Cultural Prejudice And Racism By Richard Lopez

Lopez tells us that Whites do not exist as a natural group, but only as a social and legal creation. The very purpose of some laws was to create and maintain material differences between races, to structure racial dominance and subordination into the socioeconomic relations of this society. The concept of race incorporates, and arguably partially arose out of, cultural prejudice. At no time in history of its use for human beings, was the term race reserved for groups based solely on their biophysical characteristics. From the start it was a cultural construct composed of social value and beliefs synergistically related in a comprehensive worldview, integral to the cognitive perceptions that the Europeans and white Americans had of themselves and the rest of the world.
Antimiscegenation laws sought to maintain social lines, and at the same time, sought to maintain racial lines through social domination. In reading this book, and others in this class, I have learned a lot about race. Looking at it from the scholarly point of view, laws I didn’t understand seems to make more sense. For example, I know about people being racist and prejudice, however, I never thought about it in a way of forming society as well as the country. My previous idea was that the majority of the white people in the earlier days, just didn’t want the races to mix. Furthermore I knew that there were other minorities that came here but I never gave thought to it only being a generation ago, that all people were able to naturalize. I was really surprised to read some of the cases were Blacks were naturalized before other races. At one point of the reading, it actually stated that for some to try identify with black identity would help them