Race is generally a group of people united by a common language, history, and cultural characteristics. It has been used as a social construction to bring people into one identity ( Smedley, 1998) . However, it perpetuates societal stereotypes which vary considerably. It has shaped the way in which people view each other. Racism has been ingrained in societal structure as well as people’s minds. It is evident that aspects such as housing systems, educational, legal, and prison systems have been racialized in the current societies.
The traditional view explains that biological differences in human beings show the hereditary factors and the manner in which they are affected by the social and natural environments. The differences result from the interaction of both phenomena. Physical differences exist among today’s populations in various geographical locations. Most differences are inherited while others, such as shape and body size are determined by nutrition and the way of life.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
In early America, race was the major division of humanity and encompassed physical and cultural traits. It formed a platform for the enslavement of Africans and American Indians. It was also used to identify the Europeans who were ethnically diverse and socially unequal. Racial categories in the US were created to bring a gap between the whites and blacks showing superiority in the former while putting the latter in an inferior position.
One of the factors that caused racial construction is power and knowledge. This classification ascertains order within civilization. Knowledge and power forms race through interpretation and representation of reality. Skin color was another factor. However, various cultural groups experience a change in skin color at different time periods. Anthropologists believe that it depends on the quantity of melanin that significantly varies in a community. For instance, in North America, the white race refers to a people originating from any Europe, Middle East, and North Africa. The black race, on the other hand, is also referred to “African American.” it is given to a person originating from any Black racial groups of Africa.
Due to several backgrounds of people, the US was known as a melting pot. It describes the assimilation of immigrants into the United States. People with different backgrounds came harmoniously into a common culture. This made the society to become heterogeneous via the arrival of foreigners. Cultural pluralism, on the other hand, explains that each ethnic group has the right to exist within a larger society and it should retain its special cultural heritage. It is believed that ethnic traditions suppress individuality because they are constant
More fundamentally, assimilation refers to the situation where people adopt the way of life of another group after migrating to a new place. It leads to modification of social attitudes as individuals become similar with time until they are indistinguishable. In the field of religion, members of a church, slowly and gradually, join the field of another through conversion. For example, the American Indians acquired cultural aspects of the whites with whom they met. The whites, in turn, obtained some cultural characteristics from the Indians(Forbes, 1993).
I support assimilation as the definition of race. This is because we live in a world dominated by various factors, such as politics, which affects citizens in one way or another. Indigenous people, ethnic minorities, and immigrants always adapt to be governed by other societal groups. The two groups might dispute, but the more sophisticated will accommodate the inferior. Assimilation is gradual and can happen anywhere in various social contexts. In conclusion, race is a social construction since a person can be racially categorized based on social context, personal factors, and sexual identity among any other factors. It is constructed to bring people into one identity.
References
Forbes, J. D. (1993). Africans and Native Americans: The language of race and the evolution of red-black peoples . University of Illinois Press.
Smedley, A. (1998). " Race" and the construction of human identity. American Anthropologist , 100 (3), 690-702.
