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Essay On Mixed Race

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The majority of the general public has preconceived ideas as to what a person’s race is based solely on appearance. In general, it can be difficult to identify a person’s race just by looking at their skin color. In each race, there are many variations of skin color and to make it more complex and difficult, not to mention people who are of mixed race.
Historically, race has been divided into four categories: black/African American, white, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American/Alaskan Native. This type of categorization is based on skin color. By categorizing people in this way, most of the information that is gathered is not completely accurate. It does not take into consideration people who are of mixed races. For example, someone could …show more content…

For example, I have a niece who is of mixed race. Her mother is white and her father is black and Native American. When my niece was getting ready to start school, my sister wanted her to go to a certain school. However, if my sister identified her daughter as black, the chances were very high that she would not be able to get into the school of her choice. If she identified her daughter as Native American, she had a guaranteed spot at the school. Now that my niece is in high school, she identifies herself as white even though when people look at her, they say that she is black. This is a great example of how complicated identifying race can be, and how someone might change what race they identify with based on the situation.
A common misconception occurs in regards to people from Hispanic or Latin countries. If a person says that they are Hispanic, that is what their ethnicity is, not what their race is. It is often thought that race and ethnicity are interchangeable terms when they are actually two different things. In short, race is based on biology and ethnicity is based on culture. It becomes very difficult to classify the race of someone from this background. Just like in any other group of people, there are many variations in skin color that can easily lead to a person being classified as race that they are

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