Sociology Learners

Race and Ethnicity in the United States

From the beginning of the country, gender, class and race have been significant element in the individual’s experience in United States. A meaning of the gender differences, class separation and race have changed the history of United States. For Americans, the view of race and class, and degree for which gender discrimination affect the lives of people, mostly depend on their gender, class and race too. Several differences have been found among America’s reality, media reality, and perceived reality. In United States, nationals and also outsiders have some confusion and questions in their perspective regarding the real connections between gender, class and race (Wade, 2017).

American media is one of the biggest exports of the American culture. It is one of the widely consumed and distributed forms of culture in United States. It clearly means that Americans not only consume own media in large quantities, but other countries also consume American media. However, nationals of other countries do not understand or interpret the media same way as Americans do, however, different aspect and angles of the American reality and culture are viewed in other countries through media content. Media is one of the most significant tool for discussing class, gender or race in America. It takes viewer for discriminating and understanding the accuracy of proportion found of minority and ethnic groups. As stated by (Omi, 628-629) “Film and television have been notorious in disseminating images of racial minorities which establish for audiences what these groups look like, how they behave, and , in essence, “who they are”. The power of the media lies not only in their ability to reflect the dominant racial ideology, but in their capacity to shape that ideology in the first place”. (Cook, 2017).

Even during the Presidential election of Barack Obama, who was the first nonwhite President in history of United States, has contributed in distorted perception, which decreases racial barriers in American society. White people in America have the privilege in United States and different perception related to the effects of class, gender and race on their culture and to nonwhites. White Americans are seen in lower classes and upper-middle class but nonwhites exist more below poverty line as compare to white Americans (Yanow, 2015).

According to Goldberg, (2016), Columbus sailed Ocean Blue in 1492, and everyone is aware about his story, as it is taught in primary schools or before it. When he was landing in United States, he was unaware that he is exploring or developing the biggest Melting Pot of the world. This “Melting Pot” means that a new country, which is made from the mixture of different beliefs and cultures, hence, creating the new changing-culture and new country. The complication with the “Melting Pot” is that individuals are unable to put individuals of different ethnicity and race together without the conflict. The conflict is defined as “A state of disharmony between incompatible or antithetical persons, ideas, or interests; a clash.” (Murji, and Solomos, 2015)

It all started from the columnist, who work and farm by themselves on the land, which mostly were stolen. Gradually with the passing years, they started to realize that they should not work on their own, if they have other people for doing this for them. And then shipping of the slaves from Africa started. Thousands of slaves were gathered and brought in this foreign lands as slaves by the white people on the basis of race. And then these racial differences formed America. The foundation of United States was on conflict and tension. And so this strained was obvious and continued after the abolishment of the slavery. People lash out on other races for making themselves better. The use of phrases like “hating crimes” were also popping up. In the last century, American Africans were considered as the inferior groups because of their race. Areas were designated for the colored and white people. Colored nationals were forbidden to eat at certain places, and not even permitted to drink water from same fountain white drank. The discrimination was also done on the basis of ethnicity groups. They degrade minorities and do not protect their rights. Minorities were humiliated at many times (Yanow, 2015).

References

Cook, B., 2017. What impact has Ethnic Studies had on Black men (Doctoral dissertation, San Francisco State University).
Goldberg, D.T., 2016. Racial subjects: Writing on race in America. Routledge.
Murji, K. and Solomos, J. eds., 2015. Theories of Race and Ethnicity. Cambridge University Press.
Wade, P., 2017. Race and ethnicity in Latin America. Pluto press.
Yanow, D., 2015. Constructing” race” and” ethnicity” in America: Category-making in Public Policy and Administration. Routledge.

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