Philosophy: Race, The Individual and Community-racial Interaction

I hold that race, without the existence of Racism, has no effect upon the relationship between an individual and the community. Race, as it exists independent of racism, is an arbitrary classification that has no significance upon a person's identity and experience. Outside of the context of a racially-charged and motivated society, racial "traits may be thought to be distributed in such a way across the races that there is no clear-cut hierarchy among races." (Mills, 46). Since, however, racism is both real and prevalent in society; one's race has large implications upon their relationship with the world community.

The racial constructivist view, in which "there are no 'natural' racial divisions between human groups but rather a continuous spectrum of varying morphological traits," (Mills, 47) is most in line with this hypothesis. It supposes that because these racial divisions are human constructs, different divisions could have been made within another societal context. It goes further, then to establish that "the decision as to where to draw the line is politically motivated, to establish and maintain the privileges of particular groups." (Mills, 48). A person's racial reality, then, exists not as a universal truth, but as a fact contingent upon the attitudes of the communities of which they are a member. Racial divisions and constraints were not created for the sake of classifying human beings with the same scientific methodology that divides mammals from reptiles, but for the sake of dividing human beings into "others" so that social hierarchies could be created. Race has implications on one's status because these racial divisions "are not epistemic (getting at the truth) but political (establishing and maintaining privilege);" (Mills, 48).