After watching the video clip, answer the following questions:

In lieu of a class period for Thursday afternoon, I had to ask 5 of my friends what ethnicity meant to them. Ethnicity is a sensitive and significant topic to many, for those of a certain ethnicity take great pride in their identity. Since I was not at UConn at this time, I asked 5 people at the leadership conference I attended, all of whom were from differing states and backgrounds across the USA. Unfortunately, however, almost all individuals were of Caucasian descent, and so there was not much diversity in my crowd of people other than the state and values with which they grew up. One individual, a young Caucasian woman named Jessie from West Virginia, identified ethnicity in the same way that many would identify race, in that it has to do with those the person is related to by blood and the way in which they look. I then asked a young man named John from Missouri State how he defined ethnicity, and he gave me a very similar answer to Jessie’s, in that ethnicity is not much different than race, except he did hint that ethnicity also has to do with a person’s culture. Next I asked one of my friends at the conference named Ella. She defined ethnicity as cultural and past back grounds that tied a group of people together, and therefore developed a sense of belonging in a group. Next, I asked Bryan from UVM what his response was, and he said that it is a mix of traditional, historical and blood relations that tied a group of people together. Last, but not least, I asked a young woman named Sarah from UNH what she thought ethnicity was, and she stated that it is the shared traditions and culture that bring a group of people together; that it is a way of categorizing people.

Although all these people grew up in very different states and backgrounds, I did notice that their answers on ethnicity, and what it meant to them, were all very similar. This could be due to the fact that these people had similar interests and somewhat similar back grounds of growing up with agriculture. It could also be the fact that these people were all Caucasian, and so they do not see the idea of ethnicity applying to their lives. I was surprised by this, and expected the answers to be somewhat different for those who grew up in southern states or western states from those who grew up in eastern states. Growing up I, like Jessie, thought that ethnicity was just another word for race, and failed to realize up until taking this class that ethnicity is much more. Ethnicity, as defined by the textbook, is “a sense of historical, cultural, and sometimes ancestral connection to a group of people who are imagined to be distinct from those outside the group”. I think that this misunderstanding comes from the lack of discussion on subjects such as ethnicity and race. Growing up, I was never asked to talk about ethnicity, and how it impacts others’ lives. It is important that one is educated on what ethnicity is, so we can develop a respect for the subject, and for those who identify with a particular ethnicity that may be different from our own.