On May 25th 2020, George Floyd’s murder by the Minneapolis police, sparked the largest racial justice protests in the US since the Civil Rights Movement. While the first wave of the pandemic had gripped everyone with fear, confusion, loss and death, my students from Sholai were at home watching The Black Lives Matter protests hit the streets.
We were just beginning with online classes when some of the children began questioning: why are people protesting? In what ways are people racially discriminated against and why does it happen? What is race, to begin with?
We began our exploration by engaging with the history and science behind the idea of race. Here, I share few resources relating to the same:
Resources
Race and science: Did we invent the category of race or is it a biological discovery? What is the evidence of race, if it was discovered scientifically?
Resources to learn about these questions:
1. Race - The Power of an Illusion
2. Facts from the infinite monkey cage podcast: Within the continent of Africa, there are the largest number of genetic differences amongst the people. In other words, if you take a person from Ethiopia and another person from South Africa, there will most likely be a greater genetic difference between them as compared to a person from Ethiopia (or South Africa) and any other person from a different part of the world (Indian or British). So, on what basis are people separated into different racial categories? Race and history: Has the idea of race been constructed over time? How has it molded over time and why?
Resources to learn about these questions:
1. The Story of Race
Click to open The Story of Race attachment
2. Race is different from ethnicity in that the latter is a social identity that a person can choose to change over time. This is because ethnicity is a self-assigned and fluid identity category in a few ways. For instance, I may relocate from Tamil Nadu to America and change my religion from Hinduism to Buddhism, thereby altering my ethnic associations.
3. The idea of race can be understood through analogies. For example, in Harry Potter, there is a distinction between pure blood and mudblood. Those who are born as pure blood are considered to be more intelligent, brave, powerful and superior than mudbloods. Moreover, a person cannot change their identity from mudblood to pure blood unless the categories themselves are redefined. What are the racial categories? The recognized racial categories in America as of the 2000 Census Bureau:
1.White (from Europe, Middle East of Northern Africa), 2. Black/African-American, 3. American Indian (or Native American) and Alaska Native, 4. Asian, 5. Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander and 6. ‘Some other race’ (so all other places not listed above)
To explore racism, we tried to understand structural racism and impact biases. For this reason, we watched:
1. Systematic Rasicm Explained
2. Implicit Bias: Peanut Butter, Jelly and Rasicm
3. The danger of a single story
4. What are implicit biases? They are our mind’s way of making uncontrolled and automatic associations between two concepts very quickly. It is a result of conversation, books, news, media, music, parents, friends, culture that we are surrounded by… basically everything that influences us. For example, when I hear Idly, I think Sambar. And this is an association because of all the conditions of my everyday life.
Our implicit biases are usually at a subconscious level. We can become aware of many of them but psychologists understand that we cannot get rid of them. They are usually contrary or opposite to what I think I believe or know. For example, I may not think that a poor person may steal from me. But when I am in a poor neighborhood, I may clutch my bag closer to me, fearing that my purse may get stolen.
Although implicit biases seem harmless, they mold our fears and judgments and influence how we behave with certain people. That can further affect how the other person is treated and behaves as well. For example, if I keep thinking that a poor person may steal from me, I start becoming scared in their presence and I may call the police on a poor person even if they were just passing my street.
Responses
Having clarified a few ideas and concepts, we began thinking about the following questions. Here, I also share snippets of the children’s responses and conversation. Given the recognised categories in America, what do you notice about how ‘race’ is dividing people? Is this fair?
Response 1: Race is dividing people in America by color (ex. White, Black), if they are Native (ex. American Indian, Native Alaskan), if they are immigrants from other countries or continents (ex. Asian,Pacific Islnder), etc. It would be fair if the recognised categories are only ways to classify people, but things would get dark if they were also means of discrimination, like in the case of Jamal and many others.
Response 2: I don't think it's fair to put people in groups according to their colour because the colour changes happen due to MELANIN so anybody could be white or black according to the place they live in. But as Tarun said it is alright if it is just there to classify people but when it comes to the case of America where they made this difference to show their superiority that is not right.
