According to Ruth Frankenberg, the author of the editorial, The Social Construction of Whiteness: White Women, Race Matters, race affects the daily lives of human beings whether or not they are aware of it. Frankenberg supposes that each person sees the world typically via a racial lens that colors their world as white, Asian, black, Latino, or others (Frankenberg 23). Consequently, how human beings perceive each other through race, affects essential domains of their lives such as their places to of work, or at home.
Question
Considering Frankenberg’s position, humanity’s social structure has been considerably affected by race, and while an ever-increasing number of people are aware of it, why has it proven nearly impossible to obliterate the detrimental social construct?
Tentative Response
First of all, efforts geared toward the dismantling of race have proven tedious and futile, principally because it only exists as a theoretical sense and has no merit in science. The construction of race and its continued existence over the years has been predominantly reliant on social groups and their shared acceptance, imposition, and agreement. Major authoritative editorials point out that there is nothing biologically linked with the different races. As such, race is entirely ontologically subjective, and it continues to exist in the world because of the collective acceptance, agreement, and imposition among societies. Arguably, even though race is not ontologically objective, it has real impacts and consequences in the community just as mentioned by Ruth Frankenberg. It largely shapes the way people see and interact with each other.
Outstandingly, the notion that race is a social construct has in no small part, been supported by a plethora of literary works. In the book A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America by Takaki, the author notes that race is a social construct that was created by the dominant social groups and their capacity to define (Takaki 96). Frankly, the author insinuates that the powerful societal groups imposed boundaries by defining race along biological lines. It is for this reason that the blacks were regarded as being biologically inferior to the whites hence justifying enslavement. This first biological comprehension of race helped in drawing the color line, and boundaries of community members were marked by the skin color. Unfortunately, up to this date, the leading race indicator has always been considered to be the skin color.
Evidenced in Franz Boas’s Race, Language, and Culture, there exists no biological differences between the different racial classifications among people. Similarly, race cannot be used in identifying the differences in culture, and it exibits no links to the practices, or beliefs of the cultures of the world (Boas 39). Mainly, culture is usually unbounded and concluding that one participates in a black or white culture because of his or her skin color is usually a misled view. Remarkably, this idea of unbounded cultural practices has been explicated in Gary Taylor’s editorial White Noise: What Eminem Can Tell Us About White America, where Taylor describes Eminem, a white man, who has been active in the hip-hop culture, commonly perceived as part of black culture (Taylor 362). That said, the notion of race was constructed by the dominant societal groups as an indicator of difference. The difference was that of status in particular, and since then race has been considerably used as a marker of status; excluding or including individuals from broader social constructs and enabling or disabling certain powers. Since race and its indicators are commonly collectively defined and imposed by the dominant groups in the society, so are the statuses of people. More so, due to the fact that race, being a social construct, is ontologically subjective, it has continued to operate in the world only in the virtue of shared agreement and acceptance.
The above response shows that race is a social construct that has very little to do with one’s skin color, but much to do with power, status, and fear. Also, race has been sustained for a very long time because the dominant group consistently utilize it in maintaining and controlling power. With that in mind, it is very paramount to deconstruct racism as it influences critical domains of the social, economic, and political realm. Ruth Frankenberg, recommends that for racism to end, the society has to abandon the idea of race. Frankenberg perceives that only after the society realizes that race is an illusion, would it abandon it. The author offers that racism will cease when people stop viewing each other via racial lenses, but she is wrong in presuming that race is unreal and it is simple to remove the racial lenses. In the end, it is undeniable that race is a social construct dependent on shared agreement, acceptance and imposition. Dismantling it has been very difficult so far because of this shared approach. It appears only natural that the notion of racism will cease altogether, once the community stops collectively accepting, agreeing, and perpetually imposing this idea of race. Regardless, this is a green hypothesis. Racism is rooted in the minds of people and the structure of the society and therefore a paradigm shift in what people collectively believe would help in understanding and thereby overcoming racial divide.
Works Cited
Frankenberg, Ruth. The social construction of whiteness: White women, race matters. Routledge, 1993.
Takaki, Ronald. A different mirror: A history of multicultural America (Revised edition). eBookIt. com, 2012.
Boas, Franz. Race, language, and culture. University of Chicago Press, 1940.
Taylor, Gary. "Epilogue: White Noise: What Eminem can tell us about white America (1704 2004)." Buying Whiteness: Race, Culture, and Identity from Columbus to Hip Hop: 341 362.
