Analysis Of Agustin Fuentes's The Myth Of Race

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Categorizing and identifying threat is part human defense mechanism which allowed humans to survive nature and evolve into the modern man. Identifying threat in nature allowed for better survival and by categorizing animals into dangerous or safe further improves the chances of survival. Unfortunately, this defense mechanism of categorizing and identifying threat in the modern world has shifted from animals to other humans. Describing someone based on their appearance is normal and it facilitates the recognition of that individual, but racism also developed due to natural tendency of humans categorizing subjects. In America, the land in which everyone is created equal, there is a clear evidence that equality between races may just be an ideology …show more content…
Unfortunately, in the United States the color of an individual’s skin will have an effect on the way a person is treated. Agustin Fuentes in his essay “The Myth of Race” discusses how the social idea of race impacts the way some races are treated. Fuentes mentions statistics about discrimination due to race and that “In test of housing markets conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), black and Hispanic potential renters and buyers are discriminated against (relative to whites) nearly 25 percent of the time” (Fuentes 529). The race, or skin color, that renters prefers is showed to be white as blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be judged. The result of this discrimination tends to segregate neighborhoods between the good white communities and the black or Hispanic dangerous communities. The discrimination based on race does not end in real state but it is also common is everyday life. According to the study “Neighborhood Racial Composition and Perceptions of Racial Discrimination: Evidence From the Black Women’s Health Study” by Matthew O. Hunt, Hunt and his team looked into the amount of discrimination women of color received during their lives and found that “The percentages of participants reporting other everyday racism experiences at the at least once a month level were: 26.5 for not intelligent, 17.4 for poor service, 15.1 for afraid of you, and 12.1 for dishonest” (Hunt 280-282). The amount of discrimination a women of color receives indicates that whites have a mistrust of someone who has a different color skin. Being afraid because a person has a different skin color it is not something natural, since young children who have not yet been introduced to the concept of race are not afraid of another children simply because they have a different

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