Is Race Real or a Justification for Superiority?

Essentially, race does not exist.

You may consider your race as a major part of your identification for your entire life, but how would you prove your race to someone? By the color of your skin, hair, and eyes?

    According the Jenée Desmond Haris in a three-minute Vox YouTube video, she explained the myth of race. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a German scientist, was one of the first people to attempt to categorize human according to geographical reasons and physical appearances.

              Throughout history, it was common as to someone who might look one way, but identify themselves as another race. Let’s take a look at a research done by Pew Research Center. The research was done over a telephone interview and interviewees were asked to guess the race of their interviewers during the end of the interview. Surprisingly, the analysis of the results shows about a half (49%) mismatch between what the respondents perceived to be the interviewer’s ethnicity and the actual race of the Interviewer (PewResearch.org). This result might be surprising as to how one’s race may be hard to identify based purely on external factors. 

(PewResearch.org)

            Keeping this in mind, let’s look at further findings of Jenée Desmond Haris. She stated the reason as to why many people cannot prove what exact race they are is because “There isn’t a race chromosome in our DNA that people can point to” (Vox.com). She claimed that when the medical community links race to health outcomes such as stating how there is a higher probability of being diagnosed with malaria in Africa. It is not according to your genetic makeup, but to other external factors such as the origins of your ancestors the coincidental higher probability of being diagnosed with a disease.

            However, if this is really true, then why do people still prioritize themselves over others according to external traits. Thus, creating race and racial divisions due to the illusion of superiority. From the American Civil War to the “Black Lives Matter” campaign, race had always been an essential part that had caused many social and political disputes. People fight with and connect with another through race, which does not exist. If so, then is the idea of race just a justification to resolve all contradictions between those who are born free with those who are born enslaved?

            
           Yet, it is saddening how many people urges for the idea of equality between all races and ethnicities. While internally, they unintentionally categorize one another according to their “race”. From the misconception that Asians are known for having straight A’s or being extremely talented at math to the humiliation of Jim Crow. Racial stereotyping is common needs to be ceased. There are no genetic structures that confirms any race to be biologically predisposed to the labels others put on them. It seems to be that the prejudice against certain groups are so embedded in one’s cultural and worldview that it is natural for someone to make racial discrimination statements without second thoughts. Although social issues due to race will probably never come to an end, one must recognize how devastating that people are classifying each other by superficial factors like race when we are all intrinsically the same.

(vox.com)