Today in class, I realized how truly differently I do think about race and ethnicity in an every day setting. Listening to my friends talk, I pick up on a lot of societal cues that I would not have a few months ago. I question racial jokes and wonder why they were provoked or necessary, beyond just simply thinking they were wrong-- I wonder what has happened in society to make them exist.
I have learned that whether we like it or not, racial issues are everywhere. My friend said earlier this week, "I cant believe you have talked about race and ethnicity for an entire four months...well I guess until everyone is the same orangey gray color it will always be an issue." At first, I laughed and then I thought about it...and there was a lot of truth and sadness in that statement. Yes, everyone will remain different colors (orangey gray would be pretty weird after all) but will it always remain an issue? Or is it possible that society will evolve to be open-minded enough so that skin color is simply like hair color or eye color.
I think we have at least all progressed to a good point where we recognize deeper racial issues and see the societal reasons behind them- hopefully, and ideally, this will lead us to be less judgemental and allow us to use our knowledge progressively. Perhaps I am being too optimistic, but I honestly believe and hope it does not take an orangey gray color to make us all see each other the same.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
In my opinion, I think that race will be an issue for a very long time. I am not sure that race could ever be looked at as merely a quality, such as hair color or eye color. (Although, even in the instances of hair color and eye color, many people declare preferences. Additionally, many people associate certain qualities to people with certain hair colors/types and eye colors. For example, what do you think of when you think of females with blonde hair?) Just as we talked about in class, race automatically carries a specific connotation, it carries a specific meaning. People observe certain characteristics, such as class characteristics, and automatically assign those qualities to define the entire race. These meanings and connotations perpetuate the ideas and assumptions about various races. I do not think that race will become a non-issue until we can break the associations between specific races and certain assumed meanings. In order to do this, we will have to do a lot of work to break the associations and prevent future associations.
ReplyDeleteI would have to agree that race will continue to be a part of our society and there will continue to be racial tensions for some time. But I would also agree with the fact that I have learned so much from this class. It really does make you question a lot of things and forces you to look at everyday situations in a different perspective.
ReplyDeleteI have always been conscious of race and ethnicity as a result of all of my friends. For a long time, I used to conflate the two terms but I was able to distinguish them whenever I started hanging out with different groups of friends. I learned early on that you can be "brown" racially, but "Mexican", "Peruvian", "Indian", "Pakistani", etc. ethnically.
This class has further allowed me to distinguish between the two terms. What I am grateful for, however, is that I took this class in conjunction with my research meathods in sociology course. We have talked about race/ethnicity as being an independent variable in research methods. While many of my classmates see these two terms as synonomous and see race as an actual factor in behavior, I am able to question the validity of this assertion.
I can see where your friend is coming from on the basis that by talking about it for four months we still haven't come up with answers to the problem and we never will in our class discussion. However, I agree with your reaction and everyone else's. Race and ethnicity encompass so much of our lives. It is all around us. We have only breached the first chapter in race and only from a anthropological standpoint. There is so much out there on this topic that four months isn't even enough time to talk about race and ethnicity. People spend their lifetimes studying these phenomena and how they intermingle in todays society.
ReplyDeleteI also think that there is still so much to be said about the differences in race and ethnicity. How they change over time. Like we talked about in class the Irish once were seen as a race not it is an ethnic identity we share nation wide, for God's sake there is an entire day to celebrate that ethnicity. To me this is the most interesting thing about race and ethnicity, the malleability.