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Miguel Chavez
Dr. Annette L. Reed
Ethnic Studies 100.05
3 March 2015
Writing Assignment 1: Study Of Race And Ethnicity
Race and ethnicity in the United States are concepts that, unfortunately, have a great deal
of value in our society, ever since the foundation of this country. Even though the United States
is home to a diverse and mixed population of immigrants from European, African, Asian, and
Latin descendants, Americans tend to focus on issues of ethnicity quite often throughout its
history. This great racial and ethnic diversity poses a challenge between assimilation and
pluralism in the United States.1 In a country where all men are created equal, equality and value
as a people and race has to earned. Americans do not see this division and would never bring it
up unless they're faced with the inconvenient truth of race and ethnicity.
Both of my parents were born in Mexico and both moved to the United States in the late 70s. I
am the first generation Mexican-American born in the United States. Most of my parents siblings
live here in the United States while their extended family live in Mexico. I have visited Mexico
only once when I was nine, although, from that trip, I remember very little. I have only heard
story of my grandparents and much of my family linage, never really meeting anybody. My
parents have not been to their home country for almost 30 years, because they choice to come to
this country to find a better life for me and my three sisters. My older sister will graduate from
UC Davis this May, planning to go to graduate school and I will be graduating next spring, if all
1 Richard T. Schaefer, Race and Ethnicity in the United States (Boston: Pearson Education,
2013) 2.

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goes as planned; we are grateful of their sacrifice and dedication to helping us get this far. I bring
up my background because it poses an interesting dilemma, one I think every first-generation
child faces, the question of self-identification and fitting in as an American.
In the United States, he government has many forms to describe Mexican Americans. For
example, Latino, a general term used to refer to all persons whose ethnic background emerges
from a Latin American, Hispanic, a word implying an association with Spain, or at least the
Spanish language, or Chicano, a term then adopted by activists which, is used politically on a
regular bases.2 I consider myself both Hispanic and Latino, since my parents and ancestors come
from a Latin American country, Mexico where they speak Spanish. The development of
solidarity between ethnic subgroups, like Latino and Hispanic, is the way the government
chooses to identity most decedents of latin countries. The panethnicity, in a way, it seems like the
government is trying blur the line between ethnics by erasing all the cultural identity one has. I
believe for that reason, it is up to the parents to teacher their child about their heritage so they
know who they are and where the come from.
My parents instilled in me and my siblings many principles that Mexicans usually value.
Religion was an important value in my household. We went to church every Sunday, we attended
catechism school after school, and we celebrate and pray to certain saints for certain things. I
grew up in a Spanish speaking household, since both my parents only knew broken english, so
education to my parents was very important. My older sister and I especially, were brought up to
this value, as we had to help our parents with translations, filling out forms, and helping them
understand the American culture. We were brought up with the value of respecting authority

2 Richard T. Schaefer, Race and Ethnicity in the United States (Boston: Pearson Education,
2013) 17.

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figures teachers, priests, and older people, general. I remember as a child, we rode city buses to
get around in Los Angeles and more often than not, my mom always made me stand up if a
woman or senior citizen got on and there were no seats. Finally, I learned the value and
importance of friendship and community to once life. In the neighborhoods I grew up in Los
Angeles and Woodland, from what I have seen, Mexicans stick together, always ready to receive
people in their home, to make parties, and to make everybody feel comfortable. We help each
other out the best we can. For example, when we lived in Los Angeles, my mom feed, walked,
and picked up many of the neighborhood children because both of their parents worked early in
the morning. These are just some of the values I learned growing up as a Mexican. I, however,
did not grew up as just a Mexican, I grew up as a Mexican in an American society. Dont get me
wrong, I love my heritage and the traditions and values that I have come to learn, but that is why
I consider myself both as an American, culturally, and ethnically and but also culturally Mexican.
I had a blended identity. This is a self-image and worldview that is a combination of cultural
background based on nationality, Mexican, and the status of being a resident of the United
States.3 From my experience, like many other children of immigrants, assimilation into American
culture was quite confusing and, at times, still difficult.
Race and ethnicity is a very real topic in American society. It come up in some way, shape,
fashion or form in our everyday lives whether we like it or not. Race and ethnicity, at its most
basic level, does not matter because, after all, we all come from the same roots, the same biology.
According to Schaefer, 90 percent of human genetic variation is within local populations,
The remaining 10 percent of total human variation is what we think of today as constituting races

3 Richard T. Schaefer, Race and Ethnicity in the United States (Boston: Pearson Education,
2013) 159.

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and accounts for skin color, hair form, nose shape, 4 Race and ethnicity, however, have value
because we choose to put value in to the idea of a race being better than another. This is what is
know as the social construction of race; race is important because of the social meaning people
have attached to it. Your race and ethnicity can plays a vital role in your life, like how the
government and politicians see, you where you live, or how much you earn.
This affects us, not only in our daily lives, but is used as a politic tool to support political moves
and actions.5 Hilter, for example, uses it to galvanize the German people into blaming the Jewish
people for the their problems and created death camps to solve the problem. Politicians in the
United States during the 19th and 20th century, believed that African Americans and people of
color were somehow beneath whites just because they believed that skin color and the idea of
race was important. With that in mind, if society and your government tells you that you are
beneath them, that you are not worth it, that you are not capable of achieving great things, you
are bound to believe this idea. This systematical rhetoric makes people believe that they are
something that they are not.
These stereotypes, inadvertently, change how someone of a certain race think about themselves.
My whole life, I have lived in, what is concerned, low income, ghettos. This was not by choice,
but out of necessity. Rent was cheap, the bilingual schools were only blocks away, and the
community around the area was mostly, if not all, Mexican and black. The reason why I bring
this up is because I grew up in these neighborhoods and, if it was not along with my parents
4 Richard T. Schaefer, Race and Ethnicity in the United States (Boston: Pearson Education,
2013) 12.

