preview

Ap 352 Quiz 2 Essay

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document

Kiera Nissen
STS 352 Quiz 1

1. Explain why scholars and others say that the term “race” should not be used.
Scholars say that the term race should not be used because it does not have any basis in scientific fact and really has no use today. According to the AAA’s statement on race, there is 94% variance in genes of individuals within one “racial” group. Race has its basis in colonization, when trying to conjure reasons why some groups of people, i.e. Native Americans and Africans, had lower places in society than the white people. That’s why the groups of “races” are so broad and meaningless today. The concept of race is just used to spread prejudice and give so called “scientific reasons” to discriminate against another group. The term …show more content…

For example, in the United States, race is often split up into white, black, Native American, Asian or Pacific Islander, and these categories go back to the colonialism, that some groups were “better” in a socio-economic sense. So often when we use the term race today, we are going back to those groups that were established with colonialism. We often discuss the disenfranchisement of blacks, but black is such a broad group of people, because it includes all of sub-Saharan Africa, a region with dozens of ethnicities. Race today is a term used to simplify groups that have no need to be simplified.
3. How is the concept of ethnicity different from the concept of race?
The difference between ethnicity and race is that race is supposedly a scientific difference between groups of people. Race subdivides groups of people by a physical or genetic characteristic. Ethnicity, on the other hand, considers cultural traits. Race is a flawed term, because there is more variation within a racial group than between racial groups. Ethnicity, is a true term, because there are distinct cultural groups within groups of humans. Although there is a lot of mixing and melding of cultural groups, it is still easy to find distinct groups.
4. Why do some people think our common racial categories are

Get Access