The Foundations of Race as a Social and Political Construct - Essay Example

How have ideas about race been shaped by changing economic, social and political circumstances? BY YOU YOUR SCHOOL INFO HERE HERE WORD COUNT: 3,953 How have ideas about race been shaped by changing economic, social and political circumstances? Introduction The concept of race has been shaped by evolving social, political and economic circumstances that have occurred on a global scale over an elongated period of time. Many people in society deem that race and ethnicity are one in the same and can be discussed interchangeably, however the terminologies are absolutely distinct from one another. Ethnicity is a construct associated with physical attributes of an individual, inclusive of skin colour, the texture of one’s hair, and other relevant anatomical characteristics that serve to classify one group from another. Those who belong to a particular ethnic group maintain shared cultural heritages, language, social ideologies, religions, rituals and biological ancestry (Peoples and Bailey 2010). By applying a definition to ethnicity, society is able to make distinctions between different social groups. Race, however, is a construct that is absolutely considerate of anatomical attributes. Race is defined by Cornell and Hartman (2007) as the method by which groups are able to define themselves through the commonality of physical attributes that are shared biologically throughout a society or culture. Race is determined by the meaning that is placed on these shared characteristics. People who share common physical features determine which specific attributes are significant and then attempt to organise groups according to a perceived set of boundaries and then develop social ideologies that give the aforementioned boundaries or characterisation a relevant meaning which serves as the foundation for race. Hence, race is very much a social creation whilst ethnicity is more concerned with the tangible similarities of a particular group. Race serves to mould the social and political methodologies by which the world is classified and organised. The concept of race was formed in global and regional cultures as a product of various socio-political systems that recognised denial and opportunity (Dalmage 2010). Race has become substantially rooted in the structures that guide societies, a form of institutionalisation of perceived human value and relevancy constructed through centuries of changing economic, political and social circumstances. The conception of race as a social interpretation is ever-changing and the meanings and values assigned to various races evolve when it becomes advantageous to those maintaining power within a society. Those who represent dominant groups, such as the European whites in the 17th Century, often assign race to less-advantaged groups as a method of establishing appropriate hierarchies in society (Cornell and Hartmann 2007). White Europeans belonging to a social system that maintained superior technological capabilities and resources which allowed for colonisation of other regions, an expansion strategy, and race was assigned to foreign cultures and societies as a means of ensuring that European whites were at the top of a determined hierarchy and placing meanings behind race to ensure that other races would be deemed inferior and maintained significantly less value in European society. This ideology of Euro ethnocentrism built many of the foundations of racial discrimination and prejudice that are still prevalent in many societies around the globe. Having clearly defined the concept of race and its origins, this essay intends to explore and analyse how ideas about race have been shaped by political, economic and social circumstances. The foundations of race as a social and political construct Colonialism in 17th Century Europe was the foundation of the construction of race (Cornell and Hartmann). As Europeans expanded various national empires, their Eurocentric concept of self arrived on foreign lands with the conquerors and explorers. Their potent longing for procuring vast resources served as the rationale for the motivations of Europeans to classify indigenous people as out of the ordinary and absolutely inferior to the European races. Most potent was the social and politically-motivated construction of black versus white races. Europeans required and applauded slave labour in an evolving economy that now included more industrial capabilities and resource exploitation for the good of established European society. Hence, the dominant and more militarily-equipped European conquerors accumulated humans to work within a slave trade and what is referred to as indenture servitude. During the period where Europeans began taking slaves from African nations to North America (the New World), racialization as a means of justifying slavery and ensuring that those maintaining physical differences from Europeans remained conceived as inferior beings. Race as validation of the merits of slavery quickly became permanent and a phenomenon of trans-generational thinking, conceptions of race passed down from one generation to another (Winant 2001). Blackness was indicative of slavery and servitude whilst white was attributed to ideologies of freedom and liberty which laid the foundations of white supremacy. Hence, it was a blend of political objectives for the expansion and prosperity of European nations that built the foundation of the conception of