Racial Myth Assignment
Week 1
Disrupting Racial Myth Assignment #1 – Is the race idea a myth?
Dr. Mitzi Carter – Anthropology of Race and Ethnicity
——
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 someones
beliefs, they tend to embrace it, and when new information conflicts with
someones 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 1800s, 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 Im an alien anthropologist. Ive
materialized on this strange planet Earth and
was specifically sent here to study you
strange inferior species we call human. In
my observations, Ive noted that you all
frequently use the world race.
1) Tell me what is race? Please do not
answer, its a social construction. I still
dont understand. Remember, Im 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 cant 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 doesnt 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.
https://www.pewresearch.org/interactives/what-census-calls-us/
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 1600s 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:
Dont include your namewhen you upload it to Canvas, well
see its from you! Your paper will be peer reviewed so its better
that its 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)
