Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Social construction of race and how it affects society
Racism in modern days
Social construction of race and how it affects society
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
There is an only race—human race, in the words of Nelson and Fleras, “human beings belong to a single biological species within a larger grouping or genes” (Nelson & Fleras, 2005, p. 173). Human beings’ changing in which all individuals participate and belonged, with species diversity contribute a distinctive human society. Race concept is often explained human diversity in society, and certain social issues. Meanwhile, the discrimination of human populations may cause certain problems in society, because people may use these race notions as a means of explaining and even quibbling what they have done, and as an excuse to discriminatory other people. For example, Nelson and Fleras mentioned, “Europeans were not the first or only group to mistreat …show more content…
Then, this essay will elaborate the attribute of race, and it has a series of potential problems, while it also references more scholarly materials such as Augie Fleras, to provide a better and proper understandings of race concept. Afterwards, this essay will give a brief description of the issues racism, privileges, prejudice, and power. In addition, this essay will analyse the relationship between race and racism, and how power is used to illustrate races as racially inferiority in society. Finally, this essay will provide various claims and proofs to sustain whole essay’s argument, and interpret view of race and social science. Overall, this essay concludes the article by explaining that humans’ diversity cannot simply defined the norm of race, and even for the reason that deprive the rights belong to human beings. All forms of discrimination are against with pursue equitable treatment and humanism, and all individuals deserve respected and comprehended by other racial …show more content…
The distinction of human populations based on an artificial consequence without any biological and scientifically foundation. Nelson and Fleras described, “racial types and typologies have been discredited as pseudo-science and dangerous politics, without any redeeming explanatory value or empirical merit, except to preserve privilege or exert control” (Nelson & Fleras, 2005, p. 174). However, the boundary between these diversities and what the racial differences mean is socially constructed, and races to be “social organization” is also constructed. In short, the major problem is that people usually assume others based on their external features such as eyes colours or skin colours. The view of Usher is that “there are several social scientists that connects race with ethnicity to identify certain group of people by their religion, culture or nationality” (Usher, 2003, p. 379). Therefore, people cannot consider them as a social group, while ignore their culture and
Like Omi & Winant, Bonilla-Silva think that race is a categorization that assigned by dominant group and the members in the subordinate group act according to the expectation of the dominant group, whether the members aware or not. According to Bonilla-Silva, race acquired a life of their own and do not need human as actor to function. (Bonilla-Silva 1997,p.475) Unlike Omi & Winant, Bonilla-silva explained that race and ethnicity is different in a way that power is removed from ethnicity and have different history. In the other words, ethnicity do not involve power relation, it is more about self-determination. The differences of race and ethnicity, according to Bonilla-silva, are whether it is internal(self-determination) or external(imposed by dominant group) and the degree of power
Culture, Not Race, Explains Human Diversity, Mark Nathan Cohen, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 17, 1998, pp.B4-B5. The term race refers to a biological subdivision of a species. At one time, scientists held that there were as few as three such subdivisions in the species Homo sapiens: Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid. Mark Anthony Cohen points out that this is an antiquated view, yet it lingers as a common belief in society. Mark Nathan Cohen makes an interesting point in his article “Culture, Not Race, Explains Human Diversity”. While the article does deal wholly in the realm of the opinion, it is supported by numerous scientific facts. In fact, Cohen’s usual method of drawing in a reader is to make a blanket statement and then “beef it up” with several scientific facts.
For at least three decades race, gender and biopower have all been linked together. The three terms used, are frameworks installed by governments to manage the population by categorizing, regulating and controlling its subjects. Race, gender and biopower are intertwined to illuminate the treatment of the minority for centuries. The mistreatment, discrimination and suffering experienced by the minorities throughout history is evident in the texts provided.
In America, essentially everyone is classified in terms of race in a way. We are all familiar with terms such as Caucasian, African-American, Asian, etc. Most Americans think of these terms as biological or natural classifications; meaning that all people of a certain race share similarities on their D.N.A. that are different and sets that particular race apart from all the other races. However, recent genetic studies show that there’s no scientific basis for the socially popular idea that race is a valid taxonomy of human biological difference. This means that humans are not divided into different groups through genetics or nature. Contrary to scientific studies, social beliefs are reflected through racial realism. Racial realists believe that being of a particular race does not only have phenotypical values (i.e. skin color, facial features, etc.), but also broadens its effects to moral, intellectual and spiritual characteristics.
