The Meaning of The Following Terms: Discrimination

Explain

When you mention the word “race”, people will automatically define it as another species, someone who is totally different from themselves. What they don’t realise is that apart from maybe the skin colour, hair texture, facial features and one or two other differences, we are all the same genetically. Human beings are all one race or species so to speak.

Besides physical, we obviously have other noticeable differences such as our language, culture and religion, but these are traits that are learned depending on what country we live in and how we are nurtured.

Just as all cats, i. e. tigers, lions, leopards and domesticated are all felines, or rats, mice, gerbils and hamsters are all rodents, they belong to the same species despite their place of origin or physical differences. This shows that the word “race” is very misleading. Ethnicity is a word used to describe a certain group of people whose culture is different from the rest or most of the rest of the society in which they live.

For example, a group of Asians living in Leicester who share the same religion, dress code, language and skin colour would be considered the Ethnic minority as the majority of the population in Leicester would be English. Culture is something that someone is born into depending on their origins. Someone from Africa will have different cultural values to those from England. These values are learnt from one generation to another and have nothing to do with race or ethnicity, neither is any one culture superior to another.

Cultural differences include things like:  Household items (tools)

Dress/fashionReligion Art and literature  Education  Accommodation Every culture has a different way of life and even though a person moves to another country, they don’t necessarily adopt all of that country’s culture, they usually keep their own beliefs and ways of life. Being Prejudiced involves making your mind up about someone (usually in a negative way) before even knowing anything about them or listening to what others say about someone’s nationality without finding out for themselves. All this purely on the grounds of the colour of their skin or racial background.

These attitudes are learnt early on in life from people usually quite high in authority, i. e. parents, teachers (in some cases) and the media. People with these attitudes rarely change their views or even want to. To discriminate against somebody generally means not treating that person equally or excluding them from employment or certain activities for instance solely because they are physically different from the majority as regards to their skin colour. Select 4 Theories Relating To The Issue Of Race And Assess Their Strengths And Weaknesses.

There are several theories regarding racial differences and how we came about. Some will argue that we are all separate races and are distinguished into these categories by our skin colour, facial features, language and place of origin. Four theories relating to these issues include:Monogenesis  Polygenesis Jensen’s theory  Genetics Monogenesis – The theoretical descent of all livings things from a single cell. Monogenesis, as the term was understood by natural historians in the middle of the nineteenth century, was the theory that all human beings shared the same origin.

While this may be true in one aspect, this specific theory was based on the ideology that all of us originated from the biblical story of Adam and Eve. If it was believed that humanity arose from a single pair of chromosomes and followed Biblical chronology, which left only relatively few generations for any changes from that pair to take place, then the human form, and particularly skin colour, had to be very sensitive to the effects of climate to account for this diversity.

But in spite of efforts to find support for this possibility, the observations of both settlers and slaves in the colonies of European nations provided evidence that judging humans by features and skin colour, was relatively constant. In 1749 Buffon decided that as an experiment some Africans should be taken to a northern climate. He predicted that after eight or twelve generations they would lose their black colour and perhaps become as white as the local inhabitants. In 1766 Buffon reiterated this claim with even more confidence.

He judged that the result would be ‘reintegration’ of the human species. But during the intervening period his claim had become increasingly less plausible. There was no longer any need for such an experiment. The colour changes that scientists had predicted were not happening. The collapse of this hypothesis and the lack of viable alternatives lent support to polygenesis. This, by contrast, was the theory that at least some of the races had a separate origin, therefore in the middle of the nineteenth century polygenesis became widespread, particularly in the United States.

Part of the reason for this was the problem of reconciling the biblical account with certain new pieces of historical and scientific evidence. This theory, argued mostly by slave owners of the West Indies like Edward Long, said that black races were a different, unequal species, far less superior to the white race. Another one in favour of this theory was Georges Pouchet who had said that there were several species which had evolved independently and were totally unrelated to each other.