Race is a Social Construction
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Race is a Social Construction
The idea that all individuals are created equal is referred to as a social construct. In order for certain people to appear to be more dominating than others, human beings invented methods of establishing social classes. Many indigenous people of African origin were denied citizenship after a constitution was passed in 1789, and as a result, too many of them became slaves, reducing them to a position of dependency. Biologically, all people are the same. No gene is available to whites that isn’t available to blacks, and vice versa. People, on the other hand, needed a categorization, and in order to do so, they had to look at the skin color, which was obviously different. Other racial classifications have been introduced to make people look whiter and more intellectual to those who classify them (Demoiny, 2018). All humans would be classed as members of the same race if race were a true genetic tendency. A good example is in the years between 1820 and 1830, whereby the right to vote which had been granted to some blacks was stopped and only the whites could vote.
Affirmative action can be explained as a course of action that has been identified as the right channel to tackle and address certain issues such as discrimination that has taken root in an institution or place in order to ensure that the current population receive equal opportunities unlike in the past. The course of action is actively instilled in the current regime to prevent the re-emergence of the problems that were previously experienced. The active policies acknowledge the fact that unfair and unjust decisions were the order of the day in the previous years with racial discrimination being a big part of institutions that disadvantaged a good number of the black community. Racial discrimination describes the use of color and race to treat people differently.
Colleges should by all means comply with affirmative action because everyone has a right to study anywhere as long as they have qualified and meet all the requirements needed. The constitution advocates for the rights of every person to receive fair treatment without considering their race or ethnic affiliation (Bodoh-Creed, Hickman, 2017). Complying with these actions ensures that everyone has an equal opportunity to develop and be who they want to become. With college admissions, students should be admitted based on merit and not just because they have connections or because their parents attended the same school and hence given opportunities even when they do not qualify.
The biggest surprise to me is the fact that the idea of racial discrimination was dominant in areas with the most educated people; “It happened in one of the most educated, most liberal regions of the country. These are significant numbers.” I expected that this would be dominant in areas such as the deep south, the part of the country that is less liberal and its population not well educated. The old housing policies such as redlining shape racial stratification today in that it influenced the development of urban neighborhoods and they were starved of investments and categorized as highly hazardous (Kim, Block & Nguyen, 2019). Today, there are segregated and unequal cities due to these redlining policies that previously existed. I see the lasting impacts of segregation around me in that credit availability has a huge influence on every aspect of neighborhood life, including real estate quality, investor desire to come in, property pricing, and the rise of predatory activities. Micro aggression describes the unintentional discrimination against the minority groups. I have not experienced this phenomenon because I live in one of the region that has no rule on who or who not live there.
References
Bodoh-Creed, A., & Hickman, B. R. (2017). Pre-college human capital investments and affirmative action: A structural policy analysis of us college admissions. Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics Working Paper, (2017-10).
Demoiny, S. B. (2018). Websites to explore race as a social construct. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 61(4), 469-472.
Kim, J. Y. J., Block, C. J., & Nguyen, D. (2019). What’s visible is my race, what’s invisible is my contribution: Understanding the effects of race and color-blind racial attitudes on the perceived impact of microaggressions toward Asians in the workplace. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 113, 75-87.
Race as a social construct
