Reflection - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages The American culture has a socially constructed definition for the term “race” but the very existence of people from mixed race cultures pose a threat to the understanding of the term race. It is really shocking to face the fact that in the very liberal America that we see today, the attitude towards mixed race people has always been negative to such an extent that inter-racial marriages was not even supported based upon the fact they were unnatural and resulted in weak progenies. The Hybrid Degeneracy which says that mixed race people have “inferior” genes compared to the parental genes, theory lends support to this argument. This somewhat confused me since according to Darwin’s theory mixed genes lends more stability and even though some people think that mixed races would have bad genes, Darwin’s theory makes it clear that mixing of genes is better for human race.
Mixed race people were once considered dangerous, immoral and even unfit for the “superior” white society. However, no such consideration is made against the whites who might be indulged in something familiar as the non-whites. From the perspective of mixed race individuals, it must be really hard to select their allegiance to just one race because of which they are often seen as “traitors” or “sell-outs” especially in an hegemonic culture. This creates a problem for an individual’s identity since society compels mixed race people to re-define his identity altogether.
The article makes it clear that some people consider “white race” to be superior and consider the dilution of the genes as something unnatural and this superiority complex compels some people to deny the existence of mixed races in America.
The latter part of the reading highlights the fact that “race” is political, socio-cultural as well as biological in nature. Our society has created a bubble of thought about the ...Download file to see next pagesRead More