Social Construction Essay

1027 Words5 Pages

The topics of racism and identity are not brought to light often enough. Social construction, dehumanizing biases, discrimination, and social groups are important aspects that play big parts in day-to-day life whether or not you realize it. We must consider these concepts in our daily life.

Social construction plays a large role in identity in relation to race. Social construction affects your own life and the lives of others who are around you. Race is a social construction because of the way that it distinguishes how certain people are put into specific groups based on aspects like race, gender, ethnicity, and or identity. Racism is both intentional and or unintentional and is an unconscious use of mainstream political powers against people …show more content…

Mindell also talks about how people who are mainstream will refer to a social activist as a so-called “reverse racist” because people can be reversed only if they have social power that is equal (Mindell). The term “reverse racist” is not a term that I had heard of before reading Mindell. I would be curious to learn more about what the term means exactly. Social construction is connected to discrimination, bias, and prejudices.
In our world, there is a fairly large amount of dehumanizing biases, discrimination, prejudices, and both personal and institutional racism. There are various ways that you can recognize and deal with all of those topics. Dehumanizing biases is essentially saying that …show more content…

Their influence can have either negative or positive effects on people. The influence of parents, schools and the media heavily impacts what people say and think in regard to race and racism. An example of a social group could be white people. DiAngelo discusses why it's hard for white people to talk about racism. He states that people develop feelings and opinions about race by looking at culture or the ideas of their parents, however, mainstream sources like schools, textbooks, and social media platforms do not give people various perspectives that are needed to fully understand (DiAngelo). Another concept discussed by DiAngelo is that he says that systemic and institutional control makes it easier for people who are white and living in America to inhabit an environment that allows them to be relieved of “race-based stress. It is clear that the social groups and environments around us have considerably significant impacts on how we view and think about race and racism in our daily lives. The topics DiAngelo brings up have made me think about how the mainstream sources like school, textbooks, and social media have influenced my own opinions and