Race is one of the most essential partitions ever determined due to the controversial and ambiguous nature of the word itself (Andreasen 664). The word race comes loaded with differing meanings that are debated by numerous prestigious anthropologists, sociologists, and authors such as Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Eric Williams, Franz Boas…etc. The key factors when analyzing the background and ongoing trend of race and racial terms are, firstly, the biological and scientific explanations of racial subdivision (Andreasen, Templeton, MacEachern, Rushton, Hall); secondly, the social and cultural aspect of race and how this contrasts with the biological definition (CLR); and finally, the political side to race and how it is debated that race ultimately emerged from Capitalism and that racism can be abolished with the implementation of socialism(Cohen, Bannerji, C.L.R). Despite the wide variety of arguments surrounding the taboo, modernized topic of race, two essential anthropological debates take into consideration the biological and sociological aspects of the term race. On one end, it is argued that race is used to define the taxonomic hierarchy of the population through biological characteristics (MacEachern, Hall, Templeton, ... ... middle of paper ...
Not only focusing on culture, but anthropology has a substantial connection as well. Anthropology is the field in which the study of cultural and biological variations among human groups is studied. The difficulty that some people have with characterizing culture is that they associate it with race, whereas that is not the case. The two are remarkably distinct. Race is something biological, a genetic trait that is innate, while culture is something that is educated and experienced.
Other groups, mainly African Americans, Latinos, and Asian descendants, have found the path for worldwide social acceptance much more difficult.” “The irregular borders of ethnicities touch educational and economic opportunity, political representation, as well as income, health and social mobility of people of color.” (CNN) It appears that racism has been around since the end of slavery, we should have been able to overcome it through generations. However, interaction with those of whom people were afraid of caused conflict over time; it is what caused racism to change completely from people plainly disliking each other, to the long-lasting basis of prevalent racism and prejudice. Modern racism is said to have come from many places, one of the most prevalent interpretation being your childhood. When you are a child, you are depending on your parents to help you become the person you are. Part of that includes their own, apparent beliefs, since children do not have the wisdom to establish their own beliefs.
Work Cited Back, Les, and Solomos, John, Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader, (New York: Routledge, 2000). Lewis, David L., W.E.B. Dubois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, (New York: Owl Books, 1994). Lewis, David L., W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century 1919-1963, (New York: Henry Holt and company, LLC, 2000).
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(3) Ivan Hannaford, Race.The History of an idea in the West (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press: 1996). (4) Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson(New York: Harper and Row, 1962). (5) Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness translated by Hazel Barnes(New York: Washington Square Press, 1956), pp 432-434. (6) Simone deBeauvoir, The Second Sex, translated by H.M. Parshley (New York: Random House, 1972) p. xxx (7) Anthony Kwame Appiah, In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosphy of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) (8) Karl Marx, 1973. The German Ideology, New York: International Publishers, 1973), p. 39.
Wartime produces an inevitable need for political cohesion. World War II represented a conflict of national endurance, moral obligations and cultural pride which mobilized public support in all countries involved. However, WWII can also be considered a byproduct of racial discrimination and race-thinking which united social mentality in such conflictuous times. Despite heightened awareness of racial superiority after the holocaust, race-thinking extended throughout WWII. The war manifested racial prejudices which illustrated both the United States’ and Japan’s national pride and pretensions as well as tensions and fears, creating a new form of racial consciousness.
This shift in presumed cause of health-related problems raises many troubling implications. With race-based therapeutics comes the assumption that there are biological differences between races. The dangers of such implications are vast, the most pressing problem being the ambiguity of race, particularly with regard to genetic composition. Considerable studies have demonstrated the lack of genotypic correlations among members of a given race. Similarly, socioeconomic and other confounding variables have a profound impact on health and thus must be considered in the discussion of race-based therapeutics and research.
(1995d). Storrs, CT: Roper Center for Public Opinion [Producer and Distributor]. Steele, S. (1990). The content of our character: A new vision of race in America (pp.111-125). New York: St. Martin’s Press.