Race?

Throughout our entire lives, we have been taught about the history of our nation, including the parts about racism, segregation and prejudice. We learned about race and the differences between different races. We also learned that we should take pride in the race that we belong to, encouraging positive stereotypes and avoiding negative ones. However, instead of embracing our ‘race,’ why don’t we embrace our ethnicity or our nationality?

After completing a semester in an introductory sociology course, I would not consider myself an expert on the topic, but I learned much information concerning inequality and differences between peoples. One major section of the class was that race is a social construct. In other words, it is a concept that society created to organize people into categories. This is similar to religion or marriage. It is a way of differentiating between peoples, but this way of identifying people became much different after slavery occurred, making certain races stereotyped as superior and others as inferior.

I strongly believe that it is important to know your history, regardless of how bad it was. However, instead of teaching children to embrace their race, which is completely determined by the color of their skin, why can’t we embrace our ethnicity? By knowing which specific country we come from, we can embrace those cultures and not think of ourselves as superior or inferior to other people. Instead, we can understand that different people have different traditions and come from different cultures. However, if one does not know where their family came from or they are such a mix of things that it is hard to determine, embracing America would not necessarily be a bad thing either. I think that by embracing your roots or embracing the country you live in, we could limit the amount of racism in the country, but something has to change.

The color of our skin should not determine what traditions we follow or define our personality. Everyone is different and has different traditions. The concept of race and the history that accompanies it has only led to discrimination from all ends and hurtful interactions between all groups. By not encouraging the concept of race, we can turn race from a reality to a page in a history textbook.

Those are my Thoughts for Food.