Why are the concepts of race and ethnicity important to the U.S.?

Answer 1

A lot of people in this coutnry make too much a big deal over race, because it's really a way of dividing land rights and privledges. It will be great if/when we can get over it and just see each other as human beings, but this will take a lot more education and enlightenment on everyone's part.
Interesting article from Wikipedia there, especially the bit about Amerindians. But a bit long, better to just give the link, with a few comments or exerpts.
The "one drop" rule for blacks was/is to maximise the number of agricultural workers.
The "blood quantum" rules for Indians was/is to minimise the number of people who can claim tribal lands and rights, and who can claim identity.
As a mixedblood White and Native American, it really hurts not to be able to claim my Indian identity because I lack a piece of paper certifying my blood quantum. I don't begrudge the tribal lands and rights to those who were raised in that culture and have little else to call their own, but it's very sad, having to defend myself to my "fullblood" cousins because I don't have a piece of paper in my wallet from the dominant society gov't that says I'm one of their own!
If I had as much recent black ancestry and physical features as I have Indian, I'd be considered Black, no questions asked. As it is, I'm a "breed", too white to be Indian, too Indian to be white, and too much an Aspie to fit in anywhere anyhow. The best I can do, is just be a good and decent human being. We all have that in common, regardless of how else we may be different.

Answer 2

I have no idea. That has always been a question that no one can really answer. There are people of every color who are the same. No entire race is one thing or the other. All people are different. We all bleed red blood. Perhaps if their shallow minds could get past the color, they will see we are all pretty much the same. We all want to be loved and accepted. Simple as that. Color isn't the issue, ignorant people who are racists are the problem. We would be able to solve so many problems if we just worked together and accepted not all of us are the same, but want pretty much the same things. Thank you and GOD bless.

Answer 3

Country was founded on it, race designation/grouping. From the Native American, to the black slave brought here, and the white indentured servant coupling these three groups engaged in creating mixed children.

Somebody had to be marked and kept in check! It's all a matter of control.

Answer 4

racism is a joke.

What is really going on is the rich people in this country are fueling the the flames of racism among the poor people. This keeps the poor people busy with trivial matters of unneeded hatred instead of them being concerned with bigger things in life.

Answer 5

Race in the United States
In the United States since its early history, Native Americans, African-Americans and European-Americans were classified as belonging to different races. For nearly three centuries, the criteria for membership in these groups were similar, comprising a person’s appearance, his fraction of known non-White ancestry, and his social circle.2 But the criteria for membership in these races diverged in the late 19th century. During Reconstruction, increasing numbers of Americans began to consider anyone with "one drop" of "Black blood" to be Black.3 By the early 20th century, this notion of invisible blackness was made statutory in many states and widely adopted nationwide.4 In contrast, Amerindians continue to be defined by a certain percentage of "Indian blood" (called blood quantum) due in large part to American slavery ethics. Finally, for the past century or so, to be White one had to have "pure" White ancestry. (Utterly European-looking Americans of Hispanic or Arab ancestry are exceptions in being seen as White by most Americans despite traces of known African ancestry.)

Efforts to sort the increasingly mixed population of the United States into discrete categories generated many difficulties (Spickard 1992). By the standards used in past censuses, many millions of children born in the United States have belonged to a different race than have one of their biological parents. Efforts to track mixing between groups led to a proliferation of categories (such as "mulatto" and "octoroon") and "blood quantum" distinctions that became increasingly untethered from self-reported ancestry. A person's racial identity can change over time, and self-ascribed race can differ from assigned race (Kressin et al. 2003). Until the 2000 census, Latinos were required to identify with a single race despite the long history of mixing in Latin America; partly as a result of the confusion generated by the distinction, 32.9% (U.S. census records) of Latino respondents in the 2000 census ignored the specified racial categories and checked "some other race". (Mays et al. 2003 claim a figure of 42%)

The difference between how Native American and Black identities are defined today (blood quantum versus one-drop) has demanded explanation. According to anthropologists such as Gerald Sider, the goal of such racial designations was to concentrate power, wealth, privilege and land in the hands of Whites in a society of White hegemony and White privilege (Sider 1996; see also Fields 1990). The differences have little to do with biology and far more to do with the history of racism and specific forms of White supremacy (the social, geopolitical and economic agendas of dominant Whites vis-à-vis subordinate Blacks and Native Americans) especially the different roles Blacks and Amerindians occupied in White-dominated nineteenth-century America. The theory suggests that the blood quantum definition of Native American identity enabled Whites to acquire Amerindian lands, while the one-drop rule of Black identity enabled Whites to preserve their agricultural labor force. The contrast presumably emerged because as peoples transported far from their land and kinship ties on another continent, Black labor was relatively easy to control, thus reducing Blacks to valuable commodities as agricultural laborers. In contrast, Amerindian labor was more difficult to control; moreover, Amerindians occupied large territories that became valuable as agricultural lands, especially with the invention of new technologies such as railroads; thus, the blood quantum definition enhanced White acquisition of Amerindian lands in a doctrine of Manifest Destiny that subjected them to marginalization and multiple episodic localized campaigns of extermination.

The political economy of race had different consequences for the descendants of aboriginal Americans and African slaves. The 19th-century blood quantum rule meant that it was relatively easier for a person of mixed Euro-Amerindian ancestry to be accepted as White. The offspring of only a few generations of intermarriage between Amerindians and Whites likely would not have been considered Amerindian at all—at least not in a legal sense. Amerindians could have treaty rights to land, but because an individual with one Amerindian great-grandparent no longer was classified as Amerindian, they lost any legal claim to Amerindian land. According to the theory, this enabled Whites to acquire Amerindian lands. The irony is that the same individuals who could be denied legal standing because they were "too White" to claim property rights, might still be Amerindian enough to be considered as "breeds," stigmatized for their Native American ancestry.

The 20th-century one-drop rule, on the other hand, made it relatively difficult for anyone of known Black ancestry to be accepted as White. The child of an African-American sharecropper and a White person was considered Black. And, significant in terms of the economics of sharecropping, such a person also would likely be a sharecropper as well, thus adding to the employer's labor force.

In short, this theory suggests that in a 20th-century economy that benefited from sharecropping, it was useful to have as many Blacks as possible. Conversely, in a 19th-century nation bent on westward expansion, it was advantageous to diminish the numbers of those who could claim title to Amerindian lands by simply defining them out of existence.

It must be mentioned, however, that although some scholars of the Jim Crow period agree that the 20th-century notion of invisible Blackness shifted the color line in the direction of paleness, thereby swelling the labor force in response to Southern Blacks' great migration northwards, others (Joel Williamson, C. Vann Woodward, George M. Fredrickson, Stetson Kennedy) see the one-drop rule as a simple consequence of the need to define Whiteness as being pure, thus justifying White-on-Black oppression. In any event, over the centuries when Whites wielded power over both Blacks and Amerindians and widely believed in their inherent superiority over people of color, it is no coincidence that the hardest racial group in which to prove membership was the White one.

The term "Hispanic" as an ethnonym emerged in the twentieth century with the rise of migration of laborers from Spanish-speaking countries to the United States; it thus includes people who had been considered racially distinct (Black, White, Amerindian) in their home countries. Today, the word "Latino" is often used as a synonym for "Hispanic". In contrast to "Latino," "Anglo" is now used in a similar way to refer to the descendants of British colonists, and values and practices derived from British culture.