Ethnicity and Group Rights :: Sociology Race Gender Essays

Ethnicity and Group RightsABSTRACT Recent developments in biology switch made it possible to acquire to a greater extent and more precise information concerning our genetic makeup. There are four groups of people who may want to know about our genes. First, we ourselves can have an liaison in being aware of own health status. Second, there are people who are genetically linked with us, and who can have an interest in the knowledge. Third, individuals with whom we have contr titles and economic arrangements may have an interest in knowing about our genetic makeup. Fourth, society as a whole can have an interest in the composition of our genes. As regards the question of motivation, the term should can be interpreted in three ways. Prudentially speaking, to say that individuals should act in a certain manner is to say that the actions in question promote the long-term self-interest of these individuals. From the viewpoint of morality, we should do what is right and avoid doing what i s wrong. When it comes to legal thinking, it is held in around liberal societies that grave other-regarding harm should be the primary justification for the use of coercion and constraint. In the written report, all these aspects are examined in more detail. In multicultural Western societies more and more frequently members of ethnic minority groups behave and act in ways which the majority find different, strange or alien, sometimes make up irrational, threatening or immoral. Differences in action and behaviour range, for instance, from clothing and fashion accessories to the observance of religious holidays and the mutilation of the human body.The question that I propose to address in this paper is How should the majority respond to these differences? Should the reaction be tolerant and permissive? Or should it be cautious and restrictive? Should the majority hold that individuals are entitled to act as they wish unless their actions inflict harm on other people? Or should the y think that ethnic groups as collectives have rights which ought not to be go against by constraints on the behaviour of their members?The questions concerning the group rights of minorities have recently been discussed in considerable detail in the frameworks of communitarianism and deontological liberalism. However, the difficulty with these approaches is that they presuppose complicated and sometimes metaphysically and ideologically loaded accounts of liberty, personal identity and interpersonal relationships. I have therefore opted for a simpler and more accessible starting point.