race. Coupled with economic agendas for resource procurement and more productive exploitation of capitalistic philosophy, an evolving and more economically prosperous Europe served to underpin the significance and meaning of race through the 1700s. Therefore, it is not necessarily the biological importance of humankind that dictates race. It is a form of collective social beliefs, values and ethnocentrism that causes the conception of race to materialise and have significance in a variety of contexts, inclusive of political and social dogma. When the Dutch arrived in Africa in the mid-1600s, the formation of racial distinction was founded. Renowned explorers embedded a very robust and impassable barrier to ensure that Africans did not mingle with Europeans. The largest border that served as a fortress between English conquerors and indigenous African society was language. This is the reason why whiteness remains disjointed, today, in South Africa. Even though slavery was completely abolished by the British government in the early 1800s, the British Empire did not believe in the appropriateness of equal rights protections between European whites and African society. Laws enacted to ensure superiority of British whites served to demoralise and weaken political authority of African citizens and challenged the economic viability of the region, all enacted on the social distinction and ethnocentric values of race disparities. Voting rights for indigenous African peoples were denied upon the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, which established a connectivity and social sentiment about the relevancy of whiteness and society that endured until the 1990s in South Africa. It was not until citizens revolted against apartheid, a systematic ideology of racial segregation, that the black race in this nation changed toward equal rights between whites and blacks as a product of political upheaval and the consequences of potential government downfall at the hands of angry black citizens (Newbury 2009). The evolution of British government rule in South Africa serves as only one example of how race has been shaped by political agenda, economic circumstances and changing social sentiment. In the United States, a nation that did not abolish slavery until 1865, society viewed acceptability of segregation between black slaves and their white owners. Even after slavery was abolished, new legislation that demanded poll taxes, excises that had to be paid to exercise the right to vote, were designed to ensure that African-Americans would be unable to employ their voting rights as many blacks still lived in poverty between 1965 and 1940. Blacks were also compelled, legislatively, to submit to a variety of literacy tests that would determine competency to exercise the right to vote which served to demoralise blacks in the nation well into the 20th Century (Hale 1998). Social ideologies related to maintaining race disparity, borne of trans-generational teachings and hierarchical conventions, supported continuance of poll taxes and the utilisation of literacy testing in order to ensure that the dominant group, whites, maintained absolute social and political superiority. Two major cities in the U.S., Detroit and Chicago, began to accept a massive migration of Southern blacks, establishing a racial space that became over-crowded and ultimately, in the 1900s, became dilapidated ghettos whilst white citizens in the country established more affluent suburbs outside of the black racial space (Hale 1998). This social and political construction to ensure white supremacy endured until the 1960s when black advocates of the Civil Rights Movement began to demand change through protest, appeals to government leadership, and even violence. It was also becoming apparent to the aristocratic government ruling the United States during the mid-1900s that there was a growing need to fill low-level labour positions in an environment where industrial improvements and increased consumerism maintained significant economic benefits to the country. The upper-class ruling regime needed to improve education for African-Americans in order to ensure they were given the skills and competencies needed to become industry labourers, positions that were considered demoralising to many white Americans. Through the use of propaganda and politically-motivated rhetoric, political representatives were able to convince blacks that they could sustain a better quality of life through education, which was actually an attempt to ensure obedience, conformity and submission (Watkins 2001). Through this propaganda, blacks and whites alike began to believe in the merits of a more educated black race in which academics could improve lifestyle quality and ensure more social acceptability for those who conformed to the pursuit of skills training. Blacks began to view other African-Americans that were gaining advantages and social acceptance as positive reference groups, creating a desire to obtain the same advantages that were reinforced by aristocratic government leadership as being fundamental to moderate social equality afforded to black citizens (Watkins 2001). This is why, today, the black race is deemed socially acceptable when they maintain similar educational competencies as their white counterparts. It became a trans-generational set of values and beliefs prevalent in multiple races that academics were a justification for social relevancy and acceptability for black citizens that had, for