Making an Impact – Week 1 Summary

During class last week, I learned the difference between nationality, race, and ethnicity. I knew of the differences fairly well, but the class made it clearer and easier to understand. Starting off, race is grouped by someones skin color (brown, white, etc.). Ethnicity is what your heritage and ancestors are from. Nationality is where you hold citizenship. For example, my race is white, my heritage is italian, and my nationalities are Italian and American (or Italian-American). Now, I actually know how to respond when someone asks about me instead of staring at them blankly and trying to remember which word means what. Through the week, we also learned about the history of racism and the history in Rochester, however, I was one day ahead in the exact same topic in history class, so it was mostly all review.