Race Still Matters?
The race is a term used to refer to the grouping of people based on shared social or physical qualities into groups that the society views as generally distinct. This term was first used to refer to those individuals who had a common language; then later, it was used to denote national affiliations. The term was then used to refer to the physical traits within the 17th century. The contemporary scholars use the term race as a social construct meaning an identity that is assigned according to the rules that are made by society. It does not have an inherent biological or physical meaning; however, it is partially based on the physical similarities in groups. Over the past centuries and decades, groupings of races and social conceptions have varied over time, frequently involving folk taxonomies that mostly define the key types of people based on perceived traits.
The scientists of today contemplate such biological essentialism outdated hence discouraging the racial explanations for the shared discrepancy in both behavioral and physical traits. There exist no gene or s cluster of genes that could be considered common to all whites or all blacks. If race was real in the sense of genes, then racial classifications for people would be constant across boundaries. It is, therefore, true that race is not genetic since an individual who could be grouped as black in the US could be considered colored in South Africa or white in Brazil. Racial identity could be viewed as fluid just as race (Durden, Dooley & Truscott, 2016).
This generally means that an individual could change how they perceive their racial identity based on time and experience and not simply for those people who are multiracial. Such shifts in racial identity could result in categories that the society insists that has not been defined yet on the rigidity of race. The whites who are in interracial black-white relationships or marriages often experience a shift in the way they get to understand their personal, racial identity.
In this case, for example, in a society whereby being white irrespective of an individual’s socioeconomic class contextual or any other advantages generally means to live a life that is full of the white skin privileges including being presumed noncriminal, safe or competent, those whites who would start experiencing discrimination as a result of being connected innately with another individual from another race or those who would witness their loved ones facing racial discrimination, they have high chances of starting to feel as if there are not white anymore. This is because they feel that their lived reality fails to align with the social meaning that comes with their whiteness.
This example fully supports Fuentes’s claim that in such a society today, the racial, social categories will be a reality that impacts people’s lives (Fuentes, 2015). Over the past few decades, racial progress has been witnessed, and this could be the case where President Barack Obama was first elected as president in the United States; it is clear that even though not many whites who voted for him, at least he had a quite good number of whites who voted for him. There is no way Obama could become president without the support of the whites too.
Statistics show that most non-whites, and this includes the Latin Americans, the blacks, Asian Americans, and other racial groups in the United States voted for President Obama in both his ruling terms; however, they were not enough to make him the president without the support of the Whites too. In the article “School Segregation, the Continuing Tragedy of Ferguson” by Nikole Hannah-Jones, she gives examples that support Fuentes’s claim of how social categories of race generally are a reality that impacts peoples lives. Nikole gives an example of how five black students graduated months after the main graduation of the school mainly because they could not graduate during the main graduation since there were many students who had achieved the best credits or had failed to participate in the initial graduation.
Among the students who graduated was Michael Brown, an 18-year-old boy who was the eldest son of his mother. He was waiting to join the college in the fall, which did not happen since Michael was killed eight days later by a white police officer. The shooting caused angry protests as well as a painful round of national debate concerning policing, race, and the frequent elusive matter of justice. The reports from the media weeks after Michael’s death explain his recent graduation as well as his ambitions to college, an implication of how the teen’s achievements in school resulted in deep sorrow over his loss.
The educational experience of the boy was a success story mainly because the school district where he graduated from the Normandy School District, was among the most segregated and the poorest in Missouri (Hannah-Jones, 2014). In fact, the school ranked last in overall academic performance. The annual state assessment indicated that its annual ratings were so dismal such that by the time Michael graduated, it had lost its accreditation from the district. Almost half of the black male students in the school never graduated, and it was only one out of four graduates who managed to join a four-year college. The college where Michael was headed in the fall was a troubled for-profit trade school.
It was a school that the senate had reported that it targeted the vulnerable students and that it had once advertised itself as being the area’s unsupported, unemployed, undeserved, underpaid, unmotivated, unskilled, unhappy, and unsatisfied. Five miles from Normandy school was the wealthy county seat whereby the grand jury made a decision not to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Michael. In the county, success did not look like that of Michael. The public schools there were mainly white, where poverty could not be mentioned. The district ranged within the top ten percent in the state, which covers 96% of the students graduating. 84% of the graduates always joined four-year universities.
In this case, we could therefore say that Michael’s tragedy was not limited to his personal ability that was brutally cut short. His state of schooling shows a more understated and ongoing racial injustice. His story shows the large disparity in expectations and resources for the black children within the stubbornly segregated America’s educational system. This shows how American schools are and continue to be racially divided. The information amassed by the education department shows that the Latino and black children are generally less likely to be taught by experienced and qualified teachers, to have access to technology, as well as get access to courses such as calculus and chemistry (Kiuchi, 2016).
From these examples and information, we can clearly say that race still matters in that for one to get a better education and be taught by well-qualified teachers; they have to be whites for one to receive justice in a court of law in the United States, one has to be white. Meaning that most lives of people living in the United States mostly depend on their race. The whites get more benefits while the non-white races get a rough time in almost every stage of their lives. In the article, Nikole Hannah-Jones gives examples of different scenarios indicating how the race of an individual favored some while it oppressed or was a disadvantage to others.
References
Durden, T., Dooley, C. M., & Truscott, D. (2016). Race still matters: Preparing culturally relevant teachers. Race Ethnicity and Education, 19(5), 1003-1024. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13613324.2014.969226
Fuentes, A. (2015). Race, monogamy, and other lies they told you: Busting myths about human nature. Univ of California Press. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=VbQwDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR1&dq=Agustin+Fuentes.+The+Myth+of+Race,+from+Race,+Monogamy,+and+Other+Lies+They+Told+You:+Busting+Myths+about+Human+Nature&ots=jbaDxa_inT&sig=MPYpj1GSylrTeyLKudu4ykYXc8Q
Hannah-Jones, N. (2014). School segregation, the continuing tragedy of Ferguson. Retrieved February, 24, 2017. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=School+Segregation,+the+Continuing+Tragedy+of+Ferguson&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5
Kiuchi, Y. (Ed.). (2016). Race still matters: The reality of African American lives and the myth of postracial society. SUNY Press. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=EC9_DQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=race+still+matters&ots=-MATwg5vOO&sig=cLizV839QGvzKsLVfSA0fOcEB_c