Mexicano Con El Corazón En La Mano

Mexicano Con El Corazón En La Mano

How can we as human beings defined race?  Well, we could have an endless discussion about it, and we would never get to a well fitted definition for it. As a Mexican, in my opinion, race is whatever we want, I say this because we could all changed its role or meaning within society, especially in the United States.

The struggle of race first came to people, to differentiate white from black. In this case, whites as the supreme race over of all, and blackness, of course, as the inferior race on face of the earth. Here, it would be reasonable to mention that in 1803 in the Tasmania islands, the British people terminated the native aborigines that live there during that time because the British thought that it would be a benefit for the whole world, to get rid of these aborigines that lived in the forest, didn't know how to cultivate, and weren't Christians, so because of these characteristics the British thought they were useless to society, and therefore, they all, should be terminated. These were the ways how people, back then, used to differentiate race.

There is also other ways that people use to define race in the United States such as, skin color, clothing, way of Speaking English, the music people listen to, etc.  For example, if you worked for a retail store selling phones, and a customer calls in to get more information about the new devices that just came out, she wouldn't be able to tell that you weren't American if you didn't have an accent, of the other way around. But if that the same person, comes to the store, asks for you, she might be surprise that she wasn't able to tell whether you were American or not, because of the simple reason that you don’t have an accent, and she was able to see you. Another example could be, a person with dark skin color, looking for a job. This person goes to restaurant looking for a job opportunity, and the first question the employer asked you is do you have a social security number? Here the employer assumed that the person looking for a job was undocumented because of his darker skin color. There is tons of characteristics that people in the United States use to set social barriers to people that aren't necessary white but have a lower educational level, or are not able to speak the host language well enough to pass as an American.

Other crucial factors that stop people from integrating to the American society are discrimination, education, surroundings, and people that were born outside the U.S.  I say this, because people that haven’t been discriminated are most likely to identify themselves with the American culture in an easier way. In the other hand, people that suffered discrimination would rarely associated themselves with the American culture, but instead would identify themselves as Latinos, Hispanic, Cuban, Mexican, Chicano, etc. Education plays an important role when it comes to adaptation or social assimilation because people with higher educational level are seen as people that are useful to society, and that are able to support and enjoy all the luxuries that most of the middle-class Americans have.

In conclusion, I believe race is a term that we would never be able to define as longest people keep using it as a social barrier within society. But I believe that race is an artificial social contract used to categorize people within society. 

Citations

"Introduction to Sociology: Race and Ethnicity: Definitions." YouTube. YouTube, 06 Mar. 2011. Web. 07 Nov. 2013.

"Scientific Racism: The Eugenics of Social Darwinism." YouTube. YouTube, 16 June 2011. Web. 07 Nov. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eX5T68TQIo>.