Essay Sample on Racial Sensitivity: America vs. Other Nations

Introduction

Racial difference is an issue that affects most countries, considering the globalization and increased level of migration across many regions. However, racial difference is more sensitive in America compared to many other countries globally like Britain, France, and Brazil that are historically known to be racial sensitive. Other than the United States, in these countries, people are fine with being overtly and racist and do not interact with racial diversity (Kinder & Winter, 2001). The case is not much different in the United States despite its robust and enduring differences in how its people believe across races concerning their identity. It is this high sensitivity to racial differences that partisan politics arise in the United States through the creation of political reality. According to The Atlantic and the Public Religion Research Institute, there are distinct racial outlooks in America regarding the most fundamental issues of identity and values (Wilson, 2009). The country delves into deep racial differences in areas of policy preferences when it comes to several issues. The current paper examines the increased sensitivity in the racial differences in America and how it affects the cultural practice of the country.

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Study Questions

The study in this paper focuses on answering the following questions:

• Is the United States of America highly sensitive to the issue of racial differences compared to other countries like Britain, France, and Brazil?
• Does being highly sensitive to racial differences a recipe for cultural variations in the United States and other mentioned countries?
• Have the United States and other countries put in place measures to address the cultural issues that emerge from its sensitivity to racial differences?

Learning Outcomes

The study focuses on how culturally the United States is affected by its sensitivity to racial differences. Thus, the study aims at achieving the following learning outcomes:

• To define whether the United States of America is highly sensitive to the issue of racial differences compared to other countries in the world.
• To find out if being highly sensitive to racial differences is a recipe for cultural variations in the United States.
• To establish if the United States has put in place measures to address the cultural issues emerging from its sensitivity to racial differences.

Project Outline

The paper examines the increased sensitivity in the racial differences in America and how it affects the cultural practice of the country. To accomplish this project, the paper is organized into various sections under the topics and the subtopics. Every topic of discussion in the paper is examined in detail to bring out the important findings and the supporting materials. The first part of the part is the introduction that brings out the subject of discussion and puts it into perspective. Under the introduction, there are subtopics on the questions and objectives of the study to serve as the guidelines to help the paper establish its course. The identified objectives are concerning understanding the aspect of racial sensitivity in the United States; it causes for cultural variations and the measures that can address any emerging issues.

The other section is the body of the paper that uses multiple resources to establish the course of discussion to help conclude. Under this section, the paper is divided into relevant topics and subtopics that are related to the project, as established from the review of the literature. Some of the topics discussed under this section involve the findings of whether the United States is the country considered most racial sensitive. Similarly, various areas that show the racial trends are examined, paying attention to the cultural influence these areas have as a result of sensitivity towards the racial differences. Important elements such as health, population formation, attitudes, economics, and the criminal justice system are examined as the most changing areas due to racial differences. The paper ends with a robust conclusion that summarizes all the parts and the discussions presented based on research.

Resources

The project uses various resources that the paper relies on for review. The resources used in the paper are electronic sources of information and human resources. The human resources include the experts who had given their views in different media, which include the journal, articles, and websites. Majorly, the paper relies on electronic sources of information that is identified below:

Good, M. D., James, C., Good, B. J., & Becker, A. E. (2005). The culture of medicine and racial, ethnic, and class disparities in healthcare. The Blackwell Companion to Social Inequalities. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, Ltd, 396-423.

Cooper, L. A., Hill, M. N., & Powe, N. R. (2002). Designing and evaluating interventions to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health care. Journal of general internal medicine, 17(6), 477-486.

Hochschild, J. L. (1998). American racial and ethnic politics in the 21st century: A cautious look ahead. Brookings Review, 16(2), 43-47.

Causadias, J. M., & Korous, K. M. (2019). Racial discrimination in the United States: a national health crisis that demands a national health solution. Journal of Adolescent Health, 64(2), 147-148.

Smelser, N. J., Wilson, W. J., & Mitchell, F. (2001). America becoming: Racial trends and their consequences. Volume I. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Marx, A. W. (2001). Racial trends and scapegoating: Bringing in a comparative focus. America becoming: Racial trends and their consequences, 302-317.

