African American Essay Example for Free

African American riseJames Baldwin once said, I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, surely, but I am as well as so much more than that. So are we all. When the subject of run a way comes up, I rule corresponding that quote is in truth meaningful. According to class lecture, race is an arbitrary social classification of clearly leap categories ground on climb color which corresponds to no biologic reality. To be able to understand race today, a psyche should have a background on the history of race. According to the American anthropological Association, by the 1600s, English colonists had established a dodge of indentured servitude that included twain Europeans and Africans. But by the time of Bacons Rebellion the status of Africans began to change. Servants who once had an opportunity for freedom following servitude were relegated to a carriage of permanent slavery in the colonies. Thomas Jefferson was influential in the idea of race with a biolo gical and social hierarchy.He stated that, blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the discolors in the endowments both of body and mind. Not only did quite a little pop to base their opinions on Thomas Jeffersons statement, but when Carolus Linnaeus developed a biological classification system and the German scientist Johann Blumenbach introduced a race-based classification of humans, the idea of race expanded and whites saw themselves as superior.I feel that even though race is so deeply embedded into our lives, and it also appears to be the natural fix of things, it is not a useful way to talk about human re factorration. Skin color unaccompanied does not provide any reliable information about at individuals race, culture, or susceptibility to disease. Ryan A. Brown and George J. Armelagos in the review, Apportionment of Racial Diversity, makes a good point by sound outing, A single trait such as skin colo r will result in a classification system that is easily impelled.Add some other trait and classification becomes a more severe task, and there usually are groups that cannot be classified. For too long people have been basing human variation on a persons race. Many people are guilty of simply flavour at an individual and grouping them by their skin color. The sorting exercise on the PBS website confirms this. When I completed the exercise, the results said that I only had grouped 3 individuals in the right group. I was exploitation appearance and appearance only to classify the individuals. Appearance doesnt always tell a person about someones ancestry of self-identity.Its hard to make any accurate predictions based on appearance alone. According to the Me, My Race, and I interpreting on the PBS website, I realized that whites and nonwhites had very different things to recite. A Caucasian individual stated, race does not affect his life so he doesnt dwell on it. It is quite different for nonwhites. An African American male stated that he feels as if people automatically perceive him as a robber. An Asian said she was expected to be good at math and sciences, just because of the way she seeked.According to the Why Genes Dont search (for Racial Differences in Health) article, human race variation is non-concordant. Traits tend to vary independently of other traits. Race classifications vary, therefore, by the traits used in the classification. For example, a classification based on the sickle cell trait king include equatorial Africans, Greeks, and Turks. Sickle cell is not a black disease. According to AAA, Contrary to prevalent perception, the gene variant that causes sickle cell disease evolved as a result of its surprising meridian malaria resistance.The gene variant for sickle cell disease is related to malaria, not skin color. There is no possibility for consistency. Because skin color correlates with only a few other phenotype traits such as pig and eye color, it is true that race is only skin deep. Another actor why I would say race is not a useful way to talk about human variation is the reason that human variation is continuous. Alan H. Goodman, PhD says there is no clear place to designate where one race begins and another ends. Skin color, for example, slowly changes from place to place. Whether than using race to talk about human variation, I forecast there is a better way to talk about groups of humans. I think the better way to talk about groups of humans is based on culture. In lecture we learned how a persons ethnic group is the emphasis of cultural construction over genes. Ethnicity is a multifactorial concept including, but not limited to cultural constructs, genetic background, ecological specialization, and self-specialization. According to the article Culture, Not Race, Explains Human Diversity, races are imagined by the public and do not actually exist.If you think about it, ethnicity/culture is such a better way to talk about groups of people rather than grouping according to skin color. Skin color is based simply on appearance, whereas ethnicity/culture brings multiple concepts into play. Mark Nathan Cohen says, The anthropological concept of culture can be explained best by an analogy with language. Just as language is more than vocabulary, culture is more than, say art and music. Culture structures our behavior, thoughts, perceptions, values, goals, morals, and cognitive processes. Mr.Cohen makes a good point by stressing that people should stray from their egocentric ways and look more carefully at what other people are doing and try to understand their behavior in context before judgment. A persons culture shapes many things once thought determined by biology, including sexuality, aggression, perception, and susceptibility to disease. This exercise of exploring on the websites and reading all the outside readings, did reinforce our classroom discussions. One thing t hat stood out to me was the fact that we talked about a girl from Lau Lagoon, Solomon Islands who had dark skin but was born with blond hair.This example also came up in our outside reading as an example. This emphasized that skin color does not come with a certain set of hair colors. Another way this exercise reinforced our classroom discussion was that the websites and reading both reinforced the concept that race has no genetic basis. Not one characteristic, trait or gene distinguishes all members of one so-called race from all members of another so-called society. I feel that that was the overall major concept that was learned in both this exercise and classroom lecture.As I was on the PBS website, I came across one of the background reading entitled Where Race Lives. I put this article very interesting because I read that in 1993, 86% of suburban whites still lived in places with a black population of less than 1%. This was interesting to me because in 1994 my family move to what was considered a white suburb. Even though I was only 1 years of age, at the time, my mom told me that we were 1 of the 2 African Americans families living in the neighborhood at the time. We were the only African American family on our way at the time.Today our street has more African American families on it than white families. It is sad to say but as more African American families moved on our street, more white families moved away. All in all, Genes and environments work together to make each person unique. Why just look at a persons skin color and make judgments, when there is more to a person than their skin color. Characteristics such as skin color, height and susceptibility to disease are determined by complex combinations of genetic traits, environmental factors and cultural experience.