Prior to this lesson, I believed race to be only a concept that categorized different people into divisions of humankind that all have a certain physical characteristic. In this lesson, I come to realize that race is not just a biological perspective; however, it closely ties into power in the studies of religion and is a constructed notion by colonial Western Europeans to help form a system of power relations. This lesson highlights how the racial system has power historically and politically in our contemporary world. In Kendi’s chapter provided, I found it interesting how from the previous lesson on power we can get a more in-depth comprehension of race and how race can form this racial hierarchy. Which ultimately, “makes [an] essential ingredient in the making of racist ideas.” Kendi also wrote in a way that included other races and also touched onto the topic of religion, class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, body, size, age, and disability that are all also often degraded in a society that places importance on white privilege and views that as the standard.
On the other hand, in Nye’s chapter, he states that race is not an individual issue. I find this fascinating because it means that the disparate construction of power through the concept of race tends to form this inherent sense of racial hierarchy in ourselves. This power construct of race is apart of our world and it shapes our responses to the world around us.
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