group+together

Why do people tend to group together by race?

People define their self by race whether it's in the hallway, at lunch, and just in general. People group together by race because they're with a group of people who are similar to them. People are not told to do this, it is self - segregation. Segregation is the force of separation, whether it's segregation at schools, using water fountains, on buses, or in restaurants. Self - segregation is when you are not forced to separate, but you do it by a habit. Segregation was common in the 1870-1900's **IN AMERICA -- WHAT ABOUT BEFORE 1870??**. In 1954 Brown vs. Board is what turned things around. While the Brown vs. Board case was going on, a decision was made that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." This decision changed the way for future segregation problems.

When looking at the book __Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria__, Beverly Daniel Tatum, the author of the book, thinks that whites are afraid that they will say something wrong and be called "racist." When people are around people that they have something in common. There was an article in The Massachusetts Daily Collegian called "The Dangers of Voluntary Self-Segregation." There was a quote in the article that came off of University of Massachusetts website that said "You'll find friends and neighbors from a range of backgrounds, differeing in ethnicity, race, and religion, the region or country they came from, the languages they speak, their sexual orientation, and their economic background." This is why people tend to group together by race. Not only are they similar in their race, but they could be similar in religion, where they came from, the language they speak, sexual orientation, or their economic background.

http://i.biblio.com/z/619/083/9780465083619.jpg http://higley1000.com/charts/USTotalHHbyRace.png

When looking up what the definition of race was on Wikipedia it says that race is the "categorization of humans into groups". This definition even states that people do indeed group together by race, not by choice, but by habit. Self-segregation is found to be really common in colleges. Within the colleges, the most common place to see people grouping together is in the lunch room. Even before college, self-segregation had happened. An article in news week called "By Third Grade, black students who self-segregate are more popular" talks about people who hang out with their own kind are more popular. The article says that black kids who hang out with white kids are less popular, which was surprising. It was stated in the article that 85 percent of black kids have best friends that are black too. Although the popularity situation was surprising, this was not. This comes back to my statement above about people are hanging out with their own race because they are more comfortable around them and they have similarities.

Did segregating kids at such a young age in school cause problems later on? Segregating kids when they are as young as third grade, would not let them get as good of an experience and education in school than they would have received if it had not been segregated. Back then, it was known that black kids did not receive as good of an education as the white kids did. Since the kids were separated at a young age and they were only with people of their same race, they carried this on throughout their life. Maybe they had thought since they did in earlier in life and gotten used to their same race, that they should carry this on.

You can't make a conclusion on why people tend to group together by their race. Over all, the main reason is probably because they are similar and have things in common. It could be anything though, and people do not group together every where.

I would like to research the idea of segregation back then more in depth. I want to figure out more information about the 1950's segregation. Finding out more information about things like the Brown vs. Board and the Rosa Parks bus incident would give me a lot of information, because that is how segregation all got started. AnnBibWalker
 * What I want to do next?**
 * ONCE YOU START LOOKING, YOU WILL SEE IT "STARTS" WELL BEFORE THE 1950s.**