To What Extent Does Race Exist

Race is everywhere. As westernized individuals, we are collectively raised to see race in other human beings, in hairstyles, music, and almost every aspect of our day-to-day lives. However, race isn’t as black and white as we make it out to seem because race does not actually exist. Then how do we see race, you may ask? Well, this is because race is socially constructed to oppress certain groups of people.

In order to completely understand how race was fabricated, we must first know what exactly race is considered to be. So, what is race? Race is a biological grouping within human species possessing genetically transmitted traits sufficient to characterize it as a distinct human type. Essentially, race groups people together who have similar and distinct traits. However, the reason race doesn’t exist is because there is no such thing as a distinct type of human based on a particular set of traits. A widespread majority of people see race as

In fact, society continued to make distinctions between racial groups using biology. One of the most famous examples of this is Bartmann’s Exhibition. Prior to the nineteenth century, there were very few black people living in England, and even then the majority of the non-white inhabitants were male. So, when the attraction opened up showcasing Saartjie Bartmann dressed in a tight, flesh-colored dress to accentuate her large and unusual buttocks, the public immediately began to see black women as exotic creatures, which automatically made them lesser than the civilized Euro-American women. Bartmann was also displayed “caged, rocking back and forth to emphasize her supposedly wild and potentially dangerous nature” (Fausto-Sterling 30). This only perpetuated the notion that black women were wild, savage, and overwhelmingly sexual; thus, furthering the gap between ‘normal’ and