The (Anti-) Racism Symposium

Today at school I participated in a Racism Symposium, in which a bunch of students gathered together to discuss the problem of racism in our society, and even more specifically in our school. I thought it would be fitting to comment on it with the theme of my blog, especially the most recent entries. The Racism Symposium lasted about two and half hours, and there were three parts. For the first two parts we had speakers come in and talk to us about racism and such things.

Our first speaker was Dr. Chaichian, who was born and grew up in Iran, and then he moved to Iowa. His studies have focused on race and the biology that goes along with race. His job at the Symposium was not to sway our opinions about racism or preach to us. He was simply to present facts and evidence that we could either take with us or not. He made several very interesting points, and he seemed to be a very educated man. One of his finest arguments dealt with the difference between a non-racist and an anti-racist. He asked us to raise our hands if we thought we were a non-racist, and everyone raised their hands. However, when he explained to us the anti-racist meaning, only a few of us raised our hands because not all of us worked constantly to eradicate racism. I think he made a good point that all of us may be non-racist, but none of us actually constantly work at stopping racism.

Dr. Chaichian also pointed out that there is no such thing as race through various Powerpoint slides filled with valid points. He explained that race is only a perception of society, and that racism is only a way for one group to more superior than another. Both are absolutely true once they are thought about. His evidence dealt a great deal with biology and history. Dealing with biology, he noted that the Human Genome project found that every human is 99.9% identical to the next, proving that race should be a minimal matter. Even more significant, in my opinion, is the fact that humans' DNA is more different between people of the same race than between different races themselves! Thus, a black man is genetically more similar to a white man than he is to another black man. And if it has always been this way, how did society become so racist? Through our history. The white Europeans conquered all of Africa by the mid-1800s, thus showing that the white man was superior to the black man in that instance. And as a result of that occurrence, the white Europeans gained superiority over the Africans and that dominance was transferred into all of the colonies of Great Britain and other nations. Through America's history, it has been a constant battle for equality, and although we now have a racially and ethnically minor as a President, the equality is becoming less and less for minors. The classification of race is only a perception of society that we like to hold because it makes one group more superior to another.

There was a plethora of ideas discussed at the Racism Symposium (in the second and third parts as well), and I hope to examine these ideas in future blog entries.