The Correlation Between Race And Power

The correlation between race and power

The racialization of human beings, has been used as a tool of inferiorization to population groups to justify, and preserve a political and economic system where a foreign state ‘dominates and exploits another colony. According to American sociologist John J. Macionis, was defined as "a category of individuals who share certain hereditary features that members of society consider significant or relevant". This definition is quite simple, since it simply indicates certain characteristics that allow differentiation. However, soon some of them used the concept to attribute values or catalog society in a hierarchical way. 

Humans like to classify. Take the diversity of elements presented by reality, and define “types” in which we can divide these elements. Classifying can be very useful when we talk about objects or concepts, because it allows us.Since people can travel, they have realized that in different places, the inhabitants have different aspects, different skin colors, hair textures and features. 

The first formal classification was made by Francois Bernier in 1684 and in 1785 after classifying the animals Carlos Linneo, said there were four human races;whose were, European, Asian, African and American. For a long time, this classifications, sometimes with pseudoscientific legitimation they served to justify oppression and exploitation. For example the slavery of Africans and Indians in the 18th and 19th century.

Indians and Africans were enslaved and treated as lower by virtue of having been defeated by Europeans. A cultural and technological conception of superiority against other civilizations crossed out of primitive gave as valid any domination over these peoples.

Another system of domination is the caste system, which was used in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Spanish Viceroyalty of America invented a caste system linked to the breed, who had the most rights was the "Spanish" of clean blood. The children who had with indigenous women were called "mestizos" or if it was with Afro -descendant women, "mulatto" and all possible combinations emerged a tangled classification that included caste with names with much more contempt like "Zambo" "Saltatras", "Sambaigo" or "Tentenelaire", each with less rights than the previous. After a couple of centuries it was impossible to know what caste each person belonged, and although the caste system was abolished, to date a miscondussion persists in our countries that the importance of a person is related to their skin color. 

The idea of race is a racist conception and, therefore, discriminatory and excludes subjects, and are finally subjected to extreme forms of domination. For example, after the conquest in America, and after the enslavement of the Indians in the Americas, the Spaniards decided to stay, imposing a long -term and more state policy for economic reasons than by a humanitarian attitude, a policy is adoptedof the protection of the indigenous population as free labor for the parcel. 

This created the idea of black or indigenous as "the other" or as "objects" and this marked the beginning of a dehumanization process that tries to justify the exploitation of these people. By conclusion, most of Spain and Europe have been built on the benefits generated by the slave system, which began with the idea of the race that categorized the value of humans according to the color of their skin in a hierarchical way.