Analysis 7: Ethnicity Studies

So is it racist to want to mix our races together so that we are all one race? Part of race, after all, is enjoying the culture that often follows race. Mexicans, for example, enjoy celebrating Cinco De Mayo, El Dia De Los Muertos, and so on. Would something like that no longer be acceptable after the mixing occurs, or do we incorporate it as well as all other cultural traditions to make into a brand new culture? What if we can't agree on this kind of decision? Would we not then judge those who chose to incorporate it, or in turn judge those who choose not to? It's simply not likely that something like this would put some kind of end to racism. Racism, after all, is a socially constructed issue. It is not something that has to exist for nature to function or anything like that. It's made-up.

"I am Incognegro. I don't wear a mask like Zorro or a cape like The Shadow, but I don a disguise nonetheless. My camouflage is provided by my genes; the product of the Southern tradition nobody likes to talk about. Slavery. Rape. Hypocrisy. American Negroes are a Mulatto people; I'm just an extreme example. A walking reminder. Since white America refuses to see its past, they can't really see me too well, either. Add to that a little of Madame C.J.'s magic and watch me go invisible. Watch me step outside of history. Assimilation as revolution. That's one thing that most of us know that white folks don't. That race doesn't really exist." (Johnson 18)

I think too many would rather think that mixing the appearance of our skin colors would change race issues in the world, but quite frankly its not the color of our skin, its the assumption that we know what and who a person is from first glance. If one person from one race can easily assume the appearance of another and no one knows any better, then isn't that already in itself a mixing of some kind? Doesn't that mean that we should just let go of what we attribute to certain races in our minds and go, I don't know, psychologically color-blind? To mix our colors is more like trying to hide from the racists rather than trying to remove racism, so I see no point in the idea of a mixed race. It seems fanciful and silly to me, and it seems like an attempt at a lazy way out. Besides, having similar skin color hasn't kept racism or discrimination from happening in the past. Both being from Germany and having light skin didn't stop the Nazis from killing the Jews. More recently there's been issues of blacks discriminating against each other for exactly how dark or how light their skin is. It really doesn't matter how similar we ended up looking, or how different we look either. What matters is that we all think that we can place certain personality traits on people that look a certain way because its just easier to do so that to be open minded and considerate.


Works Cited
Johnson, Matt. Incognegro. New York. DC Comics. 2008.