After every class, I find myself really struggling to understand the real purpose of race and/or ethnicity. I am fascinated by how ever present the terms have become in society and their ability to change an individuals identity and interaction with the world. The conversations are everywhere and as I go through each day, I am more aware then ever about the fact that race/ethnicity is on everyone's mind-- even if its not always talked about.
Another student in one of my anthropology classes mentioned that his dream anthropological study would be on children adopted into a different race/ethnic family. This study has been in the back of my mind the past couple of classes and really gets at who chooses ethnicity especially.
Although its not biologically confirmed, people associate race with physical characteristics and something you're born into. But if ethnicity is a socially constructed thing and reflective of the way a particular group carries out their life, could a person's ethnicity change? I don't think anyone has ever considered it as a flexible and transferable thing. If a child is born to one family but adopted to another, he will begin to reflect the social identity of the family raising him-- not the biological one. So if ethnicity is reflective of social habits, how would he identify himself?
I recognize that this is a unique example and not reflective of the general use of ethnicity but it really highlights a flaw if society is going to divide people in this "socially based" idea. This idea that one's ethnicity must be a certain way just kind of points back to the idea that ethnicity is just as unreal as race.
Have we created the idea of ethnicity in an effort to be more "politically correct?" Is it just a new and more specific way of identifying people while avoiding the dangers of directly addressing race?
President Obama walks fine line on race, justice
11 years ago
Yes and yes. If we look at race and ethnicity, I see them being two sides of the same coin, used to organize a population (being national or global). We were thinking about ethnicity as being more closely associated with culture, with a spiritual essence of "who you are" based on language, traditions, values, etc. In a way, they are the less tangible, viz. more immaterial, qualities than the more physical traits we associated with defining race. The interesting part here is that if we negate the physical basis for race, we lose the differentiation between racial and ethnic classification. That is, if we can not use physical traits to justify/back up our racial classifications, what are we left with? Simply the same features we used to talk about ethnicity. Therefore, to answer your question, I see the concept of ethnicity as simply being race, disguised in a more politically correct, less-charged piece of dialect.
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