Race vs. Social Class THESIS: Race differences in identity and social position were, and are, more important than class differences in American society. "Events in the nineteenth century made it abundantly and irrefutably clear that race as a concept sui generis superseded social class as the dominant mechanism of social division and stratification in North America." (Smedley 219) For many decades people have been using race as a way to classify humans into different social categories. Lower, Middle, and Upper classes were created to divide humans into appropriate categories using their individual lifestyles, financial income, residence, and occupation. People decided to ignore this classifying system and classify one another, simply by the color of their skin. People's skin color says nothing as to what a person does, their beliefs, attitudes, or any of the ideas for creating a fair social classification system. Racial barriers were created that divided people into different groups at work and at home. Race differences in identity and social position were, and are, more important than class differences in American society. The role of work, money, and the effect they have on individuals has changed throughout the past years due to social classes and racism. Social classes being based on by race is just the beginning of the differences. In the work force there are always people who feel the need to dominate in their field or profession solely because they think they are the dominant social class or race. People of any rank at the office will look down upon others, not because of their position, but skin color. People are not only treated differently at the work site based due to these issues, but also in some cases th... ... middle of paper ... ...at a person's skin color to make their judgement on whether or not they want to take the time to talk and get to know the person. Then, they will classify that person, without knowing any background information on them. Is this fair? It does not matter or not if it is fair, it is the way people work. As Takaki says, 'race is just a concept', an idea created, it should not be used to separate people. Works Cited Baer, Hans A. African Americans in the South: issues of race, class and gender. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Martin, Deutsch. Social Class, race, and psychological development. Winston: Greenwood Press, 1968. Smedley, Audrey. Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview. Boulder: Westview Press, 1999. Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993.
1. What is the argument of Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America? How does Takaki make that argument?
The Impression of Life on her Works’ Leslie Marmon Silko for more than two decades has been enriching Native American literature through her poetry, novels, short stories, and essays. Her fertile imagination and vivid writing continues to impress both critics and readers alike. Influences in Silko's life are abundant in her work. She includes childhood memories, experiences with racism, Pueblo beliefs, family history, and traditional storytelling. Prominent in many of her works is the perspective of her mixed ethnicity. She explores ethnic identity and cultural values through her literature. Often the reader is taught about the lessons, values, and heritage of early cultures. Leslie Marmon grew up attaching herself, in memory and imagination, to the village and then to the land around it; and because this is Laguna land, many of the stories she grew up with were stories from the Keresan oral tradition, the stories of her father's people and their shared history. In her art as in her life, Silko has continued to maintain her identity with the story of the people of Kawaika, the People of the Beautiful Lake. The story of Laguna, like the biography of Silko and the fictional lives of her novels' protagonists, has always been a story of contact, departure, and recovery. “My father had wandered over all the hills and mesas around Laguna when he was a child; I started roaming those same mesas and hills when I was nine years old. At eleven I rode away on my horse, and explored places my father and uncle could not have reached on foot. I carried with me the feeling I'd acquired from listening to the old stories, that the land all around me was teeming with creatures that were related to human beings and to me.” ("Interior and Exterior Lan...
In the novel Ceremony, Tayo is often marginalized by his traditional Native American society. Tayo is not full Native American like the majority of people that live in his community. He is half Native American and half Mexican, and his lighter skin tone and his hazel eyes clearly mark Tayo as “mixed”. He is not simply a bastard, but is the bastard of a white man and a disgraced Native American woman. Tayo felt his stigma throughout his entire time growing up due to the actions of his Auntie, his mother’s sister, who raised him. Feeling shame for having to take care of her sister’s mistake, Auntie never treated Tayo fairly. Ev...
