Race as a Social and Political Construct Essay

Prompt: 

White supremacist Daniel Malan argues that the white race is vastly superior to all other races. As evidence, he points out that the black community has a consistently higher rate of heart disease than the white community.

In your précis you must argue against Malan’s racist claim.

The modern conception of race is a social and political construct. The categorical separation of people based on race is a flawed system of organisation. This does not mean race is not important. Physical attributes play critical roles in every person’s life because all people are subject to society's conception of race. Too, from the conception of races, racism has emerged. Racist thought glorifies ideas of superiority over ‘lesser races’. Daniel Malan points to evidence of higher heart disease rates among blacks than whites. Concluding that this is proof of white superiority. Although these claims may seem valid, such evidence is misleading.

There are points of data that point towards the white race as superior. Daniel Malan’s argument concerning heart disease with African Americans is factual evidence. The black race also suffers from diabetes, stroke, and hypertension at a higher rate than a white counterpart. People with dark skin also have troubles absorbing vitamin D which can lead to host of problems such as coronary artery disease and higher blood pressure. According to WebMD, black Americans suffer from asthma the most, have a higher chance of developing lung cancer, and goes on to state, “. . . blacks are 3 times more likely to die of asthma than whites.” The article also states that African Americans and Mexican Americans have a higher chance to develop diabetes. As shown there is factual evidence of black Americans having more health problems than other races.

Though through understanding the article entitled, “How Race Becomes Biology” by Clarence Gravlee, one can come to understand that these facts are not caused by the biological makeup of African Americans. Gravlee suggests that these problems transpire from “toxic effects of exposure to racism”. He further supports these claims with evidence, citing a study of infant birth weights before and after the September 11 terrorist attacks. After the attacks racism towards Arabic people rocketed. The effect was that birth weights of Arabic babies born after 9/11 were significantly lower than Arabic babies born a year prior. This evidence supports the effects of racism being ‘toxic’. African Americans have been subject to racism for hundreds of years, the Arabic women only a short amount of time. The stress of racism hinders the ability to rear a child properly in gestation, leading to a host of problems later in life like high blood pressure. Not only are blacks affected by adverse health effects generated by racism, but also the environment they mature in. The WebMd article cited in the former paragraph further explains that blacks suffer from lung problems more than other races because they are more likely to live in places of higher air pollution. The economic affluence of blacks is lower and leads to consumption of less expensive and typically unhealthy food. Moreover, this means less money to spare for medical expenses. This is true for Mexican Americans as well and explains why diabetes is higher amongst these ethnic groups. Yet it is important to remember that health problems are not entirely based upon environmental or economical factors. The genetic makeup of our ancestors plays a significant role in acquiring undesirable diseases such as sickle cell.

The Great Chain of Being

To understand racist ideology, it is important to look to the past and grasp how it emerged. Categorizing races had not always been around. Though, in the past, people have always differentiated others by regional characteristics and physical attributes, there was no scientific way in doing so. It was not until the emergence of the five categories of race by Johan Friedrich Blumenbach that distinctions between one another became relevant. The Great Chain of Being, an ancient understanding of man’s origins concerning various hierarchies descending from god, was understood by most European settlers and, along with Blumenbach’s research, helped establish inferior and superior races. Blumenbach's ideas came a time when the United States was more or less a group colonies and had recently relinquished the grip of Britain. The colonies needed slaves, but also just fought a bloody war for the equality of man (American Revolutionary War). Blumenbach's ideas helped the early Americans to circumnavigate the morality of slavery, reducing the African slaves, as well as Native Americans, to an inferior level. So thus, American society was built by slave labor and on the conquered land of the Native Americans. And these distinctions between European-Americans and their slaves folded into the underlying fabric of early United states, producing scientific racism. This pseudoscience emerged in the 19th century and set out to prove differential features between races, reducing other them to animals or savages. Social Darwinism, natural selection applied aggressively to society, further expanded the reach of scientific racism, influencing the the Eugenics movement and Nazi regime. The base of such a science has no ground as mankind is a single species. Humans are rather a product of their environment or culture than their genetic ancestry. Unfortunately this was not recognized in the past, the Nazis found vindication in scientific racism and social Darwinism, producing mass genocide and sterilizations on the highest scale in hopes of preserving genetic purity. In relation to these crimes, the film District 9 exemplifies how prejudice thinking is created. How foreigners can seem almost like a different species. The film also displays how quickly these boundaries can turn deadly.

