Race And The Construction Of Human Identity By Audry Smeldey

1843 Words4 Pages

Stigma "comes from ancient Greece, where it meant "bodily sign designed to expose something unusual and bad about the moral status of [an individual]"(Rosenblum andTravis, pg 34). Like other aspects of Ancient Greece 's society like democracy stigma has also carried over into society today. Stigma defined in modern terms would be a negative connotation or belief held about someone based on their appearance, beliefs, and other superficial aspects of a human being. Overall stigma is a tool used to dehumanize and undervalue an individual, to pidgin hole them into narrow categories based on a perceived identity that has been associated with a certain group. There are seven different groups that are targeted by different stigmas.Some of the …show more content…

So now it is time to take a closer look at how each of these groups are viewed and treated.

Race was not even a thing until the 18th century. As the book points out in the article "Race and the Construction of Human Identity" by Audry Smeldey "Race was a form of social identification and stratification that was seemingly grounded in the physical differences" (Rosenblaum and Travis, pg 49) . So race was purely invented as a way to separate and downgrade different people.Minorities have gotten the short end of the stick during their time in the United States. From slavery, to systematic discrimination, to getting round up and taken off their land and thrown it camps and many more offense based off of their appearance and beliefs.A few groups that have been heavily targeted based on their race are African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. African Americans have arguably had the hardest road based on race in America. African Americans have had a hard road to equality in the United States. From the start Africans came over to the United States as slaves with no …show more content…

From the first European settlements of the United States Native American Indians have been viewed as subhuman savages that we could just take advantage of and push out of their land. To giving them small pox infected blankets and getting them addicted to alcohol to make taking their land easier. And on top of this after Native Americans signed treaties with the United States protecting their land, the Untied States decide to just throw out those treaties and forcefully remove Native Americans and put them in reservations. Which is like forcing a farmer off of his land and giving him a parking lot instead and expect him to grow enough food to sustain himself. This was followed by an attempt of forced assimilation where Native American children were rounded up and put into boarding schools where they were attempting to make the children "more white". After "seeing" the error of the ways reparations were set up to assist with Native Americans. But like with African Americans there was a legal definition of what made you a Native American based on your blood. As seen in page 67 of the textbook in the article "Real Indians" by Eva Marie Garroutte "Most federal legal definitions of Indian identity specify a minimum blood quantum-frequently one-quarter but sometimes one-half" (Rosenblaum and Travis, pg 67). So your blood determines if you get the benefits of being Native American or not, if you

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