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Race 1 | P a g e "Race": The Political Classification of Humans Introduction Why Be Concerned About “Race” and Racism? Chapter 1 The History of the Ideas about "Race" Chapter 2 Old and New Forms of Racism Chapter 3 The Biological Side of the "Race" Signifier Chapter 4 The Political Side of the “Race Signifier Chapter 5 Toward a Program of Anti-Racism From a Communication Theory Perspective Chapter 6 The Need for a Political Turn: Putting Politics into the Study of Racism, Ethnicism, and Prejudice Can America Move Toward Post- Chapter 7 Racialism? Moving Forward With Courage Conclusions Index 2 | P a g e “RACE:” by Kenneth L. Hacker © 2014 Sixth Edition (no permissions given) Introduction: Why Be Concerned About "Race" and Racism? I began writing this book many years ago as my teaching of political communication drew in more insights about the problems of racism and prejudice in American society. As I did research for a lecture on racial aspects of voting in the United States, I was struck by some academic references to debates about the very existence of human races. Like most Americans, I took the word “race” at face value and equated it with skin color patterns. Later, I realized that nationality, culture, heritage, family lines, genetic patterns, religious affiliation, ideology, personality, motivations, and social networks might be as important as or more important than these superficial patterns of outer physical traits. For many years, like most people I knew, I wondered how anyone could doubt what you saw all around you – people of different colors and physical traits and groups of people with clusters of those traits. Only later would I reflect on the naiveté of thinking that “red people,” “yellow people,” “brown people,” and other skin-based categories had any real scientific meaning. Today, I still wonder what people are talking about when they mention “white people.” Look at the color of this paper – that is white. This does not deny the importance of what is called “white privilege” but simply means that the idea of white biology or white culture does not seem as real as the concept of people who are lighter in skin color having more social advantages than people who are darker. The color line, history shows, is also a power line. I admire the activists how try to turn the “race” construct on his head and to strip it of all political dominance. I am not sure this is being accomplished, however. It appears to me that the term went from culture to biology and anthropology and somewhat back to culture. I am still a little undecided on whether or not the word should simply be buried. Everyone likes to put people into boxes and mutually exclusive categories it seems. However, while I lean toward the elimination of the “race” construct or concept, I understand that some people use the term to simply describe superficial similarities like skin tone. If only the racialists and new racists were using it, I would stand in line to throw dirt on it. But with anti-racists using the term for upend its power, I am believe it is important now to expose the political nature of the word. The color line exists in many nations; it is not just a product of American culture. After reading thousands of pages of articles and books about the “race” construct, I became convinced that the concept is based more on speculation and power than on science. I joined those who use the term in parentheses to denote the fact that the term is widely used, but scientifically contested. People vary by how important the “race” term is to them. It changes meanings across time, across nations, and across individuals. Scientists have no consensus about the exact meaning of the word. In its earliest usage, “race” referred to 3 | P a g e separate species, later as sub-species, and still later and today and distinct groups with similar traits. After all of the speeches, articles, and books that have addressed the “race” term, it appears that overall it is word in search of a meaning. And where it findings meanings, the meanings appear to change by speaker, nation, and point in time. The essentialism of the term has dwindled increasingly and the concept still searchers for a meaning. A sparrow is not a robin, but even racial science experts admit that many humans are mixed in the alleged racial constitution. Since there are in fact, patterns in certain genetic markers related to geography, one might wonder why so many scientists don’t flee from the “race” term’s baggage of racism and simply use a language of genetic groups. Some of them argue that all will be lost if they lose the word, but this has never been proven. I believe that it can be easily shown that the word usually does more harm than good and that working against prejudice and social injustices of all sorts does not depend on it. The word “race” is grounded in a history of assumed biological heritability of traits that are assumed to have some position of inferiority or superiority. If you really think you need the word “race” to talk about people, try doing without the term for a day or so. Nothing more painful that shifting to other words like ethnicity, culture, community, or group is likely to happen. While many scholars announced the death of the concept of “race,” after World War II, some are now arguing that there is a resurrection, resuscitation, or unburying of the concept due to genomics and the discovering of genetic markers that place people’s DNA patterns into clusters of patterns that associate nicely with continents originally linked to the old racial categories. Of course, the genetic scientists using racial categories deny any racist linkages to their work and argue that racial categories can be proxies for geographic populations. Thus, along with efforts of bringing the dead back to life, we see that the newly resurrected concept can now also be sanitized and disinfected such that its roots in racism can be dismissed. In my position as a professor of communication studies, I created two new university courses concerning ethnicity, prejudice, and communication. When I first began, I expected some students to be shocked by my nonacceptance of traditional racial thinking. Instead, I found them to be fascinated, curious, and fully capable of critical thinking – exactly what we should encourage in higher education. I have taught these courses many times now and it is common for students to tell me that they appreciate the opportunity to explore some deep issues that normally are not addressed in most courses. In no way, do I require them to abandon racial thinking as I have abandoned it. iI only seek to get them to question its use and history and then to think about how ethnicity might be a more productive concept with which to distinguish various groups of people that differ in geographic, physical, and culture characteristics. I also encourage more thinking about collective identities. Critical race theorists are in favor multiculturalism and anti-racism and maintain the use of the “race” term in order to fight for civil rights and lowering racism. While I do not accept the premises that the race term is necessary to fight racism, I respect the drive of critical race theory to turn the construct on its head and to it for liberation rather than 4 | P a g e subjugation. In the chapter on politics, I will argue that a more productive manner to work against prejudice is to reject racialization rather than work with it. That of course is my personal opinion. I tend to disagree with the American Sociological Association position which says that “race” is invented but so important we need to study it in order to work against it. I believe that many of the sources of social injustice stem from racial thinking and discourse. Social psychologists have noted many reasons for people categorizing each other into groups such as “races.” Before there were racial categories there were tribal, religious, national, and other forms of human kind methods of generalization. In fact, placing people into categories has always fulfilled a desire to create taxonomies of things that are observed. As we will see, the concept of “race” is different than other concepts such as nationality because its meanings shift over time and while superficially related to biology, it tends to have more force in terms of politics and power. The historian David Cannadine (2012) argues that there were times in human history where the “race” term was absent as a tool of human classification. He notes how Jews, Christians, and Muslims once lived in harmony for hundreds of years in Spain, for example. People were categorizing but with other categories such as religion, tribe, nation, and culture. Consequently, the “race” term cannot be blamed for all of human polarization, oppression, slavery, genocide, etc., but it can be found to be strongly employed to provide ideological justifications for these human maladies. As we will see later, the culmination of the purposes for inventing the term and its theories was in the Nazi regime of Adolf Hitler. Hitler and his followers, when talking about racial groups, would never stop at labels but would move into arguing the needs for “racial hygiene.” Biology was fused with ideology and bad science produced the worst of politics. By now, some gentle reader is thinking, but that is not me-- I am not a Nazi! This misses the mark.
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