Essay On Race And Ethnicity In Society

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The Exploitation of Race and Ethnicity in Society
In the United States, there is a stark racial divide that has been going on for decades and continues to exist today. For example, a black male in America is 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by the police than a white male. Statistics like that pop up in the news every so often, promptly when a young, unarmed, black American is shot to death. I continue to ask not only why black Americans are killed so much more than white Americans, but why, in general, does this country have such harsh racial inequities? It also makes me wonder why we classify people based on their race and ethnic background and why people are exploited because of those factors. There is no finite answer to these questions as I’ve learned through my own research and through discussions in this class. The role of race and ethnicity in society and the reason why we use constructs to justify inequality between different groups of people are unresolved issues we face. …show more content…

Many people fail to recognize that racial meaning is dynamic, fluid, and historically situated. These people, most of whom are white, tend to ignore what race means in the context of how it was constructed over the years. It’s much more than just a skin color but for some reason that skin deep difference is what fuels many different forms of injustice in society. Daniel Martinez HoSang and Oneka LaBennett described in their article, Racialization, about how race is used to justify many forms of social hierarchy and power. This process of racialization highlights human difference through hierarchy based solely on race, creating “superior” and “inferior” races with no biological basis. Racialization then alludes to a cultural dominance where an “inferior” race or culture is exploited by the “superior”

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