Racial Identity in the Twentieth and the Twenty-first Century

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Racial Identity in the Twentieth and the Twenty-first Century
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Introduction
The way how racial identity was constructed for an American (the African American and the White Americans) has been very conflicted and changing as time goes. This is because of the constant tug-of-war between the past racial inequality that dominated their culture and the present liberal movements proliferating in popular consciousness. However, the author strongly believes that it is not enough to just focus on the current news and texts about the state of inequality today if we were to understand it. Rather, he believes that it is crucial to look at how these volatile and inconsistent social categories were invented, re-invented, and changed through the years – More specifically, in the Twentieth and the Twenty-first centuries (Prentiss 64). By doing this historical analysis, one can see how the person perceives his identity has changed and how well the movements that advocated this did in trying to break down the barriers between races. Thus, seeing its importance the author dedicated this article into providing a historical analysis that would look at how identity is conceptualized by history, culture, and society over time.
Racial Identity in the Twentieth and the Twenty-first centuries
The author believes that one’s creation of identity has no inherent and innate bias in terms of race. This is one of the most common and widely accepted misconceptions in the common parlance, where they debate nurture vs. nature. Rather, the author believes that these notions were just created through a very conflicting historical beginning and then re-created as times go by. Thus, this re-creation is already in the realm of the subjective consciousness rather than an objective reality. In order to prove this case the author cited the case of W. Justin Carter. As is one of the first African-American lawyers who became widely known for his intellect and skills in the field, he also lived in an era where the liberation movements were just beginning. However, what’s interesting about his case is the idea that in the town where he lived, laws are not used to neither ensure racial inequality nor impose inequality. Rather, laws were imposed in order to define who you are and what you’re race is. This is an important factor to consider in trying to understand how racial identity is being conceptualized since it would show that there exist a place where they put least amount of effort in determining who they should be against with. Also, this work also shows how racial identity changed from an exclusive point of view to a more inclusive and open, due to the immense amount of efforts done by the liberal rights movement. As existing evidences of these changes, cultural artifacts such as books, novels, poems, films, music, sculptures, and other works of art show how racial identity and one’s perception of it changed over time. However, despite all of these optimism, it is apparent that there are still persistent issues of racism and racial inequality present in the workplace a...