Shaquille Blackstock
        Staff Writer

What is race? On Monday, Oct. 19, UNC-Greensboro hosted a multidisciplinary discussion in the School of Education Building around precisely that question, titled “what is race?”

The featured speakers of the event included: Dr. Robert Anemone, professor and head of anthropology, Dr. Shelly Brown-Jeffy, the interim head of sociology at UNCG and Dr. Joseph Graves, Professor and Associate Dean of research at N.C. A & T University and the Joint School of Nanoscience and Engineering.

The presentation was facilitated by Dr. Tara T. Green, Director of African American and African Diaspora Studies at UNCG.

News that made these professors, especially Green, see the need for this discussion were the Texas pool party incident, in which black children were violently detained, the Rachel Dolezal revelation and the Charleston church shooting.

What compounded the significance of these events is that they all occurred within two weeks of each other. At the time, the confederate flag was also taken down in South Carolina, which sparked widespread debate across the country concerning race.

Graves began the presentation with the claim that race is a myth, citing two books he wrote on the subject.

“There is an elephant in the living room, so to speak, so I aim to research both the biological and social definitions of race. Socially defined races do exist, and these have an effect on people’s livelihood. There are no differences in biological races,” said Graves.

The audience intrigued, Graves then explained the way social categories of race function.

“Further, even scholars from humanities and the biological sciences disagree about the meanings of race. Everyday Americans also get these confused, and this results in neo-racism, a direct result of this confusion. Neo racists often argue that because our species does not display biological races, racism cannot exist. Socially defined races exist precisely because of social dominance hierarchy. So with this thinking, Trayvon Martin was killed because of socially defined racism, not biologically defined race,” said Graves.

Graves continued to argue this with reference to scientific and genetic classifications of race.

“We would conclude that races would not exist if we classified ourselves like animals. Socially constructed race arbitrarily utilizes aspects of morphology, geography, culture, language, religion and other things in the service of a social dominance hierarchy. The biological criteria for races fail in humans. Genetic analysis would show variation within versus between groups, and there would be unique genetic lineages. The human race does not portray enough variety to be considered a species with biologically distinct races,” said Graves.

Anemone then spoke about race with a more anthropological perspective.

He opened with a harkening back to New Orleans in 2005, “I refer to this as a man-made disaster that nearly destroyed the whole city. It came with a lot of implications on race, because the Associated Press released two photos: a white couple getting food from a local store in chest high waters, and a black man doing the same thing. ‘Looting’ was used in relation to the black man, while the white couple was seen as ‘finding’ food. This says a lot about how some in America see race, even to this day.”

Anemone continued to argue that although biological diversity exists, race remains a social construct.

“Human biological diversity is a fact, but the concept of human races is a cultural construct. Race is really about the meanings we associate with different racial features. Racial meanings derive from culture. Each society creates different racial meanings. Different societies conceptualize races in different ways. Race is like kinship in that both are based on biology but essentially cultural categories,” said Anemone.

He then discussed what was referred to as the “central paradox of race.”

“Race as biological concept does not exist, yet race as a cultural construct can often be a life or death factor in the lives of many. The lived experience of Americans mixes with the cultural aspects to make a salient factor. This apparent paradox is resolved by recognizing the difference between race biologically and race culturally. White kids have played with guns in Walmart and other public venues for centuries and no one calls the cops. However, when black, Hispanic, Middle Eastern or Asian children do this, the police usually get called and the endings are sometimes fatal.”

Anemone continued with an explanation as to why the nature of human races is arbitrary; comparing race to height.

“You can’t only find tall people in Europe, for instance. Also how do we define tallness? How tall? There is no one set of genes that contributes to height. NBA vs. horse jockey height are different. Might the same problems be applicable to using skin color as an indicator for race? Different types of dark pigment occur internationally. Lumping altogether as black in America is problematic. Where does distinction come from? It’s all purely arbitrarily assigned, both height and race,” said Anemone.

The last part of Anemone’s presentation focused on the scientist, Linnaeus, who created the first, widespread classification of race in 1735.

Linnaeus’ classification designated four races through separation of geographic origin, behaviors, skin colors and cultures. These racial classifications were also steeped in racist archetypes.

Linnaeus fell under Homo europeaus, which he described as white, serious and strong. His other categorizations of race, meant for people of color, were not as rosy.

Homo americanus was labelled as, “Red, ill-tempered, subjugated, obstinate, contented, free and ruled by custom.’ Homo asiaticus was seen by Linnaeus as, “Yellow, melancholy and greedy.”

Finally, there was Homo afer, who Linnaeus described as, “Black, impassive, lazy, with kinked hair, silky skin and flat noses.”

Linnaeus saw afer as having thick lips, being crafty, slow and foolish. He also said homo afer, “Anoints himself with grease and ruled by caprice.”

The audience was struck by the hypocrisy in these descriptions. Anemone did not hide his skepticism.

“We can see that Linnaeus’s descriptions were based largely on bias and generalizations, because he was from Europe and probably heard about people from sailors, not from experiencing any other culture himself. Also, he made up another race of humans called the fifth race, which he called monstrosus. These were made of cyclops, men with tails, cone-heads, giants, dwarves. He was clearly working with bad data, and had no firsthand account. He indulged in firsthand account, overgeneralization and prejudice. This trickled down to now, unfortunately. Inequality or hierarchy went into bad intentions. There is nothing inherent about racism,” said Anemone.

The last speaker was Brown-Jeffy, who moved the discussion in a slightly different direction.

“The U.S. uses race as a huge classifier. Race is classified by location, for the most part. American Indian classification [is] by tribal affiliation, by birth and interaction with the tribe; and if you don’t do that, then according to the US census department, you aren’t an American Native.

Asian-American in this country is defined by a collection of geological locations. There is a great variation in physical location. Hispanic or Latino is defined as an ethnicity now, which is a change from the way things had been previously classified. It’s entering into our racial classification system, sort of like how Black in this country is defined. Sometimes we think of African-American being specifically people who came from Africa, but this would seemingly exclude Haitians, but Haitians aren’t classified separately. They, according to the census, are African American as well. Another new addition to the census categories after the 1940’s was the Native Hawaiian, Pacific Islander category, because the United States took over Hawaii,” said Brown-Jeffy.

She then challenged the audience, “What is the overarching factor that makes all this categorization necessary?

“I would answer the criminal justice system,” Brown-Jeffy continued, “a police report could say: ‘white male, six feet tall, jeans’, and that would help classify and find within the system who the culprit would be.”

She went on to another point, relating to Rachel Dolezal.

“So, what can we see about cultural boundaries, and how and when those should be crossed? Lots of Euro-Americans who wanted to play Jazz in the early days of the 20th century were called illegitimate, because Jazz was seen as a black form of music. Genetics and culture are not the same thing. Race is made of physical traits and phenotypes, and it gets imposed by society. Ethnicity is cultural, based on how you live your life. It can be embraced or not,” said Brown-Jeffy.

During the open discussion portion of the event, someone asked about the meaning of the “Other” category label, which appears on the U.S census document.

“Most of these individuals who choose that category get reclassified into other racial categories that the government deems applicable. It’s different [now] than back in the 30s, when a census worker would come to your house and poke around, look at everyone in the household, and make some sort of guess about what kind of background that they came from,” said Brown-Jeffy.

As the event came to a close, Graves said, “We must debunk the notion of biological race. Surveys that were taken of everyday people, and they believed that there are biological differences [in race], which translates into some of Linnaeus’s old stereotypes.”

EIC ready, 1519-this is long but that’s okay because everything else is short