11 Ways Race isn't Real

Since the recognition of races by society, the laws and terms that govern them in American government are constantly shifting. For instance, at one point the Census regarded Mexicans as white, then changed their status to Hispanic. Further, arguments over Japanese people, whether or not to be considered white, have been topics of debate. Yet what it takes to black has varied the most. At one point the ‘one-drop rule’ ruled, saying just a drop of African lineage would deem someone black. Moreover, whether or not a person was black could depend on what state that said person was in. Therefore, in the eyes of the government, someone’s race could change just by crossing an imaginary line. The Census would go on to incorporate the option of being mixed race into their forums, making it possible to be all the races, if one were to choose so. Thus, there is no general consensus on race nor a sure way to determine someone’s race and the classification of people differs by who is doing the judging. President Obama is a famous example of this. Since the president has a white mother some consider him to not be black but mixed race. According to a poll done in 2009, 55% of the black subjects stated Obama was black while 53% of the white subjects that participated said he was mixed race. In addition, determining race becomes even more difficult when twin children born are born black and white. Coming from the same parents, they have relatively the same DNA, but are considered different races by society.

In conclusion, racism emerged to allow dismissal of morality concerning slave treatment, condemning them as not actual people. This toxic notion lived on in society after slavery was abolished. The ramifications of this categorizing humans are now being fully understood. This discrimination can cause health problems, mistrust, and violence. Society can not agree on who is what race and the laws that govern it are subject to change. Although ancestry places a role in hereditary diseases, superior race claims are redundant as ancestry does not determine race, society does.

Sources:
"AAA Statement on "Race"" AAA Statement on "Race" American Anthropological Association, n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2014.
Gravlee, Clarence C. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 139:47–57 (2009) How Race Becomes Biology: Embodiment of Social Inequality (n.d.): n. pag. Web.
"Race Becomes Biology, Inequality Embodied – Anthropology 1.7." Living Anthropologically. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2014.
"Why 7 Deadly Diseases Strike Blacks Most." WebMD. WebMD, n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2014.\

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David Graeber on Basic & Meaningless Jobs - Stenography

Beyond Beef: Jeremy Rifkin - First Chapter

David Graeber on Basic & Meaningless Jobs - Stenograph

David Graeber

This an approximation of what was said as well to make it seem more friendly. This is the link to the video.

Graeber: I keep meeting people who talk about how meaningless and pointless their jobs are. They say, “You don't really want to know what I do. The truth is I don't really do anything.” I hear this over and over again. I thought about it and realized this is something nobody ever talks about. There are millions of people who secretly feel their jobs shouldn't exist.

Interviewer: Are they right.

Graeber: Well who would know better than they…. I think what has happened is over the course of the last century. Mechanization has eliminated a lot more jobs than what we really think it has. Somehow we have all this technology but people are working more hours rather than less. This is what I wanted to understand. If you look at it in the 1930s almost all the manufacturing jobs have vanished, the farming, domestic service are gone. Yet somehow the service administration and clerical jobs have tripled. We have 3 times as many people pushing papers even though we have computers. Why have we effectively made up these jobs? Whole industries exist that don't really need to exist. We don't really need telemarketers or lobbyists.

Interviewer: Economically it make sense to make up jobs so economically those jobs are necessary./?

