Race and Ethnicity

A Different Mirror

Perspective is just a mirror of what we see others from pur point of view.Similarly 'race' and ethnicity is a debating illusional perspective that has been much talked about.Back in middle school in Nepal I remember studying about the different races around the people. It was just a subject compilation based on eye shape, hair type and skin color. I remember reading a chapter on Sherpas , a himlayan tribe you all must have come across when you hear mountains.The chapter opened with " sherpa has flat notes , small eyes and stouty figure." I had sherpa friends and I couldnt see it wasn't untrue , they all had the same description as the book. This was an encounter of racial stratification based on features in Nepal. Later on we also had to study Nepal had primaliry two races Aryan and Mongolian.Aryans can trace back their lineage to sharp featured people from the euro-mediterrannean and Indo people whereas the Mongolians traced back their ancestry from the land of Genghis Khan , Mongolia hence the name mongolians.This was a lesson learnt in our general sociology class. We also had to learn about the black people who were enslaved for hundreds of years in America and different parts of the world and how I wondered there were no Blacks in Nepal. There were dark skinned people who could be mistaken for dark complexion african people but they were not classifified as blacks in the Nepalese racial system.Coming to America , I was equally shocked to see the racial divide among neighbourhoods.I live in Brooklyn and while I was back In Nepal , I got feedbacks from my uncle and aunts who lived in the states that Brooklyn was predominantly an african american neighbourhood. it was by par true but as I became familiar witht the neighbourhood , the notion of only black was not true at all. There were more of a mixed racial existence in where i lived and still live.Africans, Indians, Pakistani,Nepalese, Tibetan, Italian, Bangladeshi,Arabian and Whites ( It;s harder for me to differentiate their origin).

From the reading 'A Different Mirror' my eyes opened up on the history of America. How the predominant Natives were driven out of the picture , how the English created race in strata of skin and features. The reading was much about everything from little stories of one person to the mass majority of people in riots to create an equibellarium of immigrant America. Except for the natives who were mistaken for Indians every other people we find in today's america are immigrants from all over the world. Being the first generation in my family from Mustang, Nepal it is an overwhelming experience  a tale to be told to the upcoming generation of our family's origin.What is RACE? a stratification of people based on their feature?skin color? if it was so my own biological sister she looks totally different from me. She has straight hair in contrasts to  my super curly hair always mistaken for being african