Thursday, April 30, 2009

Jeffrey M. Fish "Mixed Blood"

Jeffrey M. Fish "Mixed Blood"

Reading Mixed Blood by Jeffrey M. Fish really opened up my eyes to how much race is a social construct. It is a product of the society defining what “race” really is. As seen in the comparison of Brazil and the United States, in different cultures emphasis is put on different characteristics in order to group people into a race category. The Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary provides several different definitions for race.

One of the definitions is “a family, tribe, people, or nation belonging to the same stock”. If the race of a person is defined by their background, such as parents, a child whose parents are black and white would be equally white as he/she is black. This made me think of the American “hypo-descent” concept, the author was discussing. According to “hypo-descent” the child would be classified as the race of the parent with a “less prestigious” race. This in turn brought me to the next definition provided, which is “a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits”. However, the American concept of race does not fit even this definition according to the work of Mr. Fish.

After reading about the broad range of characteristics used to “classify” people into races in Brazil, the United States folk taxonomy seems to be focusing simply on skin color and broadly clumping any variation together. While the Brazilian system struck me as an attempt to group people based on as many physical traits as possible, the United States’ system seemed very basic in comparison. The broad groups did not even scratch the surface of the many distinct traits which made up each “typo” in Brazil.

The American use of “hypo-descent” in deciding the race of people, in my mind, is what causes the inequality and tension between races and even within them. I often hear people say “you are so white”, “you are not as white as me” or “you’re not as black as I am” and etc. The concept of a hierarchy of racial “prestige” causes people to feel that they are better then or worse than someone else, even if they are of the same descent. Aside from causing unnecessary tension between people the system is clearly far from accurate, as a result making much of the race related research very questionably. Largely the author is right when he says that it is a waste of time, time that could spent researching the descent and development of the many unique variations of human characteristics in the world today.

Bibliography
Fish, Jeffrey M. “Mixed Blood". In Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, 12 ed., ed. Spradley and McCurdy. Allyn & Bacon, 2008, 84-94.

1 comment:

  1. EXCELLENT!! One of the best essays this term. Well done.

    PS
    "a category of humankind that shares certain distinctive physical traits”. Consider it this way: humans share skin that can vary according to climate and sun. We share male and female organs for procreation. We share having a nose to breathe and mouth for inhalation and exhalation as well as eating, smiling and kissing. We share lots of things other than skin color as physical traits.

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