Wade's Argumentative Analysis

Race is defined as a category or group of people widely perceived as sharing socially significant physical characteristics or hereditary traits that set them apart. It is commonly accepted myth that the human species is composed of physically different groups and that these differences are assumed to be genetic. Race is supposed to be based on biological factors. However, the myth is debunked; it is scientifically proven that race is a social construction; although it is based on physical characteristics that presume biological base, most important biological differences between people are invisible and do not play any role in the definition of racial categories. There

Race is a hot topic in our world. We all think we know what race is. After all, we are constantly being bombarded with it whether it be from media, politics, or sports. The truth is that race does not revolve around the idea of biological traits or characteristics. It is a modern concept that we as a society have created to divide people into categories. I will argue that race is socially constructed from a biological, political history, and sociological standpoint, and how it may impact other areas of our society.

This article written by Mark Nathan Cohen, who is an anthropology professor in the State University of New York; talks about how race does not define human diversity. In the article, he also mentions that in school students learn the definition of race based on “biological variation” and not based on their culture. The professor Cohen says that studies on human family tree that were based on their genetic analysis of traits do not show any relation of who those traits belong to. He gives an example by stating that even skin color is not a god indicator of who it relates to because the “traits occur independently in several different branches of the human family.”

The PBS series “Race: The Power of an Illusion” effectively works to expose race as a social construct and deconstructs the false notions that race is a biological marker. The series first discusses that all human beings originated from Africa but dispersed about 70,000 years ago to various places in the world. As a result of this migration, people were spread to different locations throughout the world with different environmental conditions that affected their physical traits. It was many years after the migration in which people began to display these new physical traits such as slanted eyes, fair skin, and differing hair textures. While the series notes the physical changes that occurred during the migration it also emphasizes that race while it may seem apparent in skin color and other physical features has no real biological basis.

President Lincoln proposed a lenient plan to bring the defeated Confederate states to join the Union, which was known as the Ten Percent Plan. He believed that being more lenient to Confederate states would convince them to surrender sooner, and would speed up the healing process, which he thought was needed for a solid reconstruction of the Union. The plan consisted of forgiving all Southerners, except the high-ranking officers and officials, who would pledge loyalty to the Union, and as soon as 10% of the state’s voters would pledge oath to the Union, the state could call a convention and as a result could form a government and apply for federal recognition.

Back when the European explorers discovered people who did not look like them it started racial conflicts. They questioned if the natives where human and did not treat them as equals. In the nineteenth century Max Webber disregarded the biological explanations for racial conflict and emphasized the social and political factors which engendered such conflicts. Since Webber did this it began changing perspective on race. In the text is states that in the contemporary social science literature race is assumed to be a variable which it shaped by broader societal force. In this time race is not seen as difference in skin color but difference in status. Which made society believe one race is better than the others. Over the years the meaning of race has changed tremendously. For example, the existence of water is not based on collective acceptance, or

Racial myths bear no relationship to the reality of human capabilities or behavior. Scientists today find that reliance on such folk beliefs about human differences in research has led to countless errors.

Before I studied human race in detailed, it was just one simple concept and classification that people hardly bothered about. The effects of race upon an individual are way too surprising. It affects one’s life chances, the area where one lives in, the way an individual is treated, one’s financial condition, education, life expectancy and so on.

Ever since the beginning, slavery has always been a growing conflict in the United States. However in the 1800s, it became such a problem that it nearly separated the whole country. Those that lived in southern states believed that they had the rights to own slaves. They argued that the slavery made up a fairly large part of their economy because slaves labor was cheap. This is why many of the big time planters were rich. Also, they felt African Americans were unfit to survive on their own. Northern citizens felt that there was no need for slavery and that it was wrong. But who is right regarding this situation. It all depends on the individual. The back and forth arguing between the north and south was intense, neither backing down from the

We are still consumed with the notion that there is some possible generalization that can used to determine who belongs and who doesn’t, to a certain category of ethnicity. Throughout the process of natural selection, uninhibited love and the freedom of choice, we humans continue to cloud the reality for the concept of race. This social construction of race no longer holds as a scientific factor. Physical features such as skin color and eyes and hair have been proven scientifically to be components of the location of environment. These traits were

Within the pro-choice world there are many issues that are discussed like abortion, the instant where life begins and the use of contraceptives. This article will focus on not only the issue of using of contraceptives, but specifically the distribution of oral contraceptives (“the pill”) to teenage girls without their parent’s consent.

The concept of race and the meanings associated with the term have continuously changed and evolved throughout history. Many negative connotations have been associated with the word race and these are evident as one reflects on the historical origins of the term. Commonly the term race is closely connected to the notion of ‘racism.’ Racism is a specific form of prejudice which focuses on physical variations between people. It describes the ideological belief that a person, or groups of people can be classified into ‘races’ which can be ranked in terms of superiority and inferiority (Spoonley, 1988:4). Giddens defines racism as “the attribution of characteristics of superiority or inferiority to a population sharing certain physically inherited characteristics” (1997:584). This supports the idea that racism is a manner of prejudice or animosity against people who have different physical characteristics. It is in virtue of circumstances such as these that Anthropologists find it necessary to make a distinction between the concepts of race and ethnicity.

The current race issues in America led me to seek out the anthropological perspectives on race and ethnicity. Historically, anthropologists typically only provided research within their own cultures versus pursuing research about us all. It is important to understand the history of race and ethnicity globally. Every culture and background offer information about our beginnings are human beings. Understanding each cultures role, lifestyle and environment helps piece together details about humans as a race in itself aside from our varying differences within our species. In performing this research we are able to observe behavioral changes amongst varying cultures as well.

If you would have asked me, "Do you believe race is biological or that is was socially constructed?", I would have responded with the same examples you may commonly receive from scientist or anthropologist; that race is in fact biological and deeply rooted and shared from generation to generation by DNA. However, through analyzing Pearson 's, Chapter 11 Race & Ethnicity we discover various examples in which history has built the shelves in which everyone is neatly categorized for its convenience even if not entirely in truth.

Due to scientist’s interest in human genetic variation, human racial classification became a focus of scientific investigation by evolutionary biologists attempting to categorize individual humans based on presumed patterns of biological difference. Scientists had hoped to classify humans in the same way that they classified other species. These scientists attached hierarchical titles to these categorizations; they claimed that differences in skin color, physiognomy, and geography were associated with scientifically measurable differences in character, aptitude, and temperament (Smedley, 1998). However, studies supporting these claims have been unsound (Gould, 1981). Categorization of humans by racial and ethnic groups continues, as researchers must remain aware of this historical legacy of the science of heredity as the genomic era continues to develop (Bonham et al., 2005).