The 13th Amendment was drafted in 1865 marking the end of 400 years of oppression towards African Americans. The 13th Amendment was split into two sections, Section 1, the more important section states “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Slavery is regarded as ine of the most heinous periods in United States history. It was centered around the dehumanization of Africans, Africans were taken from their homes by the Europeans as well as being captured and sold by their fellow countrymen for economic gain. They were then forced to do intense labor and were treated like property. This perpetuates the idea that they were not human, which lead to White Americans to have a sense of superiority towards them. They used this sense of superiority to justify their treatment of the slaves. Many events were crucial to the drafting of the 13th, the Civil War being the most infamous. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest wars ever fought on American soil, 620,000 Americans died in the Civil War. To put that figure into perspective roughly 1,264,000 American soldiers have died in the nation’s wars, this means that the Civil War makes up nearly 50% of all American casualties ever. The war was between the North and the South, the North consisted of highly industrialized cities, that believed that slavery was outdated and inhumane. The South was more rural but more densely populated, and fought to maintain slavery. Their clash resulted in the North winning and the subsequent abolishment of slavery in the united states of America as a nation. This was monumental, a 400 year tradition was now broken and now African Americans were free from their physical shackles.
The 13th Amendment talks about a lot, the main purpose of the amendment is to prevent citizens from being forced to work against their will. What does that mean exactly? This means that another person or entity can’t compel you to work against your free will. A lot of people agree with the 13th amendment and glorify it for its implications, but fail to see the darker aspect of the amendment. Slavery isn’t 100% abolished, if you have committed a crime then for the time that you’re serving in your sentence you’re a slave to the state. I find this part of the amendment as one of the aspects I disagree with, since forcing someone to involuntary labour goes against everything the 13th stands for. Crime shouldn’t be punished with more crimes, the struggle to end slavery persists today since it still exist in American prisons. The amendments were created as a safety net to protect the freedom of citizens, allowing their voices to be heard and preventing the government from having absolute power. That freedom should extend to you even if your incarcerated, being behind bars doesn’t change the fact that you’re an American citizen as well as person. The purpose of the 13th amendment was to humanize people and prevent higher powers from taking advantage of a weaker class and exploiting them for labour. This still happens not only within the jail system but in the outside world as well, this can be seen with the use of immigrants coming from different countries being used as cheap forms of labour. These people lack the ability to get established jobs for many reasons, they may not be able to go through official channels due to immigration status. Or they simply just lack the skills, this makes them cheap workers that companies can hire to do labour, and due to their lack of knowledge they are paid less than they should be making.
Stanford University is one of the world’s leading teaching and research institutions, producing household names such as President John F. Kennedy, Reese Witherspoon, and even Sigourney Weaver. It also hosted the research of Micheal James, who endeavored to bring the concept of race to philosophy. In his piece “Race” which he published Wed May 28 2008, he highlights what race is and it’s influential presence in history, all through the lense of philosophy. One of his first examples is The Iberian Peninsula was one of the first regions of europe to promote anti-black sentiment, as well as being one of the first regions to use Africans as slaves. While they’re subsequent enslavement of Africans continued their use of European Christians as slaves became taboo. Micheal James states “Iberian Christians may have come to associate blacks as physically and mentally suitable only for menial labor. In this they were influenced by Arab slave merchants, who assigned the worst tasks to their dark skinned slaves while assigning more complex labor to light or tawny-skinned slaves (Frederickson 2002, 29)”(Michael James 2008). Race was used to differentiate intelligence amongst slaves, darker meant dumber, lighter meant smarter, this idea that the characteristics of another determines their capacity is a reoccuring theme in Michael James’s piece. In this day and age that topic is perverse, but Michael defines race as:
(1) Races reflect some type of biological foundation, be it Aristotelian essences or modern genes; (2) This biological foundation generates discrete racial groupings, such that all and only all members of one race share a set of biological characteristics that are not shared by members of other races; (3) This biological foundation is inherited from generation to generation, allowing observers to identify an individual’s race through her ancestry or genealogy; (4) Genealogical investigation should identify each race’s geographic origin, typically in Africa, Europe, Asia, or North and South America; and (5) This inherited racial biological foundation manifests itself primarily in physical phenotypes, such as skin color, eye shape, hair texture, and bone structure, and perhaps also behavioral phenotypes, such as intelligence or delinquency.(Michael James 2008)
Michael James provides an objective perspective towards the technicalities of what race is defined as, he continues this trend as he describes different schools of thought when it comes to how people define their race.
