The Race, Racialization, Ethnicity And Racism - 1384 Words

When immigrants flooded the shores of the United States in the earliest part of the twentieth century, the Immigration Commission hired an anthropologist to prepare a Dictionary of Races of Races or People. W.E.B. Du Bois observed in the late 1930s that no scientific definition of race is possible. He said Race is a dynamic and not a static conception, and that typical races are continually changing and developing, amalgamating and differentiating. What Du Bois meant in layman’s term was that it is impossible to characterize people based on measurements. Orser begins his book by talking about Race, Racialization, Ethnicity and Racism. Orser says that it can be argued that the science of humanity in America was initially organized around†¦show more content†¦The first example of classifying people was during the seventh century when Isidore of Seville used region to classify the world’s people into two groups: Christians and Idol worshippers. I thought this was quite interesting because it has never crossed my mind, classsification has been a thing since humanity. I always thought people were only classified into groups based on physical characteristics. On the other hand, Ancient Egyptians, Indians, Greeks and Indian created and used what is called the racialist classification of human difference. He brought up ethnicity because archaeologists have made significant advances in connecting past ethnic groups with excavated material cultures. The prominent role of ethnic research in archaeology makes sense because it re affirmed the long-held archaeological tenet that culturally discrete peoples could be identified by their specific objects. Orser continues by saying that the basis for identifying archaeological cultures linked distinct peoples and their unique artifacts. This quite Interesting because objects from the past, some maybe valuable brings about a sense of culture. Orser also made a relationship/distinction between Class and Rac e. A statement that I thought summarized the relationship betw Class and Race was when he said The Negro is poor because is black ; that is obvious enough.p But, perhaps more Importantly, the Negro is black because he is poor. This statement is interesting, it was true years