Hierarchy Of Race In Society Essay

The hierarchy of race in society is based on the idea that one race is superior to the others with “white” being at the top due to the systems put in place by the hegemonic structure of dominance. Whenever the wealthy British conquered an indigenous group such as the Native Americans, that group took a spot in the racial hierarchy somewhere below the British. By placing the native population below whites, they are then denoted as inferior, in part due to the ideology that the superior race would not have been conquered. For example, Takaki writes about how during the western expansion of the U.S., Native Americans were being successfully pushed off to the west and the American conquerors felt justified in their actions because many of them believed in the idea of manifest destiny, which states that God is allowing the Native Americans to be brutalized because God wants the U.S. to colonize westward. To elaborate, since God is allowing what is most beneficial for the “whites” rather than the Native Americans, “whites” must be superior, and therefore higher in the racial hierarchy, than Native Americans. This ideology of white supremacy was formed to create a hegemony in which the British

land-owners could justify and maintain their socioeconomic dominance at the top of their fabricated racial hierarchy.
The Irish struggled to be included in this “top tier of race” so that they could too, enjoy the rewards of being the dominant class in a society.

The Irish ascended economically and socially over time as they gained better careers and college educations. According to Noel Ignatiev, the assimilation into doing “white man’s work” is ultimately what shifted the Irish from non-white to white. Ignatiev writes, “In the case of the Irish, ‘white man’s work’ could not be defined as work they did, when it was precisely their status as ‘whites’ that was in question… ‘white man’s work’ was, simply, work from which Afro-Americans were excluded.” The Irish managed to separate themselves from blacks by embracing anti-black testaments such as anti-abolition and anti-black

suffrage.
The blacks during the time of Malcom X opposed whiteness and embraced their African-American ancestry. They were not looking to become white through assimilation, but to separate themselves from the evil that they believed to be caused by the whites. This is the same time when Islam became somewhat popularized in blacks in America, and Kwanzaa became a well-known holiday celebrating peace and unity within the black community.