Race
Race is primarily a social classification that relies on physical larkers such as skin color to identify group membership (Brislin, 2000). Individuals may be of the same race but of different cultures. For example, African-Americans, who may have been born in Africa, the Caribbean, North America, or elsewhere, are heterogeneous group, but they arc often viewed as culturally and racially homogeneous. A frequent consequence of this is hat the many cultural differences of these individuals from different countries are overlooked because of their similar racially homogeneonus. (Degazon, 1994). This often blurs understanding if this culturally diverse group. One factor highlighting race's diminishing importance is the finding that the DNA composition for any two humans is 99.9% genetically identical and hat the difference between them is only 1 in 1000. Another factor is the increasing number of interracial families that lead to
changes in physical appearances of individuals and make race less important in ethnic identity. In the United States, children of biracial parents arc usually assigned the race of the mother. A social significance of race is that it allows for some groups to be separated, treated as superior, and given access to power and other valued resources, while others are treated as inferior and have limited access to power and resources (USDHHS, 2001).