Race and Ethnicity & Gender / Week 10 / Cindy Paskalina Kweesar

Summary

Race groups human based on physical differences that everyone can see. But in contrast to race, ethnicity classifies human according to the social traits they have, for example religion, culture, language, nationality and much more.

The concept of race that classifies based on physical differences is still very controversial. Some sociologists believe that this physical difference is something consider man-made. Therefore some of them chose to use ethnic words compared to the word race.

One solution that can resolve this controversy is to use a combination approach. We have a clear differences from the biological side (skin color, eye shape, hair type), but the thing that can really classifies us in term of race are artificial and socially constructed.

This classification also often creates several problems such as Prejudice and bias. Both of these are related to the negative perspectives held for certain groups. The difference is that prejudice evaluates certain groups based on stereotypes that exist in society and bias evaluates certain groups based on minimum experiences of negative interactions with these groups. Prejudice and Racism can be included in racism because racism in general is a behavior carried out by someone on the basis of understanding certain groups are superior to other groups

Next the topic to be studied is gender. Gender and Sex are two different things. Sex is identified through the biological conditions that a person has. We divide sex into two male and female. While the concept of Gender is identified through masculine personality behavior or their feminism. Feminism is usually associated with characters such as submissive, dependent, emotional and others, while masculine is associated with dominant, independent, and rational characters. Both sex and gender are concepts built by humans.

What was interesting/what did you learn

From the reading, we can see that the differences possessed by humans in the gender dimension influence their social life, such as work, education and others. Often women become victims and man's privileges. One of Christian Schilt's research clearly shows that people who make a transition from female to male will have certain benefits in their work life. They will get fewer jobs and more rewards than women.

Discussion Point

if gender raises many negative gaps, is it not better to eliminate the concept of gender from the start?

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