Week 1 Disrupting Racial Myth Assignment #1 – Is the race idea a myth?

Dr. Mitzi Carter – Anthropology of Race and Ethnicity

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What is a myth? In every society, we have myths or stories and explanations that help us make sense of the world around us. We sometimes call them “common sense” beliefs and we rarely stop to analyze how those stories started circulating in the firs place. These beliefs are incredibly powerful. They impact the way we treat one another and they shape our assumptions about people. Anthropologist Agustin Fuentes cautions us to be more aware of the active “practice of making a large set of assumptions from a small bit of data and then asserting it as “truth” about the natural world…” especially when it comes to myths around race, gender and sex.

Myths also tend to shape our confirmation bias. What is confirmation bias? FIU Professor Heather Blatt has summarized this well, “Confirmation bias is the tendency to interpret, remember, and especially seek out information that confirms beliefs a person already has. This means that when new information confirms someone’s beliefs, they tend to embrace it, and when new information conflicts with someone’s beliefs, they tend to reject it.”

Examples? You can probably think of several day-to-day myths many of us carry around, from notions about who is better at sports and dancing to who is better at math and science to how variations in our physical appearance is correlated to inherited abilities. Sometimes, we may not be able to easily identify the myths that are the foundations for

http://h%22p://www.utne.com/arts/human2nature2ze0z1305zpit.aspx
many of the cultural assumptions we have. That is what we are going to try to unearth in these three writing exercises.

How is this relevant to studying race and ethnicity?

In the 1800’s, doctors like James Marion Sims performed multiple painful experiments on enslaved women to develop new techniques in the field of gynecology. Sims refused to use any anesthesia on these enslaved women and caused them excruciating pain, nearly killing them in some cases. Even some of the white doctors he worked with could not stomach this practice and forced other enslaved women to hold down the women on the table while tortured through pain. These practices were based on the strong and “common sense” myth at the time that black people were less sensitive to pain than white people. That myth did not suddenly disappear once slavery ended. Those “common sense” myths about race continued to be absorbed and recirculated, even until today. We will discuss how later in this session.

There are other myths that are powerful and hard to dismiss. Some of the major disciplines in academia are often largely to blame for this. Anthropology in particular perpetuated the myths about race. In our early beginnings, the classification of all objects into their “proper

scientific” categories was a very popular practice.

That classification system moved the greater population away from folk beliefs to classifying all things in these “scientific formulas.” Scientists were fascinated by head measurements and hair texture, nose width and height of people. They tried to make sense of all the human variations and put them into boxes, often with hierarchical values added to them creating a very messy picture of “races” of humans. Today, we are left with the remnants of these messy and oftentimes bizarre ideas.

In this class, we will be uncorking some of these myths.

Goals: The goal of this exercise is to try to identify and correct any assumptions you may possess about race and ethnicity. Without such work, we continue to blindly practice cultural practices that are based on myths absorbed over time. This assignment will give you a foundation from which to better understand how racial formation occurs in the United States. Each time you complete one of these assignments, you will explore information about authors and texts you have read, seeking out additional factual information to correct or adjust what you thought you knew about a subject or text prior to reading it in this course.

This assignment will take you about an hour and a half to two hours to complete.

Step 1: Begin by freewriting (typed or handwritten notes are both OK) for 10-15 uninterrupted minutes on the following questions:

• Imagine that I’m an alien anthropologist. I’ve materialized on this strange planet Earth and was specifically sent here to study you strange inferior species we call “human.” In my observations, I’ve noted that you all frequently use the world “race.”

• 1) Tell me— what is race? Please do not answer, “it’s a social construction.” I still don’t understand. Remember, I’m not from this planet, so explain to me how I can explain it to my great planet in a galaxy far, far away. Is it something inherited? Is it cultural? Try to give me a quick and dirty explanation. Explain it to me like you only had enough time to tell me in a short elevator ride up to a 25th floor in a building.

• 2) How do you know who is of a different “race?” Is it because of skin color? Language? Where one lives? Does the government say who is who or do you determine it yourself? Basically, what is the criteria for membership in that “race?” 3) Are you the same “race” if you move to another country? What about a different state in your own country?

