Race

Cultural Awareness in the Human Services
Melissa Maldonado
May 20, 2013

When it comes to race many people think of white and black. But there are many other races within the United States. But according to the Univeristy of Michigan there are two kinds of races biological and social. The term they list for biological race is a geographically isolated subsdivision of a species that will eventually evolve into a new species if it remains isolated long enough. In this study it staes that human physical genetic variation is not distributed into discrete populations marked by abrupt shifts in gene frequencies. Which basically means there are no human races. Now the social race is a group that is assumed to have a biological basis but is actually defined in a culturally arbitrary manner. Basically this means that each culture comes up with it's own race. The US, Japan and Brazil may have a different concept when it comes to race. So how did race come about in the US, what does it mean to be one race or another? Why is race important at all? When America was first formed there was only white and black for races. In the United States race has always played a part in the social realm. In the 17th century race wa defined by the color of the skin. In 1830 the indians were moved so that the white race could live on the land that they claimed. From the first time landing on US soil the white race was always the prodominent race. Whites had the power and resources to drive the indians out of the land so that they could build their homesteads. When the first Africans came on the ship they were defined by their culture, however as time progressed and whites and blacks started having sexual relations, race became a factor in determining where a person belonged. If a child was conceived from a white person and a black person, it became based on the skin color of the baby if it was determined to be white or black. If the baby was light enough the whites would label the baby white, it would grow up as part of the white culture. If the baby was dark it was labeled black and it would be given to a slave to take care of it. In America today there are many mixed children. Normally if they had a black parent they would be