By Susan Campbell

A large photo in an exhibit about race at Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center shows a group of people dressed in white T-shirts.

On those shirts are written the races as they historically were defined by the Census Bureau. The older white man’s shirt says “1790 — Free White; 1880 — White; 1970 — White”; a darker-skinned young woman’s shirt says: “1900 — Indian; 1980 — Eskimo; 2000 — Alaska Native.”

Just as the government has flailed about trying to decide how to categorize its citizens, so, too, have its citizens tried to figure out race.

Or not.

Ask CC Stinson, a Texas filmmaker, how many times she’s almost missed meeting potential backers. After setting up a meeting on the phone, she sits at the agreed-upon coffee shop, waiting, and the person arrives and looks right past her because she doesn’t sound black on the phone.

And precisely what does that mean?

Add to that weirdness, this: A notoriously racist website — emblazoned with slogans such as “White Pride, Worldwide” — includes in its rules for posting comments: “Avoid racial epithets.”

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has said “We can’t afford to ignore race, not in our political campaigns, our media, our neighborhoods.”

Oddly, the idea of dividing people into race is entirely human-made, and it’s a rather recent construct. Scholars say race first emerged in the 14th or 15th century as European explorers stumbled upon riches they’d only dreamed of, presided over by fully formed cultures of people who were predominantly darker than themselves.

To justify taking the resources of the people — and the people, themselves — the ruling power created an entire body of (false) theories that suggested darker-skinned people were inferior, and thus should be assigned to do the heavy lifting, says Joe R. Feagin, sociology professor at Texas A&M University.

Over time, race became (falsely) the main predictor of attitudes, behaviors and potential. Such notions were bolstered by early biologists — such as Charles Darwin — who argued that race was biological, said Feagin. That began to change in the 20th century with groundbreaking anthropologists such as Franz Boas, a German immigrant who applied objectivity and scientific method to the study of cultures and people and found that predicting behaviors was far more complicated.

But old habits — especially those rooted in economics — die hard. In his book, “Race: A History Beyond Black and White,” historian Marc Aronson says racism is based on the idea that even minor physical differences matter, that the differences can’t change because they’re inherited, and that certain races are, from birth, better than others.

If it’s no longer polite to say that out loud, Feagin says racism runs rampant behind the scenes. With Leslie Houts Picca, Feagin co-authored “Two-Faced Racism: Whites In The Backstage And Front Stage,” which includes a study of 626 white college students who kept records of racial events. Feagin said 7,500 accounts were “blatantly racist,” including casual confessions that some students sat around playing cards and telling racist jokes with their friends.

“We distinguished between the front- and backstage,” said Feagin. “A lot of younger whites learn not to do these racist performances in the front stage. Backstage, they’re much more like their parents and grandparents than anybody recognizes. The media talks about how liberal these young whites are. I beg to differ.”

He has similar data from students of color they’re just beginning to study, he said.

If race is not real, its consequences are, said Renee Romano, director of Wesleyan University’s Center for African American Studies.

“The world we’ve created for ourselves is biologically immaterial,” said Romano. “Even though science says race doesn’t exist, it’s used to keep people in their place, and to give other people more privileges that are unmerited and undeserved. To give that up is a big deal.”

On a cultural level, categorizing people by race can be a tool to study health trends, or to guard against discrimination. On an individual level, race can be the tie that binds, a connection, a sense of community, Romano said.

“But I’m not convinced you couldn’t have those positives without race,” she said. “There are other ways to give people kinship. We live in a society that is still structured by race.”

Romano grew up in a Cleveland neighborhood that was no more or less racially segregated than any other city’s, she said. She was 12 when her family moved to a racially and religiously mixed neighborhood nearby.

“We moved 45 minutes away, but it was a completely different world,” Romano said. “All of a sudden, I was going to an integrated school, and I remember wondering: How did these two places so close together become so different, what’s at stake?”

“Race: Are We So Different?” from the American Anthropological Association, is on display at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum through Sept. 7.

Via Courant

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!