Race: A Social Construction Of Race

Race is a social construction made up by whites to help them justify slavery and capturing land. Throughout history, the definition of race changed. People used to believe that it was a biological, but now it is accepted as artificial. Many prejudgments are made based off of race and the stereotypes that are associated with each race.

It is common for people to confuse the term race with ethnicity. Ethnicity is a person’s country of origin, the traditions they celebrate and the language they speak. Race is simply the physical appearance of someone. Race is a social construction. Other countries do not look at race the same way that Americans do. During a lecture by Professor Nelson, it was stated that Brazilians believe that there are 123

During this colonization, Christopher Columbus enslaved the natives to mine for silver and gold. Sadly, the Spanish brought many diseases with them from Europe and many of the natives died working for the Spanish. Because of a shortage of slave labor, the Spanish began the transatlantic slave trade. African leaders sold captured prisoners of war to the traders who would bring them to America to mine and plant crops. It is a widely held belief that Christopher Columbus discovered America. This is not true because there were already roughly fifty seven million people living in the Americas before he arrived. Americans should not celebrate the day that Columbus landed in the Americas because all he brought was disease, racism, slavery and a racial classification

It creates a form of natural segregation. Back in the 1960’s, the civil rights movement was created to end segregation. It was met with a lot of resistance but eventually stopped all forms of segregation in the law. This was a big step toward race equality in the United States. Race is a social construction in America. Even though segregation has ended, our human nature still sees color. I think the quote “The seemingly obvious, “natural” and “common sense” qualities which the existing racial order exhibits themselves testify to the effectiveness of the racial formation process in constructing racial meaning and racial identities.” by Paula S. Rothenburg sums up the issue of Race construction very well. Americans still make prejudgments based off of the color of someone’s skin and not based on who they are as a