Race, Ethnicity, and Culture

The diversity of cultural ways within a nation and around the world is a resource for the creativity and future of humanity. As with the importance of supporting species diversity for the continued adaptation of life to changing circumstances, the diversity of cultural ways is a resource protecting humanity from rigidity of practices that could

Likewise, sexual orientation is another form of social stratification. This is perhaps most poignantly illustrated by continuing discrimination and hate crimes that are directed toward gays and lesbians. Also, homophobic political rhetoric in the ongoing debate on same-sex marriage echoes discriminatory attitudes that fueled the antimiscegenation

Ethnic identity is a relatively new construct that grew out of the ethnic-consciousness movements of the early 1970s in reaction to historically oppressive racial typologies. Ethnicity, nonetheless, is similar to race in that both are social constructions. - Organista et al., 2018.

Similarly, the just world hypothesis states that our thoughts about experiences are influenced by our need to believe that the world is a just place in which good people are rewarded for their positive deeds and bad people are punished for their wicked ways (Lerner, 1980).

“Whiteness is an historical, cultural, social, and political category” created in part by the fact that “Whiteness is so often invisible to White people but not invisible to people of color” (p. 12).

Berry (1998) notes that minorities’ disempowerment and discrimination are often determined by the characteristics of the dominant groups, such as their openness to share privilege and status, the nature of relationships between groups (e.g., positive or tension-filled), and levels of tolerance or embracement of difference or diversity. Other

To learn from and about communities other than our own, we need to go beyond the ethnocentric assumptions from which we each begin. Often, the first and most difficult step is to recognize that our original views are generally a function of our own cultural experience, rather than the only right or possible way.

Understanding across cultural groups requires adopting