Effective Anti-Racist Guidelines in the British Education System Literature review

Effective Anti-Racist Guidelines in the British Education System - Literature review Example In this literature review, a brief description of the notion of race, ethnicity, and faith, as well as the distinctions among them, will be discussed. The concept of ‘ethnicity’ is quite new. Before the 1970s there was hardly any discussion of it in anthropology works and literature, even a mention of its definition (Faas 2010). Prior to the Second World War, the word ‘tribe’ was the chosen word for ‘primitive’ societies and the word ‘race’ for contemporary societies (May 1999). Because of the strong connection between the ideology of the Nazis and the concept of ‘race’, the word ‘ethnicity’ eventually succeeded ‘race’ in Europe and the United States (Spalek 2007). The discourse on ethnicity is confounded by a diversity of associated concepts applied to distinguish comparable trends, like the nation, race, minority, and tribe. Several researchers and scholars apply these concepts synonymously w hile others use them as distinct terms (Spalek 2007). Nevertheless, the connection between race and ethnicity is complicated. Even though there is much continuity they are different notions. For instance, Pierre van den Berghe defines the term ‘race’ as a specific classification of ethnicity that makes use of genetic attributes as an indicator of ethnicity (Cashmore & Jennings 2002, 122). Although the connection between the two notions is more complicated than the above definition, his description is quite accurate (p. 122). British scholars normally exclusively attribute ethnicity to minority groups.