Sally Haslanger - Gender and Race

Race as Performance

Race, for most of the people, are genetically controlled. We all were born with diverse features like different color and different bone structure, and some people believed we performed and treated differently based on our race. But is it true? Do Asian people performing as “Asians” because they know what they have to be in their genes? After reading Sally Haslanger’s article about race and gender, I believed people with color perform differently because they learn to do that, and not because of their genetic information.

In the article, Sally Haslanger mentioned, “there are no racial genes responsible for the complex morphologies and cultural patterns we associate with different races.” What she meant was, that noon of the culture differences were a result by racial differences. People learn how to behavior from their parents, their teachers, and people around them. For example, for me as a Chinese, I learnt from my parents that Chinese people are always hardworking, are smarter than other race, and also very good at math. I used to believe this is true for all Chinese because we are Chinese, and those were written in our gene and blood. But then I started to realize that I am actually not good at math, I can be real lazy and don't want to do anything, and more importantly, I know other Chinese people who also hate math and also lazy. We do have very Chinese people who have all those traits, but I also know Chinese people that don’t fit any of the “stereotypes” about Chinese people. No necessarily just internal traits, physical traits are more obvious. A good example can be ABC, also known as American born Chinese. Those people were born in America, they learn the American culture and behavior the same way as most Americans, but they are Chinese because they have the physical features known as Chinese. Even though many of them described themselves as American, people still may see them as Chinese just because of their physical appearances. They have all the Chinese physical traits. However, they still can be grouped as “not Chinese” because of the distinguish features they have compare to the “Chinese” group.

Gender is just the same as race. We, as women, were born in a certain way that is complete different from men. Everyone women are different, just like every Chinese are different in certain ways. According to Sally Haslanger, gender is a matter of occupying a social position, and not based on physical or psychological characters. The reason woman and man are unlike is that people are performing themselves according to the social group they belong to. Woman performed woman by following the gender norm, people with different races also behave based on the social norm.

This also reminds me about Butler’s opinion about gender and her idea that “We’re all in drag”. She suggested that gender is not something people have or are, gender is what we do, as a performance. Woman have to behave themselves in certain ways to fit the gender role, and in some case, even man are forced to perform certain ways in order to be actually considered as “man”. In the case of race, it is just the same as gender role. As Chinese, I need to perform “like” a Chinese in both physical and psychological ways in order to actually be considered a Chinese. As far as I am concerned, sex and gender are not the only two things that are social constructed, race is also socially constructed based on social norm and stereotypes.