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    Muhammad Hamza Naseer. 20011510-109: Sociology ASSIGNMENT Submitted by

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    Muhammad Hamza
    This document discusses the sociology of race and ethnicity. It explains that race refers to physical differences, while ethnicity refers to shared cultural characteristics. It argues that the concept of biological race is problematic, as physical traits are often more varied within groups than between them, and racial categories have been applied inconsistently and arbitrarily over time. For example, Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants were once considered a separate race but are now seen as white. The document suggests ethnicity may be a better term than race, as it focuses on shared cultural experiences rather than implied biological differences.

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    Muhammad Hamza Naseer. 20011510-109: Sociology ASSIGNMENT Submitted by

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    Muhammad Hamza
    28 views7 pages
    This document discusses the sociology of race and ethnicity. It explains that race refers to physical differences, while ethnicity refers to shared cultural characteristics. It argues that the concept of biological race is problematic, as physical traits are often more varied within groups than between them, and racial categories have been applied inconsistently and arbitrarily over time. For example, Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants were once considered a separate race but are now seen as white. The document suggests ethnicity may be a better term than race, as it focuses on shared cultural experiences rather than implied biological differences.

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    Sociology assignment

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    Ass3 Sociology

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    This document discusses the sociology of race and ethnicity. It explains that race refers to physical differences, while ethnicity refers to shared cultural characteristics. It argues that the concept of biological race is problematic, as physical traits are often more varied within groups than between them, and racial categories have been applied inconsistently and arbitrarily over time. For example, Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants were once considered a separate race but are now seen as white. The document suggests ethnicity may be a better term than race, as it focuses on shared cultural experiences rather than implied biological differences.

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    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    28 views7 pages

    Muhammad Hamza Naseer. 20011510-109: Sociology ASSIGNMENT Submitted by

    Uploaded by

    Muhammad Hamza
    This document discusses the sociology of race and ethnicity. It explains that race refers to physical differences, while ethnicity refers to shared cultural characteristics. It argues that the concept of biological race is problematic, as physical traits are often more varied within groups than between them, and racial categories have been applied inconsistently and arbitrarily over time. For example, Irish, Italian and Jewish immigrants were once considered a separate race but are now seen as white. The document suggests ethnicity may be a better term than race, as it focuses on shared cultural experiences rather than implied biological differences.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as pdf or txt
    of 7

    Sociology ASSIGNMENT

    Submitted by:

    MUHAMMAD HAMZA NASEER.


    20011510-109

    Submitted To:

    Mr Bilal Hasan

    SECTION : B

    BS PHYSICS DEPARTMENT

    UNIVERSITY OF GUJRAT
    Topic: Sociology of national race and ethnicity.

    Introduction:

    The sociology of race and ethnic relations is the study of social,


    political, and economic relations between races and ethnicities at
    all levels of society. This area encompasses the study of systemic
    racism, like residential segregation and other complex social
    processes between different racial and ethnic groups.Race” refers
    to physical differences that groups and cultures consider socially
    significant, while “ethnicity” refers to shared culture, such as
    language, ancestry, practices, and beliefs.

    Race is defined as “a category of humankind that shares certain


    distinctive physical traits.” The term ethnicities is more broadly
    defined as “large groups of people classed according to common
    racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or
    background.”

    Explanation:
    2
    It is certainly easy to see that people in the United States and
    around the world differ physically in some obvious ways. The
    most noticeable difference is skin tone: some groups of people
    have very dark skin, while others have very light skin. Other
    differences also exist. Some people have very curly hair, while
    others have very straight hair. Some have thin lips, while others
    have thick lips. Some groups of people tend to be relatively tall,
    while others tend to be relatively short. Using such physical
    differences as their criteria, scientists at one point identified as
    many as nine races: African, American Indian or Native American,
    Asian, Australian Aborigine, European (more commonly called
    “white”), Indian, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian
    (Smedley, 1998).

