Structural Racism and Community Building - The Aspen Institute

THE MEANING OF RACE
Scientific studies conclude that race has no biological meaning or significance. The
gene for skin color is linked with no other human trait. The genes that account for
intelligence, athletic ability, personality type, and even hair and eye color are
independent of the gene for skin color. In fact, humans are far more alike than they are
different, and share 99.9 percent of their genetic material.
Race does, however, have social and political significance. Social scientists call the term
race a “social construct,” that is, it was invented and given meaning by human beings.
Why? Answering that question requires looking at the creation of racial categories in
history, and what those categories have produced over time.
In the particular case of the United States, two primary racial categories—white
Europeans and all nonwhite “others”—emerged early in our nation’s history. Beginning
with the expropriation of Native American lands, a racialized system of power and
privilege developed and white dominance became the national common sense, opening
the door to the enslavement of Africans, the taking of Mexican lands, and the limits set
on Asian immigrants.
“Millions of Americans still
think and talk about race in
terms of fixed biological or
genetic categories. A strikingly
different way to view the
concept of ‘race’ is as an
unequal relationship between
social groups based on the
privileged access to power and
resources by one group over
another. Race is historically
and socially constructed,
created (and recreated) by
how people are perceived and
treated in the normal actions
of everyday life.”
Manning Marable, The Great Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of
Race in American Life. (New York: BasicCivitas Books, 2002), 22.
Over time, beliefs and practices about
power and privilege were woven into
national legal and political doctrine.
While committing to principles of
freedom, opportunity, and democracy,
America found ways to justify slavery,
for example, by defining Africans as nonhuman.
This made it possible to deny
Africans rights and freedoms granted
to “all men” who were “created equal.”
Only when white Southerners wanted
to increase their political power in the
legislature did they advocate to upgrade
Africans’ legal status to three-fifths of a
human being. Thus, from the earliest
moments in our history, racial group
identities granted access to resources and
power to those who were “white” while
excluding those who were “other” legally,
politically, and socially.
Expressions of racism have evolved
markedly over the course of American
history, from slavery through Jim Crow
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