Understanding Race
Understanding Race What if we lived in a world where there were no races? What if people were not discriminated against because of the color of their skin or because they are different from what we see as acceptable? This is what Kwame Anthony Appiah tries to examine in his essay “Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections. ” Appiah tries to point out that “American social distinctions cannot be understood in terms of the concept of race. ” (102) That America is made up of so many different races that no race is the more superior or in other cases inferior to one another.
America is defined by its cultural diversity; it is what makes America the nation that it is. It is the reason that we as Americans have freedoms other people don’t have. It is also one of the reasons we are one of the most powerful nations in the world. The concept of cultural diversity in America defines us and makes us the nation we are today. Appiah states in his text that he “Wants to explain why American social distinctions cannot be understood in concepts of race: the only race in the United States is the human race. He continues on with “I want to show that replacing the notion of race with the notion of culture is not helpful: the American social distinctions that are marked using racial vocabulary do not correspond to cultural groups, either. ” And finally wraps up his argument with “I want to propose that, for analytical purposes, we should use instead the notion of racial identity, which I will try to explore and explain. ”(102) These key main points in Appiah’s text clearly tell us the direction he is going to go. But I will argue that races make America what it is by looking at examples you and I see every day around us.
Races are good for a nation; they add contrast to an otherwise dull world. Races are what make people unique and different. Many people spend their entire life trying to differentiate themselves from everyone else race and culture is what does this. Finally Appiah wraps up his entire essay with this conclusion “You can’t get much of a race concept, ideationally speaking from any of these traditions: you can get various possible candidates from the referential notion of the meaning, but none of them will be much good for explaining social or psychological life, and none of them corresponds to the social groups we call “races” in America. (102) What I try and will conclude with is that Appiah is right in a way but he is also wrong that these traditions can correspond to races. Social and psychological life can also correspond to different cultures. Now if we examine modern day examples that you or I could see around us every day, if you go for a walk outside in a larger city you are going see different things depending on the area that you live in for example living in a rural North Dakota, which is predominantly white, is different from living in inner city Chicago, which is predominantly black.
The people living in rural North Dakota are going to speak and behave different, from the person in inner city Chicago. The main reasons are the areas they grew up in are dominated by different races with different cultures. I am not trying to separate people based on skin color. So, after looking at that example one could still argue with Appiah that if the black people of inner city Chicago would have grown up in North Dakota they would have been the same as white people who lived in rural North Dakota.
What I say to that is you are probably right, mainly because one can’t prove it one way or another, but the point is that cultural diversity is used to differentiate people from one another. Now if we analyze this we can see that maybe the social distinctions between these two people I talked about earlier one can argue that it is the people around that person that makes them act the way they do. Isn’t that what culture is let’s take a look at the definition of culture. “Culture is the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc. (Dictionary. com) now from this definition one can make social distinctions based on these qualities listed above. So not only can you determine race from the way someone acts but you can also tell their race by their traditions, the food they eat, etc. Another example could be if you look at sports. It doesn’t matter which it could be basketball, hockey, football, lacrosse, soccer, tennis, or volleyball. I think you get the point. It also doesn’t matter what level amateur, college, professional. All these sports you can see racial differences between the athletes.
Professional Football for example, if you break it down by position you can see which culture dominates it. The Quarterbacks are mostly white. The reason for this being is that most of the black people are already running backs or wide receivers the white are more accurate and have a better developed football sense or the ability to see the field. If we look at quarterback ratings which is the system for rating quarterbacks based on completion percentage, average yards per attempt, percentage of touchdown passes, and percentage of interceptions.
We see white quarterback’s passer ratings are higher. (Espn. go. com) Punters and Kickers almost all of them are white. Mainly because most punters and kickers are ex-soccer athletes which is another sport dominated by white people in America, around the world it is more culturally diverse and most star high school athletes aren’t the punters and kickers they are usually the kids that don’t play much so to play they learn how to kick and that is all they do usually the undersized kids. The one position in football that is about fifty-fifty, which I find interesting, is the Linebacker position.
To be a linebacker all it takes is attitude and a strong desire to basically hurt someone. Now as a contrast if you look at professional hockey almost the entire NHL is white, there are a few exceptions though; that sport is dominated by the white races again, and again I ask is this a coincidence, no it really isn’t. Because a large percentage of the professional hockey players are from the Midwest, Northern New England, Canada, Russia, or European nations all regions dominated by mostly white people so the reason that there are not many black people isn’t really surprising. Wikipedia-Ice hockey players by Nationality) Now if we take a look at the NBA it is a league mostly dominated by 7 foot black guys. So as you can see one can pick out many examples of cultural differences and I only named a few you could cover so many more examples in the realm of sports but I’m afraid this paper would go on forever. Now I’m not saying the entire NBA is black or that every Quarterback is white but I am merely just trying to draw difference between positions in a sport and break them down by cultures.
If we analyze this now we might see a trend most of the black big name football players come from the southern states such as Texas, Florida, Alabama or California. This isn’t a coincidence after the civil war into today African Americans dominate the Southern half of the United States. Where football is an important thing to the communities there, take New Orleans, Louisiana for example which according to the US census bureau is dominated by 67. 25% black population,(quickfacts. census. ov) after hurricane Katrina this city rallied behind and put all their hope into their professional football team to win a super bowl and they did. If we take a look at Texas high school football, which is the most important thing in small communities once the game is over the entire town talks about it until the next week. Now one may ask what does this have to do with anything with my argument. Well as the southern states are by blacks, where most of the football recruits come from.
The northern states, such as North Dakota, which is 90% white population based on the US census (quickfacts. census. gov), which has only had 50 players from North Dakota play in the NFL since 1932. (databasefootbal. com) Does this have something to do with the area? No, because if you look at it a white Wide receiver with a high talent should have the same chance to get into the NFL as a black Wide receiver with the same talent level, but is this true?
No, it is not the case and in most cases the black Wide receiver will go on to be successful in the NFL but the white one will play college for four years maybe a couple years in the NFL with limited playing time then retire. The reason being that generally the bigger the hands the better the receiver, the black race which has larger hands then most of the white race is more successful in the wide receiver position. In conclusion although Appiah would like to think that nobody can be separated into groups based on cultural diversity in America it still happens.
It is something we see every day walking to class, watching sports on TV or any other every day activities we do as Americans. Most of the time it isn’t a bad thing sometimes it does lead to stereotypes but usually the people using those stereotypes are more insecure about themselves so they use these insecurities to try and make other people insecure. Cultural Diversity is a good thing it creates friendly competition among people to better themselves and it helped to form the nation it is today. As prominent philosopher Aesop puts it, “United We Stand, Divided We Fall. ”
