The Influence of Race and Ethnicity on My Life

Sociological Imagination is the ability to see things socially and how they interact and influence each other. The most common example of the sociological imagination pertains to unemployment. An individual facing unemployment might feel defeated, depleted, and discouraged. That person is likely to look in the mirror and say, ‘You didn’t work hard enough. You didn’t try hard enough…’ You, you, you.

Symbolic interactionism is a school of thought in sociology that explains social behavior in terms of how people interact with each other via symbols; in this view, social structures are best understood in terms of such individual interactions.

Education is one of the leading problems in the Muslim community. Though there have many reforms in education over the years, racial injustices still exist because no attention in placed on how legislature affects people of color. I was raised in a middle-class family of educators. My entire life I’ve been told to “stay in school, get an education, and work hard so that you can beat the system.” The racial background, the skin of your color it does matter in this society because no matter how educated you are people only chose their own race over another.

Race and ethnicity have influenced my life in many ways and up until now I am living with the discriminations that comes with not belonging to a certain group of people. Worldwide racial discrimination race is common and even more common here in the United States. People make choices subconsciously based on the racial group they belong to. Individuals have preference of people of their own ethnicity over people of a different ethnic group. As a Muslim, I face so much hatred even still for example: couple of months ago I applied for jobs everywhere I didn’t care whether it is a small job or big but, all I got was no we won’t hire you, you don’t have an experience or you don’t know Spanish, your height is too short, and so much. Even up till now, I couldn’t find any job. I will become Nurse one day but, at the back of my mind I have this insecurity that I couldn’t get any job because of my race. I believe day in and day out; other people just like me have to deal with situations like this.

Based on this experience and some other experiences from my past, my race and ethnicity had influenced the kind of choices I make. If we continue making choices to satisfy ourselves by making preference of people of our type rather than the qualified people, it will be hard to make progresses. I believe everyone deserves equal opportunities regardless of their race and that is the only way we as individuals and the community can be well developed and successful.