WHITE, BLACK, AND ALL SHADES BETWEEN.
The classification is an attempt to understand humans along anthropological parameters. Immediately, a problem emerges the classifications are based solely on the looks and not the content of the characters of the people being classified. It's not even based on scientific or biological parameters.
I have always been fascinated by the concept of ‘race’ and race relations. The idea that humans can be classified along physical attributes is truly intriguing. Race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as inherently distinct by society – Wikipedia (what can we do without Wikipedia?) For good reason, anthropology has studied human existence for years. According to Wikipedia Anthropology is the study of humans and human behavior and societies in the past and present. Social anthropology and cultural anthropology study the norms and values of societies. Linguistic anthropology studies how language affects social life. Carleton Stevens Coon was an American physical anthropologist, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, lecturer, and professor at Harvard University, and president of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists who divided humanity into five races:
· Caucasoid (White) race.
· Negroid (Black) race.
· Capoid (Bushmen/Hottentots) race.
· Mongoloid (Oriental/ Amerindian) race.
· Australoid (Australian Aborigine and Papuan) race.
All shades.
The classification is an attempt to understand humans along anthropological parameters. Immediately, a problem emerges the classifications are based solely on the looks and not the content of the characters of the people being classified. It's not even based on scientific or biological parameters. The classification is based on looks! Europeans live largely in Europe and they are mostly light-skinned therefore they are grouped as Caucasians so also Africans are largely dark-skinned and have also been grouped as Negroid.
You'll find that among the average African, there are varying degrees of dark to light brown skin so also among the average European, there are varying degrees of dark to light pink skin. But we have seen time and again that nature plays the joker, the case of a Nigerian couple who gave birth to a pink-skinned blond-haired baby girl with all the features of a European, made the news a few years ago.
The funny thing is that nature has a huge sense of humour. During the apartheid regime of South Africa, another case of ordinary white parents birthing a black baby girl in 1955 happened, Sandra Laing was classified as black by the colour-crazed regime while the white parents looked on helplessly. The movie Skin (2008) was based on Sandra Liang’s life and directed by Anthony Fabian and it won several awards. She is also the subject of the documentary In Search Of Sandra Liang (1977) directed by Anthony Thomas for the BBC and banned by the apartheid regime.
Other movies based on her extraordinary story include; Sandra Lian: A Spiritual Journey (2000), and Skin Deep: The Story Of Sanda Liang (2009). There is definitely a long brutal history of this colourization going back to the barbaric transatlantic slave venture to the civil rights movement down to the apartheid chokehold of South Africa then on to the present-day debate of racial profiling, illegal migration across the Atlantic and extrajudicial killings across America particularly.
The classification has reinforced the false belief that humans are different and therefore must be classified as such. To back up this belief, several scientific research studies have been undertaken by notable scientists and teams of scientists across very credible institutions all over the world. All of the research done in an exegetical manner shows that humans are essentially the same! The same engine under the hood!
Deoxyribonucleic acid also known as DNA, is a self-replicating material that is present in nearly all living organisms as the main constituent of chromosomes. It is the carrier of genetic information. Deoxyribonucleic acid is a thread-like chain of nucleotides carrying the genetic instructions used in the growth, development, functioning, and reproduction of all known living organisms and many viruses. DNA is the code life is given by. All humans share 99.9% similarity at the DNA level. Essentially The 0.01% differentiates you from the other person, your skin colour just happens to be a part of the 0.01% difference and it is not enough to serve as a basis for any sort of classification. America is the hub of racial tension and relations, they define what the rest of the world believes about race in all its shades.
The country prides itself as the land of the free, God's own country but they grapple with the most basic of human interactions. Racial profiling and killings have become daily news items. The most advanced country on earth which has given us the most tech innovations and provided leadership in various other sectors in the last century still grapples with racially motivated tensions. I can not possibly write an all-encompassing essay on the issue of race and racial tension but I can offer a suggestion that may help turn the tide for the better.
Acceptance
My submission is pretty simple but first I will have to talk about acceptance. I watch movies and American news channels and I can gauge reactions on social media as well. The majority of Americans and by extension the Western world ‘accepts’ white, black, and race as relevant things, important enough to feature prominently in politics, economics, and the people's mindset.
Maybe it's their fascination with demographics, the overwhelming need to group people into statistically relevant subsets, or something else I do not understand yet. Take the average African American rapper for instance, he or she readily accepts the term Nigger as the hip way to address another person more frequently than their African-American peers. There are companies and associations created along this imaginary line of colour, take BET (Black Entertainment Company) for instance, the insidious Ku Klux Klan and several other multi-million dollar enterprises all based on colour!
The average “white” American and by extension Europeans struggle with that word. In one of the episodes of the sitcom Blackish created by the talented Kenya Barris and featuring Anthony Anderson (Dre Johnson) and Tracee Ellis Ross (Rainbow) Diana Ross’s daughter, Dre Johnson’s boss, and colleges struggle with the “N” word and Dre Jonson told them at some point in the episode that Whites can’t use that word and that Blacks have earned the use of the word by the virtue of their history. It's confusing really. Nigger is just a word and the moment you say it's more than that then it is truly more and in that moment you accept it for what it connotes.
Coming to terms
We first need to not accept it as a thing, it isn’t. That is not to say four hundred years of slavery didn’t happen, it did but we need to move past it.
Now that acceptance has been dealt with my submission is this; every man woman and child belongs to the human race, not the black, white, or red race. We are not our skin, we are not our hair (I miss India Arie), we are the things we do, we are our DNA we are our future, we are the realization that we are truly more in the deepest sense of the word as such we should view each person not as a stereotypical part of a larger demographic but as human beings.
Humans come with excess baggage already, they can be irrational, loving, kind, and violent. They may be rude and crude, jovial and humble but they remain human! Once we realize that, we can correct the defective ideology of racial supremacy and suffering. No rational human wants any harm to come his or her way and as such will not wish harm on anyone if not as a noble action it’ll be as a self-preservation move.
Colors are beautiful and we are all shades of humans.
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