Graeber: This is what fascinates me. In theory this is exactly what shouldn't happen in a competitive capitalist economy. We used to make fun of the Soviet Union because they would make up these jobs so that they would have an ideal level of employment.

Yet corporations are doing the same exact thing. You would think that the last thing they would do is hire people who don't do anything. If you talk to people in the corporation, they say. “I explained to my boss that my job was unnecessary. Then he would say, “Don’t tell anyone because I need to have more people under me to be important.””

There are all these internal mechanisms. There are all these people who are like ‘I am the east coast manager’. If you talk to them and get them drunk, they will tell you that they don’t really do anything they just go to meetings etc.

Interviewer: [So your saying] There are plenty of people who regard themself as having very important positions but don't actually make any contributions to society.

Graeber: Well you could say that but I am not here to tell anyone that feels their job is important that their wrong. I am here to talk to those people who actually feel their jobs aren't meaningful and are suffering inside.

Interviewer: That is interesting you said ‘suffering inside’. Does that mean if my job does not have any meaning, does that mean I have job dissatisfaction?

Graeber: I read something by “Fyodor Dostoyevsky” when he was in a prison camp. He said if you wanted to destroy someone psychologically, have them move a rock to the one side of the road and move it back again, over and over. Or fill pitches of water continuously. Have them perform something meaningless forever. They will do anything to make it stop.

Interviewer: That's interesting because some people would be bored if they had a job…. Some people would be hanging around and wanting something to do.

Graeber: If you had people do whatever they wanted, they would come up with more meaningful and useful things to do with their time than what the current system is allocating. No one says they want to be a human resource consultant. Maybe they would write poetry or start a band.  Ultimately the benefit to humanity is that they would most certainly be better off than working in our current system.

Interviewer: Well the benefit of having a job is earning money

Graeber: Well, that is the problem. I am personally in favor or the basic income solution. If you just gave people money: Here is 30,000 pounds for everyone decide what you want to do. You would have less parasites than now. More people would come up with more interesting things.

Interviewer: Now you are a prof of anthropology and your article clearly has started a stir. Do you think it really has created some kind of relevant social conclusion?

Graeber: I think I started the conversation. I was actually really shocked. It was a hypothesis. I met people like this. I have never done a statistical analysis. I don't know how many there are out there. So i have put out this peace in a relatively obscure publication. Within a week it had been translated into 20 different languages. The very fact that people had time to read this thing tells me something already.

Interviewer: So just briefly can you conclude that your job isn't a waste of time?

Graeber: Mine? Well ask my students. They like me well enough. I think teaching is a job that is important. I ranked jobs by what would happen if they disappeared. If all garbage collectors or nurse vanished we would be in trouble. If all teaches vanished the world would be a lesser place. It is a problem in time. The same is true for Sci-fi writers or musicians. Maybe we don't need them but the world is a nicer place with them. Its hard to imagine how a financial CEO is in that same category. If they were to all vanish, would we suffer or would the world be a better place?

Check out Graeber's book Debt the First 5000 years

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Race as Social Political Construct

Beyond Beef: Jeremy Rifkin - First Chapter

Beyond Beef: Jeremy Rifkin - First Chapter

This is the first chapter from the book 'Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture' by Jeremy Rifkin. It is important to note that this book was written in the early 1990s and published in 1993. This is for promotional use only. I do not take credit for any of the following content.

Chapter 1: Beyond Beef

Several millennia before the birth of Christ a powerful king emerged among the peoples of the Nile river. Narmer-Menes united Upper and Lower Egypt into a single kingdom, creating the first great empire in Western history. Although he is remembered by historians for his extraordinary military accomplishments, Narmer-Menes’s spiritual achievements were no less significant. The new king introduced bull worship throughout his kingdom, creating the first universal religion.

