Take Home Exam for Com 100 - Essay Example

Appiah emphasizes that “American social distinctions cannot be understood in terms of the concept of race” (Appiah 102). America is a diverse nation; it is composed of different races, and no race should be superior over the other. America is known for its cultural multiplicity. That’s what describes it as a nation. Furthermore, Appiah believes that “the only human race in the United States, I shall argue, is the human race” (54).He believes that social divisions are merely beliefs that have been drawn from natural historical notion or causal theory.

This peculiarity requires a need for change and neutralization. Hence, the central point of this discussion shall focus on how Appiah’s claim on the existence of race would affect the way people think, act, speak and write by understanding the key points specified in Appiah’s article. Appiah claims that “what we learn when we learn a word like “race” is a set of rules for applying the term” (57). . Appiah argues that race cannot be identified by simply looking at the colour of the skin.

The identification of race based on colour is a flawed belief in that even variations in colour are collectively joined together in some applications. For instance, the United States Census Bureau does not classify “Latino” as a single race but, regardless of the range of colours they find themselves of having, the US Census Bureau classifies them as Hispanic; you do not find a racial classification that says “Strong Brown Hispanic” or “Light Brown Hispanic”, in other words, even colour is not recognized as indicative of race; also, if race is only based on the colour of the skin, it is quite obvious that black shades are not only endowed to African-Americans or Blacks.

Think about Ghanaians, Indians, or Tanzanians, they have skin colours that are relatively similar to Black Americans but much difference is being to them. Seen this way, there is a much telling reason that hides behind skin colour, which could either be a social or a cultural phenomenon because if all Blacks are regarded uniformly such that Indians are also considered as the same race with Black Americans based on their colour, Indians should have likewise experienced the stern upshots of social distinctions that are prevalent in the United States up until today.

So, granting that Appiah is indeed right that there is no human race by arguing that race cannot be indentified by colour, the consequences would be immense: first, it would result into a borderless world in which people could freely intermingle and interrelate with other people without a strong regard of their physical appearance and their cognitive abilities. Second, the manner in which we speak, think, and act