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Challenges to Efforts purposing to end Race-Thinking
The growth in labor mobility has resulted in multiracial societies owing to the migration of people from one country to another in search of jobs. The development of multicultural societies has raised significant concerns about racism and how people should stop racist thoughts. Despite the crucial need for stopping racist thoughts, there exist a number of challenges that prevent the elimination of racist thoughts and actions in a multicultural cultural society. Taylor identifies three challenges to race-thinking: the anti-racist challenge, the challenge of human variation, and racial differentiation. None of the three challenges by Taylor provides enough reasons to discontinue race thinking because man’s existences cannot be detached from social classes, gender principles, morphological and genetic differences, and ethnicity.
The anti-racist challenge
According to Taylor (37), the connection between race and racism is one of the issues that has hindered the efforts to eliminate race-thinking from society. Racism is propagated by race thinking. Consider the case of the black Americans whose vast population worked as slaves in the cotton and rice plantations. The blacks are still associated with inferiority, and such thoughts have continued racism. The recent killing of George Floyd by the police as another indication of race thanking among the whites. The police who knelt on the victim’s neck until the victim died must have been motivated by race thinking and consequently propagated racism. Further, Taylor borrows from the racial privacy argument that racial classification and categories have only divided the nation deeper instead of uniting society members. The slave trade and the Holocaust are excellent indicators of how racial classifications have divided members of society. The race-based divisions possess significant challenges towards offering solutions to social, educational, and political challenges. A divided country can newer work towards a common goal (Taylor 67).
Racism is diverse, including actions, thoughts, attitudes, and gestures. However, all the forms of racism have one theme in common, which is the unethical disregard of people from a particular race. Disregarding in this setting includes withholding respect, care, goodwill, or failing to show concern to a particular group of people (White 417). Ethically, human life is equal and should be given equal treatment irrespective of race (Taylor 54). Racialism, a theory that links specific race to capacities and mannerism, is another form in which racism is propagated. Since the theory relies on and prejudices and race-based stereotypes in the process of attributing individual races to capacities and mannerism, it continues race-thinking (White 412). The primary reason as to why this challenge fails is
The Challenge of Human Variation
Though all human beings belong to the same species, they show a significant variation in genetic makeup. According to, the genetic constitutions of a particular individual are unique and can be inherited from the parents to the children. Importantly, it is the genetic makeup that controls the behavior and one’s personality. However, the challenge of using human variations to race thinking is the existence of continuous and discontinuous variations. Some human traits such as height and clear have no definite boundaries, making it difficult to draw the line on where one race ends (arbitrary demarcation). Similarly, the human genetic constitution is altered by mutations, which further complicates the process of race-thinking based on human variation. It is extremely hard for the precise race of the albino people from mere observation.
The other clustered traits include invisible traits such as intelligence and emotional control, and moral sensibility is also part of the human variation. Notably, these invisible traits are not only determined by the genetic constitution but also the environment. As suggested by, people can still share the same race but have a markedly varied level of intelligence, among other forms of the invisible trait. This form of inconsistency is another crucial phenomenon explaining how race thinking is absolutely irrelevant.
The challenge of Social Differentiation
The recent growth in labor mobility, coupled with the slave trade, has significantly contributed to culturally diverse societies. The issues of ethnicity have gained popularity among culturally diverse societies. Unlike race, which is mostly linked to the body and physical appearances, ethnicity is linked to culture. Cultural factors considered in ethnicity includes language and customs and norms. This implies that people belonging to the same race can belong to different sub-races, which possibly comprises ethnicity. However, it is undeniable that ethnicity and race share the same decent. Notably, the ethnically diverse groups have definite morphological differences that are prone to racialization. According to Taylor, the Africans become part of America after the abolishment of the slave trade. The abolishment of the trade further brought Americans in the same social groups irrespective of the ethnicity. Therefore social differentiation should not be used as a basis of continued race-thinking.
Equally, the caste system, which was a form of social classification based on wealth and social status, does not rule out the same racial decedent. The accumulated wealth that resulted in the caste social classes is firmly anchored to the slavery movement in which Africans worked harder to clear the vast tracts of land for plantations. The white supremacy had a central role in the emergency of the social classes, and this should not be used to justify the Africans’ inferiority. Nation, the idea of striving to achieve common political and economic goals is another possible way to ending race-thinking. When people work together for the benefit of their nation, then the idea of race becomes non-existence. Wealth difference among members of the same country creates social classes and directly influences racial discrimination. The less economically privileged group is highly vulnerable compared to their counterparts. Gender-based stereotypes comprise another aspect that interacts with the race to determine social life. The society has gender expectations for both men and women. Attempts t conform to these gender expectations have continued to make women economically dependent on their husbands. As revealed by having an open mind and willingness to break the societal barrier is the only solution to end gender vulnerabilities.
Conclusion
Race-thinking is diverse, and attempts to end it may not bear fruits any time soon. The concept of race is directly influenced by other aspects of society, including gender principles, ethnicity, social classes, caste, human biological variation, and the idea of racialism. None of the three challenges presented by Taylor provides substantial reasons to continue things about race. As long as human beings continue to exist, social classes, gender principles, and ethnicity will continue to exist, which complicates the efforts to discontinue race thinking.
Work Cited
Fujimura, Joan H., and Ramya Rajagopalan. “Different differences: The use of ‘genetic ancestry’versus race in biomedical human genetic research.” Social Studies of Science 41.1 (2011): 5-30.
Fujimura, Joan H., and Ramya Rajagopalan. “Different differences: The use of ‘genetic ancestry’versus race in biomedical human genetic research.” Social Studies of Science 41.1 (2011): 5-30.
Taylor, Paul C. Race: A philosophical introduction. Polity, 2013. 27-98
White, Sarah. “Thinking race, thinking development.” Third World Quarterly 23.3 (2002): 407- 419.