Define Race and Ethnicity

Defining Race and Ethnicity

What does the term race and ethnicity mean to me? I believe that the terms race and ethnicity are and will remain two different things. Some people choose to put them together but they are should never be but society has a different view. I believe race refers to a group of people based on what color they are from which sometimes is not always politically correct. You cannot always judge a person where they from based on their skin color or geographical origin. Black, white, Dominican etc. are races. Ethnicity to me is term dealing with someone’s tribal or cultural background, such as Dutch, Greek, French, etc. It usually identifies a member based on common genealogy or their ancestry. Ethnicity equal one race that equals many different ethnic groups.

Why are these concepts important to the United States society? I believe that these concepts are important to the United States because it is the different races and ethnic backgrounds that keep our society together. The U.S. government collects information on race and ethnicity. The reading stated that that race and ethnicity was used in civil rights monitoring and enforcements like employment, housing, and lending services. I really wonder how else the United States keeps up with the number of people, what races, and sexes that are here IN the United States.

If the United States does surveys and monitoring wh is to say that they are not counting how many different race are turned down for mortgages, credit cards, and cars. Really if the United States would just check themselves they would find out they there are so many different race and ethnic groups represented in this land that they would not be able to keep track of them all. There are to many diverse groups and mixture of races to monitor and better yet why are monitoring or checking for races and ethnic groups. It al l boils down to we are all human and we all bleed red.