>1. My students had a hard time understanding the following statement in
>our marriage and family textbook: "From a strictly scientific
>perspective, then, so-called racial differences do not exist. Skin
>color, for example, can be defined only on a continuum, just as the
>colors black and white exist on a continuum, with gray in the middle and
>no clear-cut distinctions in between." I was able to help them
>understand how cultural and ethnic identity are more useful and
>informative concepts than race, but many students had a hard time
>understanding how racial characteristics "do not exist." One of my
>students, who is an honors biology major specializing in genetics,
>stated that our marriage and family textbook contradicts what she has
>learned in her genetics courses. Can anyone offer me some specific
>suggestions for making these concepts more clear to my students?
Race is seen in sociology as a social construct... race doesn't exist
in the genetic markers but in our heads. It is very real, but only to
the extent that people agree upon what to use as signs of membership.
So, we can take the same group of people and put them in the U.S.,
where they will be divided into two or three racial groups (black,
white, Asian - in America we don't have very many), which is very
real for the society they're in (they will be categorized, treated,
and benefit or suffer accordingly), and then we can take that same
group of people and move them to Brazil, Jamaica, Cuba or China,
where they won't look any different than they did in the U.S., but
they'll be divided up differently, and again, very real for the
social environment they're in. Finding a genetic marker for dark skin
is no better indication of group membership than finding a marker for
curly hair or big ears... it all depends on how the people have
grouped themselves. So although the physical differences can be very
real (and for obvious reasons sustained over generations, "as long as
you don't marry one of them"), the idea of race is something we have
made up to explain (if not to accentuate) differences between us, and
since we made it up, we can make it up pretty much as we please.
This doesn't mean there aren't genetic differences between people or
that those genetic differences have no effects on their psychological
being, but only that what we call a racial group is a shared idea
based on how we divide people according to physical characteristics.
In America my curly hair doesn't affect my being white; in another
place (or at another time) it would.
>A question was asked in class about "cultural" differences based on
>gender, political ideology, or religious worldview. Would these also
>meet the definition of cultural group, or would they be a specific
>subgroup within the broader cultural group definition?
This is where the idea of subculture comes in. However, how do we
draw lines between culture and subculture? Are you a member of a
subculture only when you live in a society dominated by members of
some other cultural group? Who gets to claim culture status and who
gets consigned to subculture? It's probably one of those useful
concepts that's hard to define.
--> Mike O.
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Michael S. Ofsowitz [EMAIL PROTECTED]
University of Maryland - European Division
http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~mofsowit
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