My point is that reality is often what we percieve it to be. If we never directly engage that perception with dialogue and study, we'll never alter reality. We'll continue to be forcefed that we're all created equal, even while most people don't believe it. And we'll do it quitely and like it because that's what we're supposed to do as good, compassionate humans.
That all depends on your definition of "equal".
There are differences between different races, but the debate rages on as to how much/little can be attributed to genetic and biological factors, and how much/little is due to circumstances outside of biology: environment, culture, etc.
Not to mention, social and environmental factors completely alter the concept of "equality" from the moment we're born. I was born in the United States, into a lower-middle class Mexican family with immigrant parents who spoke imperfect English. My closest childhood friend is Vietnamese, whose parents came here in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. I'm in Berkeley, he's in a community college after being kicked out of a university for a variety of reasons I will not discuss here. If you wanted to compare ethnic trends to our paths of success (by traditional American economic standards), you'd be puzzled by that result. Did racial differences matter there? Or was it perhaps something else?
We went to the same schools, had the same friends and classes, and had some common goals in mind. But he wants to go into engineering. I want to go to law school. He's into anime. I'm into science fiction. He's one of the youngest siblings in the family. I'm the oldest in mine. His parents constantly evaluate him, and use me as a comparison point (which doesn't make him feel much better). They wanted to see him get into Berkeley or Stanford. My parents, on the other hand, can't even agree on the college question; my mom wants me to do what I want to do, and she supports my law school decision; my dad, while proud of my college success, thinks my time would have been better invested in real estate.
We seem to have had equal opportunities in our education - something you don't see often in comparing any two people, since education is NOT equal in this country. But he lives within a very different family, a very different culture, and under very different personal circumstances.
Would you cite his race as the explanation? Or is it something else?
And on the subject of reality... reality is
never the same for any two people. And that is why I agree that we should challenge these perceptions - but not because we see reality as it is; rather, because we DON'T see reality as it is.
We have multiple lenses through which we view the world through - culture, social ties, family upbringing, race, the media, politics, etc.. Perceived reality is the product of those lenses. Does a true reality exist? Yes, but none of us ever see all of it. We can certainly see more by borrowing the lenses of others, and that is the real goal: understanding the world through someone else's eyes, to broaden your own perception of it.
The goal is not to believe that we're all the same, but that every individual deserves to be judged through more than your own lenses. The history of the world is full of travesties and tragedies that resulted from our adherence to stereotypes about our differences. But our adherence to a singular vision of equality has done just as much damage.
Clearly, we're missing the mark again.
The whole concept of race is pretty general and unspecific anyway - what do you call the offspring of an african and a european? What if the african is "white" and the european is "black?" What if their offspring is moca coloured?
+1. We can argue about the terminology all we want, but at some point, we have to compromise and pick some terms, or we'll bring the discussions of the subject to a grinding halt.
Bringing in a personal example... I can call myself "Mexican", "Chicano", "Mexican-American", "Latino", "Latin-American", "Hispanic", "Minority", "Colored", "White", "French", "Spanish", "Aztec", "Toltec", "Indigenous", "Native American"...
Better yet, if you were to look at me, you'd spend a long time guessing what I am. I usually ask people to guess my ethnicity for fun... I've had everything from "Arabic" to "Middle Eastern" to "Russian" to "English" to "Venezuelan"... few people ever get it right the first time. I'm a product of the melting pot.
My point is... if I don't pick a term, it'll make for a LONG and confusing discussion. So, I usually just refer to myself as Chicano (because I think it's an adequate term), and that makes everything from statistical analysis to going out on a date a hell of a lot easier.
Funny guy. The ancestors of those individuals referred to as black are from south of the Sahara, that is were those ethnic groups -- I'm not gonna list 'em all -- originated. Any yeah, I know there are the British (Anglos, Irish, Scottish), Afrikaners, Germans, Portuguese, and some Indians and a few East Asians here and there but I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the ethnic groups that originated in Africa.
