STUDY SECTION
2.2: THE
CONSTRUCTION OF
RACE
CONTENTS
SECTION 1
1 Introduction Slavery
SECTION 2
5
2 Overview- race, racism
and racial ideology
Race & Racism
SECTION 3 SECTION 6
3 Colonialism The enlightenment
2
1 SECTION 1
INTRODUCTION
RECAP
• Gender binary and the inclusionary-
exclusionary mechanisms it uses to
INTRODUCTION / SECTION 1
reinforce certain gendered norms
• They are inclusionary-exclusionary mechanisms because the norms
that they are grounded in and founded upon exclude those who do
not conform to these arbitrary and made-up standards
• The good news about social constructs is that when they no longer
serve a useful purpose or become outdated – because we know
more due to science and technology, for example – we can change
them
INTRODUCTION / SECTION 1
• Becoming aware of one’s own biases is the first step towards
unlearning harmful practices and ideas.
INTRODUCTION / SECTION 1
IMPORTANT WORDS
● Bias- “a preference in favor of, or against a person, group of people, or
thing” which is oftentimes unconscious and “rooted in inaccurate
information or reason” (The National Museum of African American
History & Culture, Smithsonian, n.d.).
● Biases are also part of being human.
o Implicit/subconscious -you are not aware of these or how you express
them. Implicit biases transpire “unconsciously, typically without
INTRODUCTION / SECTION 1
discriminatory intent” by well-meaning people (Maryfield, 2018).
o Explicit/Conscious - manifest in a myriad of ways, for example how we
think of and treat other genders, races and religions.
The “latter typically manifests as overt racism or
discrimination” (Maryfield,2018).
First, we will trace the history of
race, racism and racial ideology in
order to understand how and why it
was constructed.
AIM Second, we will think about how
implicit racial biases “can cause
individuals to unknowingly act in
discriminatory ways”, even when
they are “not overtly racist” but
INTRODUCTION / SECTION 1
have, nonetheless, had “their
perceptions” moulded by harmful
experiences that “result
in biased thoughts or
actions”
(Maryfield, 2018).
OVERVIEW- RACE, RACISM AND RACIAL IDEOLOGY / SECTION 2
OVERVIEW- RACE, RACISM AND
RACIAL IDEOLOGY
SECTION 2
2
Do you know what is meant by the terms race, racism and racial
ideology
OVERVIEW- RACE, RACISM AND RACIAL IDEOLOGY / SECTION 2
[Link]
(Origin of Everything, 2019b).
OVERVIEW- RACE, RACISM AND RACIAL IDEOLOGY / SECTION 2
One of the most important ideas put forward by this video is that
the construction of race was born from a combination of factors:
the rise of global capitalism + colonialism + slavery + the
Enlightenment.
3 SECTION 3
COLONIALISM
The practice of one country taking full
or partial political control of another
country and occupying it with settlers
for purposes of profiting from its
COLONIALISM / SECTION 3
resources and economy” (Longley,
2021).
● Imperialism- both practices encompass the hostile takeover of a
territory through political and economic means
● The goal of the colonizing countries is to profit by exploiting the
human and economic resources of the countries they colonized.
● In the process, the colonizers – sometimes forcibly – attempt to
impose their religion, language, cultural, and political practices
on the indigenous population” (Longley, 2021)
COLONIALISM / SECTION 3
SLAVERY / SECTION 3
SLAVERY
SECTION 4
4
● There are many kinds of slavery – including human trafficking, forced labour, and
forced and early marriage.
● For the purpose of this study section, we will specifically refer to what is known
as the Middle Passage or the transatlantic slave trade
● When roughly 12 million enslaved Africans were passaged across the Atlantic
Ocean to the Americas to work on sugar and tobacco plantations.
● The idea of race was thus created to impose a ‘natural order’ between races in
order to make economic exploitation viable.
SLAVERY / SECTION 4
● In order to justify slavery, the concept of race had to be invented.
● In other words, the idea of race was created to impose a ‘natural order’
between races in order to make economic exploitation viable.
Before working through the rest of this study section, watch the
following YouTube clip:
[Link]
ED-Ed
SLAVERY / SECTION 4
(Hazard, 2015)
But why were most slaves African?
?
To find an answer to this question,
watch the following video:
SLAVERY / SECTION 4
[Link]
UDFaqNgXc
(Origin of Everything, 2021).
RACE & RACISM / SECTION 5
RACE & RACISM
SECTION 5
5
RACE RACISM
• Historically, been used • Racism is the belief that the observable
to divide people into physical features of people, such as their
groups, often with the skin colour or hair, are indicators of
innate qualities that render them inferior
aim of enslaving
to others.
supposedly ‘inferior’
races • These ‘innate qualities’ include aspects
PRESENTATION TITLE / SECTION 1
like moral character and intellectual
• Thus, race affects how ability.
the world is structured
and how we perceive • To put it differently, racism “is a
ourselves and other system of advantage based on
people. race that involves systems and
institutions, not just individual
mindsets and actions.
RACISM
● The critical variable in racism is the impact (outcomes) not the intent
● Operates at multiple levels including individual racism, interpersonal racism, institutional
racism, and structural racism” (Smithsonian, n.d.)
● Racism does not merely denote individual biases or even group biases, but biases that
have become institutionalised throughout society in implicit and explicit ways.
● Thus, as the National Museum of African American History & Culture (Smithsonian, n.d.)
argue:
RACE & RACISM / SECTION 5
“Racism = Racial Prejudice (Unfounded Beliefs + Irrational Fear) + Institutional Power.”
● When it is explicit, we can think of it in terms of racial ideology, or the belief that certain
groups of people are superior to others and that this ‘natural order’ should be maintained
through specific institutions, such as laws and employment prospects, that uphold the
economic and political privileges of the perceived superior race.
THE ENLIGHTENMENT / SECTION 6
THE ENLIGHTENMENT
SECTION 6
6
● Many of these ideas were spread during the Enlightenment
which, positively, promoted ideals of freedom and the equality
of all human beings but,
● More negatively, thought that only certain populations were
capable of progress.
● So the Enlightenment ideals carried within it a contradiction and
THE ENLIGHTENMENT / SECTION 6
a deep prejudice, especially against non-European peoples.
● Kenan Malik argues, however, that the idea of race was not so
much a product of the Enlightenment itself, but rather because
of a complex overlap between different processes, such as
colonialism and slavery, as we have seen
As he says:
Enlightenment thinkers certainly often held deeply prejudiced views of
non-Europeans; it would be astonishing if they had not. But they were
largely hostile to the idea of racial categorisation. It was in the
nineteenth, not eighteenth, century that a racial view of the world took
hold in Europe, and it did so largely because of the ‘counter-
THE ENLIGHTENMENT / SECTION 6
Enlightenment’ views that Smith lauds. (Malik, 2013)
What Malik is suggesting here is that
in spite of their beliefs in freedom
and equality, the idea of progress
and capitalist expansion had
‘hijacked’ these ideas and ideals so
that the 18th century fascination
with human variety became
transformed into an obsession with
racial difference in the 19th century.
THE ENLIGHTENMENT / SECTION 6
This idea became further entrenched
because Charles Darwin’s ideas of
competition between species was
misapplied to justify slavery and
other forms of oppression
Please go through the reader to get more understanding of the abolishment of slavery and the
continuation of racism with elaborated examples.
IMPORTANTANT INFORMATION
This is why it is so important to decode our social constructs, to understand where they come from
and to think about our explicit and implicit biases. The most important thing about social constructs
is that they can be changed.
END!
Please ensure that you read through
your eFundi content before the next lesson.
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