Race and Ethnicity Essay

scat in America is one of those subjects that scholars rarely induct and are heavily criticized for these omissions by their constituents. For this reason, the subject of play and urbanization matte a proper choice for this final paper. Following, we will incorporate information from multiple sources including Khaled Hosseinis The Kite Runner, a novel that examines the harrowing trials of polar groups in Afghanistan and what happens to the ones lucky enough to escape the violence of their homeland into the galosh net of American soil in an try to show the non-negotiable link between race and urbanization.This discussion on urbanization and race in American will as well include a outline discussion on classism. Classism is a part of the structural organization of ships company that can be mea trustedd as part of the contributing accompanimentors to the socioeconomic divisiveness undergo in this urbanized terra firma. Some argue that gentrification, in only of its wond ers is class based. Others argue it more a matter of ethnicity and race, both blankthorn be correct. Nevertheless, the issue of race, as aforementioned should be granted a closer look.By examining the ideas and experiences of anthropologists and sociologists past and present this paper will attempt to specify on how classism, racism, and urbanization are connected. Growing Cities and Ghettos The Industrial renewal sparked an enormous wave of migrants and immigrants into American cities creating an urban ecology. Chapter 3 of the Giddens et. al. text, describes the sociable private highway from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft from a community based ideology in society to a more individualized world. Afghanistan is an agri heathenishly based society.urbanisation is a global cognitive operation that draws people away from rural areas and into the cities. Once in those cities, people race to gravitate to areas that are inhabited by people of their same pagan fabric. In discussing theories of urbanization, gentrification and dis impersonatement, John Bentacur (2010) in Gentrification and Community Fabric in pelf points out how people are bony to areas that cast off a cultural/ethnic connectivity, immigrants with different characteristics compete for space until they get accommodated with alike others in locations that correspond to their competitive strengths (p 384).In the novel, The Kite Runner, Amir and his father actualize the arduous migration from Kabul, Afghanistan to Fremont, California. Their low income neighborhood of Fremont is ethnically diverse but with a notable concentration of Afghani residents. It makes sense that when people leave their countries of show measure to settle in a new place, they will be drawn to people and areas that are familiar to them. Even with familiarity problems arise, urban studies reveal several(prenominal) difficulties that plague densely populated urban neighborhoods poverty, crime and dilapidated conditions to hear a few.In Afghanistan Baba, Amirs father, was rich and even wielded about spring for being a respected business man and portion the community by creating an orphanage that would later be destroyed by the Taliban regime. In America, there would be no such accolades to speak of for their family. In occurrence, they would live in a type of poverty, they had never experienced nor just now imagined. They would experience the existence that many b miss Americans face with no closedown in sight.A growing world population combined with globalization and the heightened mobility that comes with it has led to the creation of cities and a scramble for affordable housing. Gentrification also know as urban regeneration or re-urbanization is the process that happens in a community when it go aways urbanized and consists of the grittyer income families moving into lower income areas. During this process demographic changes are notable in America, gentrification is notably marked by whi te families moving into black neighborhoods. Race and Ethnicity America is a multicultural nation.Our biography of break ones backry created the black and white groups and the immigrant populations from around the world contributes to a high variety of culture and ethnic background. The macro-sociological issue of race and ethnicity has been the source of such(prenominal) debate and discussion. The reason for this is that the issue of race has been the root cause of amicable and political turmoil. Douglas Massey and Nancy Denton provide the backdrop in history when segregation by race was created in America in their book American Apartheid requisition and the Making of the Underclass.Massey and Denton edify that racial segregation was not al shipway a fact of life in American society and that in fact blacks and whites lived in close proximity to each other, albeit in the alley ways of the big homes occupied by their white neighbors, industrialization in the north-central unlea shed a set of social, economic and technological changes that dramatically altered the urban environment in ways that promoted segregation between social groups (199319-26).Urbanization and technological advancement (causing blacks in the south to migrate to northern cities by the tens of thousands) would be the foundation for residential segregation where blacks and other minorities would be relegated to the outskirts of town. discolor ghettos would remain stranded from society in a manner that was rarely, experienced by the European immigrants that came to this country during industrialization.Blacks and later, Latinos, would be destined to live isolated and neglected from social organizations