9.8 Student Questions About Race Answered
- Who can be racist? What is the difference between racism and racial prejudice? There is an important difference between racism and racial prejudice, and that is rooted in the systemic power available to one group compared to other groups. Racial prejudice is an attitude toward members of a given social racial group, while racism is racial prejudice PLUS systemic power. Everyone can be racially prejudiced but not everyone has systemic power.
- Why do we have to still talk about race? Maybe if we stop talking about it, it will go away? The reason we have to continue discussing race is because of racism. The problem isn’t really seeing “physical characteristics as race” or even skin color, the problem is how race is linked to other things like criminality, wealth, smarts, etc. Just to be clear – Race is defined as a socially constructed political tool that is based on physical characteristics like skin color, hair texture, body shape, eye shape, eye color, etc. that has real consequences because of the society in which you live and whether your group has “power”. That said, how do we provide people with the understanding to debunk race as biology info and still work toward anti-racism?
- I think I am a victim of reverse racism because now whites are in the minority. What is reverse racism? Reverse Racism does not exist – Here is a good spoken word explaining why Reverse Racism is not real. In order for reverse racism to be real, people of color would have to hold institutional power over white people, which they do not.
- “I don’t see race” is something people say to mean that they “do not think a person’s physical differences that they notice influence how they see the person”. This is often called color blindness, or color blind racism. Unfortunately, this is mostly bogus because we live in a society where there has been a powerful and systemic racist hierarchy since the beginning. A person may believe they are immune but more likely they are in denial. That said, you can work to unlearn those ideas and you can work to be anti-racist. If you want more info on this, please reach out to me directly and I will share even more resources.
- When did race and racism begin in America? Folk ideas of race existed prior to Linnaeus but science did help to solidify a wrong understanding of “race”; law helped too. But even now when laws are sometimes trying to fix it and most science agrees that race is not a good way to understand humans, folk race continues.
Professor Question: After reading the whole chapter on race and ethnicity, explain what it means to say that race is not biologically valid but it is socially constructed.
