Anti-Essentialist Responses

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When going through my own answers to Morning’s survey I found many constructivist and some essentialist modes of thinking. They were not always separated by question and seemed to denote a disconnect in my mind when trying to rationalize both of them together. I didn’t really see a big amount of anti-essentialist responses but there were a few implied by contradicting constructivist answers. Most of my responses seemed to revolve around a theme of culture, which fueled my constructivist answers, but also the responses gave credit to biology.
I gave purely essentialist answers for questions seven, nine, and nineteen. When typically asked about how one perceives race, I said that physical appearance (or in other biological terms, phenotype) had much to do with the perception. For the NFL question, I …show more content…
My response was that different races (due to differing cultural practices) ate differing things and maybe that contributed to the baby weights. A difference in diet can be attributed to your environment and your culture. For example, in the South many African Americans like to eat soul food and grow up eating or cooking it. If a woman were to eat soul food while she were pregnant versus a vegan diet, it could affect the weight of the baby, thus defining a constructivist response outlined by cultural and environmental themes.
As far as anti-essentialist responses, I did not openly discount essentialism in my propagation of constructivism. Though, as I stated earlier, I did have some constructivist thoughts that would contradict essentialism. This would indicate that I don’t completely disagree with essentialism, even though I feel that essentialism is associated with the proliferation of racism. From my responses I would draw that I agree with both essentialism and constructivism, and also that I have a hard time bringing them together in my
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