actually a discussion with my old latin teacher, who has a lot of interesting (although often closed-minded) beliefs, and varied interests re: reading and research. we were musing about the historical origins of the divisions of "race" (this including "race" the way ill broke it down, i.e. pheonicians vs. romans vs. greeks vs. teutons etc.). one of the things we concluded was that race as a social construct was for a long time (and in some ways still is now) a necessary social construct. "us" and "them" can be fruitful for both the us and the them, when one considers that the two need not be conjoined by a "vs." essentially, we surmised (he'd read on the subject, i hadn't yet, although i have since) that such classifications originated partially when people lived in smaller groups (anywhere between 25 and 300+). these could have been tribes, villages, clans, etc. essentially the cohesiveness of the "us" could only be enhanced by establishing a "them." but once this paradigm is accepted, it becomes an object of exploitation (here's where the "vs." comes in). i'm rambling and incoherent (i've been sneaking this post off and on for 20 mins, lol), but i'm simply putting out the idea that racial and societal divisions developed and gained establishment out of necessity and initially were very beneficial. now that we live in societies of 300 million or more at a time, however, it's necessary to find new classifications (as we couldn't survive with no classifications) because race has become to heavily exploited to be further beneficial. however, and i comment on this hesitantly (as a "white" person), race has become exploitable but it still strongly maintains a positive "us" in many cases. that is, by NOT being "white" or asian etc., black has become something unifying. black may not have biological basis, but it's still something that allows people help establish who they are. i'm about to get caught so i'm going back to fucking data entry now. whiteboy (sue me, k-love) out for now.

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