My ethnicity predominantly consists of African, European, and Native American descents. It is funny to see blacks grouped together as one race when in fact, blacks are comprised of many ethnicities. The ridiculousness of categorizing people by their skin color proves to be anti-productive in assuming ones ethnicity. It seems to prove the race system being used as more of a class system. My own biological information has collected from across the globe so for someone to assume that I’m all African based on the color of my skin concludes stupidity onto the spectator. My appearance affects who I am.
When described in more detailed political terms, I only know of my European and Native American descents. My European ancestry comes from Ireland and France. My Native American ancestry comes from the Choctaw and Cherokee natives. But because of certain laws and policies put in place, I am not legally ,therefore not socially, part of any of those groups. The historical segregation of these groups has affected my linguistics or my communication. The way I Communicate makes up who I am.
These laws and policies follow both the benefits and costs of the class system. The amount of access that one has to certain privileges depends on their race with little to no relevance of one’s ethnic background. My privilege of going to college will affect my occupation which will then affect how much money I have which will then lead to more opportunity to where I move in the class system. Up to my almost 20 years of life experience, I feel I can confidently say, that race plays more of role of who you are in society than ethnicity. It is race not ethnicity that has influenced me in becoming the person I am. It is race because, like a board game, it is the card that keeps you in the game. Whether you like it or not, you play or you die.
It is my black race that I share with my black parents that has brought me to experiences and opportunities that have developed who I am. Everything from florescent wind suits of the 90s to 24 hour videogame stints with my 3 brothers. “Myself” comes from daydreaming on cold playground swing sets, watching my mother struggle over bills, losing a dog, talks about sex, parades, experiencing divorce, cold cream of wheat, the list is endless folks. I always promised myself that everything I absolutely loved in my experiences and opportunities, I would become. From my Grandmother’s warm kisses to my elementary wrestling matches at recess with the boys. These experiences exist in social variables, such as: race, ability, class, gender, religion, media environment, and institution.
These social variables effect communication, occupation, and appearance; all of what make the essentials for a person’s class. But there’s a catch, only a small portion of these variables may be controlled, race, ability, and gender may not be changed. The less you can assimilate the more difficulty for achievement. Who knows, maybe you’ll be the next billionaire.
With these experiences, opportunities, and variables has given me my play on the board. The board consists of figures that dispense, receive, and carryout information to other bodies, all for the movement of energy fueled by desires and survival. When someone encounters me they assume I’m black, which means nothing but African. No. Some get confused because “The way I talk is so proper.” Or they think I have some sort of accent. In today’s society the importance of ethnicity is as valuable as a fire place knick-knack. It won’t be until the importance of self relativism when all human effectively strategize to let our people truly prosper.
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Before this assignment, I had never really considered how different the words "race" and "ethnicity" truly are, and I think you summarize this difference quite well. People often pass judgement based on race, not ethnicity. This is true for all races. Even people who are "white" can come from many different ethnic backgrounds and therefore be very culturally different. We need to learn to communicate with one another instead of passing judgement based on race.
ReplyDeleteTrue, race is often thought to be synonymous with ethnicity. I learned the difference for the most part a long time ago, when I had to fill out forms that would ask about my race and my ethnicity. They were separate categories and I often wondered why are they even asking, but why ask basically the same thing twice? Well, the deal was, on many of the forms when they asked for ethnicity I would see, they would list like six or so ethnicities, of which Hispanic was one of them typically. Then, when I looked at the question that asked about race, there was nothing for being Hispanic, Mexican, Latin, nothing, nada, nicht. The only thing available was the “white race”, and it used to always make me wonder “What’s the deal?” This was my first introduction to the difference between race and ethnicity. Mind you, this was a while ago, and since then they have modified most of the race categories to include Hispanic, even though that itself has nothing to really do with race or even ethnicity – it is more a categorization based on language. Do you know how many ethnicities belong to the term Hispanic or Latin?
ReplyDeletewow, this made me think. You are right you can not just look at the color of someones skin and think that you know where they came from or what their ethnic background is. I liked the way you compared race to a board game, unique yet intriguing.
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