Race In Sociology

The concept of race in sociology is described as how people categorize, treat and think about groups of people and classify them on the basis of their physical characteristics. In a group, people tend to carry on certain similar physical characteristics like skin color, face structure. Racial characteristics are inherited biologically and the commonly used racial types are those based on visual traits which are skin, face structure, type of hair etc.
The first time I became truly aware of race and ethnicity was when I went to Pennsylvania to my friends, about three years ago. Since childhood, I used to hear stories told by people who experienced racism. I would listen to them, but never thought that it was real until I experienced that situation. I had gone to my friend's house after a very long time, so we went out in the city to have fun. While we were going to the city we made a stop for gas. My friend went to the store to buy some food so I just waited in the car. After a while there I saw and old guy exiting the store in his wheelchair. As he was going toward his vehicle, his wheelchair stumbled on a rock and he fell down with his wheelchair. The old man was so weak that he couldn’t even bring himself up. Immediately after seeing that I got out of the car and went to help him . As I was helping him, another guy saw us and came and helped him up as well. We finally picked him up and took him and his things in his car. …show more content…
I think the old man didn’t care to talk to me because I kind of look like a Mexican guy due to my skin color and facial structure and as well as I am not a citizen of this country. This made me realize that how race impacts the way people see each other. To me, this may be a small case of race, but now that I believe in race, when I think about the stories of those people that I have heard, it makes me feel that race is a very scary