Society Based On Race

In The Social Construction of Race, Ian F. Haney Lopez defines race as a social construct that is constantly changing its meaning due to the fickle nature of society. Lopez believes that this fickleness stems from a social climate formed by a variety of factors such as human economic interest, current events, and ideology. There are certain racial definitions however, that have remained mostly the same despite efforts to bring attention to the offensiveness and immorality of such discriminatory thinking. These stereotypes are oftentimes negative and apply to members of minority races, which end up perpetuating themselves into various cultural outlets of society including the media and film. Through the use of such popular forms of entertainment, the definitions of a race remain largely unchanged as future generations remain exposed to these racial classifications.

Society in the United States has changed the way discrimination is from the 1800’s to the 2000’s and is a big impact to people all around the country. Many African-Americans have been discriminated for a long period of time and now, many athletes are taking a stand to show its physically and morally wrong and occurs in past history, sports, and even the police force. Discrimination is is immoral tell this day and is still a horrifying act.

Throughout history and across the different cultures, people socially construct ideas of race. All races of people are not biologically different because there is no genes or gene clusters similar to all people of one race, but because people have similar visual traits humans have categorized people as being different. Due to these differences, societies have been known to show tendencies based on the socially constructed races and people develop personal views about the various races from past experiences. In large cities in the United States there are areas where the African American population is more dense, which shows that people draw imaginary boundaries due to race. An example of how the social construction of race is that in the United

All through history, the label that is associate with Black people have become a prevailing discourse that explicitly racialized black people, even today. There are specific characteristics that are related with being black and are disseminate to the public and are represented as truth. Williams Rose (2002) argues, “As the color white is associated with everything good … so Blacks has, through the ages, carried associations with all that is bad and low… the Negro is believed to be stupid immoral, diseased, lazy, incompetent, and dangerous to the white man’s virtue and social order “(p.181). Blackness have become objectified in public spaces, they are view as a threat on the street of Toronto, surrounding areas and even in the criminal

The idea of race throughout history and even in today’s society is a misunderstood concept, this is because the word has no actual taxonomic significance because all humans belong to the same species, Homo sapiens. Although two people can look completely different from each other if they are both human they are not actually different. Go back two hundred or three hundred years ago, and the belief that a white person was more dominant or “free” then a colored person is thriving throughout America and creating a very big problem that has to do with race and that is slavery. It was based upon racism and the belief that a white man was free and an African American man was not even though they were being forcibly taken from Africa and other

There is a definite difference not just in race but in gender as well. White men are seen as all powerful, and privilege is automatically given to them. They do not have to contemplate the unfairness of the world, because the world is geared towards them. While it is true that white women also enjoy much privilege, they are seen as less than a man. Even the laws passed in the past made women a mere property to their husbands, and new laws had to be erected that permitted them the ability to vote. Minorities in a sense are seen to be lower than white women (Gamst et al.,

Race is not something that is an exact thing. It is a social construct. It is a reflection of who you are and what you perceive.

Physical traits such as skin color and social implications determine what race you are. It is a way to identify yourself to others. Inequality comes when it comes to power and struggles. A race will always be superior to another. In this case whites are the race that is superior. They are the largest racial group. Slavery shows how whites have always been superior with power. They treated blacks as if they were nothing. Treated them less than humans. They used slaves for their own profit not wanting to realize they were human too. Someone’s ethnicity and race shape who that person is. You are either White, Latino, Hispanic, African American, Asian, Jew, etc and depending on what race you are, you are going to be treated and profiled

I have to say this was the first time I looked at race and ethnicity as being “socially constructed”. I had to really look at what the definition was and what it really meant. After reading the article you provided and chapter 2 in the book, and also doing a little surfing to find other articles on the subject. I agree with Mr. Johnson that race is “socially constructed”.

