Race
People of the modern world discuss the concept of race and racism daily. Some may face it directly, while others experience interracial communication through social media. It happens because today humans live in a diverse society: individuals may look or feel differently, but they share the same work and social spaces. One of the most challenging questions the community faces today is the following: whether races were created by nature or society or not.
The History of Races
Like humankind itself, races have been around for thousands of years. Golash-Boza T.M. (2015), the author of Race & Racism. A Critical Approach, allows her readers to briefly glance at the term race and its history through the years. Her work does not replace the in-depth research on this subject but provides a compact overview.
First of all, people need to agree on the definition of the word race. Golash-Boza (2015) suggests the following: “a social construction to describe a group of people who share physical and cultural traits as well as common ancestry” (p. 6). Races are not biological, as people from the same racial group may differ more than individuals from various racial backgrounds. In ancient times, humans made assumptions about others based on individuals’ geographical origin and their skills. This approach seems logical because particular natural surroundings shaped people’s looks at those times. The idea to divide humans according to their genetic traits flourished during colonial times (Golash-Boza, 2015). The reasons were in the human desire to justify immoral actions towards other individuals.
Then, colonialism brought Europeans’ ambitions into the New World. English explorers used the idea of belonging to a superior race “to justify exploitation, slavery, colonialism, and genocide” (Golash-Boza, 2015, p. 7). Through centuries, people of non-European heritage experienced unfair treatment due to their genetic differences. It is crucial to understand that division by race is not natural and did not come into existence until greedy colonists started referring to themselves as better human beings. Individuals of races may be free today, but they still struggle with the aftermath of the dark colonial times.
References
Golash-Boza, T.M. (2015). Race & racisms. A critical approach. Oxford University Press.