Ranked by Race

The idea of race has never perplexed me the way in which it does now. For the most part I believed race to be quite absolute. Black, White, Latino, and so the list continues. However, with further examination I would argue that race is fluid, especially in the way in which it weaves itself through society. It was determined by our western European philosophers what race was and what category of race a group of people fell under. These philosophers were infatuated with the concept of categorizing groups of people. From my understanding, with analysis from The Idea of Race, western Europeans categorized people into race groups because they were placing them in a rank or position in society.

Early philosophers distinguished race amongst a multitude of factors, including geography, different ideologies, and most notably, physical characteristic. Whenever a group of people were categorized into a race by one of these factors, a stigma was attached. According to Kant, the Negro “is so amply supplied by his mother land, he is also lazy, indolent, and dawdling” (Kant 17) and Blumenbach does not forget to compare the Negro to apes. These philosophers have ranked the Negro at the bottom of the totem pole, on the level of animal. The Negro is so physically different from the Anglo Saxon that black people received the worst position in society. In the ethnocentric mindset, the Anglo Saxon was graced with the superior rank in society. Positions in society based on race was most evident within Hegel’s ideology. Hegel promotes the idea that due to the fact that Europeans are Christian, they possess a sense of self-determination and self-development, whereas the Negro is “regarded as a race of children who remain immersed in their state of uninterested naiveté. They are sold, and let themselves be sold, without any reflection on the rights or wrongs of the matter” (Hegel 40). As a result of this view, white Christians are pushed ahead in society. Even when a group of Anglo Saxons want to stray from the path of Christianity, they are forced out of their race to join the rest of the inferior races. The farther away from the Anglo Saxon tradition the lower the group of people are ranked in society.

Today, society continues to rank race. People do not see themselves as individuals, but as part of their collective race. African Americans fight their way up the latter of society by attempting to disprove the deeply ingrained stereotypes that have plagued the race for centuries. Race was determined on insults and prejudice against difference, instead of sound unbiased respect. The concept of race is ever changing, and people use its fluidity to place themselves in society.