Race, Ethnicity, and Culture

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.

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 jeo

Lev Vygotsky, a leader of this approach from early in the twentieth century, pointed out that children in all communities are cultural participants, living in a particular community at a specific time in history. Vygotsky (1987) argued that rather than trying to “reveal the eternal child,” the goal is to discover “the historical child.”

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 l

Understanding across cultural groups requires adopting

Assumptions are the things you don’t know you’re making, which is why it is so disorienting the first time you take the plug out of a washbasin in Australia and see the water spiraling down the hole the other way around. The very laws of physics are telling you how far you are from home.

“Mommy, What Color Are You?” At the end of Sheila’s workday, she left to pick up her two-year-old daughter, Laura, at her day care center. As Sheila positioned Laura into her car seat, she detected a very inquisitive look on her daughter’s face. Once Sheila strapped on her seat belt, she noticed through her rearview mirror that Laura still looked

People often view the practices of other communities as barbaric. They assume that their community’s perspective on reality is the only proper or sensible or civilized one (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Campbell & LeVine, 1961; Jahoda & Krewer, 1997).

Racial categories are arbitrary and contingent on the goals and theories of the classifier (Marger, 2015).