Destroy Ignorance! "Ten Things Everyone SHOULD Know About Race."

[JanMichael]

Stop it! Annihilate it! Make it go AWAY!

The following is from the website of "Race- The Power of an Illusion".

It's a MUST see documentary. Admittedly I've been exposed to much of the material already in my life but I know that many people haven't. Although I have to add that there is an appearance by one of my personal heroes Stephen J. Gould!

Anyway the insanity, stupidity and inhumanity, of Institutional Racism must be destroyed.

It's 2005 isn't it? Stop allowing long dead, really LONG dead, Racists to infect our collective mind.

TEN THINGS EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT RACE

Our eyes tell us that people look different. No one has trouble distinguishing a Czech from a Chinese. But what do those differences mean? Are they biological? Has race always been with us? How does race affect people today?

There's less - and more - to race than meets the eye:

1. Race is a modern idea. Ancient societies, like the Greeks, did not divide people according to physical distinctions, but according to religion, status, class, even language. The English language didn't even have the word 'race' until it turns up in 1508 in a poem by William Dunbar referring to a line of kings.

2. Race has no genetic basis. Not one characteristic, trait or even gene distinguishes all the members of one so-called race from all the members of another so-called race.

3. Human subspecies don't exist. Unlike many animals, modern humans simply haven't been around long enough or isolated enough to evolve into separate subspecies or races. Despite surface appearances, we are one of the most similar of all species.

4. Skin color really is only skin deep. Most traits are inherited independently from one another. The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence. Knowing someone's skin color doesn't necessarily tell you anything else about him or her.

5. Most variation is within, not between, "races." Of the small amount of total human variation, 85% exists within any local population, be they Italians, Kurds, Koreans or Cherokees. About 94% can be found within any continent. That means two random Koreans may be as genetically different as a Korean and an Italian.

6. Slavery predates race. Throughout much of human history, societies have enslaved others, often as a result of conquest or war, even debt, but not because of physical characteristics or a belief in natural inferiority. Due to a unique set of historical circumstances, ours was the first slave system where all the slaves shared similar physical characteristics.

7. Race and freedom evolved together. The U.S. was founded on the radical new principle that "All men are created equal." But our early economy was based largely on slavery. How could this anomaly be rationalized? The new idea of race helped explain why some people could be denied the rights and freedoms that others took for granted.

8. Race justified social inequalities as natural. As the race idea evolved, white superiority became "common sense" in America. It justified not only slavery but also the extermination of Indians, exclusion of Asian immigrants, and the taking of Mexican lands by a nation that professed a belief in democracy. Racial practices were institutionalized within American government, laws, and society.

9. Race isn't biological, but racism is still real. Race is a powerful social idea that gives people different access to opportunities and resources. Our government and social institutions have created advantages that disproportionately channel wealth, power, and resources to white people. This affects everyone, whether we are aware of it or not.

10. Colorblindness will not end racism. Pretending race doesn't exist is not the same as creating equality. Race is more than stereotypes and individual prejudice. To combat racism, we need to identify and remedy social policies and institutional practices that advantage some groups at the expense of others.

RACE - The Power of an Illusion was produced by California Newsreel in association with the Independent Television Service (ITVS). Major funding provided by the Ford Foundation and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Diversity Fund.



© 2003 California Newsreel. All rights reserved.

[slor]

1. thanks for posting n/t

[jaysunb]

2. Good Post !

:toast:

[melody]

3. Excellent post

One added point - ethnic Europeans aren't even an individual ethnic group. White folks are composites of other races, just as we're all aggregates of each other.

[Cleita]

4. Just a word about class that can also be racism.

My mother, who was Chilean, hated the American racism she saw and often encountered here in the USA. She always told me that in Chile there were no racists. People were only judged by their class. Yet, when I looked around me the lowest class laborers were the indigenous Native American people of the area. So race is very much involved in classism.

When I was in grammar school right after WWII, there was an influx of Eastern Europeans after the war. In my class alone, there were constant fights between cliques made up of Polish, Czech, Yugoslavian and other ethnic types of Europeans. I was a little confused because all these kids were white. I finally asked my best friend who was a second generation Slovenian as to what was going on and her answer to me was, "In the old country, they hate you if you come from another village".

So I think this looking down at the peasant class and the guy from the other village is deeply rooted in the European psyche. It becomes more vicious when those people relegated to the lower classes look different than the ruling class. So I think it goes way beyond race and the color of your skin. It's that the playing field has to be leveled for all of humanity to have access to the same material goods and privileges that are now only enjoyed by the elite and wealthy of the world.

