Social Differences: How Race Contribute To Social Identity

Everyday the future in America looks brighter for the issues dealing with race and identity. Brave souls are not letting racism, class discrimination, or sexism hold them back anymore. Furthermore, the fight for a balanced society that pushes for equality is on the horizon. As we close on an era, based on purely the skin of the person, we need to analyze the impacts of the Ethnicity paradigm and Class paradigm on politics of the 20th century. Race and Ethnicity are used interchangeable in everyday conversation, however; they are not the same.

In the article, “What We Mean When We Say ‘Race Is a Social Construct’,” Ta-Nehisi Coates asserts that the idea of race is that “puts hundreds pf millions under domination” (Coates, p. 3). The definition of race is “the classification of humans into groups based on physical traits, ancestry, genetics or social relations, or the relations between them.” Liberals often say “truly stupid things like race has to biological element” (Coates, p. 6). William Z. Ripley wrote a story which desired to “delineate racial difference through head type” (Coates, p. 4). Coates states that “race does not need biology.

Dylan Frank 9/30/16 ANT 190 FSEM Professor Knauft Existing Outside of the Racial Binary The way an individual perceives his or her own personal identity can differ greatly from how he or she is seen by society. Although race is a social construct, its impact has been profound.

Racial formation is the process by which humans classify other human beings based on what they look like and where they come from. To racialize someone is to categorize someone; however, race is not natural, and is in actuality a product of sociohistorical processes. Because racial classifications are manmade, it is pivotal to consider the context and time period of racial systems because they change with history. They are a social construction rather than a biological reality, meaning they can be created, destroyed, and transformed. These processes can be observed when we look at how the Irish, who were initially subject to intense racial discrimination, adopted “whiteness,” or how the Chinese, who were also limited to strenuous physical labor, became the model minority.

Various races tend to face negative stereotypes which divides today’s community and make the people of the world more distant from each other (Robinson and Harris). African Americans, for example, get labeled by White Americans

Citizens may choose to ignore the judgement placed on them from other people as they go about daily tasks due to a large amount of pride in themselves. Therefore, if the term ‘race’ becomes retracted, an enormous amount of the population would be upset that they are just another person rather than declaring their background. Along with upsetting people, ‘race’ highlights the amount of diversity present in this world which is another positive aspect of the

Racial issues are sometimes dismissed as history; they are thought of as issues of the past. People sometimes believe that since the government preaches equality, that most racial issues are resolved. This is not the case in today’s society, as racial issues are still prevalent in everyday life. Not only facing discriminatory practices in the job market, minorities face racism in many different aspects of everyday life. In the world we live in today, people tend to judge a whole group of people based on the actions of only a few.

Fall 2015-Soc 100-35W 10/15 Week Seven Discussion Samantha Henry Sociologist argue that race is a social construct and not a part of our innate natural behavior. Then why is racial identification so prevalent in modern day society? That’s because at young ages we are taught by television, movies, books, newspapers, parents, teachers, friends and other sources what race is.

. Race has always been a big controversial topic around the world. We always hear on the news of situations involving race, and lets face it, if it’s on the news it’s probably something more negative than positive. But, being a young adult causes me to be exposed to many more things on my own without the news or outside influences distorting my own point of view. I can say that I’ve formed my own beliefs solely on what I’ve experienced.

Throughout history social scientists have been trying to examine the different parameters of race in terms of phenotypic characteristics, and cultural behaviors regarding the different groups that society construct’s. legally judges have had different rulings regarding the categorization of different ethnicities and groups within the United States. Many philosophers such as Kwame Appiah, and Scientists such as Dr. James Watson have had opposing arguments on the topic of race and whether it exists or not. In order to do so we need to examine the different definitions of race, and analyze them in order to see how race is a social construct, where people’s notions of race and their interactions with different races determine the way they perceive

The social construction of race has challenged our thinking and has made us think critically on how we subconsciously inherited society’s idea of norms and differences. We live our lives day by day without realizing that we have been given a predetermined outlook on how we view people because of their race. We gain these predispositions through the media, social interactions, family values and so forth. We chose this issue because we find it interesting that many people are unaware of this social construct, and that the outlook on difference of race can affect one’s actions. Using popular videos and articles in addition to our class readings, our paper will introduce the idea of social construction of race, and how it interrelates with concepts of critical thinking and diversity.

While race and ethnicity share an ideology of common ancestry, they differ in several ways. Acknowledging something's existence comes to play with identity. People are deeply driven by their sense of identity, of who they are. Often times an individual race shapes their identity. Therefore, motivation and hate makes a case on how an individual identity is constructed by race.

Racial identity plays a role in the physical and psychological features of humans. Physically, humans in different parts of the globe endure different conditions and environments. Humans adapt to their environments and obtain different physical traits, henceforth, these physical traits have become adjacent to race. Psychologically, ancestral prejudices and influences throughout history have lingered through the generations and have impacted modern racial identities and tensions. Ethnic conflicts of the past such as the Social Darwinist theory of a "superior race" are morally refuted in current times, but that assumption had a brunt impact in which the world is still repairing today.

The idea that race is a social construction can explain a lot. When sociologists say this, they are referring to the idea that we see race, just as that, how we see it, rather than for what it actually is. What I have realized upon my own analysis of race as a social construction is that when we are speaking of a race that is not our own, we are more likely to generalize. “Whites” see all varieties of ‘black people’ as ‘black’, and ‘blacks’ see all varieties of ‘white people’ as ‘white’, when in reality, there are a multiplicity of varieties. I’ve had ‘non-white’ people ask me if I was a particular nationality, and when I say no and correct them, they reply with, ‘oh that’s the same thing,’ when it clearly is not.

(Ireland & Mallicoat, 2013)” J. Milton Yinger defines ethnic groups as perceived by others as different, group perceives itself as different, members participate in shared activities. Race is considered a social construct due to the label placed on them, imply some groups are inferior to others, implications for CJ data, diversity within racial and ethnic groups. This begins the concept that race is based upon their color, how they are dressed, male or female, the atmosphere surrounding them, etc. “Yinger argues that the critical categories for social analysis are the “socially visible ‘racial’ lines, based on beliefs about race and on