At the turn of the 20th century, much of American society was dominated by perceived ideologies embedded in the scientific studies. One of the leading fields of study at the time was eugenics. Scientists believed that by analyzing the works of Mendel and his contemporaries, researchers could effectively weed out humanity’s most undesirable traits (Norrgard, 2008). In a noble quest to alleviate genetic flaws the inadvertent perversion of ideas became the foundation for what appears to be the social construction of race. Somewhere along the lines, eugenics became more about isolating certain human characteristics, like skin color, and relegating them to a hierarchy of societal importance (Norrgard, 2008). Race is simply defined as a pattern-based concept that allows for the general public to draw conclusions based on an individual’s geographical location and thereby predetermining their inclusion into a particular social group (Yudell, et al., 2016) The philosophies embedded in social ideas about race has long been at the heart of contentious discussions throughout the last century. It has led to individualized implicit personality theories by which people tend to link certain attributes together because of an apparent frequency in a particular racial group (Greene & Heilbrun, 2015).

When Sociologists say that race is a social construction, they mean that it is brought by social aspects without biological meaning. “Race is not biological. It is a social construct. There is no gene or cluster of genes common to all blacks or all whites. Were race “real” in the genetic sense, racial classifications for individuals would remain constant across boundaries.” (Nytimes.com) Divides still exist today between blacks and whites, but progress is being made. Race is socially driven, our ideas and views about the topic are helped by the opinions of others. The best example of race as a social construct are Hispanics. This is because there is no such thing as a Hispanic. This word was created by the Census Bureau to categorize

Inequality has two components in respect to power, privilege and social status: political imbalance at a social level and prejudice on the individual level. Race superiority in regards to “white privilege” by its very nature is a flawed premise! There is no white race; we are all a mixture of our ancestors DNA; by some estimates ninety or more percent of us are technically mixed race. In my own family of origin we have identified our origins to include, but not limited to: American Indian, Irish, Scottish, Brazilian, Welsh, German, Scandinavian and Dutch. I was not raised with the idea or label that my skin was “white” , in fact I was taught that white was the color of a crayon, the color of paint on the walls, it is the color of an

Sociologists argue that race was pretty much made up by society. They feel that in the early days, dating back to the time of Greece, people used race to explain the different class levels. Scientists say that humans are 99.9% alike, which means the build up of your genes are 99.9% similar to the person next to you. There is that less than 1% that changes the way you look. Otherwise we are all build similar internally. Some people say by having all the different races in the world, it helps better explain the different levels of wealth. There is always that 1% that goes against the grain so to speak. But for instance, New York City is broken up into many different boroughs, and each area there seems to be different communities. There is China

You have a point there, so what about if I found quotes from real people that were taken just a few months ago. The New York Times recorded a series on Youtube where people of different races were asked to address their thoughts on racism one-on-one with the camera. The video that brought up the idea about certain people benefitting from the racial divide was titled “A Conversation With White People On Race.” Clearly the white people are benefitting and a few of the interviewees made some noteworthy comments. For instance, this one woman said, “Now I understand that it’s a system of advantages and disadvantages based on race, so as much as there’s the disadvantage piece, there’s the advantage piece of it, which I experience as a white person.” If white people are being honest with themselves, then this statement has so much truth behind it. For various reasons‒of which I won’t get into‒white people have almost always been on the “advantage” side of the race spectrum and have tried persistently to keep it that way. To reiterate what I mentioned in the previous paragraph, I happen to think that white people use race as a justification or excuse in their determination to remain the on the good side. A white man in the same video brought up a similar idea: “I’m not involved in any conflict that involves race, I’ve only been the beneficiary of it.” I get it, like other white people I didn’t want to hear this or think about how lucky we are that we have it easy when it comes to race. Nevertheless, it’s important to come to this realization and not become defensive about a fact of the life we live in. White people may not explicitly know or want to admit that their lives are full of more opportunities to succeed than black people, so find some other reason to legitimize why life should continue as it always

White people have better access to public benefits/services, they are treated better when they have any encounter with the law, and they definitely have better opportunities than Black people in many areas of life. It is important to understand that the United States has come a long way since the 1600s when Black people were seen as nothing but slaves; however it does not excuse the fact that we are still a racist country.