"The Relationship between Race, Ideology and Racism"
In this essay I will argue that the key to end racism is to understand race and ideology and how this two concepts relate to each other. Appiah claims that race does not exist. He uses scientific methods to prove that individuals from different groups of people have no greater genetic differences between them than the genetic differences in individuals from the same group of people. He writes: "...human genetic variability between the populations of Africa or Europe or Asia is not much greater than within those populations..." With This he is trying to demonstrate that if there is no biological difference between populations, except for those differences due to the habitat in which a certain population has lived for many years. Therefore he proves that there is no accurate meaning of the word race. Appiah uses in his discussions about race the writings of W. E. DuBois, his technique is to cite an argument made by DuBois, and give sufficient proof to refute it. He does this with several statements, and concludes that race is a misconception. Although he divides the world population in races, and gives answers to racism, he does not give an explicit meaning to the word race. He uses history, culture and languages, to form se
Loewen's discusses 12 American history books, and focuses in the fact that all of them try to hide racism against black people throughout American history. He shows that even the great forefathers of the United States were racist, that all of them owned slaves and that they did not consider Black people to be equal. He also writes about the many years of beatings and lynching that black people endured, even years after the Reconstruction. "Forms of thought motivated by social interests": It is true that everyone's thinking is influenced by social pressures, but this definition implies that every belief is social-based, which is certainly not true. Appiah and Brace use scientific data to prove biologically that is impossible to categorize humankind in races. We also have take into account that racism varies from culture to culture. In Costa Rica, the degree of racism against black people is much lower than in the United States. This difference may be due to the fact that in Costa Rica we do not have the background of slavery, or the history of beatings and persecutions that is so present in the United States history. Having said that, a new definition of ideology can be made by combining these two definitions. I would define ideology as the ideas and beliefs of an individual person based on his own social, cultural, religious and geographical background. The most important reason why people try to define race is to understand racism and to see if it is justifiable or not. Racism has been in human nature since the beginning of time and it is a constant problem in modern cultures, that's why through better understanding of how it works, we might be able to finish the history of hate and violence that racism has produced. "A body of ideas characteristic to a particular social group or class": This definition is very accurate, but as history tells us, the greatest i
Some common words found in the essay are:
Appiah Brace, York Times, Europe Asia, Costa Rica, , Declaration Independence, black people, white people, race exist, american history, Shape River, scores black people, meaning word race, socio-historical background, genetic differences, definition ideology, word race, meaning word, costa rica, racism black people,
Approximate Word count = 1283
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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