TED Talk Reflection: Social Implications of Race by Dr. Tammy Hodo

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TEDTalk Reflection
Question 1
The TEDTalk I picked is The social implications of race, presented at Jacksonville University by Dr. Tammy Hodo, available at /watch?v=a4jPGhN5TCM. The presenter's argument in the video caught my attention about racism, a menace that has existed throughout global history and is more pronounced in America. I linked the video to the recent racist acts in the US, including the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis security officers. The incident attracted global attention, with most organizations and individuals joining the No Lives Matter campaign to rebuke it. In the sports sector, England's young stars, Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rushford, and Sancho, were racially abused after they failed to score determinant penalties in the EURPA league finals. Surprisingly, they are never racially abused when performing well in the pitch. Instead, they are praised and embraced as heroes. These examples compelled me to watch the TEDTalk by Tammy and relate the evolution of racism to various social constructs.
Question 2
Hodo's central discussion point in the TEDTalk is that racism is not real, and people are not born belonging to a particular race. Instead, social settings define a person's race. Dr. Hodo uses her life history to support her claim that racism is not real. She also uses various historical events like migration and slavery to describe the dynamism in the concept of race over time.
Hodo was born to an African American father and German mother, making her biracial. However, she says that she enjoyed white privileges because she lived with her mother. She grew up knowing that her family belonged to the white race instead of the black where her father hailed from. Dr. Hodo gave an example of when her racial orientation was tested. Her mother, a white, took her to a school that only admitted whites. She was denied admission because of her skin complexion until her mother protested that Hodo was her child, which made Hodo be accepted. This incident showed that racism is a social perception. She was admitted after learning that she belongs to a white person and not necessarily because she is white. Hodo gave another example of her brother, who was prompted to choose a race when he was biracial. There was no biracial option, meaning he had to be black or white, forcing a person to select a race they do not identify with. These convinced Dr. Hodo that race does not exist.
Immigrants moving to America were not white nor black but were sometimes racially segregated. Dr. Hodo gives an example of the Mexicans who are ethnic minorities and were subjected to racism at some point in their stay in the US. The people from China and Japan also belonged were referred to using their country of origin. This changed after some time, and they were categorized as people of Asian origin. Dr. Hodo wonders what changed to make Chinese and Japanese be categorized as Asians instead of the original references to their countries of origin.
Therefore, racial perception changes depending on factors like the seasons social, and political moods in a region. The people, especially native Americans and the whites, live on the racially privileged end. They determine the race of the b...