The most intriguing aspect of “Race” has to be the contemporary philosophical debates, these debates center on varying schools of thought when it comes to race. One example being Racial naturalism which is defined as “Racial naturalism signifies the old, biological conception of race, which depicts races as bearing “biobehavioral essences: underlying natural (and perhaps genetic) properties that (1) are heritable, biological features, (2) are shared by all and only the members of a race, and (3) explain behavioral, characterological, and cultural predispositions of individual persons and racial groups” (Ron Mallon (2004, 2006, 2007) (Michael James). I learned that this is the original school of thought, all other perspectives on race deviate from Racial naturalism. In the article Michael also brings up another interesting school of thought called Racial skepticism. This is exactly what it sounds like, it’s the belief that Race as a whole doesn’t exist. Racial skeptics believe that race as a whole doesn’t exist, Racial skeptics such as Anthony Appiah (1995, 1996) and Naomi Zack (1993, 2002) points out that geographical differences nor physical differences make someone a different race. While they acknowledge the differences between humans, they simply state that geneology doesn’t reinforce the idea of the race. Zack concludes: “Essences, geography, phenotypes, genotypes, and genealogy are the only known candidates for physical scientific basis of race. Each fails. Therefore, there is no physical scientific basis for the social racial taxonomy” (Zack 2002, 88) (Michael James 2008). But where do these principles fail at? As I examined this article an interesting idea was presented the idea that the physical difference of humans is a result of environmental stimuli and physical adaptation. This is distinction is used to drive the argument towards the belief that race doesn’t exist since the only inherent difference is the result of environment, meaning that if the same environmental stimuli was applied to everyone we’d all be the same. This was an interesting point since my research into If Racism Is Inevitable, since this brings up an interesting hypothetical. If racial skepticism is true can it be tangible solution against racism? Is this ideal marketable enough to appease the masses? Sadly no, Racial Skepticism will never take off for the simple fact that many people believe that race makes people different. This sentiment won’t disappear if you introduce them to a new philosophy, also the fact that it’s a philosophy will cause others to question the scientific background of the argument.
The University Of Notre Dame also published their own take on the philosophy of race. Tina Botts of the University Of North Carolina did an in depth review of Albert Atkins attempt to simplify the concept of race so “mainstream” philosophers can understand (Tina Botts). In Atkins original piece he speaks on the validity of race, he investigates the scientific backbone of race, to see if it’s grounded in biology specifically. This piece shows critical analysis of the philosophical work of Albert Atkins providing an easy to read interpretation, that further expands on Atkins own ideas. The writer demonstrates a deep understanding of Albert’s ideas but does demonstrate bias when summarizing the article. She concludes with a brief sentence supporting Atkins point of views. The rest of the review was outstanding as the critical analysis showed a more natural answer to Atkins observations. Atkins philosophical views at times are difficult to process and Tina Botts helps clarify certain ideas, as well as providing a template in which you can follow the order in which Atkins arranged his piece.
In the review Tina Botts brings writes about the foundations of race, and the lack of scientific backing that Albert Atkins brings to light. Albert states blunty that “ Race is not real” but then proceeds to try and determine if race has a social reality (Tina Botts). Albert Akins first talks about how race has no real scientific background making it a psuedo-science at best, he then starts talking about social realities. Tina proceeds to explain a social reality like this “there are differences in how race is identified, thought of and talked about in different societies and social settings” (52). To support this conclusion, he compares the socio-historical practices, behaviors, conventions, and institutions that gave rise to the concept of race at work in the United States with the same socio-historical practices that gave rise to the concept of race at work in Brazil. In the United States, Atkin links the rise of the concept of race to the “massive importation of (African) slave labor into the Americas” (52) (Tina Botts). Social realities are the social implementations of race, how race is used to identify someone, how it changes how others interact with an individual, etc. The division of race is something that happens unconsciously, as people believe that the division of people is natural. Albert talks about how people justify this decision by believing it’s “Scientifically endorsable” (Tina Botts). An example of this would hispanics only hanging out with hispanic, and when asked why they justify it by saying “Oh we all look the same so we SHOULD be together”. I love this idea of race being a natural idea since this idea holds true to so many people. While your intentions may not be malicious, many people separate themselves into groups, and especially amongst their own race. The greatest part in my opinion is this happens unconsciously, we as a species are so conditioned to lean towards our own race. When you learn that there is no scientific implications on race, and it’s a construct not founded in facts or biology it allows you to access your surroundings and see the serious impact this has on daily life. Is this idea perpetuated by our own bias? Atkins talks about that too, he talks about how Racial profiling is not justified. He says this on the topic “the tool used to connect a particular (racial) characteristic with a particular profile often seems to be suspect or inappropriate in some way” (Tina Botts). Tina Botts goes on to summarize Atkins explanation of racial profiling and says “this racial profiling is probably not a good thing, and the reader is left wondering whether this is as unsurprising a result to Atkin as it is to the reader. If so, the reader is left wondering if Atkin regrets having developed his taxonomy of race at all.” (Tina Botts). She brings up an interesting point since racial profiling is always perceived to be bad, but Atkins explaination of it seems anti-climatic. Since he’s simply telling us something most of us already know, but the true point of his spiel about racial profiling may be deeper than we think. Through mediums like racial profiling ideas like racism are perpetuated, not blatantly but through subtle judgements a person makes throughout their lifetime. These thoughts sow seeds of doubt in our minds and further the idea of a difference between us as people and reinforces the idea of the inevitability of racism. If we believe in race as a concept we also believe in racism, since one cannot exist without the other. With thoughts like these racism truly is inevitable, since the perceived differences between us will continue to exist.
