Crossing The Border Without Losing Your Past By Oscar Casares

To many people across a variety of different nationalities and cultures, race has been proven to be a key factor for how society views you in the eyes of those who are prominently in charge. The term race has been brought up in recent years, to be considered a form of identification, as the word race is used to describe physical characteristics such as a person’s color of skin, hair, and eyes. When in reality, the correct term they should be using is Ethnicity. As a result, the term race is used to separate people into sub-categories based on the color of their skin. This type of classification, is a man-made creation used by society to classify certain groups of people into lower classes, while keeping the predominate group in charge at the top.

In the story, ”Like Mexicans” by author Gary Soto explains how he was always told him to marry a girl from his same ethnicity, but unexpectedly fell in love and married a Japanese girl. Sotos grandmother advised him to marry a girl that fitted the stereotype of a Mexican girl. He decided to ask his mom about the issue. His mom agreed that if he were to find a righteous Mexican women to marry her. Soto decides to ask Scott as well, who happened to be a second generation okie. An okie was what his grandma would call any person that was from a different ethnicity than them. They talk about their future how one day they hope to reach the American Dream. They share the same vision of marrying someone. It was shocking to him, that he ended up marrying a Japanese woman because he never imagined marrying someone that wasn 't Mexican. When he was twenty years old, he fell in love with a girl that he knew his grandma would be concerned about. Soto told his mom about the woman and how she was the one for him and the more he talked about her the more his mom seemed to be worried. That’s when he realized that his mother wanted him to marry someone from his own social class. Everyone agreed that indeed he wasn 't good enough for his fiancee. One day Carolyn took Soto to her home to meet her parents. Soto was nervous, until he sees her house and how alike their houses looked. He acknowledges how alike their ethnicities were, mainly in the economic sense. As Soto is in the roadway he

Humans define race by how they conceive and categorize different social realities. Thus, race is often referred to as a social construct. The differences in skin color and facial characteristics have led most of society to classify humans into groups instead of individuals. These constructs affect us all, and they often result in situations where majority racial groups cause undue suffering to those that are part of the minority. The understanding of race as a social construct is best illustrated by the examination of racial issues within our own culture, specifically those that have plagued the history of the United States.

Throughout American history, relationships between racial and ethnic groups have been marked by antagonism, inequality, and violence. In today’s complex and fast-paced society, historians, social theorists and anthropologists have been known to devote significant amounts of time examining and interrogating not only the interior climate of the institutions that shape human behavior and personalities, but also relations between race and culture. It is difficult to tolerate the notion; America has won its victory over racism. Even though many maintain America is a “color blind nation,” racism and racial conflict remain to be prevalent in the social fabric of American institutions. As a result, one may question if issues and challenges

Racial Formation in the United States by Michael Omi and Howard Winant made me readjust my understanding of race by definition and consider it as a new phenomenon. Through, Omi and Winant fulfilled their purpose of providing an account of how concepts of race are created and transformed, how they become the focus of political conflict, and how they shape and permeate both identities and institutions. I always considered race to be physical characteristic by the complexion of ones’ skin tone and the physical attributes, such as bone structure, hair texture, and facial form. I knew race to be a segregating factor, however I never considered the meaning of race as concept or signification of identity that refers to different types of human bodies, to the perceived corporal and phenotypic makers of difference and the meanings and social practices that are ascribed to these differences, in which in turn create the oppressing dominations of racialization, racial profiling, and racism. (p.111). Again connecting themes from the previous readings, my westernized influences are in a direct correlation to how to the idea of how I see race and the template it has set for the rather automatic patterns of inequalities, marginalization, and difference. I never realized how ubiquitous and evolving race is within the United States.

Latin American immigrants are not just concentrated to one area of the country. Cubans mostly live in Florida, while Puerto Ricans live in the northeast, and Mexicans mostly live in the southwest (Chavez, et al, 2005: 508). Their main destinations in the United States could be based on the geographic locations of their home countries. They settle in the area of the United States that is the closest to their country of origin. The formation of ethnic enclaves is common among immigrants because it connects them to their home country. They are able to livie among people who speak the same language, or in this case the same dialect, prepare the same food, and have the same cultural values. This spatial distancing is further proof of separate ethnic identities. Immigrants tend to live within groups of people from their own countries, not just with people who identify as Latino. By living with people from their home countries, immigrants maintain connections with where they came from.

