[PEN-L:3714] Re: Re: Re: Race as a "construct"

[ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224]]

It was interesting -- I was teaching the difference between systemic 
and statistical discrimination today in my IR class and I was 
talking about discrimination based on perceived differences in 
group behaviour affecting the individual (statistical discrimination) 
ane related Peter's story of the treatment of his 'black' student vis a 
vis her biological brother who appeared 'white'.  Immediately, two of 
my 'mixed parentage' students volunteered the same experience.  
One was a women of Chilean parentage (political refugees) who , 
as she put it, couldn't even get a tan when she tried in the summer, 
and her dark skinned brother, who was discriminated against.  The 
other was an (I think Eurasian) female student who has a brother 
who looks totally 'white'.  As she put it, she couldn't look 'white' no 
matter what she did and as a result was discriminated against 
because of her 'colour' while her brother faced no such 
discrimination.
  I think this gave my class a particularly good teaching experience 
today -- at least I was on a high -- because they really began to 
understand the meaning that 'race' (and gender) is a social 
construct, not a biological one.  It always brings to mind the 
quotation from Andy Friedman's book on the UK auto industry -- 
that racism and sexism was not invented by managers, but that 
they just use it to divide and conquer the working class.

Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba
> Charles Brown wrote:
> > 
> >Skin color, hair texture and facial features are genetically determined in part, 
>but they do >not correlate with "humanity" "soulfulness", morality, "savagery", 
>criminality, or >intelligence, et al., as racists have asserted for hundreds of years.
> 
> They (skin color, hair texture and facial features) don't even correlate
> with *themselves*.  There are no "races" biologically.
> 
> Peter Dorman
>