Before reading these two articles written by Professor Valverde, I never thought about there will be so many “office politics” inside high education academia even though I know clearly minorities’ fight for tenure is difficult.
Racism is one of the reasons that cause these problems between different races, between white and black, white and Asian, and even black and Asian. Before the lecture on Thursday, I always thought that race is differentiated by biological traits such as appearances and skin colors. However, race is totally socially constructed. These “artificial structuring of race, gender and class” as Professor Valverde said, was manipulated years ago (Valverde, 2013). When years ago some people with power colonized other places, they needed an excuse to differentiate themselves with the colonized. They had to be the superior, so they created race. Even though we may say race is visible, those socially engineering greatly distinguish the races. There is “one drop rule” for the black, also there is “blood quantum laws” for Native Americans (Hodson, 2016).
Also, during the class, we are talking about why the word “Asian American” exists and who create this word. One of the students in our group said the word appeared because Asian Americans need a name. Instead of using other words with discrimination, “Asian American” is more decent. I agree with what she said. Asian Americans need a community to speak out voices, to fight for rights, to have a community to find similar people.
Question:
Even though I understand race is socially constructed, how do those people who construct races start? By colonization and exploitation?
References
- Valverde, C. (2013). Fight the Tower: A Call to Action for Women of Color in Academia. Seattle J. Soc. Just., 12, 367.
- Hodson, G. (2016, Dec 5th). Race as a Social Construction. Psychology Today. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/without-prejudice/201612/race-social-construction
- What We Mean When We Say ‘Race Is a Social Construct’[Image]. (2015, October 31st). Retrieved from https://commons.mtholyoke.edu/248philofrace/2015/10/31/what-we-mean-when-we-say-race-is-a-social-construct/
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