My Thoughts On Race by Emily Geib

The other day in class when Professor Dunning asked us the question "What does our race protect us from?" I really got to thinking. All this talk of race, racial identity, miscegenation, and mixed race are now constantly whirling throughout my head. I no longer see it as okay to classify people by their race or to stereotype someone because of the color of their skin. I can not allow myself to assume that all black people like rap, that all Asian kids are good at math, or that all people of Latin American descent must be immigrants. I no longer let myself see this world defined along racial lines because it is clearly no longer acceptable. The ideas of our generation are now leading with the fact that race is not biological. It is a social construction created by generations of prejudice and racism embedded deep into our social structure.
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So back to the question, what does race protect us from?

Race seems to protect us from the need to confront our differences as a result of the barriers built up by race. If race is no longer an issue, then centuries of hatred, abuse, and war no longer have any basis or foundation. The arguments of superiority of any such race and the minority of any such race will no longer be valid. Any ideas of racial identity no longer need to be confronted or pursued because race will no longer define who we are. How we refer to one another will change from racial terms and phenotypic markings of race to those terms that actually define that of who we are as people.

But the truth of the matter is that race may always be. As much as we want it to change, we may never live to see that. For as many years as race defined all we did and who we were, it may take twice as long to change the minds of the people of the world. At present day, race is still very much a factor in a lot of what we do. It may have fade for discriminatory purposes as to avoid conflict, but it did not disappear to make the world better. People everywhere still base their lives on racial terms and barriers. For hundreds of years, race forced millions into slavery, others to persecution, and even millions more to their deaths. It took many wars, years of fighting, and movements of many to bring equality among races. Can we really change the thought process of the world with this concept of a "social" race.

Race divides, but race is also beautiful. Our skin creates a world of diversified colors and ethnicities that make our world exciting and imaginative. Our different cultures are divided by race, but not bound by it. We have traditions and beliefs, and they might tend to be racial, but the truth of the matter is, not every black person celebrates Kwanzaa and not every Hispanic speaks Spanish. Race is beautiful when racial prejudice does not exist. But is that even possible?

I know that all of this might seem scattered brained and you might not agree with it. But what I have learned is that race might just be a social construct, but it is what is holding us together. I do believe that we must confront the ideas of racism and prejudice with the idea that race is not biological. And with that we can start to break down those walls dividing us.

To really make this happen, we must constantly be fighting against and correcting racial stereotypes and embedding into future generations the concepts that we ourselves have retained each day in Professor Dunning's class. We will face deliberation and constant struggle, but for this to really happen, we have to know, believe, and live out a life that breaks down race and allows us to be uniquely our own, but also collectively humans.