[JanMichael]

18. Oh they are very much related.

Actually my issue number one is the Class system and the Economics that create it.

However that a much broader argument and the Race Myth is easier to crush.

Ethnocentrism is also very prevalent among groups that are not White dominated and within White European groups. But technically this is not the classic Institutional racism that is a power technique with the White "race" being the main benefactor it's a side bar. Poor Whites obviously take the shaft in this system as well and Racism is used to divide and conquer all of these poorer classes.

[Nikki Stone 1]

5. kick

:kick:

[Karenina]

6. What a great site!!!

I hope more DUers will take a look. Living in a international city, I've long since given up trying to peg folks by looking at them. It's simply not possible here, one has to ask, if curious. Sometimes I rely on my ear as I recognize the cadences of many languages but yesterday I HAD TO ASK the 2 guys behind me on the escalator, "WHAT LANGUAGE are you speaking?" Polish ALWAYS trips me up. Russian oder Danish oder Dutch, no problem! LOL! We had such a pleasant exchange in Deutsch, (our 2nd, 3rd, 4th language, who knows? We'd have to ASK each other).

[applegrove]

7. Yes - well said.

[jpgray]

8. Race isn't really a modern idea

You have folks like Ibn Khaldun separating people into races in his geographical systems long before 1508, unless we're only talking Western literature, which would be ironic to say the least. But to speak of Western writings, ancient historians such a Julius Caesar and others also were fond of separating peoples based on supposedly "inherent" ethnic differences, even if they readily recognized merit in many races.

[JanMichael]

17. By Ethnicity from what I gather.

And by color but not with a theory, a psuedo scientific one at that.

[Terran]

9. Devil's Advocate here:

The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence.

Is this a scientific fact proven by knowledge of the human genome? Or are you just making an assertion here? If the former, please document.

Note that I agree 100% with everything else you've stated; but I've never been quite willing to automatically dismiss the idea that *some* ethnic (not racial) stereotypes may have some basis in genetics.

[jmm]

10. Skin color is determined by melanin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color

There has never been any proof that these genes are involved in hair form (hair color yes, but not hair textures), eye shape (again eye color yes but not eye shape), blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence.

[left is right]

14. I don't have a problem with this statement about skin color/hair form etc.

Both my beautiful granddaughter and handsome grandson are biracial. She is light skinned and blue-eyed but her hair is very typical for blacks--somewhat lighter in color. He has dark skin and eyes that are nearly black in color but has hair that is more like mine--thick and straight but much darker than mine.

[JanMichael]

19. I wasn't making the statement.

But afaik comments like that were all based on DNA research.

[ultraist]

25. Race is a social construct

http://record.wustl.edu/archive/1998/10-15-98/articles/races.html

Alan R. Templeton, Ph.D., professor of biology in Arts and Sciences, has analyzed DNA from global human populations that reveal the patterns of human evolution over the past one million years. He shows that while there is plenty of genetic variation in humans, most of the variation is individual variation. While between-population variation exists, it is either too small, which is a quantitative variation, or it is not the right type of qualitative variation -- it does not mark historical sublineages of humanity.

Using the latest molecular biology techniques, Templeton has analyzed millions of genetic sequences found in three distinct types of human DNA and concludes that, in the scientific sense, there is no such thing as race.

[proiowadem]

11. I like to say there's not a single human who didn't evolve from monkeys.

[whopis01]

38. Aren't you forgetting one?

How about Chimpy himself... He doesn't seem to have made the evolutionary leap just yet!

[Ksec]

12. Well actually there are differences

I dont know if race is specifically the reason though. But some people are faster, some can lift more weights, some have incredible stamina etc. This is science, not racism.

[proiowadem]

13. I'll trust you to be correct in that statement of science

But that doesn't change the fact that we're all the same species. Nobody you meet is not human

[JanMichael]

16. Perhaps Ethnic/Cultural attributes but not Race.

Muscle reflex speeds are probably along the lines of hair color and eye color.

Attibutes in a population but not some predisposed to only one skin type issue.