nearly two centuries, been oppressed substantially in the United States. In black family structures today, the imperatives of education are consistently reinforced and many in the black household attempt to serve as role models and motivators as it pertains to the paramount advantages provided by education. Family members became potent aspirational reference groups (Gofen 2009). The politically, socially and economics-based conception of African-American race and identity is illustrated through the governmental attempts to alter social attitudes about black relevancy in an effort to improve the economy of the United States and further promote the benefits of capitalism as a political system. As whites began working side-by-side with blacks as a result of their improved educational competency and government promotion of educational opportunities to ensure procurement of adequate industrial labourers, social sentiment about the distinctions between race and the level of superiority of whites versus blacks began to evolve substantially. It is likely that in the United States, without the interventions and activities of aristocratic, upper-class ruling regimes, social sentiment about black inferiority would still be prevalent in American society today. Yet another example of how race is shaped by political, social and economic circumstances can be illustrated by the Holocaust imposed by Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 1940s. The notion that German whites, the Aryan Race, were embroiled in a never-ending battle for supremacy with Jewish groups, was actually founded during the Middle Ages. Stereotypes founded on Christian ideologies created the conception of anti-Semitism which gave Jews a classification as a race rather than a religion. In the year 1096, this growing social sentiment about the inferiority of Jews over that of white Europeans led to the slaughter of over 2,000 Jewish citizens when peasants from Germany and France attacked a variety of different communities sustaining Jewish populations. In 1113, a revolt in Kiev that overthrew the government of the Grand Prince of Kiev ensured that all Jewish citizens that maintained ties with the prince’s financial affairs would be slaughtered. This sentiment about Jews as a race also maintained trans-generational beliefs which endured for centuries, thus giving the growing Nazi Party in the 20th Century much more social relevancy and clout from a cultural perspective. Friedrich Nietzche, a German philosopher and moralist, provided a definition of what was driving the negativity and hatred for the Jewish race by those prescribing to Aryan Race superiority, published in 1886: “The whole problem of the Jews exists only in nation states, for here their energy and higher intelligence, their accumulated capital of spirit and will...must become so preponderant as to arouse mass envy and hatred. The literary obscenity of leading the Jews to slaughter as scapegoats of every conceivable public and internal misfortunate is spreading” (Baeumler 1931, p.48). With the rise of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party in 1920, which ultimately evolved into the Nazi Party, this long-standing social sentiment about the perceived Jewish race, especially at a time period where the economic stability of Germany was substantially meagre, created the social conception of Jewish weakness and inadequacy. Many in society, today, contemplate how the Aryan agenda was so readily adopted and embraced by educated and forthright German peoples with praise for the recurring slaughter of millions of Jewish citizens. However, trans-generational social values, in this case dealing with envy for the seemingly advantageous economic strength and intelligence of Jewish groups coupled with growth in political authority that shared these same principles and values, served to establish the foundation of racial prejudice against Jewish individuals in German society. It was not until other Westernised nations, such as the U.S., France and Britain, were able to violently overthrow this regime and impose their own values for social equality on German people that long-standing racial artefacts were able to be evolved and broken down. Realising that the economic and political stability of post-WWII Germany would be reliant on the reconstructive support and economic support of the victors of the war, German society had no choice but to begin embracing the ideologies of their foreign supporters which, long-term, changed social sentiment about the Jewish race. Post-war studies conducted in an effort to identify why Germans accepted the brutal slaughter of Jews and embraced the conception of Jewish peoples as a race identified that Germans were actively aware of activities and atrocities occurring during the Holocaust as these events were openly publicised by Nazi regime leadership in a variety of media sources (Marrus 2000). Centuries of trans-generational prejudice against Jews as a race all their own created a German social sentiment that Jews were a threat to economic stability and the superiority of the white race. Even though it is highly likely that Jewish hatred, as a socially-constructed race conception, would still exist today without overthrow of the Nazi leadership, it does concretely illustrate that social beliefs related to race evolves through political consequence and economic consequence. If German people continued to exert Aryan superiority and publicise the sentiment, foreign