(gentle music)
- What is race?
Race is a social construct.
More importantly and more specifically
it's a modern social construct that has been used
to separate and divide individuals based upon
a notion of who is deserving, who is undeserving,
who is human, who is not human,
who belongs, who does not belong.
Race isn't the way that we've always,
when I say we, I mean, we humans,
have always worked to distinguish ourselves
or create distinction or difference
or identity or belonging.
- Well, I think this notion of social construct
is so important when we think about this,
because what it means is humans have made it.
I think that's part of the point
I hope people will take away is that it's not
a naturally occurring thing.
It's a category that we've created
as a way to do what you've just said,
which is divide people up about who gets what.
There's a hierarchy involved in that,
so there's particular group
and a narrative around that group,
who's then deserving somehow at the top and underneath.
And you can see the ways in which it's been constructed
because those narratives change over time.
Historically it becomes a really important piece,
which is where I think you were going
with this notion of evolution, which is,
it changes over time about who deserves things,
who's smart, based on these biological constructs
that we then put the social piece on top of.
- I think something that's important
about what both of you all have discussed
is that there's at least two properties
of when we talk about race.
There's the definitional, what we're trying to see
how we've defined race and how it has changed over time
among different cultural groups, different societies,
but also probably more important is what race does
and how it functions in the world.
So how it distributes.
- It does a certain kind of work.
- It does a certain type of work.
So it's socially constructed,
invested in giving a lot of weight to determine
life outcomes, access to quality neighborhoods and housing,
health care, education, and not in a one-to-one way.
- Employment.
- Employment, but we've really invested a lot
into this notion of race
and we've done a lot to shape our social world
as a result of it.
(gentle music)
- I feel like the history of race really comes about
with anthropologists and other folks
who are really trying to make sense of
and categorize the world for particular ends and means.
So it starts as a way to really build a pecking order
of individuals, who belongs, who doesn't,
who has control over particular kinds of resources,
whether it's land or whether or it's people,
whether it's manufacturing processes.
And then that later becomes who has access to things
like institutions of higher education or who has smarts.
So Lewis Terman in the early part of the 20th century
creates this thing that becomes IQ tests,
and later that evolves into other kinds of tests
and it serves as a sorting mechanism.
So I think the history of race, really in many ways,
it's constructed by humans as a way to sort people.
- To sort people for the benefit of resources,
both natural resources and man-made resources.
And I shouldn't say benefit,
I should really say the exploitation
of both man-made and human resources,
as well as natural resources.
- And I think part of the-
well, what I struggle with in answering this question,
because depending on different kind of,
let's say cultural context between societies,
folks have always been invested in this,
determining this is our in-group and this is our out-group.
And I think this is, if I recall correctly,
that's one of the points that Cornel West
makes in the chapter, I think it's
"A Genealogy of Modern Racism,"
where he talks about the way Europeans
categorize us versus them,
whether it was based on religious terms,
whether it was based on cultural assumptions about the other
already predisposed societies to easily substitute
religious difference as the primary signifier
of distinction with race.
But those things also come up at the same time
of colonialism, the rise of slavery
in which you now have an ideology or an idea.
Let's say an idea that can now justify
the exploitation of people.
(gentle music)
- Race matters today because, I mean,
democracy matters today.
The notion of who is innocent
and who's guilty matters today,
the notion of what is and is not an alien matters today,
race matters today because who belongs, who is an immigrant,
who is a citizen, who is an illegal alien matters today.
Race matters today because justice will always matter,
will always be important.
Liberty matters today, therefore race matters today.
Race matters today because race is a fundamental construct
of what we understand, how we understand ourselves to be
specifically within an American context, American,
within a human context, human.
- Yeah, I think something that you mentioned
that really ties in nicely to what we discussed earlier
about the notion of race being a social construct,
but still having, that's still very consequential.
And when you mentioned democracy in a similar way, right?
And so I think tying that in,
race matters because we at least as Americans
really galvanize around these large ideas,
we send people to war based on these ideas.
We try to collectively move hopefully forward
to a better and more equitable future
living up to these ideals.
- Of liberty, justice equality for all.
- Right, right.
And so I think in the same way that democracy
has kind of captivated our imagination,
has spurred social movements.
- Constructed our sense of reality.
- And what is possible.
- I think race has been one of those things
that has continued to undercut the possibilities
of what we can be and what we can achieve,
because we still can't seem to get away from this notion
that we're not all equally human,
all equally deserving, all equally responsible
for governing our society.
- All equally worthy of the benefit of a liberal democracy.
- Absolutely, absolutely.
- Race matters because racism still exists,
which is the ways in which people then take up this notion
of race to become this notion of belonging
that gets operationalized in a way that someone has
access to fewer kinds of resources.
- And opportunities.
- And opportunities, so I think that's
the other big piece for me.
(gentle music)