ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. For Anglo-Americans, color, especially the color white, is most often not noticed. We live in a country where millions of people can still go through their daily existence and never notice how Whites are in so many places, in so many authoritative positions, because it has been for so long the norm. Dictionary definitions of words such as race or ethnicity do not get us very far when it comes to gaining an understanding of the concepts behind those terms. For in this American culture, these terms can be complex and emotionally charged. Race is a word that has been used for hundreds of years. In the development of European thought, the term became known as a way of identifying different typologies of human beings.