Defining Race and Ethnicity

Defining Race and Ethnicity

There is not a clear scientific way to classify race. There are no pure races because of migration, exploration, and invasion. Pure race have not existed for some time, if they ever did. (Herskovits 1930:15; Roberts1955) So if we are all mixed up with different races, how can scientist just pen point one and classify it as a certain race. It can’t be done. The social construction of race is just a way of one justifying their unfair actions or treatments of groups of people by others. I think that the rich white people benefit from the social construction of race the most. For example, during the slavery days, the blacks were treated basically treated like animals. The whites were richer and more educated. I guess they tried to justify it by saying blacks were sub-humans. They weren’t important. Even today the rich whites will mistreat others differently because they don’t rank in the same class as they do. The benefits of this group are that they can almost do anything and get off easy as to where another group could do the exact same thing and end up in some type of trouble. Race and ethnicity plays a big part in this. Race to me is just the color of a person skin. It doesn’t define who that person is. Ethics is just the way a person lives, their background, their culture, just the way a certain groups do certain things. Race and ethnicity is important in the United States because that is how statistics are taken. This is used to better our country and make the significant changes that we may need.