The answer, like all other matters, boils down to the idea of power and control in society, and the acquisition of wealth. One of the experts from the film discussed this topic when he pointed out that if the White landowners of the South had simply said they wanted the free labor and they created slavery simply because they had the power to, then racism would have ended in 1863, once the slaves were freed. However, the dominant class saw it as their job, and privilege, to divide up, and conquer the nation by fooling less educated poor whites to believe that Blacks and other minorities were inferior. Racism was a ploy developed to create social stratification in societies, and led to the racial categories that are present today. Race became the new divider of people after religion and social class became less relevant, or useful to the justification for slaves.
How does one attempt to redefine the concept of race in today's society?
Part of the answer to this question is time. Many cultural beliefs, whether good or bad, take many years to be filtered out or accepted into mainstream society. Racism is no different, and certainly much has changed since the days of segregation and legal racism where Blacks and other minorities like Native Americans, Chinese, and Japanese persons were purposely not allowed to assimilate into society, or given the same rights as the White majority. In today's complex society, where race has become something of an institution, it is no longer an obvious problem, with obvious solutions. The media, and the powers that be are very successful at hiding the truth from the White majority, or at least making it seem ok to ignore the problems that exist in our society. The first step to truly addressing the question of race is admitting that every person is a little bit racist, as Avenue Q teaches us.
I don't know if I would call it "false" science. Perhaps it's false by today's standards, but at the time it was legitimate. I think science, like other fields, change according to time and grow based on theoretical progressions and external factors. I wonder about today's scientific accuracy, especially in the medical field, due to recent experiences at the friggin hospital! :)
ReplyDeleteAs far as your second question goes...I agree with you, that time is what allows for change. It's not something that a single person can change, since it's a complex arrangement of social, cultural, economic, and other factors rooted in certain events in history. What we can do, though, is learn from previous mistakes and try to encourage seeing everybody as human while accepting their differences. Furthermore, if everybody took the class we're taking now, think of how the idea of race would change! It might even be broken down...gasp...
In response to the second question: I also agree that time is an important aspect of overcoming racism, but part of me also feels that to a certain extent we may never fully overcome racism. I'm not trying to say that we, as a society, wont' be able to overcome hated associated with race, but I do feel that we will always classify people and stereotype them based on their physical features. I think that because this is something that we do without realizing it ("doing race"), that it has been ingrained within us. I think that in order to overcome that everyone has to make a conscious effort to get to know people before judging them, and although it is sad, I can't see our society being able to do that.
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