A lot of people may argue that racial issues have improved prior to the 1960s but I really don’t think so. A lot of has changed politically but socially in our lives, not that much has changed. If you have met and gotten to be around me, you will notice I don’t talk much. I am a very observant person, therefore I love listening to people and try to understand them. I have friends who deem themselves as progressive /open minded as what we would call today as being “woke”. They are quick to call someone out if they made a racist comment or joke but won’t call them out about types of people they would date based on skin color. I was at the cafeteria not long ago in the beginning of the semester sitting at a table with close friends of mine eating. We were spending time sharing what we did over the break and one person at the table shared out loud that he has finally gotten a Tinder dating account. We all cracked up and resumed to whatever the previous conversation was. Later on the person with the Tinder account saw a notification from the app on his phone that he has matched with someone. He opened to find out who it was and he reacted saying something like, “Eww no!”. We were all curious to see it was and quite frankly, it was a nice looking person. We all in an agreement said the person he matched with is a good looking person and doesn’t deserve that reaction. All he said was, “But I only date black guys.” I immediately asked why and he replied saying, “It’s just my preference”. This had me thinking, “Is it really okay for people to have dating types/dating preference based on skin color?” And this is not the first time I have heard this. I have a couple friends from my high school who have also said something as dating only white guys and asians only. I am really interested in finding out why they have preference based on skin color. I wonder if it is because of their surrounding or what they have been exposed to growing up.

A tear sheds.

And I continue to write the name of yet another European man who thought it scientific to  prick, poke, and prod the insides of my mother’s, mother’s, mother and put them on display. Her skin tears. He knows that I too feel the pain. How could I not when he has sliced and diced my mother into a game that he calls Life. That he calls Fair.

A game that he has constructed, game that he has mastered over, beat Fear into. He is the only one that plays. Makes the rules himself and for everyone else who cannot play but be played with. He. decides who is fit, who is desirable. Bases every image as other and every other as savage. He. makes sure that when he goes, his legacy will live in infrastructure, live in customs, and live in law. Long live the worthy he says. And destroys all that he sees as degenerate and fixes us into boxes he’s checked before we’ve understood ourselves by our names and not the ones he’s called us. And though his voice haunts me, still, I will tell my children the same words my mother tells me: You are Strong. You are Beautiful. You are Intelligent. You are Divine. You are Love. You are Power-full.

It’s a reasonably obvious concept that offspring resemble their parents. The question that scientists had been trying to answer for centuries was: how? In his work on pea plants, ‘Father of Genetics,’ Gregor Mendel observed that there are environmental factors which influence the expression of certain traits (Saraswathy and Ramalingam 14). This was an important discovery because prior to Mendel’s work on pea plants, it was widely believed and accepted by scientists that inheritance was described by blending.

The relationship between race and genetics is relevant regarding the multi-century long controversy which concerns race classification. In the PBS TV Series Race: The Power of an Illusion, race is interpreted as “a concept that was invented to categorize the perceived biological, social, and cultural differences between human groups” (Episode 1). To sum this up, race is a human invention. However, as a concept, race does categorize biological differences. For example, there is a mother and father, both of mixed race, and they have twins that visibly appear to be different races. However, as dizygotic sororal twins, they share 50% of their DNA. Nonetheless, they would be categorized as “white” and “black” due to their appearance.  The problem with the relationship between race and genetics is that the concept of race being manipulated as a form of categorization is inherently fallacious. This manipulation is advanced by bigotry and social structures which served as the basis of scientific understanding of race.

Works Cited

Pounder, C C. H, Larry Adelman, Jean Cheng, Christine Herbes-Sommers, Tracy H. Strain, Llewellyn Smith, and Claudio Ragazzi. Race: The Power of an Illusion, Episode 1: The Differences Between Us. San Francisco, Calif: California Newsreel, 2003.

Saraswathy, N. and Ramalingam, P.  Concepts and Techniques in Genomics and Proteomics. Woodhead, 2016.

Wade, Lisa. “”Black and White Twins” and the Social Construction of Race.” Sociological Images, The Society Pages, 1 Aug. 2014, thesocietypages.org/socimages/2014/08/01/black-and-white-twins/.

From the first reading of “The Classification of Races” to the essays on “Science and Eugenics”, I have been alarmed by the sorts of ways race has been talked about and how intellectual people have fabricated a myth about “race” that is still very much relevant to today’s categorization of peoples and the discrimination that exists.  I think sometimes we forget how far racism can be traced back to and even if we live in a progressive society, people still think that the ideas, systems and beliefs of the European race should prevail over the inferior races to keep the European model of civilization alive and everlasting. However, Dubois and Senghor challenge this system and call for the conservation and embracement of the black people’s ideals and culture, which can coexist with the European values in the same space. Senghor calls the embracing of the Negro-African civilized values a humanist movement, and makes the point that Negritude welcomes all values of the world to then become alive on its own and part of a civilization that embraces all mankind (138). This is important to look at as it shows how people of different values and backgrounds can still embrace their identities, while embracing other values that are humanist and righteous.

