Revision: My Identity?

Orlando Yauri                                                                                    October 3, 2016

                                                 My Identity?

     Understanding the relationship of race as a sociological concept and a scientific concept, a sociological concept is seen through the skin color and the racial group we most relate to. In the article “Genetic Genealogy Testing and the Pursuit of African Ancestry” by Alondra Nelson, states that scholars define “race’ is not a biological fact, but a social invention, better understood as an index of power…” (Nelson, 760), which separates the Blacks and Whites. Whites being a the majority race. In the film Race: The Power of an Illusion, Episode 1, microbiologist Pilar Ossorio states “there’s as much or more diversity and genetic difference within any racial group as there is between people of different racial groups.” The scientific concept is experimented in the film by students, by using their DNA to compare similarity and differences in genetics. They believed the result will match the students they have the most similarity with (e.g by skin color, facial structure, etc). In the article by Alondra Nelson, the Y chromosomes DNA (Y-DNA), and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), can be used to trace the ancestral links. It concludes that “an individual can be said to have shared a distant maternal or paternal ancestor with the person who was the source of the matching sample in the reference population” (Nelson, 765), and the students experiment did showed that. They had similarities with other students they least expected. The students they believed they would have similarity with, were the students they had the most differences. People should not assume having similarity or differences with a person just by their physical appearances.  

https://goo.gl/images/4BmEH6

     With the evidence found in the film, my perspective of how I see my race is more complex. I identified myself as a Latino, which the word Latino is used to describe someone’s origin from a Latin America country. Latin Americans all have different skin tones, even if they are from the same country. In the Article “Doing Race,” by Nilda Flore-Gonzalez, it states that  Latinos are a “racially heterogeneous group with White, Black, indigenous, and even Asian origins” (Flores-Gonzalez, 1835). Latino or Hispanic aren’t consider a race and many Latinos identify their race by their nationality. Both my parent were born and raised in Ecuador and I am their only child born in the United States. Being born in the United States considers me as an American, but when I am asked my nationality, my instant responds is Ecuadorian. I was not born in Ecuador, but I determine my race by my parents origin. The article “Doing Race,” explains how many Latinos identify as the other race because they do not identify themselves as Whites or Blacks. In the article “From Bi-Racial to Tri-Racial” by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, it states how a big portion of Argentineans consider themselves as White and some Dominicans consider themselves as Black or the other race. This shows me that even in the Latinos “race,” there is a big difference on how Latinos consider their race.

Work Cited

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. (2004). “From Bi-Racial To Tri-Racial": Toward a New System of Radical Stratification in the U.S.A. Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol 27, (931-950) 

Flores-Gonzalez, N., Aranda, E., & Vaquera, E. (2014). "Doing Race": Latino Youth's identities and the Politics of Racial Exclusion. American Behavioral Scientist, 1834-1851.

Nelson, Alondra. (2008). “Bio Science: Genetic Genealogy Testing and the Pursuit of African Ancestry.” Social Studies of Science, (759-783)

Race: The Power of an Illusion, Episode 1:Difference Between Us (Documentary). (2003). California Newsreel.

External Links

http://www.hispanicresearch.com/index.php/hispanic-market-data/faq/87-why-doesnt-the-census-include-hispanic-as-a-race

http://www.hispanicresearch.com/index.php/hispanic-market-data/hispanic-market-profile-and-demographics/112-a-closer-look-at-the-largest-hispanic-city-new-york