Race continues to play a role in American culture and policy in the 21st century. Average incomes in the United States are demonstrably dissimilar, affirmative action policies allow campuses to use race as a determining factor when creating student bodies, and race continues to define media and culture to a significant degree. To some extent, these factors should escape our criticism, as it can't be considered desirable for all people from all races and cultural backgrounds to converge into a national monoculture. However, to the extent that people are excluded from opportunities as a result of race rather than merit, we have no choice but to find fault and look for solutions. As Richard Payne writes in Getting Beyond Race, "General racial classifications ignore the obvious biological reality that each individual within the human species, with the exception of identical twins, is genetically unique." (Payne, pg. 1)
The essentialist articulation of race is one that invokes universals that apply to the various races and define their natures. For instance, in the early 19th century it was said that Irishmen had a certain look to them that was widely caricatured in Britain. To the extent that some or most Irishmen did not share these characteristics, they were considered 'un-Irish.' This argument can be found in American racists, who for instance, might claim that blacks usually have a lower IQ, and cite The Bell Curve as an example of factual evidence; according to The Bell Curve, the average white IQ is 100 while the average black IQ is 85, and that both populations are normally distributed. To the extent that that black intellectuals exist, essentialists would argue that intellect is uncharacteristic of a black person, and perhaps that the black man got his intellect from a white ancestor (which most American blacks have.)
This articulation is dangerous in that it creates prejudice, leading people to assign negative characteristics to races. As a result, for example, blacks can be lead to self-identify as unintelligent and ostracize their own when they show intelligent characteristics. In The Fire Next Time, James Baldwin contends that the only way he was able to grow up without self-destructing in a black culture that was dominated by drugs and gangs was by becoming a minister despite having doubts as to the existence of God. Baldwin and others including W.E. DuBois, Richard Wright, and James Weldon Johnson at one point migrated to Europe in order to escape American discrimination.
The last of these, Johnson, was a mulatto who eventually decided to blend into the white culture, which he talks about in "Biography of an Ex-Coloured Man." Johnson was a writer during the Harlem Renaissance of the twenties, and at the time, 'passing' from black into white culture was considered a taboo by both whites and blacks. Here we see essentialist notions at their worst; in requiring of people within races to maintain a certain disposition and set of attitudes, they preclude free will and negate one's identity as a human being. Although adopting 'white' cultural values is now acceptable in that these opinions are thought to be value-neutral rather than euro-centric tastes and standards, doing the reverse can result in public opprobrium, as one can readily see in the example of wiggers and white rappers like Vanilla Ice and Marky Mark.
The social construction of race is an old aspect of American society with a comprehensive history of deliberately deceitful pseudo-scientific rationales. The most obvious example of this since slavery is to be found in the Eugenics movement of the early 20th century, when many black and Puerto Rican women were involuntarily sterilized. Anti-misogyny laws were only repealed in the late 1950's, ensuring that races didn't intermarry, sometimes under pain of life imprisonment. This helps to explain why there is little or no 'gray zone' in between black and white cultures, whereas Asians in the United States regularly intermarry with white people in urban environments.
Whereas an unspoken prejudice exists that holds...
O.J. Simpson Orenthal James Simpson, more commonly known as OJ Simpson, became the most popular man in the United States. This popularity was not due to him being a famous football player who had the greatest running backs in America or any of his roles as an actor, but because he was the defendant in the most publicized and popular murder case in American history. It was the 'Trial of the
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