Race In American Culture

Race is a prevalent issue within the United States that frames or categorizes an individual or identity because of their physical appearance. In fact, their social, economical, and political standpoints have also influenced people’s perception on placing themselves within these categories. Guest has defined race as a “ Flawed system of classification, created, and re-created overtime that uses certain physical characteristics to divide the human population…”(197). As a result, race has created different types of patterns that have cause inequality. Moreover, like the United States, many countries have succumbed to classifying people based on race. As mentioned, anthropologists’ purpose when studying culture is to explore numerous ways in which race has been constructed in numerous places.
Furthermore, Guest mentions three different countries that also have a race based system.

I chose two countries and will elaborate on how they perceive race, and later analyze how they assimilate and differentiate from one another.

First, the Dominican Republic. It is stated that the term race has been brought on from the famous Christopher Columbus and has remained there until today. A historical background of the Dominican Republic is that the Spanish imported slaves from Africa to their country. As a culture, Dominican Republic has used race as a powerful tool to organize and differentiate people within the country. In Dominican Republic, to classify people they use numerous variables and color terms like: coffee, chocolate, blond, and fair as a few.
However, Malaysia has a different interpretation on race. The hierarchy of race was brought and introduced by the Dutch, Portuguese, and British colonies, but have changed based on the contemporary ideas. As previously before, people were placed on race based structures by using three categories: Chinese, Malay, and Indian. Based on your “race” you were placed in a certain category and

occupation.
Nonetheless, both of these countries are similar and different in numerous ways. Both countries were introduced to race as a classification. In addition, both were influenced by the economic system and demographic areas to distinguish where a person was placed in the race system. Also, both used religious beliefs as a classification towards the people. Whereas, both are different on how people identify themselves. Within the Dominican Republic they have a variation of terms used. In contrast, many Dominicans refuse to identify themselves as “black” because they recognize their Hispanic roots more than their African roots. Whereas in Malaysia, they only provide you limited options by only bringing certain amount of people to their country.
Race remains to be a constructed idea that is placed on people and their identities. For this reason, numerous things fall into place to help classify a person. It is determined that race is constructed in different cultures with different reasonings, but will continue to remain.