Ethnicity is a complex social construct that influences personal identity and social group interactions. Although in contemporary American politics, political agents like to interpret ethnicity as just something that you are born with, empirical evidence disagrees with the strictly biological interpretation of the term. If we compare size estimates for the Native American and Alaska Native American populations, we find a curious picture. According to the Census Bureau, Native Americans and Alaska natives alone are around 2.6 million people (Healey and Stepnick 251). When alone or in a combination of two and more groups, that number increases to 5.6 million individuals (Healey and Stepnick 251). The reasons for that are not entirely biological – while many people claim partial ancestry to one of either group, some do not belong to any of the ethnicities but were heavily influenced by them (Healey and Stepnick 252). Thus, individuals not connected to certain ethnicities by blood associate themselves with their culture and way of life, to the point of perceiving themselves as Natives or Alaskans.
Such developments demonstrate how ethnicity acts as a social construct, where personal identity and group interactions play a dominant part in physiological and biological conditions. The situation is similar to race and gender as viewed through cultural preconceptions and social expectations. People view others differently based on their gender and race they are. Gender, in particular, presents a set of expectations placed upon individuals depending on whether they are male or female. Each culture categorizes men and women differently, but with a tendency for the primacy of males.
Race, on the other hand, is a more contentious topic. Unlike ethnicity, which is predominantly a geographical and cultural phenomenon, race tends to be more deeply rooted in biological differences. A black person is black and thus visibly different from a white person. Nevertheless, it is not the biological connotations (such as predisposition to certain diseases over others or the presence or absence of melanin) but societal cues that make race a social construct similar to ethnicity (Brennan et al., 735). Based on a person’s adherence to a certain race, people change how they treat others. Race is simply a more permanent and visible notion since differences between people are often easy to spot.
The way people were treated based on ethnicity, gender, and race has been rooted in humanity’s history. Historically, most regions in the world have been dominated (violently, economically, or culturally) by white Europeans, placing other ethnicities and races in a position of subservience (Brennan et al., 736). Therefore, the social construction associated with them was geared towards denigration and submission. It is similar to how women were treated and perceived throughout history. Since males remained dominance for the majority of it, the social construct of a female is that of a housekeeper and a mother, with submissiveness, faithfulness, and beauty being the prized qualities. At the same time, initiative, drive, and ambition were seen as unwomanly (Brennan et al., 736). There are stereotypes following certain races, ethnicities, and genders, which have been socially constructed and enforced, that have no relation to reality. Such as women being weak and incapable, certain ethnicities being “un-American,” or blacks being violent and prone to crime.
Based on these examples, it can be concluded that ethnicity is a social construct. As gender and race, it is used to frame social identities and inform interactions between people. While it remains an essential part of who people perceive themselves to be, an overreliance on ethnicity as a defining factor of one’s identity has been used throughout history to suppress and label individuals.
Works Cited
Brennan, P. A., et al. “Equality, Diversity, Culture and Ethnicity—We Cannot Stay Silent.” British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, vol. 58, no. 7, 2020, pp. 735-737.
Healey, Joseph F., and Andi Stepnick. Diversity and Society: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender. Sage Publications, 2019.