What if we lived in a world where there were no races? What if people were not discriminated against because of the color of their skin or because they are different from what we see as acceptable? This is what Kwame Anthony Appiah tries to examine in his essay “Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections.” Appiah tries to point out that “American social distinctions cannot be understood in terms of the concept of race.” (102) That America is made up of so many different races that no race is the more superior or in other cases inferior to one another. America is defined by its cultural diversity; it is what makes America the nation that it is. It is the reason that we as Americans have freedoms other people

Meet Rachel, a sophomore studying at Howard University who is also mixed with both black and white. Rachel transferred to the Historically Black University from a Predominantly White Institution because she felt as though she was not “white enough” and Howard would better suit her. Unfortunately upon her arrival, Rachel could not help but feel as though she was not “black enough” to attend Howard University. Rachel’s feeling of not belonging are not isolated, they are shared by millions of biracial Americans who, at one time or another, felt as though they did not belong to either culture. These feelings have been brought on, over time, by the way, America, although believed to be a “melting pot” of cultures, often wants people to categorize themselves as one ethnicity and the pressure placed on Americans to solely identify with one race divides the country more than anything else. The only way to rectify this problem is for Americans to stop separating themselves into racial categories and come together to be classified as simply American.

America was widely known as a “melting pot” of sorts for many generations. The country earned its title by accepting immigrants of various cultures and molding, or melting, them into the American lifestyle. However, the “melting pot” idea of America is starting to dissipate. According to a Newsweek Poll on the public, “only 20 percent still think America is a melting pot” (Morganthau and Wolfberg, par.4). As more Americans push away immigrants and create stereotypes against said immigrants, America continues to lose its title as a “melting pot.” There is ethnic friction in America and people have begun to have a hard time assimilating (Morganthau and Wolfberg, par.18). .America is beginning to place a negative outlook on its

The United States of America has been called a “mixing pot” since the birth of the nation. Everyone, especially politicians and educators, will proudly declare that the U.S. is a land of unmatched diversity. The U.S. seems to always be portrayed as a highly cultural territory, harboring a vast population of many races. Admittedly, the United States has come a long in terms of eliminating racial barriers and pursuing equality. All around the world, America is seen as a country of colors, yet mass media does not recognize that fact.

In a society that focuses in the creation of labels in order to categorize its members; we continue the fight to defy the social constructed barriers that daily limit the lives of the human kind to no more than what their eyes can see and their minds judge. Gender, race, ethnicity, background, beliefs, sexual preferences, skin color, language, culture, and everything else that identifies a community are constantly used to criticized it, repress it and control it. While the judging lenses of society have always been there, we have to recognize that with the growing of communities, form migration, the problem continues to aggravate. In the United States of America, the perfect cradle is found to make this baby grow. With the great amount of immigrants, it is rather easy to find problems in society related to race, gender and culture in general; whether it is in the fields related to government, justice and law, as in the field of education.

THESIS: Race differences in identity and social position were, and are, more important than class differences in American society.

In Anderson and Collins’, chapter on “Why race, class, and gender still maters” encourage readers to think about the world in their framework of race, class, and gender. They argued that even though society has change and there is a wide range of diversity; race, class and gender still matters. Anderson and Collins stated, “Race, class, and gender matter because they remain the foundation for system of power and inequality that, despite our nation’s diversity, continue to be among the most significant social facts of peoples lives.” (Anderson and Collins, 2010) When I was a little girl, I never knew that people were classified in to groups such as race, class, gender. I knew there were people that had a different color of skin than

When we talk about race, what are we really talking about? The issue of race is a complex issue, with socially ambiguous undertones that have plagued our society for decades. Race has been a marker and maker of stereotypes. Race has been used as a justification for injustice. Whether slavery, Japanese internment, or social and economic exclusion, race has given an avenue for those in power to exclude ones deemed ‘other’. In the following paragraphs I will examine the premise of race and try to demonstrate why it is a social construct.

As outlandish as the notion seemed at the time, America has flourished as a cultural melting pot. No longer can we be described using umbrella terms or identified by superficial qualities such as ethnicity. We are each hybrids of many interwoven traits and values, which is precisely why we must continually seek the most inclusive policies that stimulate our thinking about constitutional principles and how they relate to the status quo.