Essay On Race In Society
When first learning about the term Race it was hard to pin point the actual definition of race in my own terms. We had several readings, all which played a vital role in me; further understanding race and what factors it plays in our society today. In the article Sports in Society by Jay Coakley, Coakley defines race as, “a population of people who are believed to be naturally or biologically distinct from other populations…”
It is important to understand that race and ethnicity are entirely different, yet over the years they have been used interchangeably.
Race refers to the physical and biological traits of a person where the ethnicity of person refers to the cultural makeup of that person and the heritage they identify themselves with. …show more content…
It is a way that we have categorized one another into groups solely based on physical appearance and cultural differences. Sadly, the racial profiling and segregation using racial ideology is only a recent idea that was brought up by Europeans during the late 17th century. When Europeans traveled the world and began to realize all the different people that no longer shared the same characteristics as them, they started to use racial ideology as a classification system. This is when the term race was used causally and was often used in place of the word ethnicity. Further into the the18th century people began to shift from using the term race when referring to physical characteristics and using it more to describe a biological makeup of a person and allowed the idea that colored people were inferior to the white people. This idea was widely accepted by our society for three major reasons. First, as political expansion became highly important to the Europeans of the United States our society promoted westward expansion and justified for killing and moving Native Americans to reservations. Second, after slavery was abolished the south used white power and racial segregation to restrict black Americans by implementing the Jim Crow Laws. Third, many scientists claimed to be able to “prove” that colored people were biologically
It is important to understand that race and ethnicity are entirely different, yet over the years they have been used interchangeably.
Race refers to the physical and biological traits of a person where the ethnicity of person refers to the cultural makeup of that person and the heritage they identify themselves with. …show more content…
It is a way that we have categorized one another into groups solely based on physical appearance and cultural differences. Sadly, the racial profiling and segregation using racial ideology is only a recent idea that was brought up by Europeans during the late 17th century. When Europeans traveled the world and began to realize all the different people that no longer shared the same characteristics as them, they started to use racial ideology as a classification system. This is when the term race was used causally and was often used in place of the word ethnicity. Further into the the18th century people began to shift from using the term race when referring to physical characteristics and using it more to describe a biological makeup of a person and allowed the idea that colored people were inferior to the white people. This idea was widely accepted by our society for three major reasons. First, as political expansion became highly important to the Europeans of the United States our society promoted westward expansion and justified for killing and moving Native Americans to reservations. Second, after slavery was abolished the south used white power and racial segregation to restrict black Americans by implementing the Jim Crow Laws. Third, many scientists claimed to be able to “prove” that colored people were biologically