I was watching television the other night and a commercial appeared. It featured a woman, who would probably be considered Latina, speaking to the camera seductively and saying, "I love Latinos. How passionate they are, the way they look, the way they talk." She then provided the number for a hotline where anyone can talk to a Latina woman whenever they want, for as long as they want (after paying a fee, of course).
Is this how far we've come? More than 40 years after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color or national origin (as well as sex and religion), society is still placing stereotypes on certain races and ethnic groups. According to the woman in the commercial, every Latino is passionate and looks or talks a certain way.
The sad part is that eight years ago, Alan R. Templeton, a professor of biology at Washington University, found that, scientifically speaking, race doesn't even exist.
Templeton reached this conclusion after analyzing millions of genetic sequences found in three distinct types of human DNA.
"Race is a real cultural, political and economic concept in society, but it is not a biological concept, and that unfortunately is what many people wrongfully consider to be the essence of race in humans - genetic differences," Templeton said. "For race to have any scientific validity and integrity it has to have generality beyond any one species. If it doesn't, the concept is meaningless."
So, if race doesn't exist, then why is it still an issue?
For one thing, it's profitable. Cable television channels such as Black Entertainment Television (BET) can easily project their programs at young African-American teenagers and gain a wide audience.
Corporations will pay Viacom Inc., BET's owner, thousands of dollars to advertise during the channel's commercial breaks. Colleges and universities can make themselves appear munificent by instating affirmative action programs. These encourage enrollment, but make "minorities" appear inferior by saying that they need assistance to matriculate into a school.
Secondly, people simply don't like change. Race has been an issue since the beginning of mankind, and to remove it from our culture would be a drastic and tumultuous endeavor.
It's sad that so few people are likely to make such a switch. If they were, it would eliminate many of the problems that have haunted mankind for centuries. In a colorblind world, tragedies such as Rwanda or the Holocaust would be unheard of. In today's society, it's easy to become biased or discriminatory when the media constantly presents images of the latest African-American suspect in a murder, or the latest war that holds some connection with the Jews.
One of the most pragmatic things that society can do to mitigate stereotypes and crime is to forget race. It would be an arduous and interminable process, but mankind would come out better in the end.
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