The Perspective Of Race And Ethnicity

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Race and Ethnicity is a widely discussed issue in our society and in the world we live in today. Often times there are two alternatives on race and ethnicity, whether they are fixed or fluid. This discussion over time has lead to the different paradigms attempting to explain race and ethnicity and how sociologist feel they apply to people (Cornell and Hartmann, pg. 44). A more popular fluid approach at race and ethnicity is the assimilationist perspective. This perspective was first introduced to debunk the biological/social darwinism perspective, instead of defining racial and ethnic differences due to biological terms researchers now introduced these relations according to cultural differences. The assimilationist perspective allows us to …show more content…

Puzzle 2 is looking at feeling versus being a specific ethnic group and what that may mean to an individual. Often times when looking at immigrants who come to the United States we see 1st,2nd 3rd, etc generations who over time go from “being” their ethnic group and “feeling” their ethnic group. What cornell and Hartmann explain as “being” is in a sense experiencing that ethnicity on a day to day basis, speaking the language, cooking the foods even allowing the ethnic group to influence things such as marriage. This is usually experienced by 1st or 2nd generation immigrants. When we start to see “feeling” the ethnic group we see this more commonly amongst 3rd and 4th generation immigrants who may identify with their ethnic group but it 's not a cultural distinction. These individuals may participate in certain holidays, they may say they originate from a certain part of the world but are not allowing their ethnic group to be a part of their everyday life (Cornell and Hartmann pg. 10). The assimilationist perspective would say that over time these individuals have assimilated and taken on a new social

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