RACE

It's hard to comprehend, but race, scientifically speaking, race isn't really a thing. The idea was there were significant differences between the genetics of different groups of people, but this idea was heavily based in eugenics and doesn't have much validity to it. For example, some people in Africa are more genetically similar to someone from Europe than they are to someone else from Africa. There's not really any clear reason or rules by which to divide people into different races, it was just a mechanism by which to excuse racism. Race is, in effect, a social construct.

This isn't to say race isn't real or relevant. History was very much impacted by the concept of race, and to this day racism, or discrimination based on one's perceived race, is incredibly prevalent. And being raised in a world shaped by notions of race, we all absorb messages about race, consciously and unconsciously, as proven by many studies on explicit and implicit bias. So claiming anyone can be colorblind, or race neutral, while a nice sentiment, isn't really something that's possible, and that's okay. We don't choose the world we're born into, or the messages it teaches us before we can think and analyze for ourselves. Acknowledging we can be influenced by outside sources, and that we mightn't always recognize those influences is vital to challenging our own internalized biases and growing as a person.

How is Race related to Class and Capitalism?

• Race, Class, & Marxism - a short and good read