What is the perfect race

Joy Marie Prior
14 January 2009
Sociology 112
Section 4
Homework #5
Question #1
This past semester I joined the Pow Wow hoop club, and I am preparing to perform with the Native American hoop dancing club. It has really been a good experience for me to not only learn more about cultural diversity, but I have become more curious and conscious about the very subject talked about in Chapter 5 of race and social class. While reading Worlds Apart most of my connections related back to my experiences learning hoop and what I have observed there.
I found that I agree with that statement on page 112 “Further, color, the favorite racial marker in the United States, doesn‘t correlate with much else.” My roommate has black hair, she is of European decent, but she has black hair. Instantly it seemed like she fit into the crowd of the Native American members. When we introduced ourselves most people asked my roommate what tribe she was from, but when they did not ask me (with my pale skin, blond hair, and blue eyes) about my heritage. I was simply categorized as being white.
The racial subcategories within established racial categories that Sernau tries to clarify in his Hispanic American section interested me. Although I was just “white” many of the ‘getting to know you’ questions people asked each other revolved around what tribe people were from. This idea of subcategories in a race became even more apparent as we started the habit of having one person introduce themselves at the beginning of practice and their heritage. Many of the dancers are from different tribes, and they take pride in which tribe they are apart of. Unfortunately, most of the time I don’t recognize the tribal names or their origins. As I thought about this idea further I compared tribal names to something I am more familiar with. When my friend from Spanish Fork Utah says, “I am of Swedish decent,” I don’t put them into the same “white” category as myself, because I am of Irish decent.
The realization that race is solidly based on color has never struck me so hard. I think that Sernau sadly puts it well when he says on page 112, “Race is a social construction, not a biological fact.” I will forever be apart of the “white” category solidly because of my coloring, and not because of my heritage or back ground. In every history class I have always considered myself apart of the people who suppressed the slaves, when in actuality my ancestors had not even crossed the ocean yet. My people are the ones who came across with Christopher Columbus, but my ancestors did not even speak the same language as Christopher Columbus. The one that currently disturbs me is that my people are the ones who moved the Native American nations from worthless reservation to worthless reservation.
During practice heritage is the hot word, and not race. The closer we become the more I hear myself use words like Navajo, Hopi, and Cherokee. Not only that but I also hear myself as being called Irish. I remember when I was talking to Laviata one time and she told me how insulted she gets when people call her Chinese, because she is defiantly not Chinese she is a Native American. Could it simply be because as in Worlds Apart mentions everyone wants to be Indian now. The line that sticks out to me is from page 112, “Societies have created racial divisions in attempts to categorize the range of human physical diversity,” because race in all of it’s complexity and misinterpretations it is still used to put people into groups that they feel they can identify with, or more specifically races that they want other people to associate them with.
At the heart of the debate seems to be more the legacy that particular race left behind, and not the actual physical appearance. I truly think that the two edged legacy “white” has is privilege and suppressor. For example I know that when people ask me for my nationality don’t say white because that automatically makes me feel like I am a slave owner. I say that I am Irish, even though I have more English blood in me than Irish. Embarrassed slightly I admit that I want to be associated with a lighthearted, celebrating, red haired, hospitable stereotype. It does not seem enough to be just ‘white’ any more, but you have to have some other nationality to go with it. Preferably a nationality that ‘whites’ suppressed, enslaved, or discriminated against.