Why Do Racial Identity Exist

Crit assignment 1:

Intro:

Throughout history, race has been used as a means of controlling people of colour. The ideas of racial superiority stem from colonisation and socially constructed ideas that help to garner power for a certain demographic.
Though the means of controlling people of colour might have changed, there are many ways in which this oppression still exists. The below essay will discuss the many ways in which racial identity is explored, oppressed and investigated in a South African context.

Throughout the world, the one demographic that never experiences any racial threat is that of white people. The global hierarchy of race, that was created by white people, has placed white people at the top and those with darker skin at the bottom. A racial hierarchy is a social construct which created the idea that whiteness meant “smarter”, “more capable”.
This has created the association of superiority with whiteness. This notion was first introduced by colonisers wanting to garner as much power as possible in the lands they wanted to control. Though this racial hierarchy is a global phenomena, in South Africa it was
“Othering” is often seen as treating someone, or a group of people, as inherently different to yourself. When people are seen as “others” it becomes easier to abuse and oppress them as they are no longer seen as similar to you. During colonisation, elements that were different to that of there colonisers were seen as inferior. Differences in language, religion and geography were all used to highlight how different the people being colonised were to the colonisers. For example, colonisers used Chrisitinaity as a means of oppressing and controlling the indigenous people. Colonisers saw the indigenous inhabitants lack of abrahamic religion as a sign tat they were “less-Godly” and therefor