Thursday, June 3, 2010

Ethnic Notions

I have seen this before. We watched a couple minutes in American Novels but I have seen the whole video before.

I find it kind of pathetic.

I absolutely HATE stereotypes. (Though if you know me, I'm a huge hypocrite, but this will be saved for later.)

Humans aren't as intelligent as we think we are. (Yes I know I don't know everything, but unlike 99% of people, I'm able to accept this and move on...)

We are weak minded. We believe everything we see, everything we hear, everything we think. My favorite quote, I don't know by who, is: "Don't believe everything you think."

But back to my reaction to this video.

I guess you could say that I'm biased living in our little bubble we call McFarland.

We have maybe 20 blacks in our school district tops. (that may be a low number, just estimating.)

What I find funny is how many of them act the way this video portrays them. I hear so many people saying they want to rise above stereotypes, yet they still act like this.

And don't give me the crap about "They lived in crap conditions and this is all they were brought up on."

I personally believe if people really want to change, they can, with exceptions to retards. (Don't even get me started, I have full rights to this word now.)

They can act any way they want, but they have no right to bitch and moan when people call them out for it. I don't care as long as they don't get in my way or bring me down in any way.

The best example I can come up with is Tyler Perry and all those obnoxious black shows like "Are We There Yet?"

Way to become slaves to entertainment. Doesn't matter if you like it or not, you've just moved from pickin' cotton to making music, TV, movies.. etc.

What is "Race?"

I'm white.

I'm not going to deny this.

I was born this way.

The same way a person with "black" skin was born with "black" skin.

There are a few ways we can look at this.

The first way is from a genetics point of view, my personal favorite.

According to genetics, there are no "races" of people. We as a species are 99.99% identical in our genetic code. That .01% accounts for our skin color, our hair, all of our other phenotypes (looks).

"The term race is often used in biology taxonomicaly, as a synonym for subspecies. In this sense, human races are said not to exist, as all humans are classified as the subspecies Homo sapiens sapiens.[7] Many scientists have pointed out that traditional definitions of race are imprecise, arbitrary, have many exceptions, and have many gradations, and that the numbers of races delineated vary according to the culture making the racial distinctions. Thus, those rejecting the notion of race typically do so on the grounds that such definitions and the categorizations that follow from them are contradicted by the results of genetic research" -Wikipedia

The second way to look at this is through the anthropological and historical contexts. This is basically the way we look at it in class. Which honestly, is dumb as hell in my opinion. As a society we have done an amazing job at dividing our species into groups based on the tiniest things.

I don't know what it is. Why "white" people think skin color is important. Sure, in order to have the best offspring you can,you will go out and try to find a mate that is appealing to you and that will give you the best offspring. People take things like this too far.


There is a third way. This came to me while I was talking to myself on the way to work. As I do pretty much every day to get ideas out.

Think about cats and dogs. The house pet cat we all love (well, some) is all one species. There are different BREEDS of cats. Short hair, long hair, Persian... They're all one species yet they are classified based on their looks. They are no genetically different from each other than we "whites" are from "blacks." Then there are dogs, with some exceptions. I don't think it's possible to breed a big dog like a St. Bernard with a Chiwawa due to the fact that if it's a female Chiwawa, the puppies would likely never develop. But that's for biology class and a different day.