According to legend, the bull god Apis was conceived by a special cow who had been impregnated by a ray of moonlight. The young bull god was elevated to the spiritual throne of the new Egyptian empire, and from this vaunted position he ruled over the heavens and affairs of society

The bull god represented great strength and virility and the masculine passion for war and subjugation - an appropriate symbol for the age of conquest. Narmer-Menes ruled over Egypt by the grace of the new bull god. The king, in turn, was worshiped by the people as a bull god, as were all of his successors in the great dynastic reigns of the Egyptian empire. The kings were called “mighty bulls” and “bulls of heaven.” A thousand years after the reign of Narmer-Menes, kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties were described in court chronicles as great bull gods who destroyed their enemies with their powerful hoofs and gored them with their sharp horns.

For more info on Hathor

The great bull god Apis shared the heavens with the cow goddess Hathor. It was believed that Hathor gave birth to the sun itself. Hathor represented fertility and nurture, the fecundity of the cosmos. The sky was conceived as a giant cow whose legs extended to the four corners of the earth and who is held up by other gods. The queens of ancient Egypt were all viewed as cow goddesses and worshiped by the people.

Apis symbolized the vigor of youth and everlasting life and was embodied in a real-life bull kept in sanctuary and attended by the priests. At the end of the old year the Apis bull was slaughtered in an elaborate ritual; his flesh was consumed by the king in an effort to incorporate the animal’s fierce strength, majestic power, and virility into his being so that he might enjoy immortality. The ritual slaughter of the Apis bull was a time for renewal, for resurrecting the personal and political fortunes of the kingdom. It marked the end of the old year and the beginning of the new.

The impending death of the Apis bull sent the priests to scoure the realm for a successor. When a new bull was located, its owner was handsomely rewarded and the priests immediately placed the animal in seclusion, For forty days and nights the bull was kept hidden away. Naked women were paraded in front of the animal to incite the god and secure the fertility of both the women and land of Egypt. At the end of the period of seclusion the bull was transported to the holy city of Memphis in a sacred barge inside a golden cabin. Upon arrival, the Apis bull was enthroned in a great temple of Ptah, where he occupied a suite of special rooms equipped with elaborate sleeping quarters. The Apis bull was served special foods and given holy water from the sacred wells of Egypt. Cows were kept in adjoining rooms to serve as concubines.

On holy days the bull was adorned with religious garments and paraded before the people in extravagant processionals. The birthday of the Apis god was preceded by a week of joyous feasting.

The Apis god was imbued with great powers, among which was the ability to predict the future. The animal’s every movement and even its demeanor were viewed as signs or omens. The privileged often paid to spend a night in the temple near the apis bull so that their dreams could be interpreted with the help of the bull’s gestures. It is said that the bellowing of the Apis bull foretold the invasion of Egypt by the armies of Augustus.

After the ritual slaughter and eating of the Apis bull its remains were mummified and buried in a special chamber entombed inside grand sarcophagus weighing over fifty tons.

Humanity’s relationship to cattle has radically changed since the days of Narmer-Menes. Today the birth of calves being with “teaser bulls,” also called “sidewinders.” These animals are used to identify cows in estrus (heat). A teaser bull has undergone a surgical operation that reroutes his penis so that it comes out through his side. The bull becomes aroused in the presence of cows in heat and attempts to mount the females. Because his erect penis is off to the side, he can’t penetrate the cow’s vagina, but he does leave a colored dye on her rump from a marker that’s been hung around his chin. Ranchers use the marker to identify the cows in heat so they can be sequestered and artificially inseminated.

More recently, a new generation of estrus-synchronization drugs has been developed and commercially marketed, allowing cattlemen to dispense with teaser bulls. The drugs are injected into all of the cows in a herd at the same time so that they will all come into heat simultaneously. The Upjohn Company touts the efficiency and predictability of its own estrus-synchronization drug with the advertising slogan “you call the shots.” By synchronizing the estrus cycles of an entire herd, commercial ranchers can plan ahead, picking the ideal time of the year for the calving season.

