ETHNICITY AND RACE

Ethnicity and Race



Ethnicity and Race

Throughout history, we have witnessed that nations have always faced challenges in achieving co-existence and peace in their societies. The freedom of speech, liberty and freedom to practice one's own religion have been the fundamental rights of citizens. When different races live and work in one place, there is always some clash of interests and values which leads towards hate crimes and prejudices (Marsh, et. al., 2009). Hate crimes are criminal acts or offensive acts where one or more persons attack another person through physical assault, bullying, verbal abuse, harassment, rude gestures and hate mails. All these verbal and non-verbal ways to demonstrate towards a person based on his/her race or culture. After 9/11 the rate of hate crimes has drastically increased and has destroyed the level co-existence among different ethnic/racial societies. Hate crimes signify an unattended and unrealized cancer that is slowly eating away at the roots of modern day society (Haralambos & Holborn, 2008). The presence of hate crimes undermines the progress that is characteristic to the modern way of life across the world. Underestimating the magnitude, impact and significance of hate crimes can be equated to giving way to the eventual collapse of Civilization as we know it.

Race and ethnicity are not synonymous, but the concept of race is associated with ethnicity. Ethnicity is a human community defined by linguistic and cultural affinities. The word race is derived from the Greek ethnos, meaning people (Taylor, Richardson, Yeo, Marsh, Trobe, & Pilkington, 2004). The difference between race and ethnicity, that ethnicity also encompasses cultural factors such as nationality, religion, language and traditions, while race includes only the morphological factors such as skin color, build, height, etc. The word ethnicity is often mistakenly used as a euphemism for race.

The language is used as a primary factor classification of ethnic groups, there is a large number of multi-ethnic languages ??and certain ethnic groups are multi-lingual. Ethnic groups share a common origin, and exhibit a continuity in time, have a sense of shared history and design a future as a people (Browne, 2011). This is achieved through the transmission from generation to generation of a common language, values, traditions, and in many cases, institutions.

Although they are often said as synonyms, there are certain differences between race and ethnicity. Race is expressed in visible characteristics of the person, it encompasses the physical characteristics such as skin tone, formation of the skull and face and hair type (Bilton, et al., 2002). Ethnicity also refers to it, but it goes beyond the physical characteristics of the person, it includes culture, nationality, tribal affiliation, religion, language and traditions. An ethnic group or ethnic group is in a broad sense a human community defined by linguistic and cultural affinities and genetic (Giddens & Griffiths, 2006). Such communities often claim to have a social structure, politics and territory.

Race is a concept that has been linked to ethnicity. But cultural factors include ethnicity (nationality, tribal affiliation, religion, language or traditions) and ...