Racism and Ethnicity

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Ethnical and Racial topics come up in our everyday life in many ways: shape, size, skin, fashion, accent, or even because of our names, whether we like it or not. It is a topic that is forever debatable and can be manipulated to cause fights and riots. I think race is a very important topic in the American society and has had its issues since the 17th century. It is very similar to the cast system that was very prominent in India, in the past. In this essay will define what both race and ethnicity mean to me and how these terms are relevant in our society currently. People, many times, confuse race with ethnicity. Race is a group of people that are classified together on the basis of common history, geographical distribution or nationality. Ethnicity is ethnic qualities that are a result of racial and cultural ties. For example: Race would define an African American but ethnicity would tell us where he and his ancestors come from. There is more attention given to race an ethnicity in our daily lives than we can imagine, in newspapers or in politics. People get hired or discriminated against because of their race. I can relate to this because, after the 9/11 attack, some of my family friends who were Muslims were called in for questioning and even lost their jobs because no one wanted to keep Muslims and any one who looked like them i.e. south east Asians as employees. The way Americans viewed south-east Asians and Muslims changed completely after that, even now almost 12 years after the incident, Indian celebrities and tourists are held for questioning or get their visa application rejected. Not only in the United States but racism towards Indians was seen in the United Kingdom and Australia as well. It is the actions of a few that make the rest of the race suffer. It isn’t everyone who is racist against a certain group but those who are stand out amongst

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