Intolerance: Minority Group and Society Essay

1. What are some of the ways groups of people are identified? There are many ways that a group of people can be identified but the four criteria for classifying minority groups are race, ethnicity, religion, and gender. Race is mainly determined by the color of someone’s skin, hair (in some instances eyes), height, and bone structure of the human body: big head, narrow eyes, tall short. Ethnicity is determined by where you were born and raised and what cultural patterns. Religion and is determined by what your beliefs and religious group you are a part of. Gender is determined easily enough but it does matters if you are male or female for the fact that each is treated differently. Males seem to have it easy most of the time and woman are always treated as though they are weaker. These four criteria’s are the main ones but there are so many more such as age, disability status, physical appearance, and sexual orientation they all are used to group people. There is always another factor that is sometimes over looked and that is our appearance; skinny, fat and even what we wear are we well dressed and clean all of the time or are we in regular day to day clothes or are we dressed in rags torn, ripped and dirty clothing. Also there is the money factor how much does one have or don’t have to many people the money factor matters most people like to know that they know people with money. Are these people wealthy with more money than they will every need or do they just have enough or do they struggle or worse yet do they not have anything leaving them going from home to home or street to street or going to government and privet programs for help. 2. Why do people label and group other people? I have thought about this question and it made me realize that not only do people label and group other people but we also label ourselves putting ourselves in categories that please us. Plus it gives us our sense of belonging to something that most people â€Å"need† to feel. Getting back to the question; I think it is something that we all do whether we realize it or not. Labeling and grouping help people to determine who we should or who we should not interact with. It helps people and sometimes it does just the opposite and destroys people it’s like having a power a power to have some control over other people. I can almost see it in another time a man running through the streets with a label machine placing labels on everyone’s forehead yelling â€Å"You are who I say you are! † Scary thought! We constantly label people in a negative light due to difference of opinion due to religion, political view, sexual preference, parenting method you name it we do it, even children do this and it is not done intentionally they were not taught this, too me it almost seems like it is a defense mechanism keeping themselves even ourselves safe from what we may consider to be harmful. In the end people are just that â€Å"people† we are nothing more and nothing less. People label others either to feel empowered or to praise someone but in the end we are Human Beings and that is it. We may think and act differently but we are what we are and if people could just except that then the future might not ever have to deal with the positive and mainly the negative effects that come with being labeled and tossed into a group that was thought up by others. Resources Schaefer, R. T. (2012). (Ch. 1 & 2) Racial and ethnic groups (13th ed. ). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.