Response 3: I don't think “race” without biases is a bad thing. What I don't like is how it is used to discriminate, divide, and degrade or upgrade(?) people. I don’t like how depending on your skin colour you are seen as a target or a better person than everyone else. I don’t like how your color restricts you from doing something like getting job offers.FOR GOD'S SAKE A IT’S JUST A STUPID COLOUR!!! JUDGE PEOPLE BASED ON WHAT THEY DO NOT HOW THEY LOOK!!!!! Sorry. Just letting off some steam. Race is dividing people in many ways. For a long time there were coloured toilets and coloured people could not for the longest time sit in a part of the bus. They would have special seats. Lower caste people in India would not get accepted for certain jobs and most of them end-up working as help in houses (mostly women) and cleaning the streets and collecting garbage from our houses. And still a lot of them don’t get jobs and end-up dying on the streets. So yeah I don't think the way people use race as a curse over many heads is fair AT ALL. Why do I think so? Well my previous statements speak for themselves.
Response 4: I do not think race is a bad thing. The real villain is discrimination. Race was a concept used purely for scientific reasons. I don’t know exactly why people needed to classify humans… maybe to learn more about geography or biology?? But what race has evolved into is just horrific. I think that if we all take time to think about the way we act or say things, it could help all of us be less racist or get rid of racism but not race. Maybe you don't mean to be, but you could have held your purse a little closer when walking in a slum , or carried a knife when walking down a muslim street. That is still racism. we could all work together to get rid of racism. Sure, we can't get rid of ‘Race’ as a concept itself, because race by itself is not a bad thing. But it is what we do as a community to ‘notice’ it.
My response: what does 'race' by itself mean? Can we detach it from its social, economical and historical facets? Moreover, was it purely scientific given how it was justified to perpetuate slavery? Lastly, is the real villain discrimination alone? As we saw, did not the idea of race arise out of discrimination, to begin with?
Response 5: The meaning of ‘race’ has evolved a lot and also keeps changing based on different peoples views. ‘Race’ is not a choice it is given to us by society or by birth. ‘Race’ in America refers to the colour of skin people have. Colour is something we have since birth; it is not a choice. Discriminating and having biases based on colour doesn't seem to be fair to me. People's appearance should not be the reason they are not treated right or that they can't do something (job..etc).
Response 6: Race is still occurring in our world in many ways. I feel race is also a division like caste in India but race in America plays a big role in black people's lives like not paying them affordable money for their work and keeping them in a very low position in the country. Blacks are also humans like us. They might be having different colors than us so we can't have race between the colors. So race is not fair.
2.What do you feel about the usage of ‘white’ and ‘black’ to denote race? Are our skins so opposite or binary in nature or are our skin colours more on a spectrum of different shades? Is it fair to speak in extremes?
Response 1: If color was to be used, I think it should be light and dark or something like that as there are many people of other ‘races’ who fall in between white and black. In fact, we all fall in between ‘white’ and ‘black’. Also, for example, all the African Americans aren’t necessarily of the same ‘dark’ shade either. So it confuses me when people use ‘black’ for other people of more mild perfection that is neither black nor white; not that it should be used to recognise people of a dark skin color either.
Response 2: White and black was used in America because people living in America had light skin colour mostly and people living in Africa had mostly dark skin. It was just a classification they used because at that time maybe they didn't have anything else to classify into.But that is not right to speak of it in extremes because its human nature and everybody's skin is in different shades.So they cant have races with skin colour. It is not fair to speak of extremes with skin colours because it is a natural phenomenon.
Response 3: So take mangoes for example. Mangoes come in all shapes, sizes, colours, tastes and are from all over the world. One mango is not better than the other because they are more orangy than yellow or that they are more sweet than tart. One mango might be very yellow and still have a sour taste or be very green and taste like honey(if mangoes could taste like honey....What i mean is that it is sweet, just sweet). All those mangoes are equally good. Mangoes come in a wide range of colours from green to orange(and black for when they rot) so it would be unfair to say mangoes are only green(EDIT:as Amara has kindly pointed out, they also come in red and pink in the Caribbean) and yellow(and black) because you would be missing a whole array of mango colours. I myself am very concerned about mango discrimination. I vote that we all stop this unjust bias against mangoes. #MANGO BODY POSITIVITY!
!Ok that was a joke but I am applying it to humans and that is no joke.
