Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on ethnicity and race. In his article, Smedley expounds more on “race” as a social construct or a cultural invention, which did not exist in the old da

Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on ethnicity and race. In his article, Smedley expounds more on “race” as a social construct or a cultural invention, which did not exist in the old days. He targets the American community, which he refers to as the “New Land” as the birth of racism and ethnicity (Smedley 690). Partridge, on the other hand, uses a different approach to explain how racism and ethnicity grew in Germany, in which, it’s the hypersexuality aspect of black Africans.

Abstract: In his journal article, Smedley, (1999) extensively explains the origins of “race” using scholarly references based on cultural anthropology. He uses people’s experiences to elaborate more on how racism could be socially constructed. Among the main areas covered by his article is the issues and problem of identity, historical constructions of human identity and race as an identity (Smedley 690). There are two problems that may propagate or bring about ethnicity and racism. First, when two ethnic groups are competing or have no common interest, then, it means there can be ethnic tensions leading to civil wars, for example, in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. Secondly, the individual conceptions about who you are may results in assumptions that you almost the superior human being over the others, for example, the Americans. Historical constructions of identity seem to have caused the problematic race and ethnic groupings in the modern world. Originally, “ethnic identity” seemed to be a normal way of identifying yourself even in the Bible. The occupational identity could just be assumed without knowing its potential danger to the American community. Richmond argues that these identities led to divisions even in the olden days. In the seventeenth century, the American population, however, assumed all other forms of identities, such as religion, ethnicity, occupation and more and considered race as the only form of identity. The article addresses the tragedy of “mixed-race” people.