Reflection Paper About Race

Before I moved to the United States, I lived in the Philippines as a child. While I was living in the Philippines, I was aware of my nationality and my culture. Secondly, almost everyone I knew, including my family had similar religion and beliefs. After I moved to the United States is when I began to learn the differences of race or other type of ethnicities. Growing up in the United States have thought me the different definition of race. While growing up, some people have defined race as the color of someone’s skin or physical differences while others defined race as people who shares the same values or beliefs. The definition of race “in the American Heritage Dictionary is any group of people united or classified together on the basis of

I went to high school with students predominately Caucasian and around forty percent African American race. The first thing I learned is what people’s perception regarding someone’s race. People that I have met in the past and even today stereotype race. For example, after I moved here, people was aware that I was very different compare to a Caucasian or African American. As an Asian person, other people have a perception of Asian people as very smart or naturally genius in mathematics. Even today, people refer to me as you’re so Asian because of my work ethic. According to Daily Californian article, the 2010 study reported that Asians are most likely to be perceives as nerds. (Yook 2014) The stereotype of all Asian people are smart or they are smart because it is genetics is simply incorrect. People who are not Asian simply do not realize that it seemed that majority of Asian people are smart because of hard work and dedication, in order to gain intelligence. However, our society will continue to believe this

Institutionalized racism is a system that discriminate people with different race, education or income level. (Rusciano, 2013) For example, some residential community do not permit African American to reside in the same community. Rules and regulations is written and have to be agreed between employees and the residence. Another example is institutionalized system within the health care system. Minorities who are living in poverty lack access to health care or medical treatment. “Racial inequality in health care persists in the United States because the laws prohibiting racial discrimination are inadequate for addressing issues of institutional racial discrimination.” (Randal, 2010) Secondly, minorities will continue to live in poverty and will not have the ability to get access to health care due to limited educational level. For example, minorities who currently live in poor communities will most likely end up in the close in the same community, which also offers poor education. Additionally, minorities who are less education will also experience economic inequality such as low income jobs. Due to the existence of institutionalized racism, minorities will continue to experience an inequality race