My Ethnicity Is A Shared Culture

Sociologists define ethnicity as “a term that describes shared culture--the practices, values, and beliefs of a group”. I describe my ethnicity as a shared culture in which will “include shared language, religion, and traditions, among other commonalities”. That being said, my ethnicity would be consisted of the Vietnamese language, practice of catholicism, and the annual celebration of Vietnamese New Year “Tet”. Surely, I would include my family’s country of origin of Vietnam, even though I was born and raised here in the United States due to the fact that it contributes to the idea of ethnicity including both “shared culture and national origin”. Including my family’s country of origin will reveal all the shared commonalities such as “the …show more content…
More so it “is not based on experience; instead, it is a prejudgement, originating outside actual experience”. While stereotypes “are oversimplified generalizations about groups of people”. Stereotypes may be positive “but are often negative usually toward other groups”, and ranges on a wide scale such as “race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation--almost any characteristic”. Similarly it “is a generalization that doesn’t take individual differences into account”. The creation of “new stereotypes are rarely created; rather, they are recycled from subordinate groups that have assimilated into society and are reused to describe newly subordinate groups”. An example of stereotyping that I see in everyday life is when I hear people say “Asians can’t drive” or “Asians can’t park”. In order for this type of discrimination to be eliminated, we must understand one another’s ethnicity/culture to not oversimplify/generalize a certain group’s habits or customs. While also we need to accept others for how they want to be perceived and take into account an individual’s differences. In like manner, another contributing factor to stereotyping lies within our very own homes. Most children’s upbringing consists of parents voicing their opinions about certain racial/ethnic groups and instruct them to avoid contact if possible. At a certain age, “children become aware of” color skin “in their earliest years, and they come to understand through socialization”. Since they are at an early age, family is the most prominent socializing agent that influences them to differentiate between different races and how they should act upon each encounter. Other major agents of socialization such as “education, peer groups, and mass media...narrowly prescribe” racial/ethnic perceptions in which “results in the stratification” of races. Hence, stereotype “inequality occurs in our