Race or Culture?
Race and culture are two powerful and meaningful traits in humans, and both have strong affects on society through stereotypes and racism. The effects have been seen throughout history, but which is more important? The meaning of important in this sense is the one which has a greater effect on society, and the one which generally means more to the people of a certain social or ethnic group. The one that is more important is clear. Culture has a much greater effect than race.
Race can be defined by the dictionary as “A group of persons related by common descent or heredity”. Basically, race is the same as ethnicity. By this definition, every person has a race, which cannot be chosen and cannot be changed. Now we’ve defined race, but what does race mean, and what does it mean compared to culture? A race is the people who originate from a certain place, and carry with them traits common to that place. These traits include things such as skin color, hair color and texture, language and accents etc. Culture is the way the people of that race live, including their religions, traditions, holidays and diet. Culture, however it is not always the same for all of each race. Depending on where a certain race lives, if that race has immigrated, or been separated somehow, new conditions can call for new necessities, and their culture can change. Therefore, all of one race does not have the same culture. And when a culture is changed so vastly that it is nothing alike to the original, a new race is born. For example; Americans ethnicity or race is technically English, because our ancestors were English, but you don’t see Americans having afternoon tea and crumpets. That’s because a geographical change caused one culture to become another, and the new culture eventually developed into a new race.
Culture is more important than race because culture is what causes people to identify people of a certain race, stereotype them, and often discriminate against them. People aren’t racist against blacks simply because they have black skin and originate from Africa, at least not anymore. They are racist against blacks because the black culture is different from our own, we realize that the differences are characteristic of a certain race, and we find the differences disturbing.
A personal experience I had with this happened to me at Disneyland 3 years ago. Me and my family barely made it into line on the last ride before closing time. The employees had crossed the ropes to not allow anyone else to enter. About 10 minutes after the gate closed, a family of black people came running up to the rope, hurtled over it one after another, and got in line behind us. They smelled terrible. They were loud and obnoxious and some of them ridiculously obese. We had to wait next to them for over an hour. The way they spoke and the way they smelled formed a racist stereotype in our minds that black people, not because of their race, were always late, loud, smelly, and didn’t care about those around them. Their culture allowed them to think that this was normal behavior, which caused others around them to think less of people of their race.
To some people a racist stereotype may seem to be based on race, when in fact it is not. It is the apparently negative cultural aspects of that race reflecting on the race as a whole. In this aspect, culture certainly overpowers race, as it has the ability to change a race in the eyes of others. The reason that culture is more important than race is because race is what people see in a group, culture is what makes them see it.
as this is not a research paper, no research was required. Therefore no sources need to be cited
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