After birth, young male calves are castrated to make them more “docile” and to improve the quality of the beef. There are several methods of castration. In one procedure, the scrotum is grasped and stretched out tightly, a knife is stuck up through the scrotum and then used to cut open the sac, and each testicle is pulled out with the long cord attached. In another procedure, a device called an emasculator is used to crush the cord.

To ensure that the animals will not injure one another, they are dehorned with a chemical paste that burns out the roots of their horns. Some ranchers prefer to wait until the calves are older and then use an electric de-horner with a cupped attachment that cauterizes the horn tissue. With older steers, saws are also used to cut off the horns and the roots, without the use of anesthetics.

Calves enjoy a short reprieve and are allowed to run with their mother for six to eleven months on the open range before being transported to the giant mechanized feedlots where they are fattened up and readied for slaughter. There are some 42,000 feedlots in thirteen major cattle feeding states. The 200 largest lots feed nearly half the cattle in the the United States. The feedlot is generally a fenced in area with a concrete feed trough along one side. In some of the larger feedlots, thousands of cattle are lined up side by side in cramped quarters.

In order to obtain the optimum weight gain in the minimum time, feedlot managers administer a panoply of pharmaceuticals to the cattle, including growth-stimulating hormones and feed additives. Anabolic steroids, in the form of small time-release pellets, are implanted in the animals’ ears. The hormones slowly seep into the bloodstream, increasing hormone levels by two to five times. Cattle are given estradiol, testosterone, and progesterone. The hormones stimulate the cells to synthesize additional protein, adding muscle and fat tissue more rapidly. Anabolic steroids improve weight gain by five to seven percent. Over 95 percent of all feedlot-raised cattle in the United States are currently being administered growth-promoting hormones.

Google Image Search 'Cow Factory Farm'

In the past, managers used to add massive doses of antibiotics to the cattle feed to promote growth and fight diseases that run rampant through the animals’ cramped, contaminated pens and feedlots. In 1988 over fifteen million pounds of antibiotics were used as feed additive for livestock in the United States. While the cattle industry claims that it has dicontiuend the widespread use of antibiotics in cattle feed, antibiotics are still being given to dairy cows, whicch make up nearly 15 percent of all beef consumed in the United States. Antibiotic residues often show up in the meat people consume, making the human population increasing vulnerable to more virulent strains of disease-causing bacteria.

Castrated, drugged, and docile, cattle spend long hours at the feed troughs consuming corn, sorghum, other grains, and array of exotic feeds. The feed is saturated with herbicides. Today eighty percent of all the herbicides used in the United States are sprayed on corn and soybeans, which are used primarily as feed for cattle and other livestock. When consumed by the animals, pesticides accumulate in their bodies. The pesticides are then passed along to the consumer in the finished cuts of beef. Beef ranks second only to tomatoes as the food posing the greatest cancer risk do to pesticides contaminating according to the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. Beef is the most dangerous food in herbicide contamination and ranks the third in insecticide contamination. The NRC estimates that beef pesticide contamination represents about 11 percent of the total cancer risk from pesticides of all foods on the market today.

Some feedlots have begun research trials adding cardboard, newspaper, and sawdust to the feeding programs to reduce costs. Other factory farms scrape up the manure from chicken houses and pigpens, adding it directly to cattle feed. Cement dust may become a particularly attractive feed supplement in the future, according to the United States Department  of Agriculture, because it produces a 30 percent faster weight gain than cattle on only regular feed. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) officials say that it’s not uncommon for some feedlot operators to mix industrial sewage and oils into the feed to reduce cost and fatten animals more quickly.

At Kansas State University, scientists have experimented with plastic feed, small pellets containing 80 to 90 percent ethylene and 10 to 20 percent propylene, as an artificial form of cheap roughage to feed cattle. Researchers point to the extra savings of using the new plastic feed at slaughter time when upwards of “20 pounds of the stuff from each cow’s rumen can be recovered, melt[ed] down and recycle[d] into new pellets.” The new plastic pellets are much cheaper than hay and can provide roughage requirements at a significant savings.