• 4) Are people of different “races” represented evenly in your media, jobs, leadership? Does it cost the same to adopt all children or does it cost more to adopt a child who is “white?” Why or why not? Can you give an example of who is absent or central to stories/films/telenovelas you like or dislike? 5) How do you think ideas about “race” began to form in the United States? Was it because of slavery or something else? Do you think it was “natural” for people to start organizing people into separate “races?”

• 6) Explain the difference between race and ethnicity please. I met a man who I thought was Chinese. I tried to apply the racial logic I thought I learned while doing anthropological fieldwork on Earth. This man only spoke Spanish. He explained that his parents are both second generation Chinese but he was born and raise in Cuba and always identifies as Hispanic. How should I make sense of this?

• 7) Is there a way to tell if someone is of a different race through our DNA? 8) Lastly, from where do you get your ideas about race? What are the sources of your information? Church, media, family, friends, interactions, etc. Explain.

Once you have finished, set your notes aside and save them. You will be expected to submit these notes in the last step. If they’re handwritten, you’ll need to photograph them).

Step 2: Read at least five of the following sources and spend at least one hour exploring the links. The first two links are required. Then choose three more to read. Of course you may read more. You are expected to take and submit notes as you read. You will need to refer to these notes in Step 3.

1. Human Variation: Go through each of the short interactive site and click on each of the six short links. Take the quick Human Variation Quiz at the end. This will really help you understand our human variation without relying on the idea of “race.”

2. The history of the idea of race and why it matters — this is one of my favorite explanations about the race idea written by an anthropologist. Very clear explanation.

https://understandingrace.org/HumanVariation
https://www.understandingrace.org/resources/pdf/disease/smedley.pdf
3. https://www.pewresearch.org/interactives/what-census-calls-us/ (Play with this interactive online site and try to determine the different racial and ethnic categories from 1790 to now). What does this tell you about the way we think about race?

4. What do our genes say about human difference? This is an excellent 20 something min podcast that explains why race scholars do not like recreational genomic testing (ancestry.com and 23 and Me, etc) try to “biologize” race and monetize stories about “race.” Can race really be traced through these tests? Listen and be able to explain it.

5. Racism by the Numbers: Watch this short 4 min video on some of the racial inequalities in the US — stats focused.

6. The legacy of slavery in modern day medicine — 8 min video.

7. Why can’t we divide humans into subspecies like many animals? Good quick read to answer this question.

8. The historical foundations of race — read and watch the embedded videos.

Step 3: Now identify information that is new and/or surprising to you. You may want to consider: What did you specifically learn about race or ethnicity? Was there information that was new or surprising to you? If so, why was it new or surprising? What doesn’t surprise you and why? Are there other interpretations of the ideas you held about race and ethnicity before you began? Be specific and be sure to cite the source.

http://speakingofrace.ua.edu/podcast/dna-ancestry-testing-and-race
http://ancestry.com

http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-01-11.htm
https://nmaahc.si.edu/learn/talking-about-race/topics/historical-foundations-race
This format will be fine for this assignment: (author name/website, page #). For example, “I was surprised to learn that race is XYZ, and that in the 1600’s XYZ (Zinn 150).

Write down at least 3 new points you learned addressing some of the questions above.

Step 4: Now write a short analysis of 350-500 words in which you reflect on your experience of researching a subject you thought you knew about. What was it like? What are your thoughts about the topics you researched in Step 2? Did your interpretations of it change at all over the time you spent on this activity? If so, how have they changed any “common sense” beliefs you might have had as you read?

Step 5: After writing and revising your analysis, think of a title of a blog post you could write for your peers. Do not refer to this assignment or this class in the title. The title should be about your analysis, separated by a blank line, and centered on the page. It should capitalize any nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs used. This title goes above your analysis.

Step 6: Include one blank line below the end of your title and analysis. Then write down your word count. Include your free write notes from Step 1 after the word count (either as a clear photograph if handwritten or typed). Submit it in the proper drop box on Canvas in the Week 1 folder.

Use this format below to submit your assignment:

Don’t include your name—when you upload it to Canvas, we’ll see it’s from you! Your paper will be peer reviewed so it’s better that it’s anonymous.

Title here (from step 5)

Analysis (from step 4, refer specifically to the notes you took in steps 2 and 3)

Word count: _________

Paste your notes (from step 1 and the three new points you learned from step 3)