Post #4: Completely Unidentified Beings

In a Utopian society, there would be no distinction between people through phenotypic characteristics. No matter what skin tone a person had or where they were born, he or she would be treated as an equal to everyone else in society. Of course, this world would be a perfect society with no wars and a strong belief in the greater good of all mankind. This sort of Utopia is not very likely to exist and, in my opinion, would be impossible to maintain.

We, as humans, have this tendency to notice differences between people. Even people from the same racial group often wear different clothes or act in different ways that we are able to detect and use to distinguish between different people. This rings even truer for people of different skin tones and races. We can clearly see that there is a difference between a white man and a black man and there's nothing necessarily racist about that. In fact, one might even go so far as to say that it's human nature to notice differences in all physical characteristics, and removing that ability to notice the differences is detrimental to the well-being of the human race.

In truth, a world without ethnic identity would be much more peaceful, although not completely without strife. There would still likely be opposing views between people of different mindsets and ways of thinking which could cause a fight to break out. People still have a tendency to quarrel, even if the fight has nothing to do with ethnic differences. At least the world would be a little more peaceful, though. There would be a lower chance of huge wars to break out with the lack of identity. A drawback of this state of living would be that cultures might matter less and the traditions of different groups could fade away. This would be rather unfortunate because the different traditions and cultures of the many countries around the world are what make the world a more interesting place.

Blog Post #3: 3rd Rock from the Sun

It would be a very strange experience to suddenly be unable to understand why there are distinctions between people of different races and ethnic groups. In order to fit it, I would try to observe others, perhaps in the setting of a city park or in a theme park, while wearing sunglasses in order to seem a little less creepy.

If that wasn't enough observation, I would go, as Dick did, and ask others about what sort of distinction there is between people. The answer, most likely, would be phenotypic differences between people causes there to be grouping between people of similar skin color and as a result, there is also an immediate stereotype placed upon that group that is preconceived through literature, media, and observation of society.

Armed with this new information, I would go and search for a group of people who looked most similar to myself and use the trial and error method that was used by Dick and his family. Of course, by using phenotypic similarities, I would likely have a lower chance of offending others because people tend to focus more on the outside, visible traits than on anything else when grouping others into different racial categories.