After reading Chapter 1- ‘The Origin of the Idea of Race,’ in the Golash-Boza textbook (I have provided a pdf copy of chapter 1 in the module, so if your book has not arrived yet, please return to the module to get the copy I provided) as well as the virtual lecture notes provided in module two, please respond to the following questions:
- What do social scientists mean when they say that race is socially constructed?
- Please describe and explain how the idea of race developed. In order to receive full credit, your analysis must include the role and significance of ‘purity of blood’ ideas, slave codes, ideas about superiority and inferiority, and efforts to justify colonialism, slavery, and genocide).
- Please be sure to draw on your textbook to support your discussion (this means to use examples and quotes from the textbook–use quotation marks and page numbers for proper parenthetical citation of material).
- Please remember to explain your ideas. You can do this by pretending you are trying to teach someone who has no familiarity with this material, which means you need to thoroughly explain your thoughts and the ideas.
For extra guidance on how to properly cite the work you are drawing on, please consult: https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/asa_style/in_text_citation_references.htmlLinks to an external site.
Finally, after you provide your own answer, please provide feedback to at least one classmate. To receive credit, the response to your classmate must include a minimum of 5 sentences. These discussion boards are graded credit/no credit: comments that don’t meet minimum sentence requirements for the original post or the feedback to a classmate will receive no points.
Grading:
Total Points Possible = 8 points
- The social construction of race (2 points)
- The development of race as an idea (3 points)
- Provide a parenthetical citation for BOTH discussions (2 points)
- Feedback to a classmate – 5 sentences minimum are required for credit (1 points)
- Dicussion post to rely to
discussion post number 1 to reply to
Posted by Matthew Van Ourkerk
- What do social scientists mean when they say that race is socially constructed?
When social scientists claim that race is constructed by society, they are emphasizing the fact that racial concepts are results of cultural norms, behaviors, and structures rather than permanent or basic biological traits. The concept of race is not an inherent or objective distinction between individuals, it’s shaped and formed by human cultures. As the textbook states “In the contemporary United States, one of the first things we notice about someone we meet is race. When we aren’t sure of someone’s race, we may get inquisitive or begin to feel comfortable.” (Golash-Boza, Page 6) It’s an idea or way of viewing someone.
2. Please describe and explain how the idea of race developed. In order to receive full credit, your analysis must include the role and significance of ‘purity of blood’ ideas, slave codes, ideas about superiority and inferiority, and efforts to justify colonialism, slavery, and genocide).
A variety of concepts and ideas have shaped the concept of race over the course of time, “race is also a historical construction, meaning the idea of race was formed in particular times or places. On particular note in its development of colonialism.” (Golash-Boza, Page 8) These concepts involve things such as ‘purity of blood’ ideas, slave codes, ideas about superiority and inferiority, and efforts to justify colonialism, slavery, and genocide.
During the Spanish Inquisition, the term “purity of blood” was used to distinguish between people who were deemed “pure” Christians and people with “impure” or non-Christian blood, who were often of Jewish or Moorish culture.
Legal frameworks known as “slave codes” defined and controlled the enslavement of African Americans, providing an argument for treating people differently based only on their race.
Ideas about superiority and inferiority provided a pseudo-scientific justification for racial hierarchy by being frequently used to defend slavery, colonial practices, and discriminatory laws.
Racial stereotypes were reinforced by demeaning narratives that presented Africans as less intelligent and fit for enslavement as excuses for slavery. Overall these were all situations in time that wanted to put one race over the other. It was all about being superior and having power over others.
Discussion post number #2 to reply to
Posted by Elliot
Race is a social construct, meaning that the principle of it has not roots in biological differences. It is interesting to note that in terms of genetics, there are often more variations within a single race, than among different races (Golash-Boza, 2).
The social construction of race plays a very significant role in European colonization. Constructing race was a tactic for seeing Africans as a “different” kind of people (Golash-Boza, 4). Such differences were equated with being inferior, by European colonists. The racism emerging from European colonial thought has its roots in anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim discrimination during the Spanish Inquisition. This era gave rise to “purity of blood,” which “set the stage for ideas of racial difference that were to become part of the European understanding (Golash-Boza, 5).
Another potential basis for racism was English discrimination towards the Irish. The English perceived them as “savage, sexually immoral, and resistant to civilizing forces (Golash-Boza, 5).” Such discrimination, at this time, coupled with the English superiority complex, allowed them to feel justified to demonize other cultures and see them as inferior. It is believed that this mode of thinking was the basis for discrimination against Native Americans later in history. However, it should be noted that English colonists did not initially conceptualize Native Americans as a different race. Rather, they saw themselves as religiously and morally superior. At the same time, moral and cultural superiority eventually paved the way for racial discrimination (Golash-Boza, 11).
As the African slave population grew, slave codes were established to distinguish their legal rights from those of European servants. The main law that was enacted was that “masters were not allowed to free their slaves, thereby establishing a permanent slave class.” In addition, the slaves were not allowed to own property and were even considered property themselves (Golash-Boza, 16). The slave codes were eventually modified to disallow slave conspiracies, in order to prevent rebellions. This also had the effect of depicting Black people as a “boogeyman” for White people to express hatred towards, since the codes instilled a fear that the slaves may eventually exert “dominance of Blacks over Whites (Golash-Boza, 17).
Discrimination across racial lines became more tangible when eventually, virtually all slaves were Black, and all Black people were slaves. Such racism was further enacted by the American founding fathers. The line in the Declaration of Independence hypocritically stated that “all men are created equal.” However, Thomas Jefferson saw Black people as a “distinct race… inferior to whites in the endowment both of body and mind (Golash-Boza, 19). Jefferson, along with many other White Americans, saw Black people as an inferior race, and therefore, felt justified in allowing slavery to persist.
Racism towards another group was a significant aspect during Andrew Jackson’s administration. He perceived the Native Americans as a barrier towards expansion and further colonization, and used the idea of “Manifest Destiny” to justify their genocide (Golash-Boza, 20-21).
Race eventually became a concept in the scientific community, arising out of biological taxonomy, which is the field that divides different species of organisms into different sub-groups. For example, humans are of the genus Homo and the species sapiens. While taxonomy is definitely a useful tool in categorizing different species, it was unfortunately also weaponized against different races. It became weaponized as the terms justified “European superiority,” claiming that they were the only type of people to “have created civilized nations (Golash-Boza, 23). At the same time, such classifications were used to view Native Americans as inferior, therefore furthering the justification of their genocide.
In the 1800s, scientific racism, now considered pseudo-scientific, started gaining traction. A scientist named Samuel Morton measured different skulls of different races, using very biased and flawed data, and falsely concluded that Europeans have larger skulls. He extrapolated on that idea and further concluded, falsely, that Europeans were more intelligent (Golash-Boza, 24). Pseudo-scientific racism began to further develop the framework for racial distinctions, and therefore racism. It is important to note that nowadays, it is heavily researched that biological and genetic variations among people of different races are minimal.
Moving toward the more modern era, intelligence tests were also used as a tool for labeling other races as intellectually inferior. Such tests provided the basis for the modern IQ test. The main flaw of this test was that it was administered to people who had a language barrier (Golash-Boza, 26).
