Race and Ethnicity According to Anthropologists Essay

Ethnicity is characterized as the perceived belief that there is a commonality within a group may it be culture, language, religion, and/or history. They go on and state Schermerhorn’s definition of ethnic groups as those who are self-conscience of their identity

To many people across a variety of different nationalities and cultures, race has been proven to be a key factor for how society views you in the eyes of those who are prominently in charge. The term race has been brought up in recent years, to be considered a form of identification, as the word race is used to describe physical characteristics such as a person’s color of skin, hair, and eyes. When in reality, the correct term they should be using is Ethnicity. As a result, the term race is used to separate people into sub-categories based on the color of their skin. This type of classification, is a man-made creation used by society to classify certain groups of people into lower classes, while keeping the predominate group in charge at the top.

The race is an indefinite term, which has not been created from science or research, but more so the idea of what it is. Essentially, race is all about perception. One person may separate races based on a certain category of traits while another person uses totally different guidelines to define what races there are. Race has ultimately been created socially, therefor has no biological components until people connect the two terms. This paper examines the connection between society and race while taking you through America 's history, and explains the social construction of race.

Race is a social-constructed terminology where it categorizes people into groups that share certain distinctive physical characteristics such as skin color. However, race and racial identity is unstable, unfixed and constantly shifting, as race, typically, is a signifier of prevalent social conflict and interest. Although, many, particularly anthropologists and sociologists, argue in the aforementioned point of view, some – mainly white population -- believe that racial characteristics are biologically inherited.

In order to be able to explain the origin of race and its implications for race and crime, one must first understand that “race” as a term is something that has been created and defined by man. As stated in the opening dialogue of the class text, the idea of race originated 5,000 years ago in India … and was developed into a taxonomy of race by Johna Frederich Blumenbach in his 1795 work, “On

Ethnicity is groups of individuals with the same common interest and beliefs. They speak the same language and they also have shared characteristics such as their culture. Ethnic groups look at themselves differently during certain periods of time. They are often times defined by being stereotyped. Reid Mandell, B., & Schram, B. (2012).

Race is defined in our textbook as a group of people who share a set of characteristics- typically these characteristics are described as physical ones, common bloodlines. We often think as race in relation to racism, which is a belief that members of a separate race possess different and unequal traits coupled with the power to restrict freedoms based on those differences. Racism is connected with three different keys in belief, that humans are in different groups in relation to bloodlines and physical types, that these

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.

Discussions in regards to race can be fraught with extreme opinions, to examine this subject in a more dispassionate light it is helpful to first define the terms. Race is distinctly different from ethnicity or culture, but is often combined in both writing and thought. From a biological perspective, the description of race in human populations is meaningless, but examined from a cultural basis it can make an enormous difference to a population’s wellbeing, or survival, based solely on their difference in morphology.

Historical and comparative approaches to race and ethnicity teach us a wide range of issues and approaches to social problem that our own society do not. Race and ethnicity are part of what makes a person who they are and who they will become. Scholars such as Nirenberg, McCallum and Lewis will be discussed to demonstrate what historical and comparative approaches to race and ethnicity teach us about them that our own society fails to. First, it allows us to move away from the traditional approach to studying and understanding race and ethnicity. It allows us to differentiate between the terms race and ethnicity as they are often misused as if they had the same meaning. Historical and comparative approach depicts the linkage between race and ethnicity and how they interact with one another, allowing for a racial discourse to transpire.

Race is a social construct that has influence all aspects of the American world view and life. The idea of race was constructed in America to justify slavery of Africans, stealing from and killing Native Americans, and prejudice against immigrants. Boas was took a stand on this subject that was not in line with mainstream perceptions on the subject. Another differing view was Du Bois who had some similarities in view and differences from Boas. Even with their legacies showing that race is not a biological reality, the power and impact of race can still be felt today, even though it is seen as a social construct by anthropologists.

During the Age of Discovery Europeans travelled to foreign lands and encountered different people who presented evident phenotypic variations. Authors like Malik (1996) suggest that racial prejudice and superstition were common and found in most ethnically homogenous, socially conservative communities of the time. During this period equality, reason and humanity were unknown ideas and people who spoke different languages, worshiped different God’s or had different skin complexion were treated with distrusts and irrationality, created by the fear of the unknown (Brown, 2010). In their travels Europeans quite frequently depicted the non-white people they encountered on other continents like in Africa as savages, apes and monsters (Brown, 2010). Philosophers like Bodin (1530-1596) conducted geographic classifications of the known populations of humans based on the colour of their skin, his basic classification used descriptive terms such as “duskish colour, farish & white” to categorise the appearance of different peoples (Barnes, 2007. Pg 42). In an attempt to determine the meaning and value of life, Brown (2010) suggests that upon its founding human sciences have pursued the fundamental meaning of human diversity and therefore modern sciences and the history or race have interlaced histories. This paper aims to explore the genealogy of race through the monogenist, polygenist and Darwinian paradigms by exploring the development and implementation of racial mechanisms that were

Although race does not exist in the world in an objective way, it still is relevant in today’s society. It is obvious that race is real in society and it affects the way we view others as well as ourselves. Race is a social construct that is produced by the superior race and their power to regulate. “The category of ‘white’ was subject to challenges brought about by the influx of diverse groups who were not of the same Anglo-Saxonstock as the founding immigrants” (Omi and Winant 24). Frankly, ‘white’ was the norm, the others were considered an outcast.

Racism is a social problem that has occurred many years ago and it has passed through many phases. The oldest and most harmful of all is slavery. The topic of race has over the course of history been derived from beliefs about the biology of group differences. Racism categorizes people, discriminates them and makes an attempt to take their power away. It creates a major controversy with individuality and degrades human kind altogether. However, new world views regarding race reject the validity of any biological basis of race, and now a day it is more common to see race as something that was constructed from the social fabric of societal beliefs and actions. The overall construction of race has to do with the cultural meanings that are widely shared as stereotypes (Mania, E 2017). The meanings of race, vary over time as a result of newly constructed beliefs, ideologies and stereotypes.

Race and ethnicity are key roles in our society, people can be prideful about them or they can be shameful, none the less they are a huge topic and many people would like to get rid of them, but in all actuality there is a reason why they exist and function. To start off i would like to quote the original question in the book, Emerging by Barclay Barrios, it asks the question, “why do ethnicities continue to function in society?”.This question can be answered in three steps. The first step for why ethnicities persist to exist is big institutions, secondly, what new mechanisms are emerging for classifying people, and lastly, the psychology behind ethnicity. These together make race and ethnicity posable and keep them around.