I asked my friends a question on the number of races they thought were existent, and the majority of them said there were four races: ‘White, Asian, Black, and Australoid races.’ A few contented for five races, namely Negroid, Australoid, Capoid, Mongoloid, and Caucasoid races. Most people consider race as just the color of one’s skin and their cultural orientation. Most people believe that their race is superior compared to other races. This notion is different from what I agree with, as the mapping of the human genome shows that all human beings share at least 99.6 percent of their genetic composition (Gershman et al. 465). I also agree with the general sociological notion that most of the world’s population considers race as the physical difference for phenotypic variations.
Many people believe that racial categories are not socially constructed, but they are inherently there due to race differences. This notion is wrong since people build the racial categories from the sociological factors surrounding people of a particular race, such as presumptions and prejudices. Human beings act on perceptions and cultural beliefs about race, which brings the issue of superior and inferior races (Lourens 8). People tend to confuse race, which is biological, with ethnicity, which is a cultural characteristic under which people base themselves based on common ancestry, cultural heritage, and religion
These racial stratifications have proved to be a significant cause of human conflict due to evident circumstances such as colonization, segregation, discrimination, and genocides. In modern times, there have been issues of police brutality against particular races. The occurrence comes at a time where huge strides have been made towards eradicating racial discrimination. In this regard, there is a need for social education to eliminate these misconceptions characterizing the definitions.
Topic Question: What three minority groups not mentioned in chapter 9 you can name? Explain how they became minorities.
Works Cited
Gershman, Samuel J., and Mina Cikara. “Social-Structure Learning.” Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 29, no. 5, 2020, pp. 460-466. Sage Journals, Web.
Lourens, Heidi. “Giving Voice to My Body: Healing Through Narrating the Disabled Self.” Disability & Society, vol. 36, no.6, 2020, pp.849-863, Web.