Playing with Paints

My name is Scientist Johosophatogrammaticallypharmed, but you can call me Scientist Jo.  I’ve been living in the realm of nothing for as long as I can remember.  I’m sure you are a little puzzled about what I’m talking about because when you look around, you see a vast countryside filled with lots and lots of people.  Well, believe me when I say, I live in the realm of nothing.  When I look to my left, I see nothing.  When I look to my right, I see nothing.  Therefore, I live in a realm of nothing.  Now understand me there isn’t always nothing.  Whatever I think up can appear within 6 ft from me at any given time.  I have access to your realm of earth and am responsible for most of what you see.  That’s right you heard me right, I am responsible for most of what you see.  Yes, you are correct I do not work alone.  Today’s class will be focused on race.  “Who am I teaching you ask,” well that depends.   It all depends who is listening to me right now.  Okay, no more questions about all of that.  My name is Scientist Jo and I live and teach in the realm of nothing.

Race is a manmade classification system that separates people based on their genetic background.  Put more simply it is like examining a box of crayons.  Let me think about a box a crayons and they will materialize.  Help me think now.  Focus you mind and think crayons.  Thank you very much.  the more I receive your assistance the easier the class will go.  Now, when you look at a box of crayons, you will see an array of colors.  Do you see them?  Okay now let’s think up nine more boxes of crayons.  Help me think.  Think of nine boxes of crayons.  See them in your mind.  There they are, thank you.  Okay, now we need to examine all 10 boxes of crayons.  Now open each box and poor them into one big pile.  We are now going to classify the crayons by color.  Let’s begin now.  Put the reds with the reds.  The violets with the violets.  The Blacks with the Blacks.  The Blues with the Blues.  Let’s keep doing this until all the crayons have been classified.  Now, give yourself a big round of applause, you just classified your first objects by color.

Class attention please, thank you.  Let’s think of race in the same fashion.  We are all made up of the same properties as crayons, but just come in different backgrounds and shades.  Many scientists say that we have mixed races so much throughout time that we are all interrelated.  However, as scientists, we still love to try to classify things.  Fortunately, in modern times, people can self-identify or choose their own race classification.  Okay, enough of that.  Let’s look at the modern set of race classifications.  There is the African, Carcasoid, NorthEast Asian, Artic People, American, SouthEast Asian, Pacific Island, and Oceanian.  I know what you’re thinking.  These aren’t the races I know.  Well, most scientists think on a bigger scale than just what is going on in the United States.  Now, when looking at the American scale of racial makeup, most people can be classified as: white, black, hispanic, asian, american indian, alaskan native, and pacific islander.  That is quite some difference isn’t it?  Are you listening, we can think of this thing in two different ways.  One way we can think about this is by sing our crayons.  America uses a small box of eight crayons when the world uses a bigger box of 164 crayons.  One is a microscopic view of race and the other a global view of race.

I know what you are thinking.  You are thinking that this is a bunch of nonsense Scientist Jo.  Well, in a way I guess it could be considered a bunch of nonsense.  We can solve this thing simply.  take your box of crayons and color with each.  Is there any difference with the way they color or the way they feel in your hand?  Look at the ingredients on the box. Are there any differences in the ingredients?  Are they all pretty much made up of the same stuff?  That’s right, people aren’t people, they are really crayons.  The only difference between them is that they color a little different from one another.  Now, just like any other time in the realm of nothing, we can take what we made or learned and put it into the earth realm.  Would you like to do that now?  Okay, close your eyes and think about what you learned about race.  How it is a scientific way of classifying things.  It doesn’t mean that one race or one crayon is better than another, there is what is known as difference.  As sure as yellow looks different from red.  Okay, are you focused?  There we have it.  Everything we learned together has now been placed in the earth realm.  Good day to you until we meet again.