Wonder What Race You Are

We all think we know what race we?and the people we meet?belong to, but that’s not always the case. Sometimes we define someone’s race by the JOB they do. Now that we have a black president, will that finally change?

Is race defined by appearance, researchers have discovered that a person also be colored by their socioeconomic status. A new study finds that Americans who are unemployed, incarcerated or impoverished today are more likely to be classified and identified as black, by themselves as well as by others, regardless of how they were seen?or self identified?in the past. These findings suggest that race may not be as simple as something you are born with.

But whatever it is, there IS a “race gap” between white and black students. A new study of college freshman suggests that African Americans may get higher grades if they live with a white roommate. White students, on the other hand, were affected more by the academic ability of their roommate than by their race.

Are the Amish a race? They only marry each other, so they’ve almost BECOME one. Now researchers have discovered a gene in 5% of the the Amish population in Lancaster, PA which protects them from heart disease, despite their generally high-fat diet and belief in not taking cholesterol-lowering drugs.

BBC News quotes researcher Dr Toni Pollin as saying, “If new drugs can be developed that mimic the effect of this mutation, it may afford more ways in which individuals could be protected from developing cardiovascular disease.”

Sociologist Aliya Saperstein reminds us that, “Race is not something you are. It is a very complex combination of factors that certainly does include things like skin tone, hair type and ancestry, but it also includes social status and our own stereotypes about people. Our study suggests that part of how we determine who is white is based on our assumptions about what white people do or what black people do. There is probably more mobility in our society by race than we acknowledge, because socioeconomic mobility often turns into racial mobility, where we define successful people as white and unsuccessful people as black.”

You’d be AMAZED at the many races and countries that our unknowncountry.com subscribers come from! Why don?t you join the fun? You?ll make like-minded friends that you just can’t find any other way.

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk

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