[jpgray]

28. But since it's human behavior, there's no "control" available

Environment has a powerful influence on all these athletes. The fun anecdote to mention is that Jewish players used to dominate basketball in the 20s, not unlike the african-american domination of today. Sportswriters of the day would attribute it to their "quick, scheming minds" just as some writers of the not-too-distant past would attribute black athletic success to some inherent genetic superiority in strength/endurance or somesuch tripe. In both cases, the simpler--and in my opinion the correct--explanation is that athletics represented one of the few ways out of socially-enforced poverty and degradation for both groups in their respective times. If one group of people has only one avenue of escape from a dismal way of life, it stands to reason that a substantial amount of that group's talent will be funneled into that one area, whereas a group which possesses myriad different avenues for social/economic success has no need to concentrate its talent in any one field. If you're the average WASP in this country (to generalize), there's no need to spend hours and hours on the basketball courts to have social/financial success--just muddle through high school and have mom and dad pay for college.

It's perfectly possible that different races have slightly different predisposed traits and abilities, but I'm not convinced that can be separated enough from environment to positively identify those traits. Or even to be sure that such serious differences exist.

[postulater]

15. Thanks

[bonito]

20. Great post !

Life is a symphony, hell if every thing were the same you couldn't perceive anything.

[DarkTirade]

21. I saw a study recently (can't find the link)

that said that the human race is so closely related to each other genetically compared to most other creatures on this planet that it's very likely that our population was as low as 2000 at some point in our genetic history.
That means that all people came from that group of 2000. That's a pretty effing small number. I've lived in small towns that had a lower population than that.

[UTUSN]

22. Kick for Recommended #9 n/t

[KamaAina]

23. 11. Race matters!

and you've given us some powerful weapons to fight those to whom it matters too much.

[moc]

24. An essay that might be of interest "Black like I thought I was"

http://www.alternet.org/story/16917/

Black Like I Thought I Was

By Erin Aubry Kaplan, LA Weekly. Posted October 7, 2003.

The surprising outcome of a DNA test proves a man's race while throwing his blackness into question.

Wayne Joseph is a 51-year-old high school principal in Chino whose family emigrated from the segregated parishes of Louisiana to central Los Angeles in the 1950s, as did mine. Like me, he is of Creole stock and is therefore on the lighter end of the black color spectrum, a common enough circumstance in the South that predates the multicultural movement by centuries. And like most other black folk, Joseph grew up with an unequivocal sense of his heritage and of himself; he tends toward black advocacy and has published thoughtful opinion pieces on racial issues in magazines like Newsweek. When Joseph decided on a whim to take a new ethnic DNA test he saw described on a 60 Minutes segment last year, it was only to indulge a casual curiosity about the exact percentage of black blood; virtually all black Americans are mixed with something, he knew, but he figured it would be interesting to make himself a guinea pig for this new testing process, which is offered by a Florida-based company called DNA Print Genomics Inc. The experience would at least be fodder for another essay for Newsweek. He got his kit in the mail, swabbed his mouth per the instructions and sent off the DNA samples for analysis.

<snip>

But when the results of his DNA test came back, he found himself staggered by the idea that though he still qualified as a person of color, it was not the color he was raised to think he was, one with a distinct culture and definitive place in the American struggle for social equality that he'd taken for granted. Here was the unexpected and rather unwelcome truth: Joseph was 57 percent Indo-European, 39 percent Native American, 4 percent East Asian -- and zero percent African. After a lifetime of assuming blackness, he was now being told that he lacked even a single drop of black blood to qualify.

[Ellen Forradalom]

26. Beautifully and succinctly put

[Tiggeroshii]

27. Thnks! n/t

[Catfight]

29. Suggested read on this topic, "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting

Together in the Cafeteria?" by Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D.

[callady]

30. Nominated

9. "Race isn't biological, but racism is still real. Race is a powerful social idea that gives people different access to opportunities and resources. Our government and social institutions have created advantages that disproportionately channel wealth, power, and resources to white people. This affects everyone, whether we are aware of it or not."

So True

But some say, many who call themselves "liberal", that our lives come down to "choices".
What a crock.

How the police and employers view him...that inner-city kid...regardless of his lifestyle. individual choice is often used an excuse to dismiss institutional and cultural choices and realities...that's what the rw has been doing for 25+ years.
so even telling a kid from the hood to stay away from a particular lifestyle may do little to stop some cops from shooting him 41 times for reaching for his wallet because of what he symbolizes in american culture. and let's face it: if america wanted equal opportunity for all...there would be equal opportunity for all. regardless of what choices people make, there is only so much room at the top, and increasing a lot less in the middle.

