people began to believe that these differences between races existed and these beliefs were passed onto their children. This continued during the 1930s when communities who were all white and weren’t near minority areas were considered the best and given the color green while minority areas where given the color red in the process called red-lining. When non-white began to move into neighborhoods that were mostly white, it started the process of white Americans growing more wealthy through their homes. Their wealth was passed onto their children, who, thanks to the help of their parents, became even wealthier.
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Minorities had trouble even getting loans from the government and had no way of gaining wealth for the next generation. After doing research on race and if it is real or not, I have learned that it is real but it isn’t something that’s always existed like I used to believe. Before this, I’d assumed race was a concept that had always been around and never stopped to think about whether it was involved in biology or if race was a concept society made up. Race is not involved with biology but it is a concept that has been around for hundreds of years.
