Habitus By Yolanda Moses Analysis

Victoria Montgomery
Society is ignorant if they think that there are only four major groups of people, such as White, African American, Asian, and Mexican that are completely separate from one another. Yet, the sad truth is that in fact most of the American society does believe that way because we have all been constructed into this type of belief system. Using the term Habitus gives a greater understandings of how there are important aspects of culture that are learned implicitly. Hence, believing that just because you look a certain way, such as having black skin, that you must be shoved in the African American racial category of being uneducated, having low income, and having violence in your DNA, when this is very untrue. It is very
She states that races does matter in the United States, which is true, but not in the way one would think (Fuentes, 2012). Race is just a word that that society has developed to explain the color of people skin, not their actual blood lines and genetics. It is a word that helps us put people into categories while not even taking a second look at their genes, heritage, and backgrounds. This may be due to the fact that we are structured by both the physical world and social interactions and when we do or say things we are structuring other peoples behaviors as well. As an American society we have evolved from the ideas that blacks and white should remain separate like our society had thought fifty years ago, but there is still an elephant in the room when it comes to talking about race. This is because people still believe black is black and white is white; instead of taking off their glasses and seeing that white is also African, and
If you think back to the map that we looked at in class that shows the color of peoples skin based upon where they live on earth in relation to the equator, it helps prove that there is no such thing as what we as a society call race. Also, evidence given by Anthropologist Nina Jablonski, states “that variations in human skin are adaptive traits that correlate closely to geography and the sun’s ultraviolet radiation, not race.” (American Anthropological Association, 2011) As the reading continued, they found that keeping cool in areas with extremely high temperatures was so difficult the adaptation that occurred was increasing the amount of sweat glands and reducing the amount of hair. Yet, with less hair on the skin it left the population exposed to more of the suns strong rays. The conclusion was to just evolve the skin so it was permanently dark to protect the body from the suns damage (American Anthropological Association, 2011). This is an example of natural selection where we adapt to our environment to help in our survival and reproduction process as well as passing on desirable traits to the next