    Although people certainly do differ in the many physical features


    that led to the development of such racial categories,
    anthropologists, sociologists, and many biologists question the
    value of these categories and thus the value of the biological
    concept of race (Smedley, 2007). For one thing, we often see more
    physical differences within a race than between races. For
    example, some people we call “white” (or European), such as those
    with Scandinavian backgrounds, have very light skins, while
    others, such as those from some Eastern European backgrounds,
    have much darker skins. In fact, some “whites” have darker skin
    3
    than some “blacks,” or African Americans. Some whites have very
    straight hair, while others have very curly hair; some have blonde
    hair and blue eyes, while others have dark hair and brown eyes.
    Because of interracial reproduction going back to the days of
    slavery, African Americans also differ in the darkness of their skin
    and in other physical characteristics. In fact it is estimated that
    about 80% of African Americans have some white (i.e., European)
    ancestry; 50% of Mexican Americans have European or Native
    American ancestry; and 20% of whites have African or Native
    American ancestry. If clear racial differences ever existed
    hundreds or thousands of years ago (and many scientists doubt
    such differences ever existed), in today’s world these differences
    have become increasingly blurred.

    Another reason to question the biological concept of race is that an


    individual or a group of individuals is often assigned to a race on
    arbitrary or even illogical grounds. A century ago, for example,
    Irish, Italians, and Eastern European Jews who left their homelands
    for a better life in the United States were not regarded as white
    once they reached the United States but rather as a different,
    inferior (if unnamed) race (Painter, 2010). The belief in their
    inferiority helped justify the harsh treatment they suffered in their
    new country. Today, of course, we call people from all three
    backgrounds white or European.

    4
    In this context, consider someone in the United States who has a
    white parent and a black parent. What race is this person?
    American society usually calls this person black or African
    American, and the person may adopt the same identity (as does
    Barack Obama, who had a white mother and African father). But
    where is the logic for doing so? This person, as well as President
    Obama, is as much white as black in terms of parental ancestry. Or
    consider someone with one white parent and another parent who is
    the child of one black parent and one white parent. This person
    thus has three white grandparents and one black grandparent. Even
    though this person’s ancestry is thus 75% white and 25% black,
    she or he is likely to be considered black in the United States and
    may well adopt this racial identity. This practice reflects the
    traditional “one-drop rule” in the United States that defines
    someone as black if she or he has at least one drop of “black
    blood,” and that was used in the antebellum South to keep the
    slave population as large as possible (Wright, 1993). Yet in many
    Latin American nations, this person would be considered white. In
    Brazil, the term black is reserved for someone with no European
    (white) ancestry at all. If we followed this practice in the United
    States, about 80% of the people we call “black” would now be
    called “white.” With such arbitrary designations, race is more of a
    social category than a biological one.

    5
    Example:

    "President Barack Obama had an African father and a white


    mother. Although his ancestry is equally black and white,
    Obama considers himself an African American, as do most
    Americans. In several Latin American nations, however,
    Obama would be considered white because of his white
    ancestry."

    Because of the problems in the meaning of race, many social


    scientists prefer the term ethnicity in speaking of people of color
    and others with distinctive cultural heritages. In this context,
    ethnicity refers to the shared social, cultural, and historical
    experiences, stemming from common national or regional
    backgrounds, that make subgroups of a population different from
    one another. Similarly, an ethnic group is a subgroup of a
    population with a set of shared social, cultural, and historical
    experiences; with relatively distinctive beliefs, values, and
    behaviors; and with some sense of identity of belonging to the
    6
    subgroup. So conceived, the terms ethnicity and ethnic group avoid
    the biological connotations of the terms race and racial group and
    the biological differences these terms imply. At the same time, the
    importance we attach to ethnicity illustrates that it, too, is in many
    ways a social construction, and our ethnic membership thus has
    important consequences for how we are treated.

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