nations assisting in reconstruction and economic support for Germany would likely have cut off diplomatic and financial ties to the nation. This was something that a dilapidated and decrepit Germany could not afford, thus social and political attitudes had to change substantially. From a different perspective, the conception of race is critically important in today’s society to assist in organising cultures throughout the world. Political power and influence is embedded in legislation and government policy that is often mandated, especially in democratic nations, by social sentiment. It is recognised that privilege and political authority is concentrated within the boundaries of racial sentiment and, so long as there is racial inequity and discrimination, political leaders can maintain a position of advantage and privilege. Therefore, it serves to the benefit of political leaders to ensure that racial disparities continue to be exerted and entrenched in society in order to maintain authoritative hierarchies that serve to political advantages. For instance, during the time of slavery when black servants were being transported to the United States to serve their white masters, many attempted mutinies on the ships that carried them or endeavouring to force work slowdowns post-arrival (Winant 2001). This established a threat to the white agenda and to political regimes, which exerted to public society that being of black race was menacing and sinister as it represented legitimate danger to political stability at the time, not to mention the economic benefits of recurring slave labour as it pertains to agricultural economic prosperity. Politicians, especially Southern government representatives, often publicised anti-black sentiment in newspapers and other public documents that continued to assert the absolute nuisance and menace of the black race. This type of propaganda was deliberate on behalf of government representatives, ensuring that anger and fear which led to growing disparity between whites and blacks would keep upper-crust politicians in control of government and society. By painting themselves as potential saviours and protectors of American interests, society believed that their most effective defence and fortification against the perceived black menace was to keep anti-black politicians in their positions. This type of rhetoric and propaganda can still be observed in contemporary society when political figures attempt to ensure racial or social division as a means of underpinning their genuine objectives for sustaining governmental authority and power. Social beliefs that national survival is paramount will quickly deconstruct abstract moral principles, such as freedom and equality, as an outcome of human behaviour and psychology (Morganthau 2005). Hence, conceptions of race are strongly dependent on other contextual factors such as political relevancy and authority as well as economic motivators that endure the longevity and survival of a nation state. During the American Civil War, many individuals in Northern states were strongly opposed to racial inequality as it pertained to blacks whilst Southern citizens and politicians were well-publicised advocates of the practice as they served to demoralise blacks. However, it should be recognised that Northern states maintained much more profitable industry and the development of various automation technologies which provided significant economic prosperity to this region. In the South, dependency on agricultural outputs without industrial support and capacity made slave labour absolutely necessary for their economic longevity. Hence, it illustrates how economic circumstances can radically alter one’s perceptions of race and racial appropriateness, which was supported by Morganthau (2005) as being a legitimate phenomenon of human behaviour. This was also illustrated by German rejection, post-WWII, of anti-Jewish sentiment that had, with the belief in longevity and security for the German state through Nazi growth and military strength, endured for centuries. Economic needs and radical political changes will serve as a catalyst for changing social conceptions of race, something that has been long-supported by history. From the social constructionist perspective, a person’s racial identity is the method by which those of a particular race are able to identify with another group based on various cultural likenesses, such as religion or dress, as well as how the individual perceives common or uncommon political beliefs and interests (Cornell and Hartman 2007; Omi and Winant 1994). For instance, racial identification of African-Americans often involves stereotypical viewpoints from other races that this group maintains very negative school achievements. Parents of African-Americans, therefore, work diligently to reinforce the importance of education (and punish for non-performance) to avoid succumbing to negative social sentiment about African-Americanism. In opposite accord, a pan-ethnic viewpoint of Asian racial identity is supportive of a very high level of achievement related to academics which stems from other races’ stereotypes and prejudices. Therefore, race has become institutionalised in such countries and the United Kingdom and the United States that maintain a collective social culture inclusive of Africans, Latinos and Asians. With immigration comes more exposure to different races and white individuals (as well as other races) attempt to justify their position in