Hawley, W. D., Banks, J. A., Padilla, A. M., Pope-Davis, D. B., & Schofield, J. W. (1995). Strategies for reducing racial and ethnic prejudice: essential principles for program design. Toward a common destiny: Improving race and ethnic relations in America, 423-433.

Kinder, D. R., & Winter, N. (2001). Exploring the racial divide: Blacks, whites, and opinion on national policy. American Journal of Political Science, 45(2), 439-456.

Wilson, W. J. (2009). The bridge over the racial divide: rising inequality and coalition politics (Vol. 2). Univ of California Press.

Racial Sensitivity in the U.S and Other Countries

Racial differences describe the physical variations among groups and cultures, which are considered socially significant. For instance, a group may associate with Asian race, African American race, Aboriginal, Native American, or European American race. Racial differences are based on the ethnicity that defines the shared cultural characteristics such as practices, language, and beliefs. Though it is not universal, race forms a social construct that is identified with some cultural practices which in totality influence the entire American culture (Kinder & Winter, 2001). In the United States, racial difference is the highly sensitive aspect that one requires to be careful in identity to avoid the imposition of racial labels on ethnic groups. This considers the fact that the U.S, when compared to many other countries, is distinguished by the diversity and the size of its racial and ethnic populations. It is even in the projection of demographers that the country will have no single majority group.

Britain is neither save when it comes to racial difference sensitivity since the country is constituted of a rich ethnic diversity. Most of these ethnic minority groups living in Britain have different unique cultures that make them distinct from one another. Among these groups include the Black and Asian Britons. Due to how they differently practice their ways of life, these racial groups find themselves treated differently from the rest of the communities especially the dominant white-British. It is possible for one to mistake their different life with the fact that they are minority groups. However, like the case of the United States, the way of life and their cultural differences makes the black and the Asian Britons to be left out of the practices in different sectors of life. France is no better than the United States since migrants who find their ways in this country are subjected to nationality usurped race. This means, if one does not have the ethnic origin in France may feel the heat of nationality usurped race difference which though different from what is experienced in the United States, it has its own problems.

The sensitivity of racial difference is not only restricted to United States, Britain, and France but extends to other countries. Many researchers have developed the urge to understand how different countries perceive racial difference. Brazil and South African have been the center of focus in these investigations because of their recognized history on racial differences and they have accommodated this cultural aspect (Kinder & Winter, 2001). For the case of the two countries, Brazil and South Africa, it emerges that the legal race has dominated the history relations between the European and African descendants. In the twentieth country century, South Africa experienced pervasive discrimination as restrictions dominated politics and economy on the majority population of black people. However, later in the following years, the country took strict measures in an attempt to avert the restrictions imposed on people of different races who had then developed a feeling of discrimination (Causadias, & Korous, 2019). The case was not different in Brazil as there was no legal encoding of the racial segregation of any form and the Afro-Brazilians. Even though this group was exposed to the pervasive informal discrimination and prejudice; the level of prejudice was limited.

Therefore, it is true that besides the United States, many countries have had racial differences in their history. As a result, this aspect of racial differences has continued to attract sensitive reactions in the United States. Much as other countries made attempts to avoid the legal racial dominance, the United States continued to feature uneven and locally encoded policies of racial domination over the population of races perceived minority (Hochschild, 2008). From the view of Marx, the continued racial difference impacts the cultural practices of many racial groups, which often has seen America continue to embrace social discrimination. In the general view of the three countries, it emerges that matters of racial differences that define relations and the attitudes of the people have been the center of discussion where the rules of relations have been enacted on how to treat different racial groups (Wilson, 2009). However, in the United States, the system of codification of racial dominance has continued to affect the country's cultural aspects with the increased rate of racial differences.

In 1998, the Research Conference on Racial Trends was convened by the National Research Council in the United States. The conference aimed to assess the past and present trends in racial differences regarding various sectors. The areas that were a major concern in the discussion include wealth and income, criminal justice, education, health access, and employment. The areas of consideration are believed to essential, especially when it comes to the life of Americans though they have been racialized (Hochschild, 2008). Something that emerged out of the discussion was that racial differences deeply influence the culture of the United States in various ways. For instance, the culture of the American politics is indeed influenced by the racial differences among the groupings that form political parties. The outcomes of the discussion similarly revealed evidence of relevant racial and ethnic nuances, which i...