RACIAL THINKING ON MODERN WORLD CONSTRUCTION
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The modern world is a conglomeration of many tenets. The racial battle and thinking have always affected so many individuals and institutions not only in the past but also in the present. Race forms the sociology of any society whereby people of different colors exist and therefore it is very important to look deeply into the issue of race and how its history has impacted society with time. Therefore this paper illustrates the place of race in the socialization of different people in the world of the past as well as today and what race means for the different people in the society.
Social construction is the categorization of different people according to their different characteristics and one of these characteristics is the division of individuals according to their skin color. America is seen as one of the continents with the most varied nature of race as the blacks and the whites are in the same numbers. Therefore this presents us with the question of how this came into place and what this means not only for the American society but also for the worldview. Before race came into place or even the current forms of leadership the world was divided in terms of ethnic groups. Ethnic groups are defined as people of a common origin, ancestry, dialect, and language. In Europe, most ethnic groups were fully organized and able to run on their world. Therefore to some extent, it was considered that a nation is only those people who belonged to the same ethnicity and therefore they were grouped as one.
The race is seen as a political construction created by people and not a concrete concept therefore it does not have a scientific notion in it. The race is therefore seen as to have been created to give power to the white people and legitimize black people as inferior and not worthy of getting their rights as normal human beings. In the 16th century, there was a reformation in the Christian world and one of the major concerns of the reformation was whether black people and Asians had souls. However, the catholic church was the first one to recognize black people as having a soul and they are human beings. This meant therefore it was illegal to kill a black person at any time without a good reason. This is because then the church was very much intertwined with society and therefore it was part and parcel of it.
In the 19th century, Darwin published his theory on the origin of species. Even though his theory was not racist at all social scientists and philosophers used this theory in pseudo-scientific ways to justify racism and genocide. They advanced this through their twisting of this theory to favor their desires and ideas of genocide and racism towards the black people. therefore the racial thinking has been in existence from this time on especially among the white people and what they think is best for them is to use the blacks as their vessels of making sure that they attain what they want to attain. Therefore it is this racial thinking from this time of reformation that has been carried forward and it forms and makes the current society into what it is. Even though there have been many efforts in making sure that the thinking is erased from most of the people and especially the whites who have this type of thinking it is still a problem that might take longer to deal with in the current society. Therefore racial thinking creates a racial distance between those individuals of different races.
It is the racial thinking that led to the creation of the other notion whereby the blacks are referred to as the other. This makes them left out and always feeling that they do not belong especially when it is something to deal with the whites. However, with the growing rate of population growth, there has been a challenge because the notion of the other even though held so firmly by some groups of white supremacists like the Ku Klax Klub is reducing and fading away with the continued efforts to change people’s mind about what it means to be black and to be beautiful in the black color. Therefore even though bitter that they cannot continue with their behaviors in making sure that they discriminate against the blacks they still feel a feel the need to retain their thinking.
Even though during the period of president Barrack Obama the issue of “the other” was thought to have ended there later there came a demonstration so massive that it changed so much about racial thinking after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer. This brought in a new wave of demonstrations and therefore it was a display that it is a complex thing to heal or to heal at all. This is because race is a very well-considered and important aspect of society even though there is always a need to change and make sure that race is no longer an issue in society.
Imperialism which was a very highly important aspect of the society and which Europe practiced to a very big extent also tells us of the place of race. Even though the race was never the main focus of imperialism it was still important in that the Europeans were very much concerned about controlling other powers or taking advantage of them. Europeans even though colonized so many parts of the world they went and colonized Africa in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Therefore imperialism even though not related to the race so much still has a role to play when it comes to how easy the decision to colonize Africa was and other countries considered inferior. For example, if great Britain would have wanted to colonize America during the same time they colonized Africa it could not have been successful since America was already very much developed and it wanted to have its freedom and therefore if such a thing happened there could have been a different kind of war.
Nationalism on the other hand is advocates for segregation and separation of the group which is inferior in the society towards making sure that they do not mix with the other group of people who consider themselves pure and clean. This was majorly applied in South Africa during the period of apartheid rule. Therefore it is always important to view nationalism as a good thing as well as a bad thing. This is because healthy nationalism is supposed to help a country and make sure that everything in that country is perfectly okay. On the other side, it becomes very difficult for healthy nationalism to exist if they desire to use nationalism to segregate people exists and if the situations force those considered of low class and who in most of the times are the blacks and Asians to find their niches to live on after being segregated. This concept of using nationalism for segregation is called racial nationalism.
The conceptual encounter of race in the world can be seen as a reflection or the refinement of what existed before. this means that race has always existed. However, in the olden times, it existed in ways so different from our current times. Therefore the state of the world because of racial thinking is still being formed with the efforts to accommodate everyone however it is not an easy task to make sure that everyone believes that equality and equity can be attained. It is also not easy to identify and tell the people that there is a life aside from racial thinking and therefore if there were embracing each other there could be better times for the world. Some individuals also tend to firmly believe that whites and blacks can never be the same and therefore this means that blacks and whites are viewed so differently by this group of people and therefore it the faith that change is possible may be diminished by the thought that blacks, Asians and whites can never be the same.
The enlightenment involved such concepts as the pursuit of happiness, the sovereignty of reason, ideals such as toleration, liberty, progress, constitutional government, etc. racism can be seen as a product of the period of enlightenment and this is true to a great extent. Therefore even though racism is a product of enlightenment most people still disagree with it. However, this is true since the combination of different groups and countries into one and being able to think of ways to pursuit happiness, tolerance, and a lot of other aspects of the current, as well as concepts of that time, were a big issue. This period, therefore, suggested the putting down of metaphysical and theological schemes and realizing that a human being can be beautifully explained without those concepts. Therefore according to the enlightenment period, the reason why there is racial discrimination is biological inferiority. This means that blacks and Asians were considered not full human beings.
