Race And Ethnicity Essay
Race and Ethnicity. The two terms have overlapping meanings and consequences, as both are group identities based on the concepts of: shared ancestry, shared culture, and often shared physical characteristics. On the first day of class we defined both (broadly). Race is a category based on similar physical appearance and social status where as Ethnicity is a category based on shared culture and/or heritage. While the definitions are different, the two are usually easily confused for one another. One way to understand the complex relationship between the two is to look at them through society, or how society treats people based on the two. As stated before, race is based on physical appearance and social status. Therefore, Racism is the use
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Yes both terms are social constructs, but racial categories have a much larger impact on people’s lives because they’ve been used to discriminate or they have been used to distribute resources unequally or to set up different standards of protection under certain laws. That is not to say that people weren’t discriminated against based on ethnicity, you can see the Italian or Jewish immigrants, yet at the time I think society actually treated them as a racial group. We discussed at the beginning of the year how in the 1920’s we had Slavs, Italians, and Jews coming to America and how they were treated badly, but people weren’t running around claiming that ancestry because they didn’t want that discrimination. Eventually, these immigrants were somewhat adopted into the “white race.” That right there just shows how race can just play a larger role. These immigrants looked “white enough” to receive the white privilege yet if you took a girl who was born in Japan but was adopted by Italain parents and therefore grew up in Italian culture, society would still deem her Japanese even if she had never come into contact with that culture after birth. Yet flip the race and make her white and that would never happen. Yes ethnicity can be a choice, or it can be different than what society PRECIEVES you are, but race
Yes both terms are social constructs, but racial categories have a much larger impact on people’s lives because they’ve been used to discriminate or they have been used to distribute resources unequally or to set up different standards of protection under certain laws. That is not to say that people weren’t discriminated against based on ethnicity, you can see the Italian or Jewish immigrants, yet at the time I think society actually treated them as a racial group. We discussed at the beginning of the year how in the 1920’s we had Slavs, Italians, and Jews coming to America and how they were treated badly, but people weren’t running around claiming that ancestry because they didn’t want that discrimination. Eventually, these immigrants were somewhat adopted into the “white race.” That right there just shows how race can just play a larger role. These immigrants looked “white enough” to receive the white privilege yet if you took a girl who was born in Japan but was adopted by Italain parents and therefore grew up in Italian culture, society would still deem her Japanese even if she had never come into contact with that culture after birth. Yet flip the race and make her white and that would never happen. Yes ethnicity can be a choice, or it can be different than what society PRECIEVES you are, but race