What Is Race?
The concept of race has widespread effects on our world. Throughout the past, the concept of race has been a continual source of conflicts, wars, disputes, and inequality. Today, the impact of race is no less intense as it continues to shape human relationships.
The world around us is heavily impacted by race and racial tensions. It’s seen on a global scale, but also exists within communities. When analyzing the powerful effects that race has over human interactions, we’re forced to ask — what is race?
This tacit understanding is oftentimes misunderstood, and being a tacit concept, is not directly addressed. This results in many people creating their own ideas and definitions about what ‘race’ is. While the concept of race is frequently discussed and debated, misconceptions of the term’s definition breed misunderstandings, separatism, and unending cycles of conflict.
From an anthropological viewpoint, race is a social construct — meaning that it does not objectively exist in reality, but instead as a result of human interactions. With that being said, why is it still being used so frequently? What value does it hold for contemporary society?
In order to find out, we took our questions to Forsyth Park and conducted ethnographic interviews with people of all backgrounds.
Defining Race
According to anthropologist Kenneth Guest, race is “a flawed system of classification, with no biological basis, that uses certain physical characteristics to divide the human population into supposedly discrete groups.” However, this isn’t always the way that race is perceived in mainstream societies.
Our first interview question pushes people to shape their tacit understandings about race into an explicit statement. Before discussing the effects of race, we first need to establish a solid foundation. We asked our interviewees to tell us what the term ‘race’ meant to them. Here’s what we got:
Our first interviewees were a pair of construction workers. When asked to define race, they said:
“Race is nationality; Black, White, Hispanic… It’s who you are. I consider a lot of things as race… Obviously, your color has to do with part of your race… Where you’re from — but I guess that’s more nationality, right?”
These vague and unclear answers showcase their unsure approach to the topic. Contradiction and confusion are rampant in the answers as they associate race to phenotypes, location, familial histories, and ethnicity.
Our second group was an older couple. When we asked them to be apart of our interview, they agreed until hearing the topic. Once we said the word ‘race’ their entire demeanor shifted. It was clear we had crossed into taboo territory.
When asked to define race, the husband answered: “I’m not a racist so I can’t answer that question.” Taking our investigation as negative, they incorporated the idea of racism, which Guest defines as “individuals’ thoughts and actions and institutionalized patterns and policies that create or reproduce unequal access to power, privilege, resources, and opportunities based on imagined differences among groups.”
With averted eyes and a shrug, our interview was rejected. As our group was striving to break down the construct of race, we were surprised to have been taken as racist.
Our next few interviews all linked race to a person’s appearance and where they’re from. Associating race to location and biology is common in society’s viewpoint, while it isn’t accurate or consistent with the anthropological definition.
Analyzing The Impact of Race
Our second question dived deeper into the effects that race has on society. How has race affected your life, culture, and people around the world? This question touches on the totality of their cultural understandings by incorporating both their personal experiences and observations.
https://otter.ai/s/K925itsxSqOlvUyQv6vwqQ?t=69s
Our second interviewee’s refusal to participate, we were able to observe a direct example of the impact of race. Not only was race immediately linked to racism, but it also demonstrated the effect of racial tensions. Having opinions of race was forbidden and rejected, which we saw first hand through their refusal to look at us or speak about the topic further.
The next answer we received established a connection between race, sexuality, and gender. She discussed these identity markers in the context of our contemporary society, saying that they only served to “put people into groups.” She expressed her wishes to see the things that make us all the same rather than build barriers around how we are different. We felt this point of view was a commentary on the social construction of race — challenging the notion rather than accepting it.
The final interview we conducted was on a woman and her daughter. They were on vacation here for the weekend from a small town in Virginia, where the daughter was completing her senior year of high school. As non-Savannah locals, they provided deeper insights into how our questions fit outside of our small city.
The mother’s perspective closely resembled our previous interviewee, who brought up the relationship between race and other identity markers. Going deeper, she noted how these labels are used for appearance-based discrimination and judgment.
Her daughter told us about the racial discrimination she observed in her day-to-day life, specifically noting her experience as a high school student. She commented on the microaggressions she observed. Guest describes these as the common, everyday verbal behavioral indignities and slights that communicate hostile, derogatory, and negative messages about someone’s race.
https://otter.ai/s/r-ilbzeITyu4TfelD2_CRw?t=188s
Conclusion
From our research, we can see that people’s ideas of race are largely loaded with their unspoken observations. These preconceived notions can be harmful, all depending on a person’s external appearance.
The tacit definition of race is a powerful social construct that functions to produce and fuel hatred, separation, unequal development, and conflicts. We can all perceive this in our daily lives; with impacts extending on the global scale, within a small private high school in Virginia, and even in Savannah’s social sphere.
Words hold immense meaning, and the way we define key terms has a direct impact on our perceptions of reality and how we’re able to relate to others. In closing, we challenge you to question your own personal definition of race and to rethink the seemingly ‘solid’ or ‘factual’ aspects of this powerful word.
Created by Samantha Hart, Bianca Maregatti and Tory Fransico