Cultural diversity college course help!?

Question

What do the terms race and ethnicity mean to you? and Why are these concepts important to United States society?

Answer 1

Race and ethnicity are two separate things. Anthropologist (if I recall) recognize only three races Black, Caucasian and Asian.

Your ethnicity is the cultural that your ancestors are from.

For example a Inuit is racial Asian (as are all 'Indian" people) but his ethnicity would be Inuit.

A person from Ireland is ethnically Irish or better Celtic and racially Caucasian

A person from Sudan would be racially black and ethnically Sudanese.

Now of course there are some seriously gray areas, people from the South Pacific region of the world are a mixture of Black/Asian and so are hard to classify racially. People of Hispanic descent particularly in the Americas are a mixture of Caucasian/Black and Asian but are not a separate race only a separate ethnic group.

Ethnicity becomes important when dealing within racial groups because we tend to neglect the differences between ethnicity's of the same racial group. IE. Irish and Italians or Dominicans and Columbians or American born Blacks and Nigerian born Blacks.

Race especially the Black/White conflict has dominated American political and social history and ethnicity has given us are unique American homogeneous view of the world.

Answer 2

possibly how a few cultures would possibly help gay relationships vs different cultures no longer or might be the african american cultures reaction to barack obama being the primary african american president