In the beginning of high school, we had to do a project in which we needed our baby pictures. I distinctly remember how one person sought my baby picture out and held it up in front of the entire class.
“Guys, you ought to know whose baby picture this is,” he began. “In a school full of Caucasian kids, an Indian girl is bound to stand out.”
To this day, I still can feel my cheeks flushing. “How dare he?” I thought to myself. I couldn’t understand back then why he was using my race like it was a joke. Now, I can’t understand why I let his comment affect me.
Upon reflection, I know that this boy was right. As an Indian, I do stand out from my classmates with my long dark hair and tanned skin, but socially, I define myself as an American. Lately, however, I’ve noticed that embracing my hyphenated Indian-American identity has been more difficult than I imagined it would.
I would constantly blame myself for my inability to properly identify with my Indian race due to my strong American nationality. However, I have learned that perhaps it’s not my struggle to fit in that is the problem, but rather the nebulous concept of race itself.
The Origins of Race
Race is a social construct, and for many the thought that race is socially created is a recondite idea because people have always been ascribing the idea of race to biology. However, race hasn’t always been used as a method of classification.
Around 400 BCE, Ancient Greeks often looked at language and culture as a means of distinguishing themselves from one another, not through specific physical characteristics. Yet by the eighteenth century in colonial America, wealthy white plantation owners began to group and exclude Africans based on their skin color.
Black people automatically belonged to the slave class and had little room for social mobility, whereas poor white indentured servants had some chance to elevate their social status. Even more apparent was the fact that poor whites wanted to identify themselves as white, although their status was closer to that of black slaves, with the hopes of advancing in society.
Shortly thereafter, scientists started to validate the natural supremacy of certain groups, and Darwin’s ideas of evolution evolved into the idea of “social Darwinism,” in which certain races felt superior by applying the ideas of natural selection; using phrases like “survival of the fittest” to justify their behaviors and actions towards people of other races.
People of many races live within the United States. But, as I have personally discovered, it’s quite difficult to classify an individual based on the unclear and arbitrary definition of race in our society.
The Modern Meaning of Race
The anthropological definition of race is “any of the traditional divisions of humankind, the commonest being the Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negro, characterized by supposedly distinctive and universal physical characteristics.”
Historians and anthropologists have since realized that this definition is no longer appropriate. To say that race is classified based on physical characteristics is to imply that race is a biological division of people based off of genetic traits. If this were to be true, different races would not be able to procreate due to prezygotic barriers.
When people say that Asians are the best in math or that black people are the best singers, they are alluding to the idea that “race” is linked to DNA. However, there are no genes that allow these people to have these characteristics. It could be the competitive environment in which the Asians live or the work ethic that black people have which allow them to have this universal trait as a respective group.
In an interview with PBS, Alan Goodman, Professor of Biological Anthropology at Hampshire College, described the acceptance of race as a biological myth as one that requires a “major paradigm shift.”
“For me, it’s like seeing what it must have been like to understand that the world isn’t flat,” Professor Goodman said. “Perhaps I can invite you to a mountaintop or to a plain, and you can look out the window at the horizon, and see, ‘Oh, what I thought was flat I can see a curve in now.’”
Students Reflect
Most students in Massapequa never really have to consider the origins of race in the high school setting because there isn’t much diversity within our community. As students branch out into college, though, they will be surrounded by a much more diverse student body. For this reason, I wanted to know if MHS students were aware of the idea that race was a social construct.
With about twenty students in my AP Literature and Composition class, I had a discussion in which I described the origin of race and how many people, including myself, have had the wrong idea of what race exactly is. With an online tool, students were able to anonymously send in their responses to the two questions I posed: “How do you define race?” and “What do you think of the idea of race being something that we have socially created?”
The responses that I received were very interesting. One student responded, “[Race] is sort of an odd equation between your ethnicity, your birthplace, and the color of your skin.”
Most of the students in the class seemed to embrace this sort of definition. Some acknowledged the idea that race was more than just one’s skin color. “I feel like it’s more of how we as individuals identify within a larger group or culture rather than skin color,” another student wrote.
However, others were able to admit to the fact that they often limited their idea of race to physical classifications. “The idea about [race] being nothing more than a physical quality is what I have always thought,” another student replied.
On the whole, it seems like most of the students thought of race as one’s ethnicity, but it’s important to note the clear distinction between race and ethnicity. Generally, race is associated with biology, while ethnicity is linked to culture.
Towards the end of our class discussion, students started to understand how race could be a social construct. “Race is something we created. Even if everyone looked the same, humanity would still find a way to group people,” one student wrote. “Physical appearance is an easy choice.”
Another student still believed that skin color was a major component in the idea of race. “People’s skin are different colors; this is an objective fact. Any relevance [skin color] has is a human idea that will never go away.”
Of course, two individuals who have similar physical characteristics will ultimately have children who share the same characteristics. If a child has both a black parent and a white parent, odds are he will have both black and white physical traits. The problem with the idea of race comes when that child is considered either black or white based on how dark his skin tone is.
Why It Matters
Why is it important to understand that race is a social construct? Race plays a huge role in our lives, and it will not disappear even if more people start to recognize that it has a social—not biological—origin. If one looks back throughout history, he can clearly see how people’s misconception and incorrect biological justification of race has created wars, conflicts, and discriminatory policies that we are still trying to fix today by means of affirmative action, to name one example.
I’ve become much happier since realizing that I don’t need to alter myself to fit into any race in order to feel like I truly belong, since the whole idea of race is unclear to begin with. Sometimes, all one really needs is a change in perspective in order to better understand the world around him.