Race and Ethinicity

Race and Ethnicity…Wars Still Being Fought Today Our society's great cultural diversity is the result of immigration. Immigration rates today, roughly 1 million annually, are at about the same level as was representative of the great immigration era of a century ago. The countries from which the people are primarily coming are changing. They face prejudice and discrimination, as did immigrants before them; however, they also share the hope of opportunity, and the hope that …

…segment of a society, there are exceptions: blacks in South Africa, for example. The absolute numbers of minorities are increasing and, within a century, minorities, taken together, may form a majority. Ethnicity is a shared cultural heritage. While race is a biological concept, ethnicity is a cultural one. However, the two overlap. Ethnic characteristics are sometimes incorrectly believed to be racial, but while ethnicity is subject to modification over time, racial identity persists over generations.