Representations and Misrepresentation of race in American Culture - Essay Example

This paper looks at the representations and the misrepresentation of culture in America, as discussed by Steve Olson in his book “Mapping human history.” Ideally, the occurrence of mutations in genetics mostly of the mitochondria is claimed to be the reason behind the migration of the different races between the different continents especially the mixed population. Hawaii state has always been marked by controversy in that the even the scientists are not able to tell the original inhabitants of this beautiful island state.

A prime reason is that most of the current inhabitants of this state are not true offspring’s of the first people who live in this island commonly known as the Polynesians. However, there is an existing correlation in the biological and ethnic heredity of the people especially because most people only identify themselves with the racial background. The main cause for the misrepresentation of the aboriginals of Hawaii is the intermarriage between the natives and the visitors to the island (Olson, 260).

The government of the United States splits its population into four major categories based on their racial background. . They include the color of their skins, the shape and the size of their yeas, the size and the shape of their skulls, and the types of their hairs. These dominant factors are mostly notable among the black, the whites, Asians and the Indians (Olson, 259). However, there is an element of misrepresentation in that it is not possible to tell how different their genetic makeup is in the four groupings.

Olson notes, “The rapid growth of interracial marriages in the united states and elsewhere marks a new face in the genetic history of humanity. Since the appearance of modern humans in Africa more than 100,000 years ago, human groups have differentiated in appearance as they have expanded across the globe and have undergone under some measures of reproductive isolation” (Olson, 259). He also asserts, “This differentiation has been limited by the recentness of our common ancestry and the powerful tendency of groups to mix over the same time” (Olson, 259).

The native inhabitants of Hawaii have highly been misrepresented in various statistics. Statistics shows that the natives of Hawaii live in the lower end of the social and economic life. In addition, they have the lowest incomes and highest unemployment rate in America among any ethnic group. Moreover, the native inhabitants of Hawaii have the highest rates of health problems and have the lowest life expectancy ratio. Besides, they are least likely to go to colleges, and almost certainly to be imprisoned.

However, it is utmost misleading to generalize this kind of statistics in a large group of people such as the native Hawaiians. These amounts to misrepresentation since a large portion of Hawaiians, comprising of a fifth of the entire native population are now educated and very successful. In