In Japan we have less awareness about race and racial problems and this is why I thought

that racial problems are interesting. Racial inequality was the most point that we focused on and
considered during the class and on the articles. Before I took the course I did not know what race
was. I thought race was just the difference of skin color and it did not have big differences
between white and blacks living situation. Also I thought it was a problem in long time ago,
about 1970s or 1980s, and it had already been solved. However, I realized that my thought was
different than what it really was.
To start with I did not know what race actually was. According to the lecture, race is a
classification of humans into groups based on distinguishable physical characteristics that may
form the basis for significant social identities. To add, race is not a biological thing from the
survey The Human Genome Project, 99.9% of the gene has similarity between all human. Also
race is not ethnicity which is people who identify with one another based on shared ancestral or
cultural heritage such as Hispanic or Asian and some others. In addition, race is a social
construction that certain essential features of social life are created through shared social
understanding. In other ward, they are made up by society. Because of that, according to Penner
and Sapersteins study, which took nineteen years, there are 20% of the research participants had
at least once changed their race. They changed their race when they had an experience of
unemployment, imprisonment, or some other negative experiences that tend to occur to the black.
So they said being white is an individual knapsack which we can pull out whenever we want.
Lastly, race becomes real. Social practices make social construction, including race, into real
and consequential. For example, there is a problem of immigrant children study. This study is
about the negative cycle of immigrant children. First, the mother, who is an immigrant, has
negative effect from society and has a lot of stress. Therefore, she would birth a low weight

children and these children are weaker than the usual weight children. After the children grow up
they will have a stress which is same with their mother, because they are immigrants.
There are inequality of living situation. The black is less likely to be employed than the
white, because people try to choose the majority when the other options are the same. Comparing
the wealth between black and white, white is twenty times wealthier than the black. Also there
was a separated area which is called red line. Red line is the practice of denying, or charging
more for, services such as banking, insurance, access to health care, or denying jobs to residents
in particular determined areas. It refers to the practice of marking a red line on a map to delineate
the area where banks would not invest; later the term was applied to discrimination against a
particular group of people that irrespective of geography. The environment of the area which was
lined red was very bad. Another inequality is about the crime. According to statistics, black men
are 13.6% of US population and 39.4% of the prison population, and black men without high
school diploma have 60% chance to go to jail. To support that we saw a video during the lecture
the video is about stealing a bike. White men, black men, and white women were trying to steal
the bike. First, when the white men was stealing the bike, there were few people asking him what
he was doing. And even though he told that he was stealing it, nobody had stopped him.
However, when it changed to a black men, many people stopped and asked him what he was
doing. If it was worse, people asked him whether he was stealing it or not. And when they
noticed that he was stealing the bike, people tried to call the police or took the picture. This is a
typical stereotype of black men.
Through the course I realized that race is a social construction and the difference between
white and black depends on how the people think about each race. Also I found that racial
problem is not an old problem but it is a problem lasting for a long time. In addition those

problems are spread into wide range as living situation and crime. By taking this course I could
know about race and racial problems and inequalities which does not exist in Japan as severe as
in the US. It was a nice experience to learn race, which has effects to US culture. I think this
problem is really complicated and difficult to solve. But it is not impossible because we have
countries which does not care race a lot, and once we could solve this problem we will be able to
solve the other problems like gender inequality and class inequality. I hope that we could solve
this problem as fast as we could.