Culture and Diversity

Question: Race and ethnicity are interconnected, but separate concepts that are often used interchangeably. In this assignment, write a short essay that compares and contrasts these concepts. How are they similar? How are they different? How are they related to one another? Answer: This essay represents the various aspects of race and ethnicity of United States. The census of USA mentioned various distinctive race and ethnicity. US is the home of various immigrants across the globe. So, it is not free from racial and ethnic issues. Race refers to the physical structure of a person. It represents the color of skin, height, bone structure, color of hair etc, whereas, the ethnicity represents the persons cultutre, ancestral, language, nationality etc (Kost Henshaw, 2014). According to US census, there are six categories of races. These are as African American, White American, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, Native American and Alaskan Native, two or more race and some other race (https://www.census.gov, 2016). The ethnicity is characterized as Hispanic or Latino and non Hispanic or Latino. According to Dallam (2014), the genetic structure defines the race and the differences in the skin color or body structure can drastically change in 100 years. Researcher also found that the randomly selected DNA of same person can be similar. This would prove that they are under same race. As in the case of USA, people with black skin color are considered as black or African American. But, some people are white whi le they have ancestral origin from sub-Saharan African. They are also classified of black (Kost Henshaw, 2014). In another scenario, when a immigrants come to US, they gradually learn the US culture and tradition and speak English without their native accent. So, the people of USA fall under different races but same ethnicity. As a result, the differences among people in terms of ethnicity gradually assimilate and what is left with is strata of various races. References Bureau, U. (2016).Census.gov.Census.gov. Retrieved 13 March 2016, from https://www.census.gov Dallam, M. W. (2014). Race and Ethnicity.The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements. London: Bloomsbury, 295-299. Kost, K., Henshaw, S. (2014). US teenage pregnancies, births and abortions, 2010: National and state trends by age, race and ethnicity.New York, NY: Guttmacher Institute.