Race and Racism

Racism 

Recently I was thinking about why it is that animals with major differences can live in harmony while humans struggle to accept each other even when it is in their best interest. To understand just how unique and strange this behavior is in the animal kingdom, we must first understand what race is. According to Britanicca, in the United States, “...the term race generally refers to a group of people who have in common some visible physical traits, such as skin colour, hair texture, facial features, and eye formation.” While the lines between races is decided by what society views as an important physical difference, such as skin color, most Americans see race as “geographically separated populations”. African Americans are from Africa, Asian Americans are from Asia, and so on. Here is a helpful video that summarizes the differences between race and ethnicity.



It wasn’t until my sophomore year of highschool that I was finally informed that race is not a scientific term that refers to a person's heritage, but instead just refers to the arbitrary physical appearance of individuals. After about a decade of education and discussions about racial issues, this very crucial bit of information came up for the first time. I don’t believe in coincidences and so I don’t believe that this was just some fluke. Others must have experienced the same lack of transparency due to society voluntary withholding information. It is subtle issues like this that push children to buy into a false narrative that they will then pass on as adults. We grow up in a world where we are led to believe that there are legitimate differences between people of two different races, when in reality there is only one race, the human race. I believe that the only explanation for the pattern of racism expressed throughout human history is that humans are racist by nature. I believe that this human trait is because of a lack of evolution. While other animals have evolved to take advantage of mutually beneficial relationships that can be had not only within a species but also between species, humans have been making due with only the relationships we choose to accept. For example, America was able to build the most powerful economy in 1871 when the working class consisted almost completely of white males, especially when looking at jobs with high pay. (investopedia) Imagine how much more could have been achieved since then had we been taking advantage of the entire populations ideas and brain power. Almost all of America's greatest politicians, innovators, inventors, and more, were white men all suppressing the ideas of the other members of society.



Most other animals don’t discriminate within their species of even against completely different species. The cohesive relationship that other animals have can help the animals survive better and so they evolve to take advantage of these relationships. Humans are unique because we quickly figured out how to overcome natural selection by generating an abundance of resources. Unfortunately we never evolved, and likely never will evolve, to become accepting of all others. As a result we suffer through wars and oppression when peace and acceptance would be beneficial to everyone.

Humans created the Idea of race in order to divide ourselves from others who we do not want to associate with. Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of Between the World and Me, said in his book, “Race is the child of racism, not the father” (7). Although most of us believe racism is an unfortunate consequence of having different races in America race is used to justify racism. If people were devine and accepting of all others there would be no races only ethnicity and nationality. We as humans created race and changed the lines between races as it suited those in power, usually being white Europeans. A long time ago the phrase “non-white” applied to Spaniards, Greeks, Irishmen, and more, although now they are all considered white as they have become a part of white society. Race is still used as a weapon in America and it doesn’t look like it's going to go away anytime soon because even educated individuals dignify race as a real thing by discussing it and pretending that it is.