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Reflection Paper In Sociology

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What is sociology? Before taking this class, I honestly had a very limited understanding of what sociology meant. However, because of the great diversity of people living in America, I have now realized how viewing the world with a sociological perspective can help me grasp the reality of many beliefs and practices in society today. Starting off with understanding the origin and purpose of sociology and transitioning into major topics such as race and ethnicity and education, I have gained new perspectives on how to observe the world around me. In our society today and even in the past, there has always been a tendency to associate certain qualities and behaviors with a particular race or ethnicity. In addition, many times these associations …show more content…

After learning more about the history of race in class and from the readings, I can now understand that race is just a construction made by people. At the same time, this also means that race could possibly be used to the advantage of some groups in power and limit others. Is deconstructing these categories a step towards social equality? In return, this helped me better understand the difference between race and ethnicity and how to identify myself. However, many people are unaware of the dark history of race and think nothing of it. For this very reason, I believe that it is highly important to firstly recognize the flaws in basing a society off race and then work on removing the classification of people by race to combat the existing racism throughout the world. A person should not be judged and assessed merely based off their skin color or culture, but rather by their actions and intentions. So, to group a wide variety of cultures into one category would be an unjust generalization made by social construct. For instance, African Americans are categorized by “black” in order to legitimize their exploitation as an apparently inferior race just because of skin color. This creates a system in which people are grouped based off race and ethnicity that subsequently leads to some groups having advantages, such as whites, over other minorities like Hispanics and African

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