Race and Ethnicity

This may not be a totally clear blog since it was written with my professor as the intended audience, but I thought I'd post a response paper I wrote for one of my history classes recently. I love reading, and debating, the questions of race, class, and ethnicity. I tend to think class trumps all other social categories, because it encompasses all others, but I digress. So here is a short paper on race, and the idea of post ethnicity.


This idea of post-ethnicity is first all a very difficult one to fully grasp without significant study on the subject. It is not the first time I’ve been exposed to this type of idea, in fact, over the past two years it has found its way into many of the classes or books I have read in some way shape or form. It falls under this idea of the social construction of race, ethnicity, and gender which can make one feel very uncomfortable at first. These sorts of ideas force a person to reformulate what they perceived as being fact, truth, or reality in many senses, and this can be extremely discomforting. I sometimes wonder if we will ever be able to fully reach beyond our concepts of race and ethnicity to reach a post ethnic society, but I’m not sure there is a positive answer to that question. It many ways it would involve the transformation of history as we know it, because even though I truly believe there are no inherent inferiorities amongst particular groups, they have been given meaning; and further meaning will be yet another imposition by an outside entity within the context of previously held notions of race or ethnicity.

Labels that we use to describe races or ethnicities are meaningless until they are prescribed a meaning by communities both within and outside of a given group of individuals. That being said we need to change the meanings that we give to somebody who is for example, Asian or African-American. I think how we teach history is crucial in this aspect. I think if academia can find a way present the historical forces that have assigned second class status to certain groups which is easily understood by the masses then we can make some headway in terms of our understandings of these subjects. Without knowledge individuals simply follow their senses of sight and hearing. I have seen it with my own eyes. People see a poor African American and automatically assign them as lazy and then they assign lazy as a characteristic of the whole race. This can change though and I’ve seen it change with myself. I come from a working class family who made these assumptions and therefore they became a part of me. However in college I was taught to rethink my notions about race, ethnicity, and gender. However, this raises another interesting question about the so called positive meanings that we assign to race and ethnicity. I think those are just as harmful as the negative meanings, but I think it is important to note if we are to re-negotiate our understandings of the negatives then we must also do so with the positives.

I find the question of post-ethnicity the most important in terms of our readings for this class. This question of race and ethnicity as being socially constructed, thus susceptible to being socially deconstructed is an extremely intriguing one. As I alluded to earlier, it involves in a very real sense, they creation of a new reality. Reality is not fact or even truth, reality is what we make it, but that is not to say it is what we intentionally make. It is completely out of our control in what reality is because so many forces act together to create it and there is no way we can control it. When I say we will never get past the point where we view differences among races and ethnicities I feel some people consider me to be a racist which would be incredibly faulty thinking. I think it is natural for a human being to see and acknowledge differences between their fellow human beings. I see darker skin than mine and it registers in my mind as so. Just as I see a female and realize that they are not male like me. In both instances almost immediately certain ideas pop up about they register as darker skinned or female.

We simply need to celebrate our differences. Differences are good; they make the world exciting and a more interesting place. I think in the United States, and the world, we have this problem with differences in physical and intellectual make up. In my world view it is because government fears what it would due to certain allegiances to their particular institution of rule. People fear the unknown; they fear what is different because they feel that person or thing is a threat to their personal reality. They also fear differences because they can constitute a political and social force and impose their own ideals on the rest of us. I honestly believe these beliefs exist, even if they’re subconsciously. So with all that I think we need to celebrate the good things about our differences and seek to understand the negatives to prevent them from occurring in the future. This may seem to imply that I find hope that a post-ethnic world can exist. This would mean changing history, changing government, changing economy, and basically negating everything up until now, which is impossible.

As I think is shown by my comments here, which I’m sure have many contradictions, this topic is wildly complex. We may be able to become post-ethnic in a social sense where people are allowed to determine their ethnic identity so a limited extent, but I fail to see it happening broadly, especially when it comes to social and governmental institutions. I always seem to tie things to class, but I believe class is the more important issue because the reason there is a concern for race and ethnicity is because of the economic implications. Of course I see power, both political and social, in this economic analysis because money certainly means power in this world. I think if we are ever to reach a post-ethnic world we would have to see our conceptions of wealth and economy do a complete 180.

I’m still fighting to understand these issues, and I will continue to do so even though I think nobody will ever find an answer. I love this topic and I love thinking about it despite the many headaches it gives me. I do think we need to make an effort to see each other as human beings, not as black and white, Christian and Muslim, or American and Chinese. That may make me a bit of an idealist, but I think hope must be kept alive and efforts must be made to do so.