Summarize& Response - Essay Example

An understanding of Racial Identity Roth Wendy is a sociologist and her work on racial identity paints a picture of the migration of the Dominican and the Puerto Rican to the United States (Roth 151). Roth tries to explore how migration influences and contributes to change in cultural conception about race for the new migrants and for those who do not migrate and remain in their home country. Those who migrate are bound to learn new languages and can have a different understanding of race. This form of learning does not mean that they do abandon their earlier ideas and are assimilated fully but means they own a multiple set of ideas (Roth 152-154).

The main idea in this text is to try to bring an understanding on how people can maintain their earlier knowledge on race as well as give room to learn new racial schemas because of migration.The topic of the text is on racial identification of the Latinos by the use of racial schemas. This text tries to reveal the configuration of race in the United States. It also shows usefulness of the contributions made by the Latinos in determining the future of race in country. Roth makes an unbelievable contribution to how we understand the processes and racial thinking.

This is by focusing on the racial identification of Dominican and Puerto Rican Ricans migrants and non-migrants in both Dominican republic and Puerto Rico (Roth 155). She shows the complex state of racial identification of the Latino when she argues that those who migrate tend to adopt some of the customs and language of their new country. They also acquire other ways of identifying race. She further argues that this new move does not mean that they are wholly assimilated as they migrate and abandon what they knew about race from their home country (Roth 155-157).

Roth uses the example of how people perceive race and most specifically those in power leading to stratification in the society (151). She illustrates using the ‘racial schema’ concept that helps to demonstrate how Latino migrants can simultaneously hold different ‘schemas’ that boost their understanding of race from both host and home country. Roth also adds that these racial schemas do migrate across borders as those who had migrated travel back home and pass information on the concept of race in the United States (159).

This enables even those who did not travel to adopt some of the racial schemas from the foreign country. Her work, therefore, tries to bring an understanding of transnational racial schema movement and their effect on identification process and racial labeling. The text fails to demonstrate how individuals can exercise the multiple racial schemas, for example, either by adopting the use of symbols and behavior. The text relies mostly on physical appearance to explain racial perception, which seems not to be relied upon.

It also tries the consequences of adopting new ways of living and neglecting our old ways, which can lead to the decay of history of people and their origin because of assimilation (p. 174-175).In conclusion, the ideas in this text can be applied in other context. This is to show the differences that exist between races in terms of power, resources distribution and level of involvement in decision making for the performance of a given society.Works CitedRoth, D. “Race Migrations: Latinos and the Cultural Transformation of Race.

” California: Stanford University Press, n.d. Print