Race, Racial, And The Individual 's Self Concept

There are two different dimensions of our identities: ethnicity and race. Ethnicity refers to one’s belonging to a specific cultural, or racial group that makes up culture, race language, and/or place of origin. For example, one can be African-American but have different ethnicities, one African-American and the other African-Caribbean decent. Race is a social construct that can be changed over time. Historically, referring to its specific characteristics one possesses based on: ethnicity, religion, or language; today's its classified solely based upon the color of one’s skin. Nevertheless, ethnic and racial identities are important and instill a sense of belonging and identifying with that specific group through attitude, behaviors. Moreover,

According to Cross’s (1991) model, individuals progress from multiple stages of the model, from race having little relevance to an identity in which race is very salient and fully present. For example, during the preencounter stage, individuals view race as a less important part of their identity. While during the encounter stage their racial experiences prompt a reexamination of racial challenges. In the immersion-emersion stage, AAs become pro AA and against Whites.

A majority of people here in the United States have felt a touch of the issues, that come with classification of race. Due to this, many men and women of the minority racial groups are put in to sub-groups as a way to “help” give them an identity that can relate to. This idea to separate people by giving them identities is called the Racial Formation Theory. First introduced by Michael Omi and Howard Winant, the theory is a tool that helps build the idea that race is a social contracted tool where your racial status is weighed upon by many factors such as by those social, economic and political origin. By using race a way to build lines and boundaries, this has resulted in causing a rift to grow between the majority and minority

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.

Race is a social-constructed terminology where it categorizes people into groups that share certain distinctive physical characteristics such as skin color. However, race and racial identity is unstable, unfixed and constantly shifting, as race, typically, is a signifier of prevalent social conflict and interest. Although, many, particularly anthropologists and sociologists, argue in the aforementioned point of view, some – mainly white population -- believe that racial characteristics are biologically inherited.

Critical Race Theory and Conflict Theory Society contains groups with diverse interests, where competing interests encourage conflict (Hutchison, 2013). The racial ideology in the United States is the belief in a hierarchy of races with whites at the top and other races grouped underneath (Robbins, Chatterjee, & Canda, 2011). One way minorities are depicted as different from whites is through imagery that creates detachment and seclusion between groups (Ortiz & Jani, 2010). Critical Race Theory Critical race theory (CRT) assumes this society was created to empower White people; CRT is focused on transforming the relationships between race and racial power assembled by law and culture (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). This theory suggests that racism is embedded in American society (Helms, 2006), looking at how racial pride in being White can be exhibited in tolerable ways or as White superiority (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012).

In American society, the term race entails the distinctions that are drawn from the physical appearance of the people in the community. Racial categories in the United States were developed as a result of the violent confrontations between the white settlers and the indigenous Americans and later the Spanish. Racial prejudice is perceived as unfavourable and discriminatory towards an individual or a group based on ethnicity and skin color. In the case where racial prejudice is supported by institutions and laws, this scenario is considered as an act of racism. Racial prejudice is experienced in the United States by individuals of the European descent against other groups such as Latinos or African-Americans. Racism leads to tension between people of non-European descent such as the Asian Americans and African

Today, Race remains a controversial topic in the world. Sociologists believe that the significance of race in contemporary affairs originates from the social beliefs which are associated with race, rather than the actual biological differences between groups of people. This notion is commonly referred to as the social construction of race. Studying this topic becomes even more crucial as the communities become more diverse. However, a sociologist might ask, what factors (micro or macro) influence and reinforce such believes? What could be the most significant factor that shapes such beliefs? This paper aims to investigate specific factors, such as the role of state policy, which may reinforce or create the beliefs about race. This paper, initially introduces several sociological terms, and then provides several examples to discuss the role of state policy and media in construction of racial identities. At the end, the paper analyses this question using sociology theories, mainly Symbolic Interactionism, Structural Functionalism and Social Conflict Theory.

The idea that race is a social construct is interesting because I never thought about it in that way. It is a social construct created by man; there are no substantial biological differences between the ‘races’ of the United States. I think that if you were to randomly select people and ask what the differences between races are, a majority of the responses would include physical differences, most notably skin color. While I do agree that there is no consistent basis biologically for races, there are differences between them sociologically. Even if the United States did not recognize races, there are stereotypes and stigmas associated with skin color and stigmas that affect how people interact with each other. I think that nearly everyone,

To understand the question, we must first familiarize ourselves with the definition of race. Race is defined as “An arbitrary classification of modern humans, sometimes, especially formerly, based on a combination of various physical characteristics, as skin color, facial form, or eye shape, and now frequently based on such genetic markers as blood groups” (dictionary.com).

Some shifts in racial identity can end in categories that society, which insists on the harshness of race, has not defined yet. Race, although it does not exist in the world in any real objective way, it is still very real in society. Race is a social mechanism that has serious consequences and effects. These consequences and effects, along with the notion that race is subjective is methodologically objective.

I do think that some races are social construct. Some races based on society’s beliefs and their perspective on things. Some races are considered to be in a different category than it was from years ago and it makes you question society as a whole. Are they separating races based on teir belief? Are they considering the biological suspects of humans as a whole? I feel like “race” should not be a term that is used to distunguish humans into categories. However, reading over material and watching videos, it made me look at things in a different perspective. Some people of different races have a lot of similarites. I feel like they catergorize race upon their belief and political process. How can one’s race change after generations to come? I

At the turn of the 20th century, much of American society was dominated by perceived ideologies embedded in the scientific studies. One of the leading fields of study at the time was eugenics. Scientists believed that by analyzing the works of Mendel and his contemporaries, researchers could effectively weed out humanity’s most undesirable traits (Norrgard, 2008). In a noble quest to alleviate genetic flaws the inadvertent perversion of ideas became the foundation for what appears to be the social construction of race. Somewhere along the lines, eugenics became more about isolating certain human characteristics, like skin color, and relegating them to a hierarchy of societal importance (Norrgard, 2008). Race is simply defined as a pattern-based concept that allows for the general public to draw conclusions based on an individual’s geographical location and thereby predetermining their inclusion into a particular social group (Yudell, et al., 2016) The philosophies embedded in social ideas about race has long been at the heart of contentious discussions throughout the last century. It has led to individualized implicit personality theories by which people tend to link certain attributes together because of an apparent frequency in a particular racial group (Greene & Heilbrun, 2015).

The United States is becoming an increasingly diverse country in regards to race and ethnicity. However, there are many misunderstandings and stereotypes regarding different population groups and the issue of race. Race has many definitions and one description given by Rose is that race is a “biological variation including genetic differences in stature, skin color, hair color, facial shape, and other inherited characteristics that may or may not be mutually exclusive in each individual”(Rose, 2013). Race is often confused with ethnicity which involves a group or individual’s perception of their cultural identity which is inclusive of learned behaviors used by human beings in their natural

I enjoyed your post, details and your view points about the second weeks’ topic. Race as a social construct is defined as an “illusion” or a subjective social construct () We have identified race does exists apart from our cooperative agreement, recognition within our cultural existence. The entire society that is constructed around us is subject to race and it’s stereotypes, and is an everlasting fixture in our complex culture. Ethnicity is used as a social ranking in society, constructed by society. If we intermingle race and ethnicity, which are social “illusions”, we are primarly creating a category that is not fundamentally real. Society overtime have shaped race and ethnicity within our culture and created groups of social minorities.