Race in America Essay Example for Free

Race in America Essay The racial issues have become less significant in todays society than in earlier days among the American people. In todays society, many improved racial equality measures have been taken in order to ensure that the people of the United States are treated as if in one social group. Although many actions have been done to improve the equality of the people of America, racial issues still exists. Race in my opinion is the perception that an individual have towards any social group and can see differences from a visual aspect. Even though racial profiling, in the earlier days were a top issue in America, it is dying out and is replaced with the equal standards of todays society. When people come in to contact with one another they tend notice differences they see in one another. These differences can be attributed to the genotype and phenotype variation between people. It tends to not be biologically significant to divide humans in to racial groups it is more of a social concept. The various characteristics such as skin color, shape of face, hair and eye color, nose shape and hair form are used in categorizing people in to specific races. Race is a powerful social concept that affects many aspects of our culture now and in our history. In the past you would see much more endogamy due to breeding isolates. But now with more social acceptance and modern transportation we are seeing much more exogamy. This in turn has widened the gene pool and allowed much more genetic variation. With these changes come less of a chance and or preference for inbreeding like we have seen in our history. Inbreeding tends to increase the chances for the offspring to have genetic disorders there for is harmful to the population. The problem with this social categorization system it tends to lead to certain races believing their traits are more favorable. Once it is believed that one race is better than other that type of thinking leads some to believe in biological determinism. Many wars have been found over the years because a group of people thought they were superior to another. Completely stupid concept but some simply cannot see beyond it. A prime example of this is the eugenics that was being practiced by Hitler. He convinced and or scared an entire nation in to persecuting the Jewish people of Germany. He believed that he was improving the Aryan race by his horrific actions. Which to be honest has always confused me. A man wanting to rid the world of dark haired non Aryan looking people, yet he himself did not fit in to his own category. It seems to me that concentrating on our differences only opens the door to dividing us. We must learn from the past and look toward bettering the future, for all of our sakes.