Response 4: Race is so much more than colour and specially ‘white’ and ‘black’. Our skin colour is a range of so many different shades of black and white. Using two colours to categorize people around the whole world is quite narrow minded because then we exclude so many people who don’t fall into the 2 categories. To speak in extremes about anything is not fair because then other people and their opinions won’t matter.
3.Is it fair to have a racial category as ‘white/from europe, middle east, north africa’ and ‘black/ african american’? What happens to all those people who have lighter skin because their parents are inter-racial and one parent is Black and the other is White?
Response 1: They might become victims to a lot of intended or not-intended false accusations, not that ‘black’ people should be accused due to skin color at all. Also, I don’t think they would fall into any one race, so people can randomly call them black or something like that. Also, sometimes, if something they are doing requires filling info on whether they are black or white and they might be compelled to choose one, even though it contradicts their beliefs.
Response 2: They are like Half-Bloods in Harry potter they won't be included in any of these categories and will be discriminated like what happened in harry potter and they will be discriminated for not doing anything that can be teased.They will also i think have the wish to choose what category they fall under when it comes to filling up a form or something. But If they don't want to be in any of these races they will be compelled to be in a race but they won't have a true identity because they aren't in either of these groups.
Response 3: Take apples for example. There is an apple called Braeburn which is a hybrid of the apples Granny Smith and Lady Hamilton (I am not kidding, they actually exist). Granny Smith apples are tart and Lady Hamilton are super sweet so as a result Braeburn apples are trying to be sweet and tart at the same time. Aso Braeburn is also supposed to be a My Little Pony character. Anyway if Braeburn were to fill out a medical form and one of the questions was what is your personality( a.k.a taste because obviously Braeburn apples aren't gonna eat themselves and be like “ohh i am very sweet” or something).Braeburn might choose to say she is sweet or tart but she is also allowed to be both. SHE IS A HYBRID MONGREL AND IS PROUD TO BE SO!!
Response 4: So a person's parents are white and black (for example only) they should have citizenship of any country so this son will also belong to that country's citizen.
Response 5: I think i agree with Siva, but if someone is interracial, what is their race? I don’t think they should be called black or white, there are also light skins, a new race created by gen z. These people are either Indian and black, Latino and black or white and black. Then there are also mixed skins. These can be anything, e.g. Konkani and Uttar Pradeshi (these two aren’t exactly races but do have different cultures) or, Russian and oriental.
Response 6: I don’t think it's fair to have a racial category of only 2 colours. By doing so we exclude a lot of people. Then people who are inter-racial don’t come into any category and it may or may not affect them. They can then be seen as outsiders even though they are not which somehow (i feel) is a way to discriminate.
4.Why, in your opinion, given all of this, might we still NEED the idea of race?
Response 1: We don’t ‘NEED’ it, but there is no harm in having it if isn’t the cause of discrimination. Also, I am not so sure but some people might feel uncomfortable without a race or might want to belong to their race (not because they discriminate against other races).
Response 2: We don't need the idea of race but it is helpful to categorise people in large amount and it won't really be a problem of having race if there is no discrimination against races or fights between the races and if there is no comparison among the races. Having Races helps people feel better because they will feel like I am also a part of a group and I am not left alone.
My response: why is it helpful to categorize people in large numbers?
Response 3: I don't know. I feel like we need race but we don't at the same time. If race were to continue I definitely don't want it to continue this way because the current idea of race is to undermine certain people. But I also don’t want race because I know that it will take century before we treat each other equally.I am very conflicted. Maybe I will be able to sort it out in our meeting.
Response 4: I don’t think we NEED race so to speak, but we sure can't get rid of it. To some people, their race is an assurance that they are from a specific area. And to other people, it is their pride. I know people who misuse their race exist, but people who are in tough situations due to their race still have pride in who they are.
Response 5: I don’t think we NEED the idea of race, especially the idea people have of it in today's world. Unlike ethnicity, race is quite structured and it is a very fixed idea. It's possible that people don’t want to be fixed to a particular race but it isn't completely possible to get away from it with the idea around. Also if categorizing is necessary it should be the person's choice (probably ethnicity).
RHEA KUTHOORE is an educator who is passionate about facilitating philosophical and feminist thinking amongst young people.
Thinking Rhizomatically
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