How Does Race And Ethnicity Affects Professional Growth?

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The subject of race and ethnicity is attracting a lot of attention from scholars and practitioners from different disciplines. This owes to the reality that race and ethnicity affects people differently. It could affect our personal and professional growth, educational achievements, and the progression of future college graduates. What is the meaning of these two words? The term race could be elucidated as a collection of people who may have similarities and differences genetically. Analogously, ethnicity is defined as shared perspectives, cultural practices, and variations that differentiate characteristics of groups of people. Some of the traits used to distinguish people along ethnic lines include mode of dressing, religion, ancestry, language, …show more content…

As an evidence of this, African Americans continuously encounter racism and disparate treatment (Cornelius, 2010). For instance, African American males believe that the changing demographics devalue their talents, experience, and education. As a result, they are left to occupy non-management positions in their professions. This negatively affects their professional growth by hindering opportunities for promotions and career development. Race and ethnicity also affects personal growth because people of color have recorded race-associated stress (Vogelsang, 2013). Such experiences affect their personal growth owing to their effect on daily activities. It is notable that a stressed individual is likely to have a low self-esteem, which in turn affects their personal growth. The racial minority record lower levels of personal growth because of stress-related …show more content…

Like most developed countries, America has witnessed the benefits of racial and ethnic diversity for several years. This is because the workforce today is more diverse than say, fifty years ago. Particularly, whites occupied higher offices than other races in the past. Today, the workforce embraces the fact that diversification not only results in better talents, but is also a necessity for the global economy (Byrd and Scott, 2014). The global environment has facilitated diversification because businesses are extending their operations beyond local and regional boundaries. This requires an understanding of varied cultures and markets hence, the need to diversify the workforce. Consequently, businesses hired experts with cultural experience of different geographical locations thus increase job diversification based on racial and ethnic lines. Therefore, race and ethnicity affects the current workforce by increasing job performance, fostering globalization, and improving

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