Race, religion, and ethnicity gained importance with growing importance of issues related to immigration, religion, and ethnicity. These have also increased the incidence of religion and race related violence and terrorism. Post 9/11 these issues have gained predominance in American mind due to the strong identity among Americans based on race, religion, and ethnicity.
Understanding inequality based on ethnicity, race, and religion has gained paramount importance in social studies today. The present paper studies three articles based on race, religion, and ethnicity. It studies what these articles have to say about these three impetuses of inequality.
The first article reviewed is based on white ethnicity in America (Torkelson & Hartmann, 2010). This study is an empirical research based on white ethnicity in America in twenty first century. This research explores the impact of white ethnicity with self-identity among white Americans, degree of association with the idea of whiteness or color in America, and the impact ethnic identity has on political opinion of the people. The researchers pose a few questions:
- “How ethnic is white America today?”
- “What distinguishes whites who profess an ethnic identity from other whites?”
- How is white ethnic identity relates to political attitudes, racial ideologies, and racial identity salience?” (Torkelson & Hartmann, 2010, pp. 1315-6)
A questionnaire survey was conducted to gauge racial and ethnic identification among white Americans. The research findings show that only 14 percent of the white population in America has an ethnic identity, which is greater among non-whites (Torkelson & Hartmann, 2010). There is a high awareness of racial identities among whites, which shows a strong connection between white ethnicity and white racial identity.
The second article reviewed is a research on the gap of quality of life based on black and white racial and ethnic divide in America (Coverdill, Lopez, & Petrie, 2011). This article researches the existence of inequality in the quality of life among whites and non-whites including blacks and Hispanics.
The data used for the research is a trend data from General Social Surveys to measure quality of life in the US. the research findings suggests that there is a declining trend in the quality of life gap among whites and blacks but still there exists significant difference. The study was further extended for understanding the gap with “other races” i.e. Asians and Latinos. The result suggests that “other races” have a higher gap in quality of life measure compared to whites.
With a higher rate of immigration in America, there has been a noted increase in hate crimes against immigrants of other racial, ethnic, and religious origin in the country. The third article explores the rising hate crimes against immigrants of other religious and racial origin in America (Sherr & Montesino, 2009). Hate crimes are a source of inequality in social strata. The article explores the increase in the number of hate crimes in America in name of religious inclinations especially after the 9/11 attack.
Hate crimes has increased against specific ethnicities and regions such as Arabs, Asians, and Latinos and against Muslims. The research article describes the hate crimes occurring in America against Muslims, Arabs, Latinos, and South Asians. The article describes the rising number of hate crimes and racial slurs against people or other ethnic or religious background in America. The incidents demonstrate a debate on US as the melting pot for all religions and races.
The three articles reviewed demonstrates that race, ethnic, and religion based inequality is rampant in America. This affects quality of life and identity among Americans. Hate crimes are another off shoot of the racial and religious overtones in identity creation and inequality ingrained in society.
References
Coverdill, J. E., Lopez, C. A., & Petrie, M. A. (2011). Race, Ethnicity and the Quality of Life in America, 1972-2008. Social Forces, 889(3) , 783-806.
Sherr, M., & Montesino, M. (2009). Hate crime based on ethnicity and religion: A description of the phenomenon in the United States since 2000. The Internaitonal Journal of Diversity in Organizations, Communities, and Nations, 9(4) , 23-37.
Torkelson, J., & Hartmann, D. (2010). White ethnicity in twenty-first-century America: findings from a new national survey. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 33(8) , 1310-1331.