global or regional society through these class distinctions, even if founded on prejudice and stereotype. Therefore, it should be recognised that there is a substantial social influence by which other races attempt to create a sense of identity that promotes cohesion and unity with others sharing similar physical and cultural characteristics. With the emergence of new cultures in a society, such as the UK and US, comes a variety of psycho-social outcomes as an individual seeks to find social belonging with those sharing like characteristics and beliefs, something that is universal for most individuals in global society. The need to obtain inclusion in aspirational in-groups is a fundamental need for members of global society and without establishing disparity or a sense of meaning behind various attributes of different ethnicities, finding this common ground in melting pot societies would be psychologically difficult for most individuals. Hence, patterns of migration within a nation dictates the extent to which meaning is placed on race and its relevancy toward self or the pursuit of finding a national identity. Conclusions As illustrated, conceptions of race continue to evolve as a product of changing social, political and economic circumstances. Distinctions placed on people of differing origins and physical attributes was founded on European expansionist objectives that exposed Europeans to holistically-different peoples that did not share European physical traits or cultural attributes. This leads to a sense of insecurity related to the established social identities of citizens not accustomed to these differences, promoting legislative efforts to curb foreign citizen’s authority when introduced and/or acclimated to existing social ideologies and practices. Europeans, in an effort to maintain their ethnocentric values pertaining to self-relevancy, worked diligently to demoralise other societies and this was accomplished by placing distinctions on these groups which served as the catalyst for racial characterisation. The example provided which illustrated historical and trans-generational lessons about threats imposed from Jewish people gave them a national racial identity in Germany, a country that was seeking economic autonomy and growth. In other nations, such as the UK and the United States, those with religious disparities from that of the existing race are, today, considered strengths as the world moves toward conceptions of the benefits of social diversity. However, in Germany, both during the Middle Ages and in the latter portion of the 19th Century, Jewish identity and prosperity were considered threats to the existing social and political order which justified giving Jewish individuals the distinction of a completely separate and distinct race that was segregated from white-dominated culture. This attitude and set of beliefs were not only carried throughout the ages from generation to generation, but were completely impenetrable attitudes that pervaded German society until political and economic circumstances forced a change of values and beliefs toward this religious group. It cannot be denied, therefore, that conceptions and opinions of race and the rationale for providing this classification based on certain ethnic characteristics and physical attributes of differing groups are strongly motivated by the political and economic climate which, in turn, alters social attitudes either negatively or positively. This is, again, supported by the evolution of the black race in the United States that occurred as a result of political upheavals that occurred during the nation’s Civil War and would likely not have been altered without this radical revolution in the country. Attitudes about the menace and threat of the black race were altered by new political leadership nearly 100 years after the American Civil War and a new social and economic agenda that mandated education for the black race to sustain national security and longevity of the country. Clearly, as identified concretely through the research, political, economic and social circumstances maintain potent and undeniable influences in what constitutes racial identification and racial sentiment today; and historically. Race is how individuals in a society or culture seek cohesion with others sharing similar characteristics and values and serves as the rationale for political leadership to maintain a sense of superiority and power. Evolution of racial sentiment is highly dependent on changes in economic conditions, political agendas, and social development as a means of finding personal identity especially in a global environment where new and foreign cultures are regularly introduced into a society through globalisation which could, theoretically, serve as potential threats to established social norms. . References Baeumler, A. (1931). Nietzsche: the philosopher and politician. Leipzig: Reclam. Cornell, S. and Hartmann, D. (2007). Ethnicity and race: making identities in a changing world, 2nd ed. London: Sage Publications Inc. Dalmage, H. (2000). Tripping on the colour line: black-white multi-racial families on a racially divided world. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Gofen, A. (2009). Family Capital: How First-Generation Higher Education Students Break the Intergenerational Cycle, Family Relations, 58(1), pp.104-120. Hale, G. (1998). Making Whiteness. New York: Vintage Books. Marrus, M.R. (2000). 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