Friday, January 8, 2010
Results of Sorting People Quiz
So, I took the quiz for sorting people. And I gotta tell ya all. I got like almost every single one of them wrong. When you think about people in the big picture we are all so much more diverse than what it seems and you can't ever necessarily "peg" one person as this or that. Another thing that threw me about this quiz, was that they had the people seperated by what they considered themself to be. Which I found kind of almost not fair. But, it also teaches not to just automatically assume that because you look one way, that thats exactly what you have to be.
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Very interesting -- why do you think it struck you as "amost not fair" that people get to self-identify? And that their self-identification may not be based on appearance? What else is it based on?
ReplyDeleteWell, after discussing "race" over a period of two classes, it seems that everybody has a different opinion on what "race" actually is. I'm still not for sure, what everybody in class thinks of it as. But, when I think of race, I think of the chemical make-up of a person. So, when you ask me to sort people by race, I'm sorting them on like what percentage of something you are or your ancestry. Or what your parents were. So, when I learned that the people self-identified themselves as what they consider theirself. I was like, " I thought we were sorting you, on what you "are" not what you think of yourself as. This is really hard to explain, it makes so much more sense in my head. :) Does that help at all?
ReplyDeleteYes, it does. This exercise is about highlighting our own thinking. It has been a success if you had this realization, as you say, "when i think of race, I think of the chemical make-up of a person." But it has not been a success if you still think that that is the case. The point is, it is NOT based on the chemical make-up of a person. In the middle ages, people thought of blood "humors" -- that too much of one chemical in a person, or even just too much blood -- might make a person this way or that. They were struggling to do what we can do to a much greater degree now given scientific knowledge of DNA and genetics, which tell us that there are no subcategories into which our species may be sorted on the basis of chemistry. We are, remember, less "chemically" differentiated than fruit flies. At the end of the exercise, the ideal would be for some "unlearning" to occur as you see that race, while appearing to be exactly what you thought, is not at all what you thought. If it's not that, what is it? It seems almost as if you have not let go of that misapprehension about what race is (chemical) because you don't feel confident about what race IS, if not that. It's interesting that removing race as the category we thought it was may leave us feelig like something is missing, simply because "sorting" people in this way has insinuated itself into our thinking as something that is necessary -- or even just possible. In reality, it is neither. Race is what we call a "socially constructed" category (as opposed to a biological one.) That is, the category is based on perception and experience and it may often -- conincidentally -- overlap with appearance, leading one to associate it with physical (and, ultimately, "chemical") characteristics. Such thinkig ends up, fundamentally as being as ungrounded in science as the medieval doctors worrying about humors and blood letting to get the bile out of their patients! It may be that for a deep thinker like yourself, we have not done enough to "reconstruct" race as a category based on culture, ethnicity, perception, and historical experience. It might be helpful to review some of the other links on the site -- especially the ones that show the history of the evolution of our thinking about race, and racism. In any case, knowing what something is NOT can make you tremendously knowledgeable! It's great place from which to begin learning, especially for someone with your abilities as a thinker & discoverer.
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