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Race as a Social Construct

Do you think that race is a social construct? Race as a social construct exists everywhere you go, it is known by everyone. Race all comes about when you know that you are different then the people around you. People construct race socially. Socially it all happens when you are young and just starting to learn facts of life and learning society. We watched two movies that really got me thinking about how people that are different then me, get treated worse. In the movie "Imitation of Life", an African-American mother and daughter move in with a white family. "Fakin' da Funk", the other movie we watched, an adopted Chinese boy has black parents. I also read an essay by Sacks', a Jewish woman, who wrote about racial differences in school, work and in the community. In this paper I will explain how society has constructed certain categories for different races.

In the movie "Fakin' da Funk" there was a Chinese boy named Julian and he was different then everyone else in the new neighbor hood that they moved into. Everyone was making fun of him just because they thought that he was different, even though he really wasn't. He knew everything that they did if not more than they did. He had a better knowledge of his past and how to act. He had lived his whole life as an African American and he knew exactly what it meant to be African American but to everyone else in the neighbor hood he was Chinese. When he was out on a date with a girl and Julian said "that he wanted to learn more about his roots, by visiting his native country." But, he really meant that he wanted to go to Africa and learn about the natives and the way that they live. The girl thought he was acting this way just so he could fit in but he was actually acting the way that he was brought up. He was different skin color but he acted the same way that they did.

In the other movie that we watched "Imitation of Life" it had about the same idea as "Faki...

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Race as a Social Construct. (1969, December 31). In Retrieved 19:34, December 21, 2014, from