Ethnic Groups

One of the reasons why nowadays the world is a place with a lot of social diversity is due to the so-called ethnic groups. These are social categories which share a common language, culture, religion, ethnicity, etc.With all these sharing characteristics, they create a sense of community and identity that may differ from other groups.

It is also important to differentiate two terms that can cause problems when talking about this topic: ethnicity and race. The main difference between both terms is that when we talk about race, we are referring to the physical appearance of the people, and when we do it about ethnicity, it is referring to its cultural traits. So, we may refer to a person as “black” or “white” to relate him/her to the race, and we may refer to a person as “African American”, “Asian”, etc. to refer to ethnicity.

There are a lot of types of ethnic groups due to the big quantity of characteristics that can be shared by people. They can shape traditions, nationalities, music, dancing styles, types of cuisine, languages, philosophies, etc. They are influential to the rest of the world, making, for example, that other people from another part of the world can feel identified with some of the characteristics of one ethnic group, so that they have the possibility to expand. And with the passing of time, there will be new ethnic groups which share new and creative ways to see the world.

However, not everything is pink. Historically, as they are a minority group, there have been disputes with the other big part of the population to eliminate these minorities and get unity all over the estate.There also have been discrimination, misunderstandings, these minority groups did not have the same rights as the rest of the population, masacres, rapes, etc. A big part of these consequences have been caused by colonialism, in which another estate invades and imposes all their customs, traditions, language, etc. on the colonised estate. In these cases, the colonised population can choose assimilation, which is a process in which the colonised assimilates the characteristics of the colonizer by his/her own; they can also be forced to assimilate those characteristics of the colonizer, or they can fight for keeping their own culture alive.

In addition, we have to take into account that people might belong to more than one ethnic group because, as I said before, characteristics from a particular ethnic group can be shared with other people that belong to another ethnic group. So, in turn, they create new sub-ethnic groups and so on.

In many countries, governments are promoting a lot of campaigns that help to integrate all of these ethnic groups in society. The creation of different programs, laws and events against discrimination is helping a lot of people that do not have the same opportunities as the rest of the population, only because they are from a different country with different customs, different behaviours, with a different skin color, etc. However, there are still a lot of challenges that maintain those racist threats in the fields of education, in the labor field, etc. that we have to change in order to get a more balanced world.

Santiago González Aragón