What is race and who can we define it? When I see or hear such question I realize that the term “race” means something very different to certain groups of people. Usually we believe that race is the biological item that identifies what color of skin we are or what geographic ancestry we have. By the term biological race we mean all natural, physical divisions among humans that are hereditary, reflected in morphology. Usually people of different races have the terms like Black, White, and Asian (or Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid. Besides race is not characterized or marked by any by important differences in genes and their appearance. Indeed many people talk about the social construction in the racial identity. Or I can say that they believe that people with different races have different racial identities.
They argue that race is not real and doesnt exist as a physiological issue, it is only socially constructed. Referents of terms like Black, White, Asian, and Latino are social groups, not genetically distinct branches of humankind. And these social constructions are real. Indeed they dont contradict saying that race is socially constructed and also real. As our Declaration of Independence states “all men are created equal.” Yet our society and our nation as well as others are scarred by a long history of legally imposed inequality. And basically it is based on the social believes and constructions of this or that idea. Most of us define a “race” as a vast group of people loosely bound together by historically contingent, socially significant elements of their morphology and/or ancestry.
The Term Paper on Educational Attainment And Social Class
Educational Attainment and Social Class (1) There can be no doubt as to the fact that educational attainment and class affiliation are closely related categories. After all, it is highly improbable to find children of welfare recipients among students of Harvard or Yale. However, does it automatically mean that children of rich parents are guaranteed to succeed, during the course of their academic ...
As for me I argue that race must be understood as a generic social phenomenon in which contested systems of meaning serve as the connections between physical features, races, and personal characteristics. Saying in other words our social meanings connect our faces to our souls. Race is neither an essence nor an illusion, but rather an ongoing, contradictory, self-reinforcing process. Our social construction is and has been influenced by the various subjects and problems of the macro environment , social and political struggles and by the micro effects of daily decisions. The Social Construction of Race and Ethnicity in the United Sates is a great book that is a groundbreaking collection of classic and cutting edge sociological research that gives a broad understanding of the social construction of race and the facts that really influences and has influenced it in our country. It offers an in-depth and eye-opening analysis of the power of racial classification to shape our understanding of race and race relations. It show the way in which the system came into being and remains like this till nowadays.
It also shows what real consequences this system has on life chances. The authors believed that our social construction of race was influenced and is now by many different aspects of our life and I support their belief. I believe that we ourselves and our own personal experience influence the social perception of racial dilemma. We ourselves classify people by their race, color of skin, their ancestry and heritage. The persistence with what we do it doesnt get weaker through years but vise versa gets stronger and the consequences of such social classifications become better seen and felt. Mostly these consequences are not good which brings a lot of debates about the social acceptance of race by different people and groups.
Bibliography:
Joan Ferrante-Wallace. ( 1999.) The Social Construction of Race and Ethnicity in the United States.
New York: Holt. http://www.gnxp.com/MT2/archives/000873.html.
