Race In The 21st Century

The race is an indefinite term, which has not been created from science or research, but more so the idea of what it is. Essentially, race is all about perception. One person may separate races based on a certain category of traits while another person uses totally different guidelines to define what races there are. Race has ultimately been created socially, therefor has no biological components until people connect the two terms. This paper examines the connection between society and race while taking you through America 's history, and explains the social construction of race.

In chapter seven of Racial Formation in the Twenty-First Century, the author Tomás Almaguer discusses how the Hispanic and Latino populations in the United States are identified in terms of race and ethnicity. Almaguer mentions how Latinos were initially identified as “white” in government documents mainly due to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. However, soon enough due to the increase of the Latino population in the United States from various Latin American or Hispanic countries, they began to be placed under an ethnicity.

Ethnicity and race are ways to differentiate a group of person from another; therefore, in the 21th century this terms has acquired a powerful meaning in society. A few months ago, I learned how significant this terms are.

The PBS series “Race: The Power of an Illusion” effectively works to expose race as a social construct and deconstructs the false notions that race is a biological marker. The series first discusses that all human beings originated from Africa but dispersed about 70,000 years ago to various places in the world. As a result of this migration, people were spread to different locations throughout the world with different environmental conditions that affected their physical traits. It was many years after the migration in which people began to display these new physical traits such as slanted eyes, fair skin, and differing hair textures. While the series notes the physical changes that occurred during the migration it also emphasizes that race while it may seem apparent in skin color and other physical features has no real biological basis.

Race and ethnicity cannot always be defined. As children, we grow up and we learn to associate different contexts with different meanings and even different cultures. My paper is based on the origin of race and how ultimately it can be used

As the European need for slaves to be exported from Africa to the Americas increased, it allowed them to further develop their societies at the disbursement of Africa. It began as a small profitmaking system of transporting a few Africans in exchange for European goods like guns, but led into being a large market that endorsed the capture of many Africans to be transported to the Americas. In response to the European demands, a new social system evolved as whites were the superior and blacks were subservient. Slaves were viewed as property and had no rights. Slave ownership became a key factor to economic success for Europeans. The result of this was the decline of Africa as it was nearly impossible for poor Africans to avoid being put into the slave trade. This led to descent in Africa as they encountered decline both economically and socially. The problems in current day Africa root all the way back to the participation in the slave trade. The Trans-Atlantic slave trade allowed the Europeans to strengthen their world power to and even greater

When watching a TED talk you automatically know your going to leave with some new profound thought or have your ways of thinking changed slightly. The primes behind TED talks is “Ideas worth spreading” right there in their mission statement is what persuasive speech is. In Ms. Alexander’s TED talk she did just that, she spread the idea to her audience of what the future of race in America will look like if we don’t seek to change the social, economical, and political policies that almost certainly put people in america as legal second class citizens.

What can we say about race in America that has not been said before? In reading the book, one gets more disheartened yet. Though the author's statistics are now dated, I found a calculation made by the National Criminal Justice Commission that by the year 2020, 33.3 percent of African Americans and 25.6% of Hispanics between the ages of 18 and 34 will be incarcerated most frustrating as those numbers would seem to apply to the loss of young people through war or epidemics such as aids. In the harsh environment of prisons, race becomes the all- encompassing issue.

Very few of us are aware of the difference between race and ethnicity. Many of us assumed that is the same definition. In Sociology this terms have a very specific and different meaning.

Abstract: Since the Transatlantic Slave Trade, African Americans have been dependent upon those of fairer complexions to educate them about the culture and history of their own people. Unfortunately, the trip over to the Americas caused them to lose touch with several parts of their being; native tongues, culture/heritage and most of all their self-righteous. Somewhere along the way they forgot that they are creators of every major practice; from metallurgy to agriculture; practices that essentially influenced the entire world. The Transatlantic Slave Trade essentially and effectively brainwashed a group of people. It caused people of the African diaspora to lose sight of who they really are; installing negative and inferior perception of their ancestry, while also installing white superiority through their mindsets. African Americans innately depended on white people for every part of their life, even later slavery. In regards to education, African Americans depended on white Americans to build infrastructures for the education of black people. This unfortunately continued the cycle of white dependency. While African Americans thought they were enhancing their knowledge, all they were doing was becoming more equipped servants to their white

Race is one of many key factors that influence the historic relationship between classes, ethnicity, immigrants, bodies, and the state, specifically when it comes to notions of citizenship. The articles, Perils of Degeneration, Hygiene and "The Indian Problem", Nationalizing Children through Schools and Hygiene, Puffy, Ugly, Slothful and Inert’, and The Vice Trust, all point to the function of popular perceptions of race in society, specifically how individuals are classified based on certain racial markers. All of these articles surround the theme in which notions of race influenced political and social responses in both the United States and Latin America.

When the first Irish immigrants landed on the eastern shores of America in the 18th century, they were met by intolerance from the Native whites who saw them as a threat to the American way of life. The Dangers of Foreign Immigration, an article written by Samuel Morse in 1835, exposits much of the anti-immigrant sentiment prevalent in the 19th century. To the natives, the Irish were simply "niggers turned inside out" (Anonymous Satirism), who came to America as refugees from Ireland to deprive them of their wealth and prosperity. Thus, the immigrants of Erin were forced to join the ranks of the slave, the German, and the free Negro laborer at the very bottom of the American diaspora. But instead of accepting the hand which they were

The enslavement of Africans in the Americas was such a gruesome time in history that we often generalize it into one event not being careful to look closely at the effects it had on the African people: During the course of those 400 years slavery as we knew it single handily shaped the early African American. Starting with the export of the first wave of African Slaves the impact of this would profoundly affect descendants hundreds of years later. Europeans who decided to enslave African people thought only of what monetary value they would be as they were their property who didn't deserve the decency of being anything more. The enslavement destroyed life as they knew it in their native Mother Africa. There they thrived with resources they

On all accounts in history, colonization created the system of the slave trade, in order to help build the economic foundations of established colonies. However, doing so left the victims of this trade with a legacy of limited potential. For instance, past colonization has influenced disproportionate distributions of income in South Africa, the lowest on the continent. “Colonialism has left South Africa with a legacy of migrant labor, particularly among workers in the gold and diamond mine…” As a result, it guarantees poverty concerning the majority of the black African population, in contrast with the history of wealth and prosperity of the white population in Africa. Also, white supremacy is visible throughout the colonization of foreign nations. The European colonists did not want

I took the time today to read the article titled “What is Race” by Victor M. Fernandez, RN, BSN and found myself agreeably intrigued and in admiration of his thoughts regarding race. Victor touched on an extremely insightful and significant topic; one that most people have sturdy opinions about. Race – what is it? What does this mean to you? What does it mean to our upcoming careers in the nursing field? I trust that how we characterize and assess our awareness of race is due exclusively to how we were raised. I do not mean merely what we were taught from our family or culture about race, but to a certain extent how we have lived it, and how it has lived around us. “Race is a modern idea. Ancient societies, like the Greeks, did not divide