Asterisk Gets Racy

Okay, so I actually have an opinion too.

This might be cheating a bit, since this all came up because I was asked to think about this stuff for my Puerto Rico Summer Session reflection, but Jazz has posted creative writing assignments before, so I figure posting a couple parts of my essay and some re-writes is legit.

You see, in PR, we were asked to discuss race and race relations a lot.

Racial differences were a big part of the lectures, due to all the cultural influences the different people brought into the island and the resulting difference in treatment and mistreatment of those different people.

It’s natural that I’d be asked to think about it, but here’s the thing: variations of one single thought on the matter rolled around, stewing and developing in my head the entire time. I find “race relations” to be an incredibly frustrating topic. I don’t even understand why it’s even up for discussion. 

The more I’m asked to study race, the less I believe in it. Racial differences are a human concept, existing entirely to further separate us from one another. There’s a survival mechanism located in the Occipital Lobe of the brain (1), which is where visuals are processed, that is designed to pick up and focus on differences. That mechanism probably developed back before our distant ancestors had developed higher thought in order to keep them from eating their own children—something many mammals have a problem with. Either way, it escalated into something that’s out of control, and now everyone hates one another based on something as trivial as skin tone.

As a child of scientists, I’ve grown up seeing everything from a biological standpoint. Maybe this means I’m terrible at sociological contemplation, maybe it’s left me “small minded” and “unimaginative,” and maybe that’s not the problem at all—maybe it’s because I’m a white girl and therefore can’t possibly understand. But I don’t think that’s the case. I think biology is a useful perspective. Research shows that the DNA of humans and chimpanzees is 96% (2) identical—meaning that the 15 million changes in our genome are represented in only 4% of our DNA .

(Interesting fact: chimpanzees have been known to eat their young.)

Research also shows that genetic similarity between people is 99.9% (3) , so all of our differences are represented in 0.1% of our DNA? And that’s including the millions of differences that are internal—like blood type, chronic diseases, body temperature, bone width, dental structure, etc. Of course people are going to look different—but I fail to see how it’s rational to judge people based on any of these differences. They are represented as 0.1%, or 0.01, which is statistically insignificant.

Additionally, something from a Discovery Channel Special I watched as a kid really stuck with me. Pods of bottle-nosed dolphins and spotted dolphins will occasionally meet one another in the wild and then swim together for company. While they’re actually different species, meaning they can’t mate, the dolphins don’t care. They form partnerships regardless of their inability to produce offspring, and live, swim, fish, and underwater cuddle with one another until their migration patterns send their groups in different directions. Why is it dolphins can so easily overlook differences? This isn’t even about who’s blue-gray, who’s gray-blue, and who’s white-gray; it’s about coexisting so peacefully with an entirely different group—those with spots and a significantly different genetic makeup.

So why is it that different colored humans, who are actually the same species, can’t manage to do that? Or, better question, why is it we can’t override that stupid little survival mechanism in the Occipital Lobe that is designed to notice and fear differences? We’ve obviously overridden some other pretty significant survival mechanisms—examples include “don’t smoke that, it’s bad for you” and “don’t eat that, it’s bad for you” and “don’t destroy that, that would be bad for you and everybody else.” So why is it we’ve held onto the differences mechanism, especially when in this day and age it is so much less important than “don’t cram your body full of toxins?”

In short, I think it’s because we’ve wanted to. Look at history—humans love separating themselves into groups, with one or more of the groups feeling superior to the others. Before the world had been properly explored there were race wars in Europe between different groups of white people, for thousands of years! (4)  The Frisian Frankish Wars between people living in what is now France and Germany, the Hundred Years War between two different sections of what is now France, the Habsburg–Valois Wars between different portions of Italy—Europeans have been basically fighting one another since they crawled out of caves. So I guess it’s natural that once they gained decently controlled empires and boundary lines they’d go out and find other people to fight. The larger the visual difference, the easier it is to rationalize that the other group isn’t like your “kind.” You don’t have to see that they too live and love, have children and families. Since the Europeans had been practicing this blatant disregard for the lives of people who looked exactly like them for thousands of years, it must have been so easy for them to pretend that darker skinned people weren’t even humans. It’s a sick and twisted thought, and yet, it still happens today. 

The Europeans can’t take all the blame, though. They were horrible to each other and everybody else from the start, but look at Africa. Admittedly, until it was taken over by European nations, typical history lessons kind of draw a blank on what went on there, but once the native people were forced into European created territories and made to interact with one another look what happened. A massive percent of that entire, gigantic continent is or has been a terrifying war zone—and yes, part of it is due to lack of resources, but there are other ways to solve problems other than separating into groups and engaging in conflict.

Even a brief examination of Asian history proves that this area, like Europe, fought each other from the start. Wikipedia offers a list that stretches nine whole pages of the wars of Asia (5). Deeper research sees Western Asia fighting Eastern Asia, Eastern Asia fighting Southern Asia, Northern Asia fighting all of Asia, etc. And then, after all of that, countries of Asia join in with all the fighting between Europe. Everybody fights all the time, and all on the basis of racial differences. Big or small, it doesn’t matter in the least, because once again, all of our differences are in a statistically insignificant 0.01% of our DNA. We’re all the same, and we refuse to accept it. Instead, we come up with more and more “racial differences” between people in order to offer some sick kind of justification for our violent or discriminatory actions against others. I doubt I’m not alone in finding it both confusing and exasperating.

And yes, I sound cynical, I know. But with a history like this, can you really blame me? And instead of actually doing anything about this, we keep pulling up “race” as an excuse—instead of re-examining the real problem here. As a species, all we really need to do is get over ourselves, our differences, and our need to separate ourselves from one another. It can’t be that hard, right? Friggin’ dolphins can do it, and they’re confined to the ocean.

~Asterisk

*Oooh, look I even have sources!

(So what if two of them are Wikipedia. YOU'VE DONE IT TOO!)

1."Brain Structures and Their Functions." Serendip. Serendip, 05 June 2005. Web. 10 Jun 2011. 

2. Lovgren, Stephan. "Chimps, Humans 96 Percent the Same, Gene Study Finds." National Geographic. National Geographic, 31 Aug. 2005. Web. 9 Jun 2011
3.Welcome Trust Sanger Institute, . "DNA Chunks, Chimps And Humans: Marks Of Differences Between Human And Chimp Genomes." Science News. Science Daily, 06 Nov. 2008. Web. 9 Jun 2011.

4."List of Conflicts in Europe." Wikipedia. Wikipedia, n.d. 19 May 2011. Web. 10 Jun 2011.

5."List of Conflicts in Asia." Wikipedia. Wikipedia, 15 May 2011. Web. 10 Jun 2011.