Would "Race" Still Exist Without the Help of Kant?

The origin of race is something I can honestly say has never crossed my mind. Out of ignorance, I assumed the idea of race is something that has existed since people of different racial backgrounds and ethnicities discovered one another.  After reading Immanuel Kant’s essay, “Of the Different Human Races”, written in the 1770’s, it shocked me that this was only one of the first attempts to try to divide the world into sections using only racial and physical concepts. After looking further into the text it became clear to me that the idea of race was only doomed to rise to the attention of humans at some point in time, and I’m surprised it was not sooner.

The categorization of Kant’s racial divisions’ elicited some ideas that seemed to have been agreed upon by the majority at that time. White’s and Negros were different. Asians and Negros were different. Whites and Native Americans were different. The list goes on and on.  Now, why these differences existed was a heavily debated topic, however, one idea remained consistent; the external physical construct and skin complexion of these groups were unavoidably different. I also noted stereotypes that Kant addressed, such as Negros being lazy, indolent, dawdling, and stinky, which were ideas present long before the production of his essay. It’s hard for me to believe that until Kant, or even Bernier, came along writing about “human races” the world as a whole was oblivious to at least some derivative form of this notion. Even if neither philosophers nor scientists labeled different races by name, I still believe some theory of “race” would have played a major role in our society, just the same as it does today. Innately, humans are programmed to make note of differences. Whether it is differences in physicality, language, culture, or so on, humans are intrigued by differences and try to make some sort of sense out of them. Grouping people, animals, plants, or whatever may have you together based on differences help us find commonalities within those grouped together yet also helps us figure out what makes members of different groups dissimilar. It seems to bring more order to the universe. Unfortunately, this may lead to stereotypes associated with certain groups, many of which may be untrue. Welcome to the 21^st Century.     

 I often wonder what life would be like if I was not labeled an “African American” but after giving it further thought, I’m not sure life would be much different.