Day 17.

Race. Something we often use to think about others, voluntarily or not, but doesn’t yet exist.

Someone in my intercultural communications class today said that the construction of race dates back to the segregation of jews and romans in medieval times. Now I have no clue if this is right or wrong; what I do know, however, is that the genealogy of race, that “teaches” that there are differences in our DNA depending on our race, is false. There is no scientific validity behind genetic differences between races. In fact, there is less genetic variation between races than within them. Race is entirely a social construct that has each of us predetermining another’s position in society, cultural norms, and language. If I am white, how do I know how black people speak in slang or how they dress? Media.

In class we are learning about the concept of interpellation, and not the mathematical kind. Interpellation is the practice by which the situation precedes the subject, that the subject is predetermined before even opening its mouth or performing a task. In essence, we use the constructs we learn through the media to judge who one is. Today we did an exercise about this. My professor had two students, a guy and a girl, stand in the center of the room, and asked us how many people were standing there in reference to the two of them. The first student to raise his hand replied, two. He responded with an "OK, who else?” I raised my hand and said “they” as a total guess that perhaps pronouns had something to do with it… wrong. Laughing at me, he responded, “how about his her?” and waited for a reaction.

His her, and her him.

“Any others?” he asked. Silence… “how about her his of her? or his hers of him?”

Her his of her, and his hers of him. Your me, and my you. Their me and my them, your they and their you. Make sense?

We operate based on these concepts. How we communicate with one another is determined by our preconceptions of their perceptions of us. If this still isn’t making sense, remember/think about when you were a student and you thought a professor or teacher really didn’t like you. If you were the student who then participated more or spent more time on homework to impress the teacher, you were behaving based on "your his of you”. You conceive that the teacher thought of you that way, and then refine how you interact with him.

In another country, state, or neighborhood, your them is predetermined by the media. And it’s impossible to purge these notions out of our expectations without them being challenged. We see this arguably more than ever on our exponentially expanding diversity on the media with shows like Modern Family, for example. I challenge you to interact with a few people who looks extremely different from yourself. I’m not saying be creepy and start chatting up a stranger on the corner of the street. But maybe in line for coffee, or in an elevator, give them a short one-liner and see how they respond. I can’t say if they’ll respond different from what you'll expect; but I do promise that how they react will not differ from any other person based on anything but how their day has treated them so far.

“People don’t take trips- trips take people” -John Steinbeck