The Relationship Between Race and Ideology

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The Relationship Between Race and Ideology

In this essay I will argue that the key to end racism is to understand race and ideology and how this two concepts relate to each other.

Appiah claims that race does not exist. He uses scientific methods to prove that individuals from different groups of people have no greater genetic differences between them than the genetic differences in individuals from the same group of people. He writes: "…human genetic variability between the populations of Africa or Europe or Asia is not much greater than within those populations…" With This he is trying to demonstrate that if there is no biological difference between populations, except for those differences due to the habitat in which a certain population has lived for many years. Therefore he proves that there is no accurate meaning of the word race.

Appiah uses in his discussions about race the writings of W. E. DuBois, his technique is to cite an argument made by DuBois, and give sufficient proof to refute it. He does this with several statements, and concludes that race is a misconception.

Although he divides the world population in races, and gives answers to racism, he does not give an explicit meaning to the word race. He uses history, culture and languages, to form several groups of people that he calls races.

Loewen's discusses 12 American history books, and focuses in the fact that all of them try to hide racism against black people throughout American history. He shows that even the great forefathers of the United States were racist, that all of them owned slaves and that they did not consider Black people to be equal. He also writes about the many years of beatings and lynching that black people endured, even ye...

... middle of paper ...

... few high scores from black people to fill the quota.

The controversial part is that he doesn't show that this gap really happens because black people have been oppressed for a long period of time, and until the last one hundred years (or less) they have been able to develop culturally and economically, so they have a economic deficiency that prevents black people from getting the best education possible. In the other hand, white people have an economic advantage so their kids get a better education and a higher chance to get a better score. Also, this deficiency changes the priorities of a black kid, because he is going to be more interested in going to a technical school or community college so that he can be able to start working faster and help to maintain the family.

Concluding, I would like to say that race is a dangerous word.

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