There is a specific meaning to race and how its role impacts society and shapes the social structures. Race is a concept that “symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies” (Omi & Winant 55). In other words, Omi and Winant get down to the crux of the issue and assert that race is just an illusion. Race is merely seen as an ideological construct that is often unstable and consisting of decentered social meanings. This form of social construction attempts to explain the physical attributes of an individual but it is constantly transformed by political struggles. The rules of classifying race and of identity are embedded into society’s perception. Therefore, race becomes a common function for comprehending, explaining, and acting in the
Human Race by Raymond Lutgert is in my opinion an amazing piece for many reasons. It has this wow factor that hits you every time you drive onto campus. It is simple in that it is two misshapened columns, but the emotions that it invokes are powerful. It highlights the race to the top of the proverbial food chain that we are all trying to win. And the fact that ultimately not everyone can be the president, a supreme court justice, a CEO, or a doctor or a highly publicized academic author for that matter.
Race has no biological meaning. There is only one human race; there are no subspecies, no single defining characteristic, traits, or even gene, separates one “race” from another. Instead of being a biological concept, race is a social construct, and a relatively modern one at that. It was created to give light-skinned Europeans an advantage by making the white race superior and all others inferior. Throughout its history, the concept of race has served this purpose well.
In the past, races were identified by the imposition of discrete boundaries upon continuous and often discordant biological variation. The concept of race is therefore a historical construct and not one that provides either valid classification or an explanatory process. Popular everyday awareness of race is transmitted from generation to generation through cultural learning. Attributing race to an individual or a population amounts to applying a social and cultural label that lacks scientific consensus and supporting data. While anthropologists continue to study how and why humans vary biologically, it is apparent that human populations differ from one another much less than do populations in other species because we use our cultural, rather than our physical differences to aid us in adapting to various environments.
Why is it impossible to use biological characteristics to sort people into consistent races? Review some of the concepts such as “non-concordance” and “within-group vs. between group variation.”
To begin with, “race is a social, political, and economic construct. It is not biological. There is no existence of race in the Western world outside of the practices of colonialism, conquest, and the transatlantic slave trade” (Lecture 1). While the origins of race are centered around distinctions of humans based on presumed physical, ancestral or cultural differences, race is merely a floating signifier and therefore only has meaning, but that we give it (Lecture 1 and 2). This floating signifier has taken on different meanings in the U.S. and Latin America. For example, in the U.S., the one-drop rule is enough to deem someone black. On the other hand, Latin America considers pigmentocracy and uses Mulatto categories based on appearance and color
The concept of race is an ancient construction through which a single society models all of mankind around the ideal man. This idealism evolved from prejudice and ignorance of another culture and the inability to view another human as equal. The establishment of race and racism can be seen from as early as the Middle Ages through the present. The social construction of racism and the feeling of superiority to people of other ethnicities, have been distinguishably present in European societies as well as America throughout the last several centuries.
Reflecting directly on the cultural attitudes and sociocultural messages explained throughout this course, it is clear that race, gender, and sexuality are all socially constructed in one way or another. Contrary to popular belief, race is actually almost completely socially constructed, it is not biological. Further, a human’s DNA does not differentiate at all to create any specific race. However, society has categorized certain things, such as skin color, to determine the race of individuals. In simpler terms, there are not specific genes that parents pass on to their offspring that determine their race; society categorizes people into specific races when they are born based on their
In today’s society, it is acknowledgeable to assert that the concepts of race and ethnicity have changed enormously across different countries, cultures, eras, and customs. Even more, they have become less connected and tied with ancestral and familial ties but rather more concerned with superficial physical characteristics. Moreover, a great deal can be discussed the relationship between ethnicity and race. Both race and ethnicity are useful and counterproductive in their ways. To begin, the concept of race is, and its ideas are vital to society because it allows those contemporary nationalist movements which include, racist actions; to become more familiar to members of society. Secondly, it has helped to shape and redefine the meaning of
The Thomas Theorem presents the idea which essentially refutes the hypothesis that race hierarchy was shored up by scientific factor rather than the subjective recognition of people. Through out the history of western society, People are more or less interested in finding traits of different human groups from the beginning of the Darwin 's Evolution Theory to the contemporary genetics, which is trying to convincingly divide human into subordinate groups through the method of science. As the Thomas Theorem depicted, the illusion create by the race hierarchy eventually brings real consequences to the society. The standard used to dichotomize races mostly rendered and buttressed by pseudoscience or other intention related to political and constitutional
I consider the evolution of Homo sapiens to be the most important in the evolution of humans. The Homo sapiens walked this earth about 15,000 to 10,000 years ago around the Holocene Epoch period. (Levin)Fossils for this group were found around Africa over 400,000 years ago. Also in Israel, a tooth fossil was found around this same time to prove that man lived there as well. (Ancient Man and His First Civilizations:Homo-habilis, Homo-erectus, Homo-sapien-sapien)