The Race Myth

This is an assessment of the advantages and disadvantages of categorizing people by their race or religion. I will first go over the advantages of categorization and why it is needed. Then I will cover the disadvantages and give some examples throughout history that prove my point. Lastly, I am going to talk about how different we actually are from one another. I am trying to be objective while looking at this issue, and think that everyone should try to remain unemotional while looking at issues such as this.Ratiocinating without emotion I came up with the conclusion that there are some limited advantages to categorizing people by race and religion. The reason that there are advantages is that there is an inherent need for people to categorize each other into small groups in order to measure social norms and various other social factors that effect different groups within that society. Most social studies divide races up into groups based mostly on their ethnicity, or their genetic background. In most studies there are different results for each “category” that is based on race, with this said, this will be mentioned later on because with a deeper look it may only be because of social factors that are caused by years of oppression and racism and that makes it a disadvantage. Outside of science (sociology, anthropology, and medical science) there is no logical reason to categorize people by race or ethnicity that will not cause racism. There is also a logical reason to categorize people by religion because a religion is a main influence in a person’s values, norms, and beliefs. Most people of a single religion have similar norms and values therefore the people in that religion could be grouped together in order to make various social measurements. Again, there is no reason outside of science to categorize people by religion. The only real advantage there is to categorizing people by race or religion is in order to conduct scientific research, and sometimes that will cause racism (as in eugenics).In the 1930’s Nazi Germany was a proponent of eugenics and it led to the murder of 12 million Jews and also led to the sterilization of 400,000 people who were viewed as physically and mentally “unfit”. All of this starts from “categorizing” which promotes or causes people to use racial slurs, which then dehumanizes the group of people. For instance, if I am viewed as a “haole” or “cracker” in the eyes of another person they aren’t thinking of me as a human being, I become something more like an object or a “person without breath” (Haole by Hugh D. Mailly). Therefore something as simple as linguistics that most people shrug off really does have much significant meaning, I’m sure that when most people say “haole” they don’t really think that I don’t breathe, but they are looking at me as “different than they are”, which really means inferior. That is the seed of racism; the very fact that humans “identify” with one ethnicity more than another is what causes them to think of it as “us” and “them”, thus making everyone else less important. In Rwanda the Belgian colonizers created the distinction between the “Hutu” and “Tutsi”, the division is based more on social class than ethnicity, since there are no significant cultural or physical differences between the two. In 1994 the Hutu’s and Tutsi’s performed genocide on each other in a struggle for the power to control the state of Rwanda, simply because there was so much racial tension between two groups of people. There have been studies to prove that no two races are certainly genetically different.According to episode one of the documentary “Race-The Power of an Illusion” (By California Newsreel) no two people are that different after all. In the documentary the narrator says this about race “The idea of race assumes that simple external differences, rooted in biology, are linked to other, more complex internal differences, like athletic ability, musical aptitude, and intelligence. This belief is based on the idea that race is biologically real.” In the documentary a Microbiologist by the name of Pilar Ossorio says that no one has found any genetic markers that are in everybody of a particular race, and later she goes on to say that no one has discovered genetic markers that define race. According to the documentary genetically, we are among the most similar of all species. Only one out of every thousand nucleotides that make up our genetic code is different, one individual from another. Two look-alike penguins have twice the amount of genetic difference, from one from the other, than humans. Fruit flies have ten times more difference; any two fruit flies may be as different genetically from each other, as a human is from a chimpanzee. All of this substantive evidence supports the view of not categorizing people by race.Weighing the advantages of categorization against the disadvantages of it the only logical conclusion is against categorization. The benefits that recognizing race brings are so minuscule compared to the costs of racism. We are all made up of the same genetic material and we are all human beings. We need to be careful of the language that we use, even if there is not intent to cause harm to another person, because it is truly easy to dehumanize a person. Talking about peoples by categorizing them into groups is already making them seem less human than human. America has come a long way since the abolition slavery but it is up to us [Americans] to change the world once again and shift to a paradigm where we don’t think of people based upon their race, but we simply just think of “people”.Sources“Haole.” Encyclopedia Mythica. 2006. Encyclopedia Mythica Online.19 Oct. 2006 http://www.pantheon.org/articles/h/haole.html>.RACE – The Power of an Illusion. Dir. Larry Adelman. DVD.California Newsreel, 2003.

