Mariah Carey is black?

For the last couple of days in class we have been talking about race and the distinctions people have about race. One of the days Sal put a lineup of sports balls and told us to class them. I classed them as hard balls and softer balls because even though i knew they looked like they were for a certain sport, i knew each ball couldn't and wouldn't be used for that sport. Our teacher explained that this is how people look at different races. Even thought a basketball looks like a basketball, it may be soft and not be used to play basketball. so people sometimes see a dark skin person next to another dark skin person and think "o they are probably both black" but that may be far from the truth. Their backgrounds could be from totally different parts of the world, but we would never know without "feeling the balls" and talking to the people to understand who they are. Our social construction of race started when they sailed to South Africa then the united states then back to England. They had four classes for people: Black, White, Native American, and Asian. This is how it has been and wont change until people see that people set into many different races and that every person is different. This concept was very hard for me to wrap my head around, but today i started to understand all about race and its pretty interesting how people perceive other races. This country would be totally different if those people were to walk down to Africa because they would have seen the many different people and skin colors, as Sal said. I wish they would have walked, but they didn't so i guess we need to change the world.