Change is one of the tallest hurdles we all must face growing up. We all must watch our relatives die or grow old, our pets do the same, change school or employment, and take responsibility for our own lives one way or another. Change is what shapes our personalities, it molds us as we journey through life, for some people, change is what breaks us. Watching everything you once knew as your reality wither away into nothing but memory and photographs is tough, and the most difficult part is continuing on with your life. In the novel Ceremony, author Leslie Silko explores how change impacted the entirety of Native American people, and the continual battle to keep up with an evolving world while still holding onto their past. Through Silko’s
Wise, T. (2012). Dear white America: Letter to a new minority. San Francisco, CA: City
Takaki, Ronald T. "14 World War II." A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993. N. pag. Print.
The African-American Years: Chronologies of American History and Experience. Ed. Gabriel Burns Stepto. New York: Charles Scribner 's Sons, 2003.
Social Construction Race Race has been one of the most outstanding events in the United States all the way from the 1500s up until now. The concept of race has been socially constructed in a way that is broad and difficult to understand. Social construction can be defined as the set of rules determined by society’s urges and trends. The rules created by society play a huge role in racialization, as the U.S. creates laws to separate the English or whites from the nonwhites. Europeans, Indigenous People, and Africans were all racialized and victimized for various reasons.
Race, in the common understanding, draws upon differences not only of skin color and physical attributes but also of language, nationality, and religion. Race categories are often used as ethnic intensifiers, with the aim of justifying the exploitation of one group by another. Race is an idea that has become so fixed in American society that there is no room for open-mindedness when challenging the idea of racial categories. Over the years there has been a drastic change with the way the term "race" is used by scientists. Essentially, there is a major difference between the biological and sociological views of race.
Takaki, R. T. (1993). A different mirror: A history of multicultural America. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
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.
The rate of death due to prescription drug abuse in the U.S. has escalated 313 percent over the past decade. According to the Congressional Quarterly Transcription’s article "Rep. Joe Pitt Holds a Hearing on Prescription Drug Abuse," opioid prescription drugs were involved in 16,650 overdose-caused deaths in 2010, accounting for more deaths than from overdoses of heroin and cocaine. Prescribed drugs or painkillers sometimes "condemn a patient to lifelong addiction," according to Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This problem not only affects the lives of those who overdose but it affects the communities as well due to the convenience of being able to find these items in drug stores and such. Not to mention the fact that the doctors who prescribe these opioids often tend to misuse them as well. Abusing these prescribed drugs can “destroy dreams and abort great destinies," and end the possibility of the abuser to have a positive impact in the community.
	Leslie Marmon Silko uses these three short passages taken from an ancient Indian story included in the novel Ceremony to express and convey the idea that the white man’s fear was the primary factor contributing to their negative actions toward the Indian people. The ancient Indian story that the passages are pulled from also explains how Indian witchery led to the invention of the white people and all the evil inside of them, causing them to destroy the world and everything else that inhabits it.
The idea of revenge in Hamlet is depicted in various ways throughout the play. Shakespeare makes a fine job of identifying the different types of revenge by giving the characters different motives; whereas Hamlet and Laertes, almost mirrors of each other, both want to avenge the deaths of their fathers by killing the person responsible for the murder, Fortinbras seeks to avenge his father’s death by reclaiming the land that he lost to King Hamlet before dying. Also, the author goes further into the personalities of the characters and explores their motivations, most particularly Hamlet’s; although he has a scheme for killing Claudius, he does not set his plan into motion immediately, but is rather delayed by different events throughout the story, forcing the reader to contemplate whether or not Hamlet is as strong-minded and angry about his father’s death as he claims to be. Conversely, Laertes and Fortinbras waste no time and c...
In William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the focus of many of the characters in the play is to be (or not to be) avenged. Both Hamlet and the minor characters surrounding him revisited the theme of revenge frequently. Shakespeare’s use of secondary characters highlight the important theme of revenge and specifically how a mind set strictly on revenge can corrupt the actions and thoughts of an individual and bring about their destruction. The minor characters of Laertes, the Ghost and Fortinbras display this maxim perfectly. Through their experiences with revenge, two meet their end and the other meets success.