[Toots]

31. Well there are known differences

Blacks are far more susceptible to cycle cell amino(sp) for instance and I have heard though never seen documented that native Americans have something different with their livers and are thus much more susceptible to alcohol. That is how they get away with making native villages dry (against the US constitution). The 21st Amendment says Americans have the right to possess, transport and sell alcohol. This is a Constitutional Right....yet some American Natives are denied this right based on some :shrug: science.

[mondo joe]

33. Sickle Cell Anemia (not cycle cell amino) is more common among

certain ethnic groups or lineages. But that has nothing to do with race since race is a cultural construct.

And which Native Americans are denied the right to posses, transport or sell alcohol? And which science prohibits this?

[Toots]

34. Sorry about my poor grammer and spelling

Which ethnicity is susceptible to sickel cell. My understand of ethnicity is basically nationality yet blacks which appear most susceptible are virtually all nationalities. As far as villages prohibited from having alcohol, almost every one in Alaska, and several Reservations in America.

[mondo joe]

35. "Nationality" is, again, a social construct which biology does not

respect or acknowledge.

And while reservations may or may not be able to sell alcohol, no adult persons are legally prohibited from consuuming alcohol - nor is anyone prohibited from transporting or selling it on the basis of race. And since there is no such law there is certainly no science that supports it.

[Toots]

36. You are incorrect

It is against the law in most Native villages in Alaska to possess or drink alcohol. There are very strict bootlegging laws that are enforced daily with very harsh penalties. It is based entirely on race as any white town or village has no such restrictions. As for actual science, I have never seen any such thing but that is the excuse used to restict constitutional rights guaranteed to American citizens. Of course they claim duel citizenship also which is denied other US citizens so I guess it is a wash.

[mondo joe]

37. You are talking about a law regarding location, not ethnicity.

It would be illegal for anyone of any race to drink in that location.

And if there is some science used to support such laws you ought to ptoduce it if you're goin to claim it.

[nemo137]

41. It's found in malarial regions, not only in African populations

You see higher rates of it in people of Mediterranean descent, too.

[G_j]

32. ~thanks

:bounce:

[ninkasi]

39. Great post, thanks!

We're all members of the human race, and should be working together to make the world a better place for all of us. I pity people so ignorant that they insist on clinging to their prejudices, instead of embracing the wide spectrum of human experience.

A world where we all looked, or thought, or acted alike would be deadly dull. It would be like living alone.

[Karenina]

40. How? How? How?

HOW to comminicate to our fellow travellers that this artificial construct damages us ALL so immensely?

At a dinner gathering tonight a friend inquired about my sons' light skin color. I related the story of the man who having been acculturated as "black" discovered through DNA testing that by THEIR standards he failed the one-drop test. She, a descendent of a prominent European literary family, had NO exposure to or concept of "passing for white."
I explained basic genetics to her and remarked that she and my cousin had similar coloring (actually NOT, HER blonde comes from a bottle).

I cannot be angry at her, she's a love. It's just that sometimes the level of ignorance is SO EXASPERATING.

[Ilsa]

42. There are some medical differences tied into race...

For example, persons of very fair skin, Scandinavian decent are more likely to have problems with digesting gluten and/or lactose. I'm not sure how it derived.

There are genetic diseases that are more prevalent among different groups, such as sickle cell anemia, Tay Sachs disease, etc. Some genetic differences are related to amount of available sunlight, etc.

Totally awesome post! Thanks for your thoughtfulness.

[JanMichael]

43. They are not tied to "race" though! We need to kill that word.

They are geographical traits that are not "race" but simply traits.

Of course they exist but the construct of "Race" does not, it's not because we are of different species, simply variations within this species.

There has not been time enough for Human Beings to develop into what Racists want.

Racism exists, institutionally, linguistically and socially, but "race" is a figment of our imaginations.

"There are genetic diseases that are more prevalent among different groups, such as sickle cell anemia, Tay Sachs disease, etc. Some genetic differences are related to amount of available sunlight, etc."

Yes! But not among the four classic "Races". They are geographic and spread among us all just in higher frequencies in some people who have originated from certain climates.

[Ilsa]

44. Thanks. I think you clarified that much better than I could have

written it in the first place. I knew I wasn't digging in hard enough at this moment (I'll admit to being too tired to get my brain's language center fully functioning tonight).

[Nothing Without Hope]

45. I'd recommend this if the time hadn't expired.