The central core of each ethnic group, welding it together with the thread of belief, styles of being, and adapting, is culture. . . A number of scholars in the fields of sociology and education discuss the particular function of the concept of race in the United States. While Latin American and West Indian societies, which also share the history of slavery, have built into their view of race the fact of racial mixture, the U.S. interpretation reflects the enduring legacy of a much more oppressive form of the institution of slavery. It is not required, then, to distinguish between the dramatically different racial characteristics of people from India and China. . . According to these standards, respondents are to be encouraged to select multiple racial categories where appropriate.
Several scholars note the increasing tendency to substitute ethnicity for race.
I cannot help but notice in works on ethnicity how quickly the discussion there turns to matters of culture and identity, not at all to questions of economic exploitation, political power, and powerlessness. The term race provides a good example of the difficulties in determining appropriate terminology to apply in describing particular groups. Some authors note that the word lacks meaning in terms of the physical or biological differences implied in its common usage, while others argue for the term's political and sociological importance. Disability as a socially constructed concept. They come to believe that the definitions of disability deriving from the technological culture of the United States in fact represent universal truths.