5 Richard T. Schaefer, Race and Ethnicity in the United States (Boston: Pearson Education,
2013) 13.

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support, they would have shaped my worldview and my goals, just like a white neighborhood
affects its community with a certain worldview. For example, in the movie, America Beyond The
Color Line, Henry Louis Gates Jr shows us the Streets of Heaven, notorious housing projects in
Chicago's South Side, in which the population of these houses are mainly poor and jobless and
crime-ridden. For the Chicagoan black Americans who live in the area, hope bleak and all seems
lost, due to the lack of jobs and assistance in the area.6

In what ways do the day to day encounters of whites, women, and


people of color differ from each other?
Race and ethnicity affects us in many ways throughout our daily lives. The way people look at
you differs between a white male and someone of color. I, for instance., am a college educated,
warm person that loves to hiking and be outside in nature; but when people look at me, they see a
tall 63, dark-browned haired, light-brown skinned typical looking Mexican and whatever bias
they have about Mexicans. The labeling theory talks about why certain people are viewed as
deviants while others engaged in the same behavior are not. Society response to the act, not the
act itself, that determines deviance.7 I have experienced store clerks watch me as I entered their
store back when I was younger and dressed a certain way. They probably thought I would steal
something, when, in fact, I would go in to buy something. In this predominantly white society, I
may be followed and observed more intently then the white male because, in the big scope of
things, it is not one individual, the store clerk, that causes worry and concern but the perception

6 America Beyond the Color Line, dir. Daniel Percival, perf. Henry Louis Gates, Wall to Wall
Television, 2004.

7 Richard T. Schaefer, Race and Ethnicity in the United States (Boston: Pearson Education,
2013) 22.

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society holds. How colored people are seen in society is rooted in their social class position, and
so there is disparity in my treatment to that of a white male is different.
White people have a great advantage going out to the world, whether or not they would want to
admit it. Scholar Peggy McIntosh discusses the issue of white privilege in her article, White
Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack, saying that this advantage exists unconsciously and
is often invisible to the very White people who enjoy it.8 Being considered financially reliable
when using checks, credit cards, or cash, taking a job without having coworkers suspect it came
about because of race, never having to speak for all the people of your race, speaking effectively
in a large group without being called a credit to your race,assuming that if legal or medical help
is needed, your race will not work against you, 9 are some of the privileges they obtain
systemically.
Women, compared to men, also face with adversity when it comes many things in society,
especially when it comes to work. In the work force, a female employee typical earns less than
her male coworker, not because the male worker does more work, but because the female worker
is a female. To demonstrate, thinking over the long term, a woman with a bachelors degree will
work full time three years to earn $142,000. The typical male can work just 28 months, take the 8
months off without pay, and still exceed the womans earnings.10
8 Peggy McIntosh, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack, Wellesley, MA:

Wellesley College Center for Research on Women 1989, 2 March 2015


http://www.isr.umich.edu/home/diversity/resources/white-privilege.pdf

9 McIntosh, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Backpack

10 Richard T. Schaefer, Race and Ethnicity in the United States (Boston: Pearson Education,
2013) 92.

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What is the importance of the study of race and ethnicity?


Race is a very real topic in American society. Although race is a subject that is not easily and
very scarcely talked about, the conversation is much needed and should be addressed at a much
more frequency. Race and ethnicity come up in some way, shape, fashion or form in our
everyday lives whether we like it or not. The United States government, for example, collects
statistics on race and ethnicity on all the documents ranging from driver licenses to food stamps
to the Census. The data is used to study changes in the social, demographic, health, and in
economic characteristics of various ethnic groups in our population. Federal data collections,
through censuses, surveys, and administrative records, have provide a record of the Nation's
population diversity and its changing social attitudes and in policy concerns. The study of race
and ethnicity is important because race and ethnicity have been used extensively in civil rights
monitoring and enforcement covering areas such as employment, voting rights, housing and
mortgage lending, health care services, and in educational opportunities.
When we start to see people for there qualifications and not the color of their skin, then
society, as a whole, will be better. When you consider the amount of different people and cultures
the United States, we must try to understand where we come from to see where we are going. We
come in contact with each other and influence each other, it makes sense to study all peoples and
cultures. We need to learn and talk about subjects like slavery or the Holocaust, or else we will
repeat the mistakes of those who did not stand up and say enough is enough.

Notes

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Richard T. Schaefer, Race and Ethnicity in the United States (Boston: Pearson Education,
2013) 2.
MCINTOSH, PEGGY. 1988. White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.
Wellesley, MA: Wellesley College Center for Research on Women.

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