thoughts on racial identity, the role of race in society, Obama, and America’s rapidly growing,…
The relationship between African Americans and white people in the United States has been one of contention and struggle for equality that follows a relatively unique timeline. This subordinate-superordinate relationship based on race which manifests itself in all sectors of life according to sociologists stems from the way in which different ethnic groups were introduced to the society in addition to the ways in which the groups interact. These theories are used to make sense of the racial or ethnic relationships over an amount of time. We have been briefly introduced to race relation cycle theory in the previous unit’s readings focusing on racism. With this reading, Benjamin Ringer and Eleanor Lawless dig deeper into the sociologists thinking in terms of race relationships.…
Using the present census, the American West has “four of the seven most basic choices associated” with the region. (West, p. 554) While past census polls may not have had such a diverse amount of choices to pick from, it shows how the notion of race became more complex and complicated as the years and decades continued in the United States. Furthermore, with a lack of a rigid option of race and ethnicities to choose from, it was many times up to the individual to decide whether they considered themselves white, black, or ‘other,’ even further adding to the confusion of what and who determines a social construction aspect of a person’s identity. Thus, “Expanding the Racial Frontier” puts into question the white west, by going further up and questioning what and how does race evolve in the United…
For many centuries, race has been a huge topic that people discuss about, whether talking about education, occupation, politics, or human rights. America was settled with Native-Americans, but after Columbus discovered American land, there were many Europeans travelling there. However, it did not end there, many years later upper-class settlers started bringing in slaves from African-American descent. That is when interracial relationships started to happen. Brodkin, Buck, Omi and Winant in their essays illustrate racial formations, interracial relationships, and how white people can be privileged in recent days.…
Schaefer, R. T. (2006). Racial and Ethnic Groups (sixth ed.). Retrieved from University of Phoenix eBook Collection database.…
|Pluralism |A condition in which numerous distinct ethnic, religious, or cultural groups are present and |…
You are saying I am the one with the problem because I am discussing about race, but does color matter? It is very toxic when one’s identity is erased and that person is being treated unfairly because of the color of their skin. In class, we have learned that race is a continuous issue that strikes the nation. The United States is trying to become a homogenous society combing all these different elements into one big melting pot to create a fusion of all nationalities. With learning about race based off of our readings there are three concepts that I learned from this course are implicit bias, colorblindness, and racial formation theory.…
Masci, David. “Post Ethnic America?” CQ Researcher 17 Oct. 2003: 887-88. CQ Researcher. Web. 10 March 2011.…
Racial formation as defined by Omi and Winant, as “...the process by which social, economic and political forces determine the content…
Schaefer, R. T. (2006). Racial and Ethnic Groups (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.…
In this reading, Mary C. Waters explains, six different aspects, ethnic identity for whites in the 1990s, the ethnic miracle, symbolic ethnicities for white Americans, race relations and symbolic ethnicity, relations on college campuses, and institutional responses. Ethnic identity for whites in the 1990s states, ethnicity is a social phenomenon, not a biological one. Whites are able to claim an ethnicity if they chose so, or they could just be white. Whites are the majority groups, who have the most power. The ethnic miracle explains, by the 1990s most European-origin ethnic groups in the United States were composed of a very small number of immigrants, and a very large amount of people whose link to their ethnic origins in Europe was increasingly…
Schaefer, R.T. (2006). Racial and ethnic groups (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall…
Contrary to popular belief, Asian superiority in America is nothing but a myth. The relationship between Asians and other races in America is weakened by the idea that Asians have the ability to rule the nation. In his essay, “The Harmful Myth of Asian Superiority,” Ronald Takaki effectively argues that Asian Superiority in the United States is nowhere near the truth through the use of statistical evidence to provide reasons why Asian Americans do not actually have advantages compared to other minorities. Takaki establishes logos and pathos effectively to prove his point to his intended audience.…
Omi and Winant describe racial projects as representations or explanations of racial dynamics in an effort to reorganize and redistribute resources along particular racial lines. Racial projects encompass everything from depictions in television and music, to legislative processes or even newspaper headlines. They are a result of “New Racism”. A popular example is the war on drugs. On the outside, it seems racially neutral. It is a campaign seeking to end drug abuse. However, the ways in which policies are enacted single out men of color. Police profiling and everyday prejudice leads many African Americans to be singled out and carted off to jail. When looking at statistics, it seems as if this so called war on drugs was just an effort to incarcerate…
References: Steinberg, Stephen. The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity and Class in America. January 16, 2001. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.…