and deprived from many of the benefits enjoyed by white communities with infinitesimal hope of escape, not only was the segregation of European ethnic groups lower, it was also temporary. Whereas Europeans isolation indices began to drop shortly after 1920, the spatial isolation characteri stics of blacks had become a permanent feature of the residential structure of large American cities by 1940 (Massey and Denton 199357).In America, race and ethnicity is more clearly defined than in places like Afghanistan. correspond to data gathered from the PBS News minute website, Afghanistan has nine different ethnic groups that reside in different territories of the country. They have fought and continue to fight civil wars, over culture (religion), legislative power and territory. Afghanistan and the U. S. are similar in their historical oppression of one ethnic group over another. In Afghanistan, the Pashtun/Sunni have for a long time control the land and claimed dominion over the Hazara/Shites.The Hazara group can be considered the equivalent to the Black demographic in America where historically they were the slave class, but are currently represented in government. Statistics In a rapidly modernizing world, Afghanistan is among the mischievously underdeveloped countrie s of the Middle East. As previously mentioned, Afghanistan is a multiethnic/multifaith, agriculturally based democracy, with a history of violence. And it perhaps it is this history, in appendix to deep religious belief systems that have kept this land from fall in the rest of the modern world.In reviewing the Millennium increment Goals indicators, data self-possessed by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), I reviewed several indicators that point to the fact that Afghanistan has a long road ahead. Afghanistan is making slow but sure progress trying to bring itself into a socially, politically and economically still place. The first indicator measured the number of underweight children less than 59 months. The UNSD defines this indicator as a high number of moderately to severely underweight children, whose weights for age are less than two standard deviations.According to the report a healthy population will have 2. 3 part of their children in this category. In 2004 , 32. 9 percent of Afghanistans children were reportedly underweight, compared to 44. 9 percent in 1997. This indicator points to the poverty level and lack of nourishment recorded within a seven year diaphragm in Afghanistan. A second indicator measures womens rights and representation in government. This indicator is defined as, the portion of seats held by women in internal parliament increased from 3. 7 percent in 1990 to 27.3 percent in 2006. The measurement was sustained through 2012 at 27. 7 percent. to a greater extent work needs to be done and educating the population should be the place to start. Theological Link The Modernization Theory discussed in the text looks to rationalize the underdevelopment of countries like Afghanistan. Marx worried about capitalism and the effects it had on the upper-lower-class population and thereby, the democratic process. Marxs Conflict Theory dictates that societies are ruled by a small group of elite that create social order for the larger population.In this, we have the creation of divisions by class (division of labor), a central topic of discourse since the beginning of industrialized times. The cut Revolution of 1787 (also known as the revolt of the bourgeois or bourgeoisie society) creating capitalism and thereby usurping government power from monarchs. Karl Marx hated democracy. Democracy is the road to socialism (Karl Marx) Capitalism created tensions between the working and bourgeois classes. Summary Race and urbanization are indivisibly linked. Marxism and Class Conflict is the most applicable theory of todays society.Considering the current events and status of world order, it is undeniable capitalism continues to be the most powerful ideology in the world. The United States is a powerful country and the way it retains power is by unwaveringly maintaining laissez-faire(prenominal) ideology and participating in global conflict around the world in defense of this ideology, power, ideology, and confl ict are always closely connected (Giddens 201220). Societies are based on trust and these trusts are broken by the people that create and uphold unjust rules for the population of color and the poor. whole caboodle Cited.Betancur, John. 2010. Gentrification and community fabric in Chicago. Urban Studies Journal Foundation. Sage 48(2) 383 407. Retrieved from http//usj. sagepub. com/ capability/48/2/383 Giddens, Anthony, Mitchell Duneier, Richard P. Applebaum and Deborah Carr. 2012. Introduction to sociology. New York W. W. Norton and Company. Eighth ed. , pp. 15-78. Massey, Douglas and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. The construction of the ghetto. Pp 17-59 in American Apartheid Segregation and the Making for the Underclass. Harvard University Press.Retrieved from http//ereserve. baruch. cuny. edu.remote. baruch. cuny. edu/eres/coursepage. aspx? cid=3155&page=docs United Nations Statistics Division. (1991-2011) Table Data on Gender Parity business leader in Primary Enrollment retrieved November 5, 2012. Millenium Development Goals Indicators. Retrieved from http//mdgs. un. org/unsd/mdg/Metadata. aspx? IndicatorId=0&SeriesId=559 United Nations Statistics Division. (1991-2011) Table Data on Gender Parity Index in Primary Enrollment retrieved November 5, 2012. Millenium Development Goals Indicators. Retrieved from http//mdgs. un. org/unsd/mdg/Metadata. aspx? IndicatorId=0&SeriesId=557.