Race What Is the Difference Term Paper

Total Length: 611 words ( 2 double-spaced pages)

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Race exists, suggests the social view, even in the biological categorizations of science, out of cultural customs and habits not reality. Race is a powerful illusion in culture, even amongst certain pockets of the culture of the scientific community, but it is just that -- an illusion and a delusion.

Question

Who has benefited from the belief that we can sort people according to race and that there are natural or biologically-based differences between racial groups?

A potent argument in favor of not reading human persons as existing within inherent racial categories is the fact that it is usually the majority, rather than the minority, who benefits from seeing persons as races, and victims of racial prejudice suffer. Examples are that of the 3/5ths compromise when the Constitution was framed, codifying racial differences into the American system of law, Jim Crow in the post-Reconstruction American South, Apartheid in South Africa, and Social Darwinism, a so-called scientific philosophy designed to prove the difference between the races, and the racial superiority of Whites.
Racial differences have justified the taking of Native American land, of Mexican land, the exclusion and internment of Asian-Americans, as well as slavery in America. There are social advantages to being perceived as White, but even what constitutes Whiteness as varied, as once upon a time, Italians, Jewish people, Irish people, and other people were not considered White or part of the privileged elite. Because race has been such a powerful category in the past, human society cannot ignore history, but it can attempt to mitigate the injustices caused by prejudice by questioning racial assumptions.

Works Referenced

Race: The Power of an Illusion." Episode One. Produced by California Newsreel.….....

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