Race Categorization: The Ever-Changing Dilemma

Coming back to this idea that Jenkins proposed of how we as a human race love to categorize things, race can be seen as one of the biggest examples of that need to label. In this piece “Making Societies,” the author William Roy first gives the reader two distinct ways that scholars view race, either the essentialist or constructive perspective. The essentialists perspective would be seen as, “a natural phenomenon, a characteristic of people based on genetic traits” (pg. 75). This simply means that people view others as either being “black” or “white” just by looking at their skin color rather than who the person may be considered internally. The problem with this viewpoint is that it makes having racial differences almost impossible to abolish. The other side of viewing races is through the constructive perspective. It is defined as being held that, “racial categories are not natural but are invented by the people” (pg. 75). This meaning that it is not the skin color that a human is defined as, but rather who they are internally as a person. As of today, racial categorization is not as necessary as it may have been, but it is still integrated into our society whether we like it or not because of our past history.

Before getting into the time where racial categorization became prominent, Roy talks about the preceding period where there weren’t any racial labels whatsoever. They categorized in a much different way than just looking at the color of ones skin. First of all, pre-1500’s many societies differentiated themselves by labeling each other as either being “civilized” or “uncivilized.” According to Roy, even the Europeans didn’t consider themselves as being civilized until they began colonizing the rest of the world in which they then began thinking of themselves as superior to any other race. Another method of categorization that was used was distinguishing people based upon their religion. They were either seen as being “believers” or “heathens” as a product of the crusades during the eleventh to thirteenth century. Finally, one last way they separated themselves was by virtue of territory. The area that much of this is talking about would be based upon a regional scale compared to a much larger national one. The main idea behind this type of labeling is of “native versus stranger” (pg. 82). This means that people who live in the same community develop a sense of union or trust, while if a “stranger” came in all of that would be eliminated. These different methods of categorization were the main reason why many people began looking at these situations with the label of “us” and “them.” Personally, I wonder if this specific idea of territorial categorization still happens today?  Obviously with tourism and travel it makes going places much easier and acceptable, but I’ve always wondered if that “native vs. stranger” mentality still applies.

Later on in the reading Roy gives us the five main factors of why the Europeans moved from pre-racial to racial categories. The first factor is due to the rise of capitalism. This caused many people to start demanding more rights mainly Europeans from the king. This in turn caused a negative effect as they saw all other races as “biologically inferior and not fully human” (pg. 86), thus making slavery an exception to the rule of freedom. The second reason was because of the rise of egalitarian values. Before this time many slaves got rights such as the right to marriage, manumission, ownership of property, etc. Although now that many of the owners got more and more freedoms they then took them away from the slaves because they would contradict the rights of the owner. The third reason was due to the idea of the “savage.” Many comparisons of this savage drew back to the common perception of the Irish and how they were seen as, “lazy, filthy, evil, lying, stealing, murdering, and even cannibalistic” (pg. 87). Even though they may seem to appear as one of the “superior white race” that many Europeans were believed to look like, they were described (as seen in the picture on page 99) almost as animals. The forth factor is due to the scientific legitimization of races. Science helped push this idea because they not only “tried to “prove” that races were biologically different but also tried to “prove” that blacks were inferior, giving legitimacy to a common folk belief” (pg. 89).  Finally, the fifth and final factor that helped push racial categories was the force of racial dominance by the government. Essentially the law gave preference to whites and thus discriminated against other races.

Today I believe we as humans have gone a long way in that race labeling has died down significantly from the past. Personally I think that people are much more open minded about peoples race and culture. What do you think?

The article that is attached I also found to be very interesting in that it talks about racial identification with President Barak Obama and how if he had grown up in Kenya his political identity would’ve been much more different.

http://socraticsociety.wordpress.com/2009/05/24/the-double-standard-of-race-categorization/