Poverty Study

The first source is a research project that was done in Boston. The researcher is taking aLook at poverty and crime in a new way. Most of his research in based on surveys, which he conducted on prison inmates where he finds that there are over 2,000 white inmates and only 147 black inmates. He says that crimes such as arson, vandalism, and destruction of property, cannot be associated with poverty because there is no relation between poverty and that type of crime. Morse says, “There is no reason to believe that a poverty stricken individual is more likely to vandalize property”. Morse also says that crimes such as theft and robbery should be linked to poverty because they are related to income. Morse attributes most violent crimes to moral lapses and not to poverty.In the second source Luis says that it is not poverty that causes crime but it is the “personal choice” of the criminal. Luis says, “Some people will commit a wrong no matter what” he also talks about “white-collar crime that goes uninvestigated, un-prosecuted and under-punished” this statement insinuates that people that are more “well off” don’t get prosecuted as much as people in poverty. His main thesis is that it doesn’t matter what your social class is but the most important factor is your moral standing on crime.According all of my research poverty does not cause crime. It is the personal choice of the criminal. Persons who have more money can afford better lawyers and can usually get away with more criminal acts. Police officers “target” poor people and expect them to commit more crimes. These facts are the possible reasons for the criminal data to show that people in poverty have a higher crime rate. The data that most studies are based on doesn’t account for the fact that people who are not in poverty don’t get prosecuted as much. The studies also don’t attempt to measure the external factors of poverty such as stress. The number one factor that cuases stress in most people’s lives is money, if a person is in poverty they don’t have any money, therefore they will have a lot more stress in their everyday lives. Another factor that I didn’t see in my studies is under-employment; the fact is that under-employment can be a great factor in causing poverty.I tend to agree with the sources that I studied, because I used to live in poverty. My mother was a single parent; she worked 3 jobs and only made enough to provide food for my family. We didn’t get Christmas presents or any other material things that we didn’t need. I remember those years of my life and none of my siblings or I never committed any crimes, nor did my mother. The reason that we didn’t resort to crime is that it was against our morals; we didn’t believe that it was the right thing to do. Therefore, I believe that it is a person’s set of morals that determines their likely hood to commit a crime and not their social class.SourcesMorse, Ryan. “Primary Research.” The Relationship Between Crime and Poverty in Black Antebellum Boston. 11 May 2006. African-Americans in Antebellum Boston. 10 Oct 2006 <http://www.primaryresearch.org/bh/research/morse/index.php>.Luis. “Blogd.” [Weblog Poverty and Crime] 02 Dec 2005. 12 Oct 2006 <http://www.blogd.com/archives/001571.html>.

Severe Social Isolation

Severe Social Isolation Effects of Development

            Based on the evidence provided by the video “Secret of the Wild Child” there is a strong relationship between severe social isolation (SSI) and under-development of social traits in a child. Based on the video a child who grows up in isolation will not develop the ability to socialize. In extreme cases the child will never develop the ability to communicate through speech. Scientists believe that a child’s brain stops developing by the age of 10-12 years of age. Prohibited social activity will inhibit the development of a child’s brain consequently if a child is isolated their brain may not develop fully. Most of the apparent signs of severe isolation are very similar to the signs of Down syndrome and can be easily misdiagnosed. The most predominant sign of SSI is a lack of ability to communicate using language and a lack of emotion. Most SSI children cannot tell the difference between hot and cold, they can’t walk smoothly, and they have little retention and memory loss. All of these symptoms are signs of underdevelopment of the brain and according to research on brain development the brain stops (or slows extremely) developing in adolescent age. If a child passes through adolescence in SSI then they will never fully develop therefore the effects of SSI are permanent.

 

Links for research

http://www.feralchildren.com/en/showchild.php?ch=genie

http://www.ecsd.com/~rhhedgz1/brain.html

http://www3.georgetown.edu/research/nrcbl/hsbioethics/units/unit3_4.html

 

 

Disclaimer

I am going to publish information about all of the classes that I am taking. I may publish some of the class work that I turn in. You cannot reuse the information contained in the article without proper citation, otherwise you will violate plagiarism laws. These articles are not for the purposes of cheating or any other illegitimate use. The purpose of this is too share ideas and views with other people. I hope that you enjoy this blog.