Jan 14th Reading Response: What Does the Word “Race” Truly Mean?

“Chapter 1: Racism, history, and politics,” Racism: Beginner’s Guide, Alana Lenten, Oxford: Oneworld, 2008, 1-31.

Growing up in a small town on the Western side of Washington, when the word race came to mind, the blunt idea of black people being segregated from white, upper class always came to mind. Of course I never considered myself racist, I have been instilled to treat every human being with the respect I would want to be treated with, but when it comes to the actual term of race I can honestly say I have never looked beyond the physical aspects of the meanings attached to it. The idea of racism emerging in a scientific setting has never even crossed my mind, and how Voegelin came about the idea that “-race as composed of a set of false notions with no actual basis in provable scientific fact” (8). So race as simply a definition of ethnicity, unaffected by culture or mannerism associated with a certain race, is where the idea of racism began it seems. Which is extremely ironic in the fact that some saw it as so simple and ineffective in society, yet racism was and is and what it has become and how it continues to suppress and grow in parts of the world is so complex and deep. Yet the question of “how racism became so complex in the first place?” is what keeps emerging through out the readings. The connection between Darwin’s theory of natural selection and what racism is defined as today was a huge stepping stone is elevating what racism is seen as and viewed as today. What makes a race superior? What is superiority in society? Finding what it means to be a superior race is a cultural issue so many societies have as a result of Darwinism and the support and spread of European culture.