Does race matter?

Group: Jamani Epps, Kindle Cox, Rachel Hettleman, Lia Adams, Sophie Bauerschmidt Sweeney, Christopher Mergen, Hilde Wulf
Question: Does race matter?

We began our discussion about the difference between whether race should matter and whether it does matter. We decided as a group that it really shouldn’t have to matter, but that it does, given the society we live in, and that its existence in society is beyond the control of any one individual. We discussed how it matters in instances like affirmative action—it wouldn’t be fair for colleges to evaluate a student from Simmons in the same way that they would evaluate a student from Dear Creek, the white private school in the area. We also discussed how race and class are inextricably conjoined, so the question of how race affects people materially is more complicated than just race.

We then went on to discuss whether race should matter given the society that we do have and how the elimination of race would affect African American culture. Because African Americans have no one place of origin within Africa and because there are so many different African cultures, we weren’t sure whether “African American” should be considered a race or an ethnicity. We decided that if it is a race (because it consists of so many varied ethnicities), African American culture could be a positive result of race having mattered in the past. At this point, Stacy joined our conversation and pointed out that African American culture can be very divisive and is therefore not necessarily a good thing. She also made the point that because slaves didn’t know their place of origin, “African American” can in some ways be considered an ethnicity because there often isn’t a cultural link between African Americans and their ancestral places of origin.

Ultimately, we decided that race definitely does matter in our society, but also that the ways in which it can matter—and the ways it can be either good or bad—are much more complicated that a fifteen minute conversation.