The issue of race and racial prejudices has stirred humanity since times immemorial. The notion itself, starting from the simplistic “skin color” underwent dramatic changes and was seen as lineage, genes, and geographic location at different periods of time. At present, race is seen more as a phenomenon imposed on people to explain the mistreatment of diverse social layers. More frequently, race is understood as a social construct rather than historical ancestry. This paper hypothesizes that while outer attributes of race can hardly be changed, it is essential not to divide people into racial groups so that race is never considered as an argument for mistreatment.
In my childhood, I defined my race solely on the basis of skin and eye color, as I considered ethnicity only from the perspective of visual attributes a person has. As I grew older and learned about DNA and RNA and how genes are transferred from parents to children, I saw that the notion is much deeper than that. Indeed, with the growing number of cross-racial marriages and the ongoing migration of people, the genetic pool of each individual, to a certain extent, consists of the same genes. Therefore, at present, race is more of a social construct used by the powerful to keep people from getting the advantages they inspire to have.
The primary distinction between race and ethnicity is that the former is linked to the biological differences in humanity, whilst the latter is linked to the cultural and customary diversity of people. Indeed, ethnicity is understood as belonging to a social class with a shared ethnic or cultural heritage. It alludes to the traditions and practices unique to the area one is from. While it is possible to change one’s ethnicity by moving into another geographical area or into another social stratum, race, when it is understood as a biological trait, cannot be changed. However, seen as a social construct, race is subject to change as well as ethnicity, since a person can override the limitations society imposes on her or him.
Different authors have offered insights into the constructs of race and ethnicity to help people better understand the essence of these notions. Thus, Ronald Takaki, the author of A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America, asserted that many ethnic and racial communities have unique, and perhaps conflicting, narrative legacies of racism. This suggests various American ethnic communities may teach and interpret pivotal historical times in different ways. Thus, he said, “I believe our educational system as a whole has not integrated the histories of all people into our education system, just the egocentric view of itself, and the White-centered view of African-Americans” (p. 24). Takaki admonished American historians, teachers, and people, in general, to lend credence to those conflicting narratives and to acknowledge that racial and ethnic concerns hinder how Americans define themselves.
In her works, Morrison shows how the places that would seem to be immune to racism are haunted by the idealized version of whiteness and how gender and race are constantly correlated. Thus, in her book Paradise she shows how people are tired of ‘white’ history, traditions, and culture and how they want to have ‘a home’ understood in a wider sense of the word, where they can be themselves. Morrison says: “your own home where you can go back past your great-great grandfathers […], past the whole of the Western history, […] on back past to when the rain was new […] back when God said Good! Good! – there, right there where you know your own people were born and lived and died” (p. 75). At the same time, Morrison maintains that unless there is some form of decolonization, there can be no easy escape from the impacts of race, discrimination, and sexism.
Borunda, in her works, largely supports Takaki’s point of view about education not reflecting all the narratives of diverse racial and ethnic groups on American soil. Borunda suggests that the colonial past largely forms the current attitudes of people toward the aspect of race. Thus, she shows how a colonial curriculum affects students’ perspectives on the world and their own selves. In order to change that, Borunda suggests demonstrating to children that white people have a history of fighting for racial equity. Thus, she says: “Students who are exposed to white humanists from United States history learn that white people […] have a legacy in fighting, in collaboration with People of Color, for racial justice. This legacy provides white students with role models – beyond those that perpetuate white supremacy” (p. 3). Perhaps the best variant to rid the educational system of the ideas of white predominance would be the combination of Tanuki’s model of diverse racial narratives with the model offered by Borunda aimed at showing effective interracial collaboration between diverse ethnic groups.
While the problems of racism are still acute in the USA, in the past many movements were formed against institutional racism. Thus, the textbook tells about the free society of the North, where former slave Douglass wanted to find some respite from trials that befell him. The society was created to foster an anti-slave movement across the US in the period before all the slaves were officially freed. Society helped many Afro-Americans to hide from their masters and provided support in finding work as free men.
While the problems of racial discrimination are far from being resolved, at present more and more people have become aware of the artificial character of the construct of race. Being a powerful weapon of the past to keep people in subordinate positions, the concept is being revised. Of essence is the fact that more and more voices are heard to support the idea of ‘decolonization’ of consciousness through education that should incorporate diverse racial narratives into its system.
References
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Cummings, J. N., Butler, B., & Kraut, R. (2014). The quality of online social relationships. Communications of the ACM, 45(7), 103–108.