The U.S is known all over the world as a country whose citizens are drawn from different races. Immigration has led to many ethnic groups in the U.S. The race and ethnic relations have been affected in a great way by the increasing number of ethnic groups migrating to the U.S. Studying ethnic and race relations in the U.S helps a great deal in understanding those ethnic groups that have resulted from immigration.
Two groups of people with biological differences are said to belong to different races. Racial differences can be external or internal. The external appearance is what is normally used to distinguish one race from another. The U.S has four main racial categories that include whites, blacks, Indians and Asians. This paper will highlight the various racial and ethnicity issues in the U.S.
There are other categories of people in the U.S that are not considered as races. These groups include the Hispanic, Asian Indians, Arab Americans and Bi-racial people. It is not easy to define race by phenotype (external features) because of the phenotypic variations that exist within a particular race. Different phenotypes have continued to emerge as a result of racial intermixture. Phenotypic variations within races appear to be greater than those that exist between different races.
The differences in appearance within a particular race make it difficult to distinguish one race from another based on physical appearance. The people who claim to differentiate one race from another based on physical appearance only do that through cultural perception. The use of genotype (genetics and heredity) is another way of classifying people by race. It is also a great challenge to classify races using genotype because many ordinary people do not understand the difference between phenotypic and genotypic elements.
Experts such as physical anthropologists and biologists have not been able to find significant genetic differences between different races because human genetic variation is very small. Genetic studies show that the genetic variation within a particular race supersedes the variation between two different races.
Genetic differences between races can not be used to determine the innate abilities of people within a particular race. A particular race can appear to do certain things better than other races but this is not linked to genetics. The fact that race can not be classified using both external and internal features has left many people wondering why it is so significant in the human history.
This controversy leads to a conclusion that race is a social construction and not a biological reality. The social perceptions and beliefs that people have on human physical differences lead to the racial issues being experienced. The social perception on the issue of races is culturally relative and has been changing with time.
An ethnic group is composed of people with a common culture and racial descent. Ethnicity can either be innate or situational depending on social circumstances. An ethnic group that is numerically smaller is normally referred to as a minority group. Ethnic minorities are usually discriminated by the majority groups that are dominant. Ethnic minorities face both personal and institutional discrimination.
Institutions can treat a particular ethnic group negatively or individuals can face personal discrimination in the course their interactions. The socio-economic status and power are the two elements used to create the ethnic hierarchy in the U.S. The U.S has got both immigrant and indigenous ethnic minorities. Immigrant ethnic minorities in the U.S face a lot of discrimination due to the historical legacy of immigration.