“Black Lives Matter” is a slogan used by many black people in an effort to broaden “the conversation around violence against State” by informing people “of how black people are intentionally left powerless against the state” (blacklivesmatter.com). As this grassroots movement launched in 2014 shows, racial conflicts in America's urban areas continue even after the civil rights movement and the election of a black president. Sociologists and anthropologists argue that race is a social construct, and the concept of the social construction of identity helps explain why these conflicts persist. Social identity refers to an individual's association with known groups or categories, including race, ethnicity, gender, etc. People may identify themselves in a certain way, but culture and society can also attach certain identities to people, sometimes not in the same way as they believe. All societies have different ways of differentiating “us” from “them” and when they exist in the same society there is the potential for inequality, prejudice and discrimination. This problem can become worse when one group takes control of the economy and power. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayToday, race is defined primarily as how one perceives oneself as well as how one is perceived by others. These perceptions may be based on history or phenotypic characteristics like skin color, but they may also include cultural practices, economic needs, or political affiliations. In complex societies like the United States, race is a social construct produced by the dominant group, the group in power, often associated with government, laws, and social control. Being in power, they have the ability to define the boundaries of race, thereby creating the racial identity of a large group of people at the macro level of culture and society. By generalizing this whole racial identity, stereotypes can form, and when it comes to those of African Americans and black people, many of them are very discriminatory. Identity is not only how others perceive themselves, but, as mentioned earlier, it is also how each individual perceives themselves: the micro level of identity. Many African Americans who identify in one way or another experience discrimination due to stereotypes perceived from their macro-level racial identity. Stereotypes are created at the macro level through the media, including news, television, magazines, and online social media, through science and the social sciences, and through other forms of cultural entertainment in which each can categorize people in particular ways to create dominant stereotypes. Unfortunately, black people around the world, and especially those living in urban "ghettos", have stereotypes such as welfare dependency, violence and crime, poverty, unemployment, as well as many others, and are seen as lazy, disorganized and not taking action for themselves. However, it should be noted that many black people certainly do not fit these stereotypes formulated by the social construction of race. One author, Steven Gregory, attempts to challenge these stereotypes and show his readers that black people, their personalities, and their culture are not responsible for these stereotypes, but rather they were established byeconomic and political questions and are imposed by this macro-economics. identity level. In his book, Black Corona: Race and the Politics of Place in an Urban Community, Gregory explores these issues described through his research in a working-class neighborhood called Corona, which is home to many African Americans as well as people from different backgrounds, located in Queens, New York, from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s. Here he uses ethnographic methods, such as oral histories and open interviews with residents, participant observation in neighborhoods and political action meetings, and archival research to challenge representations of the black urban experience in media, academics, and public policy debates. Through the findings he described in his book, Gregory challenges the stereotypes faced by Corona's black citizens. It explains how the various problems of these urban communities cause black citizens to find themselves stuck in situations involving their stereotypes. The people he interviews don't fit the stereotypes and some people in this neighborhood are activists, others have good jobs and families, and still others are middle class. It attempts to show how many of the black citizens that make up Corona are not all unstable and bad, and explores the causes of the portrayal of stereotypes that outsiders witness and construct into the identity of black citizens (Gregory 1999:14-19) . Racial constructs in the media and political policies are some of the precursor factors affecting Corona's Black and African American residents, as well as the discrimination they face. The media has a large impact on Corona's black citizens because of what people see on the news, television, and movies. In black communities like Corona, to be able to be respected on the streets, one must engage in violence, in some type of crime, or in drug dealing. Even if someone doesn't want to do that, they should at least play the role. This macro-level identity imposes this stereotype on an individual's micro-level identity, meaning that how people may view them affects how an individual should view themselves. These crimes and acts of violence do not go unnoticed by the authorities and in response, the news could be filled with these people committing criminal acts. People on the outside see it and the stereotypes about all black people in the community are reinforced, even though many of them aren't even involved. Many of Corona's black citizens were middle class and had respectable professions, but they are still identified as bad people. For example, in Corona, an issue raised in their neighborhood stabilization committee concerned drug trafficking on a certain street. This information was probably published in newspapers and by word of mouth within the police force and, although the police chief stated that the crime rate was lower than ever (Gregory 1999: 110), the police continued to profile and people who were living in this area and who were not involved would still have participated in drug trafficking. Gregory says that “issues of crime, drugs…carried racial overtones that remained close to the surface of the discourse,” even though police claimed they were not racially motivated (Gregory 1999: 110). Even in a predominantly middle-class neighborhood in Corona, young people were harassed by security guards in a park because they thought they werewere selling drugs. One community member said you might be walking home from work and they'll kick you out "because they suspect you of being a drug dealer" (Gregory 1999: 123). Community members said the cause of this harassment was the media's portrayal of black teenagers as drug dealers. Issues with media representation of the region in which they lived created more struggles over the representation of their identity, even when many black citizens were middle class and worked in respectable professions. The construction of race as it relates to political policies put forward by the government also contributed to the struggle. on the representation of the identity of citizens and the establishment of equality. The government and a major agency called the Port Authority had power over Corona's organizations and, as previously mentioned, having power gives the ability to force others to do what you want. For example, the Port Authority's job was in the design and infrastructure of the city, and with this power, they could treat each neighborhood in Corona as a separate entity so that none had enough power to s oppose it. Black citizens opposed it because, as many were middle class and lived in nice neighborhoods, some were clustered in lower-class neighborhoods with poor immigrants; many are not even black. These areas were known to experience poverty and other problems, and having black citizens clustered there would only reinforce stereotypes in the construction of race (Gregory 1999:182). The Port Authority also wanted to extend an airstrip to the airport in the northern Corona area. The citizens of Corona acted against this measure for the same reasons as before, as it would impact the quality of life in this region. Citizens tried everything not to build it, but thanks to its power, the port authority was able to “thwart community opposition” (Gregory 1999: 186). Politics and those in power have made it difficult for communities to establish and maintain equality and prohibited them from speaking out against discrimination and acting against the social construction of their identity. Alongside media and political policy, history also plays a role in the social construction of identity for black citizens in America. As shown in the film The Story We Tell - Race and the Power of Illusion, throughout history, politics and economics have negatively impacted the social construction of racial identity African-Americans, supporting the same ideas as Gregory. Since the time of slavery, people had the idea that black people were inferior to others because of the connection between slavery and blackness. As America grew and became more white-based, people believed that blacks were fewer in number, as many people "tried to prove scientifically that blacks and other races were inferior" (Pounder et al. 2003). People today have only just inherited this ancient stigma from the past, which developed once Africans were exploited for the economic gain of powerful white Americans. The study of race and race relations in the United States can be complicated by certain issues. It is difficult to define what race is and what differentiates them from each other. Different nations and geographies have different constructions of what race is. The entire social construction of.