Concepts and Contexts Journal: Race and Racialization

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Race and Racialization
Through this week’s readings, I have learned more about racism and racialization. The readings have improved my understanding of racism and how it comes about. With racism still prevalent in the current society, understanding how it comes about is necessary. When we understand how race and racism come about, it is my opinion that we will be in a better position to reduce its effects. I think if we change our perception of race, the discrimination that come with it will reduce significantly. I also think that given that reduction of race-based discrimination is not something that will happen at once. However, we have to start somewhere. We have to start through understanding how race comes about and then from there we can move towards deracialization. From the class readings, I have enriched my understanding of different facets of race and racialization.
While race in the past was understood to come about biologically or as a result of God’s will, modern perspective considers it as a product of social construction, meaning it comes about from human invention. In one of the class readings by Lee, Iwamura, and Fumitaka, in the colonial periods when Europeans imposed their notion of race and religion on Asians, Africans, and other indigenous people in America, race was thought to be biologically determined (131). The phenotypical differences that humans have with respect to skin color, hair texture, and head size depict the inborn biological variation of races. In the past, such differences were backed by science as well as theology and led to the construction of racial hierarchy that placed the white race above the others. From this perspective, race determines the human values, language, abilities, and mind. In addition, the civilization of human beings is determined by race as well as God. I t...