Personal Understanding of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
The two videos that I selected to watch were
What is Ethnicity?
and
The Racist Origins
of U.S. Law
. The first new concept that I learned from the ethnicity video is how race differs
from ethnicity. Race was a large focus of both scientific and social categorization in the 19
th
century, determining everything from legal status to the assignment of assumed traits. However,
by the early 20
th
century, social scientists were looking for ways to describe shared cultures that
did not have racial markers or strict national origins as the common thread, which is when they
turned to ethnicity as a method of categorization. According to the video, the definition of
ethnicity is the understanding that a group of people have a shared cultural origin. This could be
a national origin or people who come from a shared way of life. An example is that an individual
can identify ethnically as Indian but also as Punjabi. In this case, the broader ethnic identifier
also encompasses or includes the narrower identifier. The second new concept that I learned is
that ethnicity and race are not stable. They are ever-changing processes that are radically
contingent on history, politics, geography, culture, and many other factors. Ultimately, race and
ethnicity are not categories that translate seamlessly from culture to culture, even within the
United States, as these terms take on radically different meanings that depend on one's vantage
point. Ethnicity and race have some very interwoven roots, even though they are not
synonymous. In addition, the first new concept that I learned from the racist origins video is the
difference between crime and punishment. According to the video, crime is defined as the
breaking of laws, while punishment is defined as the penalty for committing crimes. There is not
a direct relationship between how much crime is committed and what types of punishments are
meted out. Nations with remarkably similar crime rates often have vastly different sentencing
and punishment standards. Crime rates and punishment rates often do not align, and governments