Throughout this week in sociology we have been emphasizing how race does not exist but is biological. We like to categorize people by the color of their skin and say that this is there race. You can't just look at the color of a person's skin and automatically assume you know what they are even though that is what we all do. When you see a dark skinned person you can't just assume they are African American same thing with a light skinned person you cannot just say they are white.
This is constantly happening to me. When people first meet me they automatically think I am Mexican just because I have brown skin or because my face looks Mexican. Some people also think I look Indian because I am brown but once I say no to both guesses they safely assume I am Filipino, well only the ones who actually know how Filipinos "look".
One new thing I learned in class this week is how different people depending on where they live get more vitamin D than others this also explains why people are light skinned and why others are dark skinned. The closer you are to the equator the more melanin you have in your body which is a pigment making it user for the body to absorb vitamin D. Using me as an example I was born and raised in the Philippines which if you look in the picture below is very close to the equator. In the picture you can see how the further from the equator you are the less likely you are to absorb melanin in your body which means you are generally light skinned and vice versa if you are closer to the equator. This all shows how race truly does not exist and it is all just biological.
I'm Indian but people also don't always know that when they see me!
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing that example from your life. One thing I want to clarify is that the melanin does not change based on where you live now; it changed over generations of people living in the same latitude.
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