Race Essay, Research Paper

Do you think that race is a social construct? Race as a social construct exists everywhere you go, it is known by everyone. Race all comes about when you know that you are different then the people around you. People construct race socially. Socially it all happens when you are young and just starting to learn facts of life and learning society. We watched two movies that really got me thinking about how people that are different then me, get treated worse. In the movie “Imitation of Life”, an African-American mother and daughter move in with a white family. “Fakin’ da Funk”, the other movie we watched, an adopted Chinese boy has black parents. I also read an essay by Sacks , a Jewish woman, who wrote about racial differences in school, work and in the community. In this paper I will explain how society has constructed certain categories for different races.

In the movie Fakin da Funk there was a Chinese boy named Julian and he was different then everyone else in the new neighbor hood that they moved into. Everyone was making fun of him just because they thought that he was different, even though he really wasn t. He knew everything that they did if not more than they did. He had a better knowledge of his past and how to act. He had lived his whole life as an African American and he knew exactly what it meant to be African American but to everyone else in the neighbor hood he was Chinese. When he was out on a date with a girl and Julian said that he wanted to learn more about his roots, by visiting his native country. But, he really meant that he wanted to go to Africa and learn about the natives and the way that they live. The girl thought he was acting this way just so he could fit in but he was actually acting the way that he was brought up. He was different skin color but he acted the same way that they did.

In the other movie that we watched Imitation of Life it had about the same idea as Fakin da Funk in that people got made fun of because of the differences in their color of skin. The whole movie was about a black mother and daughter moving into a white families home. The reason why they had to move into the white household was because that was the only work that was available. When the daughter got to school she got made fun in school just because of the color of her skin. This just proves my point that wherever you go and if you are different then a person you will be treated differently just because you fit into a different category.

In the essay that Sacks wrote, she wrote about how race is a social construct and that people get treated differently just because of their skin color. Wherever the Jewish and the blacks went there was always someone that treated them differently. When they went to school when they were young, when they went to work to try to get a better life and even when they went out in public they got put down. The only place where they didn t get made fun of was at home. Educational and occupational GI benefits really constituted affirmative action programs for white males because they were decidedly not extended to African American or to women of any race, which means they weren t allow into jobs of some types and schools. The only reason why some colleges accept minorities is, because they want to be called a diverse college. In a neighborhood, peopled almost entirely by the people who claimed to have been driven from Poland and Russia, is the eyesore of New York and perhaps the filthiest place on the western continent. Which meant that the people of New York thought that the city got dirty just because of the type of people that moved into the city based on their origin. The only reason why they called it so dirty was because the Jewish people were left with small stores but that all changed when they were considered white.

Race is a socially construct based on what people talk about. When people talk about a person or even think of a person they put them into a category of race. Race is not determined by common biological characteristics, but by the differences that societies has created between people. No matter who you are, you are put into these categories by what people say and think about you. Even if you don t see your self as different someone else always does, just like the movie that we watched. Everyone has a special feeling inside that makes he or she different then everyone else and that is called individuality. With individuality come difference of people and comes different categories. If we got raid of stereotypes there would have a lot less problems because everyone would be treated the same and no one would fit into a category.

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