Race: The Power of an Illusion

For all my life I have assumed that the differences between races were based, at least in part, on genetics. According to the documentary “Race: The Power of an Illusion,” I’m not the only one who also thinks this. What the majority of our world does not know, however, is that genetics plays no part in race. Race is simply a human invention. The documentary showed teenagers from all different races conducting an experiment to test each of their DNA and compare them. Before the experiment the kids all assumed that their DNA would be most similar to those of similar or same race as them. As it turned out, after comparing the DNA results, many of the kids were just as genetically different, or even less different, to peers of a different race than to peers from their similar race. This conclusion has been found numerous times and is strongly supported by science; genetically, we are the most similar of all the species. Even penguins have twice as much genetic variation within their species and flies have 10 times more genetic variation than the human species does. There is just as much genetic variation within your own races as there is between races. The conclusion; race is not biological. In the 1920s, when immigrants and African Americans were plagued with poverty and disease, mostly due to social differences, the general public attributed these differences to biology, saying, “extinction is encoded in their blood.”

Prejudice and segregation was first based on the belief that other races were biologically inferior to the majority race. Hitler used this reasoning to convince Germany that Jews, homosexuals, and Gypsies were biologically weak and unfit to live. For centuries scientists have searched for some sort of biological difference between blacks and whites that could prove the superiority of the whites and inferiority of the blacks. Measurements of skull sizes, hair texture, skin color, and bones have all been taken and we still have not found a biological reason as to why blacks should be treated as “less than human.” Nevertheless, assumed biological differences still justified discrimination. When America was faced with setting requirements for citizenship they only allowed whites to be citizens, however, they had to define what “white” and “black” was. In Virginia a black person was anyone with a 1/16 African ancestry, in Florida it was anyone with at least 1/8 African ancestry, and in Alabama it was anyone with any amount of African ancestry. Therefore, you could cross a state border and legally change your race!

I feel that Baltimore is still facing the effects of this age-old policy of segregation. As Baltimore suburbs were being settled after WWII, blacks were not even allowed to live in the new communities. After 1968 when the Fair Housing Act was passed and blacks started moving into white neighborhoods, whites began to move out and form their own communities, sometimes even putting us walls between white and black neighborhoods. As white neighborhoods received the better mortgages and blacks were sold houses at inflated prices, black neighborhoods became run-down because they received none of the state’s taxes. Schools became under-funded and were not able to deliver a good education, houses because even more out-of-date and unfixable, and now we have situations like we see in East Baltimore.

The effects of this past half-century are still clearly seen in Baltimore. As it was stated in the documentary, “the advantages of being white accumulate from one generation to the next,” whether or not you are racist whites are still given the spoils of the racial system. Because your father’s father had money, your father had money to send you to school so you could get a job to make money and make sure your kids have a good life. It reminds me of what I learned on my U.N.I.T.E weekend, similarly to how the cycle of wealth passes from one generation to the next, poverty cycles from one generation to the next as well. But how do we break this system? Ideally, America should be colorblind, but we can start the breaking down of these cycles by breaking down our own personal boundaries and borders between the “us” and the “them.” I believe the phrase “we all” needs to become a more integral part of our vocabulary in describing the human species. While I believe in embracing all of the many cultures and ethnicities that we have in this world, we need to begin to think of them as all equal. I must admit, even with all my education, it’s difficult to look at someone and not notice the color of his or her skin. It’s been psychologically proven that humans are attracted to people that are similar to them, which includes similarities in personality, but also external similarities. Attractive people are attracted to other attractive people; white people are attracted to other white people, and so on. It’s not that we should fight our own biology, but it’s the assumptions that need to be replaced with understanding. We need to understand that not all black people can run fast, that not all Asians are good at math, and not all white people believe that success is defined by how much money you make. Although it will take centuries to defeat the racism that has been built upon itself, we can find encouragement in the fact that, we made it, and we can fix it.