Post 1 Assumptions and Associations

On page seven Taylor begins to touch upon the idea that different societies have different beliefs saying when, "separated by time, space, or both" these different societies, "may assign the same person to different races". The concept that different cultures view each other and others different from one another is not a hard one to grasp--especially being that I have personally experienced being placed in different categories by people coming from different backgrounds and social ideologies. To elaborate--when I disclose to certain people my Jewish heritage, some consider Judaism white while others consider it to be something....else. The reaction to this information about myself is always different, but always seems to provide some sort of explanation or category for "what" I am. Before that knowledge, I was just "white"(or whatever else people first assume I am without the knowledge of my bloodline) and after I am "Jew". But Taylor goes on with the sentence adding, "if they assign racial identities at all"(Taylor 7). The word, "If", in my eyes has a lot of emphasis in it. The idea of a place where people might not even assign racial identities is a much more difficult concept to grasp--being that I was born and raised in the United states. A place where the concept of colorblindness only emphasizes the racial tensions that this nation was founded upon. We are so racially aware and sensitive to the point where just the idea of a society that does not identify anyone as any"thing" completely baffles me. On page 17 Taylor provides an example that if we were to look at a persons face and immediately decide that he "looks smart", he concludes that this assumption is made without identifying that person with a specific racial group and that "thinking racially" has yet to occur. He then stats that if, "we think he looks smart because his facial features mark him as a member of a type of smart people, then we're on the way to race-thinking"(Taylor 17). I completely disagree (with the first half of the statement at least). How can he say that racial-thinking has not taken place during the first assumption of this person? You have to ask, why did someone in the first place assume that this "John" guy is smart? Because of our (U.S.) social makeup, I believe most racial thinking is done in an unconscious matter. One does not need to actively think of the physical attributes that made them think John looked smart, because they already had the thought that he looked smart. Assumptions do not come without associations, and in an example like the one given to us by Taylor, the association of someone "looking like" something automatically identifies that person with an attribute that is acutely related to the physical characteristics in which make up the different racial categories. Within the context of the United States, I believe racial thinking does not mean you have to physically and consciously "think" about the characteristics that explains someones initial perception of another person. I believe that racial awareness is so deeply embedded within this society that the process of racial thought has already taken place and led you to the conclusion that "John looks smart"--no additional thinking or elaboration has to take place because you have already come to a reason, with the light speed and always present process, of racial thinking. Which begins to explain why racial blindness, in America at least, is something that is as of right now, impossible. But thats another blogpost.