Every aspect of the steers’ environment is closely monitored, controlled, and regulated on the feedlot to optimize weight gain Even flies can be a source of annoyance, disturbing the cattle and keeping them from eating cattle can lose up to half a pound a day feeding of swarms of flies. Flies are also spread diseases, including pink eye and infectious bovine rhinotracheitis. Highly toxic insecticides are sprayed from high-pressured nozzles atop tractors that drive along access roads next to feedlots “fogging the pens and sometimes the animals inside with a cloud of poison.” In the biggest feedlots, where 50,000 head or more are sequestered, managers sometimes turn to aerial spraying. Crop-dusting aircraft fly back and forth over cattle pens and spray feedlots with insecticides, drenching the facilities with toxic rain.

After being fattened to their “ideal” weight of 1,100 pounds, the mature steers are herded into giant truck trailers, where they are cramped together without room to move. Because the journey to the slaughterhouse is often a rough and brutal one, animals frequently fall and are trampled upon inside the trucks, suffering broken legs or pelvis. Unable to rise, these animals are knows as “downers.”

The cattle are transported for hours or days along interstate highways without rest or nourishment and frequently without water. At the end of their journey intact animals are deposited in a holding pen at the giant slaughterhouse complex Downers, however, must wait hours to be unloaded. Although downed animals are frequently in severe pain, they are rarely euthanized or anesthetized, as that would translate into a lost carcass and additional expenses. Often spread-eagled on the floor of the trailers, unable to stand or walk, these hapless animals are chained by their broken legs and dragged from the truck onto the loading ramp to await their turn for slaughter. Animals who die enroute are thrown into a heap on the “dead pile.”

Some of the more modern plants, like the Holocomb, Kansas plant of Iowa Beef, take up fourteen acres or more. The steers enter the slaughterhouse single-file. Immediately upon entry they are stunned by a pneumatic gun. As each animals sinks to its knees a worker quickly hooks a chain onto a rear hoof, and the animal is mechanically hoisted from the platform and hung upside down over the slaughterhouse floor. Men in blood-soaked gowns, handling long knives, slit each steer’s throat, thrusting the blade deep into the larynx for a second or two, then quickly withdrawing the knife, severing the jugular vein and carotid artery in the process. Blood spurts out over the workstation, splattering the workers and equipment. A journalist describes the scene:

"The kill floor looks like a red sea. . . warm blood bubbles and coagulates in an ankle deep pool. The smell sears the nostrils. Men stand in gore. . . each night the gooey mess is wiped away. . “

The dead animal moves along the main disassembly line. At the next workstation the animal is skinned. The hide is cut open at the midline of the stomach and a skinning machine strips the animal of its hide, leaving the skin in one piece. The carcass is decapitated, the tongue is split and removed, and both head and tongue are impaled on hooks attached to the disassembly line chain. The carcass is then gutted. The liver, heart, intestines, and other organs are removed. After the viscera are removed, the body is hurried along to the next station, where the carcass is cut down the center of the backbone with motorized saws and the tail is pulled off the animal. The split carcass is hosed won with warm water, wrapped in cloth, and sent to a meat cooler for twenty-four hours. The next day workers use power saws to cut the carcass into recognizable cuts - steaks, chuck, ribs, brisket. The cuts are tossed onto conveyor belts, each manned by thirty to forty boners and trimmers, who cut off and box the final products. The neatly trimmed vacuum-packed cuts of beef are then shipped of to the supermarkets across the country, where they are displayed along brightly lit meat counters.

-End Chapter 1 - Beyond Beef

Additional Resources:
For more information on implications of the cattle industry: impact of cattle on the environment
For a comprehensive lecture on the practical benefits of having a plant based diet: Doctor Greger's Lecture - Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death -

If you enjoy please support the author and buy his book.