It is to my knowledge, that there are clear, undisputable variations in the appearances and genetic makeups of men across that world. The Negro man looks different in many ways than the white man, and those in the Far East have features that resemble no man from the western world.

I believe that we only may look at the moral character of man, in determining who shall prosper and transmit their characteristics upon future generations. The assertion that the white man is the most important and the most essential race of humankind is false under this guideline.

Many view the explorations, conquests, and spread of power and influence by the white man as commendable. I argue that those actions only expose all of the moral wrongness that the white man has committed against other races. The spread of European influence and territory came with murder, exploitation and slavery. This created an unfair hierarchy of man, a hierarchy created by moral wrongdoings by immoral men.

The basic division of earth is the moral and the immoral. There is one human species, but there are undeniably different races that have different colors, abilities and live in numerous geographic locations around the world. This however is not where the division lies. There are no races that are inherently better, nor superior. The only division lies within moral character, and history has certainly proven, that this places the white man very far behind other races of man.

Link: http://metro.co.uk/2018/01/11/meghan-markles-parents-dad-thomas-markle-mum-doria-ragland-7221712/?ito=cbshare

This article discusses Price Harry’s fiancé, Meghan Markle’s family background, highlighting how race influences the “Royal Engagement” despite great strides being made with the addition of a mixed-race woman joining the monarchy, a huge milestone breaking hundreds of years of British tradition. Many rumors have begun about Meghan’s non-traditional upbringing with divorced parents, the lack of a father role, and her mother being a woman of color, and half-siblings with a 17-year age gap. This particular article elaborates on how Meghan’s family, addressing rumors alluding to dysfunction. It mentions her parents divorced when she was 6, alluding to a lack of a father relationship, and claims that half-sister has called her a “social climber”. During an engagement, there should be positive media regarding it, like in William and Kate’s situation. However, with Meghan’s untraditional upbringing, the spotlight has shifted from the engagement to also diving into her background, where race and socioeconomics are highlighted. She’s negatively viewed because these contrast with the royal family’s pristine, established bloodline. Despite these negative depictions, she holds her ground, shining as a strong, female woman in this setting. Her character allows her to overcome this negative media and show that the world is embracing diversity. As she joins the royal family, she will be the first non-British, mixed race woman. This is milestone breaking against the establishment of hundreds of years of tradition and proves that times have changed and England, along with the public, have accepted it despite the media’s attempts.

One of our previous readings by the 18th century French writer François-Marie Voltaire makes a shocking allusion to Greek mythology. In a quote from the text he describes the mythological creature called a satyr, a half-man half-goat character. He states, “I do not see why their (satyrs) existence should be impossible: monsters brought forth from women are still stifled in Calabria.” In Greek mythology, satyrs were characterized as ugly, drunken, lustful nuisances. Voltaire uses the symbol of the satyr to compare mixed race human offspring with the configuration of the man-goat satyr, and also to attribute bad characteristics to mixed race individuals. He calls mixed children a “bastard race” and makes another animal comparison of a mule created when a horse and donkey procreate. It was shocking to read a “scientific” writing and see references to mythology. In the modern age, scientists would never search for evidence of their research in mythological texts because we know today that mythology was formed on oral tradition and the need of ancient societies to make sense of natural occurrences they could not explain with their limited knowledge of the world around them.

What signifies race?  Is it the color of one’s skin?  Is it the texture of one’s hair?  What is the relationship between race and culture?  How is race performed on and through the body?  What are the signifiers of race that we subconsciously interpret as we move throughout the world and try to make sense of our place in it and our relationship to others?

The images in the banner of this blog are photos taken during various holidays, such as the the Muslim religious commemoration, Hosay, or the Hindu festival of Phagwa, as celebrated in Trinidad, and of everyday people engaged in everyday life.  Racial, ethnic, and religious boundaries are fluid in this multi-ethnic island, and challenge us to think about the taken for granted nature of race as conceptualized and reified in the United States of America.  Attention to the politics of race and ethnicity, the history of how ideas of race evolved, and the ways in which race and ethnicity are performed in various locations open our eyes to the complicated role of race in our world.

Mixing It Up is a repository of the thoughts, observations, questions, and feelings about race, ethnicity, and hybridity documented by Dickinson College students enrolled in the Spring 2018 semester of Race, Ethnicity, and Hybridity, a course taught by Professor van Leeuwaarde Moonsammy.