Is Race Biological or Social Concept

 Race, one of the main group into which people are divided according to the colour of their skin and physical appearence. In teh science field, the term race wsas used firstly by Comte De Buffon for his work, Historie Naturelle, Generalle at Paticulere in 1749. (Booklet 67). There are some races in the world. White races, Black races, Yellow races, etc. All people in this small world together. On account of human nature people are always in two different condition between each other. Reconciliation or conflict. Now we will focus on some kind of conflict, racial conflict. We can say that “racial conflict” have same meaning with racism. Literaturely racism, “When someone believes that poeple of their own race are better than poeple of other races. And they threat other races unfairly.” (Longman).

Today everybody believes that racism is damaging world ease too badly. Some people  in the world try to show racisms bad effects to people for informing them about this important problem. One fo them is Nadine Gordimer. She is an South African novelist and the short-story writer who received Nobel prize in 1991. Her novels or short-stories are mostly about moral and psychological tensions of her racially divided home country. “Which New Era Would That Be” is one of her short stories. This short story is about “apartheid era in South Africa”. All events in the story are happening around the short dialogs between six black man, one white man, and one white woman. Despite these diologoues’s shortness these short stories can explain the social position of whites and black very clearly.

In this essay we will not deal with racism’s bad effects to the humanity. Our topic question is: “Is racism is biological concept or a social one”. As we understand from the question there are  two ideas about this argument. Firstly I want to mention that I’m supporting the “Racism’s social concept”.

The social concept of racism basically depends on community’s ingroup or outgroup associations (Booklet 29).  Still there is a big discrimination between blacks and whites. We can clearly see it in our daily life. In “which new era that would be”, which Nadine Gordimer’ s short story the author tries to show some examples to discrimination from the daily life. In the story, she gives Maxie Ndube’ s ,who was a small dainty faced African examples (page 75). Maxie Ndube’s work as organizer  of an African trade unions so he is communication with lots of people. Within these people, there white people too. One day Maxie Ndube was inivited a lunch with George Elson, was a white lawyer who had been arrested twice for his participation in anti-colour-bar movements (Pg. 81), related with their trade unions works. They go to a white man’s house for lunch. George Elson and Maxie Ndube sit in the lounge and have ne beer. After that the servant of white invitatior. Man came and called them to the dining room. But while they are walking through the dining room, the white man grips Maxie’s arm and says to him  “I’ ve  had you lunch laid on the table on the  stoep.” (pg 82). As we saw white man couldn’ t stand to have a his lunch together one black person. This shrt case in indicates that how racism is been applied to other people daily routine life.

There are some factors to reveal racism as social concept. Conquest slavery and cultural differences can be regarded (booklet 86) but these factors are again bount to ingroup or outgroup associations. Fro example, from history, we see Acheans and Dorians. At the beginning of 12th century B.C. they destroyed the Bronze Age of  Mycenean Greece and started the “dark age” in greece civilization. In this dark age,it may be wrong to be use the “civilization” word for Greece because in this age they were regarded as boorish compared to the Neat East and Egypt civilization.  However, these boorish invaders developed their own culture civilized and became the founders of classic Hellas.  After they civilized, they started to look others inferiors or barbaric people.  And the only reason which they see other people as a barabaric or inferior that the other people could not speak Greek (Booklet 87).  Another example for showing social concept of  racism is from Europa.  In the sixteenth century, the population increased also technological developments were gained a speed.  These pemitted to Europeans to start colonozation and trade in last four centruies, European became a big power to dominate the much of the world. Exploration and conquest of Europeans affected every part of the world very bad. Owing to industrializaiton and technological development permitted Europeans to establish priority over other cultures (booklet 87). All of these social factors lead to form “superiority and infairity terms” because of these terms, racism came to foreground as a social concept.

As I mentioned that at the beginning of my essay. There are two approches about the concept of racism. We examined the social concept of racismi now I want to touch on “A Biological Concept”. In Nadina Gordiemr’ s short story “Which New Era That Would Be ? ” starts with physical features of one man, Jack Alexander, A big fat colored man half Scottish , half African (page 72). There are all characters’ s physical definition in the story. For instance, Alister Halford, a young English man with gentle eyes, a stern mouth and flat colourless hair... (page 72). This story tells us the different social status which is causing from people’s color of skin. Because of teh social and economical structure (social factors includes them) in South Africa in 1970’ s there was  a big discrimination between white races and black races. But can we say that blcak people are reagrding secondary class people only for their biological origin. Can we say that their biological origin affects their minds their intellgence, their decision making abiliy? In this biological approach many scientist try to prove this idea. In the 19th century Anthropologists started to search connecnting organism between people and apes. This research named was “Missing Link”. It claims that between the Anthropoids and Homo sapiens was a missing link. A lot of search were studied to use Aborgines but any link could’nt be found. Anyway today anthropologists proved that the fossil finds apes and Homo sapiens are descented from Indepented spieces (booklet 94). Any other approach is “Classification Method” . In the 20th century “race” is being seen only a system of biological classification by the scientefic perspective. Two types of classification are used in this century: typological and geographical. Both of the race classifications begin with the fact that all people are coming from a single species. But this classification accept that there are many different types or varieties in the same species but despite these varatins that have developed among humans, they have not created a new specieses (page 70-71). Both of the classification assume the exisitince of three major races. Caucasid (European), Negroit (African) and Mongolaid (Asiatic) . In this approcah many anthropologists prefer to use geographical classification because of some difficulities in typological classification (page 72). Therefore I want to give basic premises of geographical classification.

1.      There are different human populations in the world.

2.      These populations have physical traits different from other groups.

3.      Groups are separated by physical or social barriers.

4.      As a result physical or social seperation there is little or no gene flow between different groups.

5.      Consequently, the gene pool of each group differs from the other.

6.      Since the gene pool of the various groups represents only part of the total combination of the gene pools in the total human populaiton, geographic populations have somewhat different dominant physical traits (booklet 74-75).

Despite both of these classifications scientists have not yet found completely satisfactory way to classify varitions of humankind into racial groups ( booklet 75).

I think all of these evidents are sufficient to prove that racism is social concept. In my opinion if this important problem takes part in a biological concept it can be said that nobody doesn’t try to destroy it. Because nobody in the world doesn’t have such a big power to change some genetic or biological feature in the human body. But when we look at the past we will find a lot of people who try to destroy racism. If Steve Biko  didn’t believe to able to finish racism in his own country. He wasn’t killed by the guardians in the dark side of the prisons.