Ch. 11 Ethnicity & Race Flashcards
Ethnic Groups and Ethnicity
ETHNIC GROUPS are distinguished by SHARED beliefs, values, customs, and norms because of their COMMON BACKGROUND.
- Ethnic groups may DEFINE themselves as DIFFERENT because of language, religion, historical experience, geographic isolation, kinship, or “race.”
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MARKERS of an ethnic group may include:
- a collective name
- belief in common descent
- a sense of solidarity
- an association with a specific territory which the group may or may not hold.
ETHNICITY means IDENTIFICATION with, and feeling part of, an ethnic group and EXCLUSION from certain other groups because of this AFFILIATION.
- The ethnicity and other AFFILIATIONS that we feel throughout our lives are CONSTANTLY SHIFTING in intensity and direction as the world changes.
Shifting Status, Ascribed Status, Situational Negotiation, Hispanics Vs. Latinos (Race, Majority, and Minority)
STATUS SHIFTING – Sometimes our IDENTITIES (aka: SOCIAL STATUSES) are mutually exclusive, meaning you can only be in one status or the other (Ex: a man or a woman, black or white) and sometimes they are not (Ex: You can be both hispanic and also Catholic, or identify as both Italian and American), but they are always changing as the world and our experiences change.
ASCRIBED STATUSES are statuses that are dictated by the culture (ex: Race or Gender – What about those who don’t identify with a traditional gender or those born of one white parent and one black parent?)
- ASCRIBED STATUSES are usually MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, while others are contextual.
SITUATIONAL NEGOTIATION of SOCIAL IDENTITY – Adjusting or switching one’s status in DIFFERENT SOCIAL CONTEXTS (Ex: Being a mother in one social context, and a Senator in another social context.)
- SITUATIONAL STATUSES are CONTEXTUAL.
HISPANICS are an ETHNIC GROUP largely lumped together in the United States because of LANGUAGE even though they come from MANY COUTRIES.
- LATINOS is a broader Ethnic measure that includes Brazilians (who speak Portugese).
CASTE STATUS – In many societies, racial, ethnic, or caste status is associated with a POSITION in the SOCIAL-POLITICAL HIERARCHY typically broken down into:
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MINORITY GROUPS – often ETHNIC GROUPS – who have less power and less secure access to resources than do majority groups.
- When an ETHNIC GROUP is assumed to have a BIOLOGICAL BASIS, it is called a RACE.
- HOWEVER, there is NO BIOLOGICAL RECOGNITION of ‘RACE’ in humans. It is ONLY a CULTURALLY defined CATEGORIZATION.
- MAJORITY GROUPS dominate minority groups either in NUMBERS or AFFLUENCE, but USUALLY BOTH, which gives the majority group the power to hold the minority groups down.
Race and Racial Classification, Phenotypes, Three Great Races
RACIAL CLASSIFICATION – the attempt to assign humans to DISCRETE CATEGORIES (purportedly based on common ancestry).
- Historically, scientists have approached the study of human biological diversity in two ways:
- RACIAL CLASSIFICATION (now largely abandoned)
- Current EXPLANATORY APPROACH, which focuses on understanding specific differences.
There are many problems with society’s understanding of RACE. From a BIOLOGICAL perspective, RACE would be a GEOGRAPHICALLY ISOLATED subdivision of a species that is capable of reproducing with individuals from other subspecies of the same species, but does not because of its geographic isolation.
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Humans vary biologically in their genetic attributes, but because of extensive gene flow and interbreeding there are NO SHARP BREAKS between human populations that we would scientifically consider a separate RACE.
- RACE, in contemporary common use, is a CULTURAL term based on visually available cues, such as skin color, used to separate and categorize.
The THREE GREAT RACES – Caucasoid (white), Negroid (black), and Mongoloid (yellow) are myths. They don’t exist. And the scientific-sounding names also have NO scientific grounding at all.
- They were identified in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a reflection of European colonial politics.
- RACE is SUPPOSED to describe GENETIC variation. IN REALITY in our SOCIETY, racial categories have been based on PHENOTYPES.
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PHENOTYPES are an organism’s EVIDENT traits, or “MANIFEST BIOLOGY”, the product of genetic, developmental, and environmental factors.
- Humanity has thousands of EVIDENT PHYSICAL TRAITS, from skin color and hair form to blood type and enzyme production.
- There is no logical hierarchy of phenotypic features.
- Early European and American scientists gave priority to phenotypes in determining race, the characteristic that had been assigned arbitrary cultural value for purposes of discrimination.
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PROBLEMS with phenotype-based race:
- Don’t accurately describe skin color. There are actually NO people with white, black, or yellow skin.
- Such traits as skin color, stature, skull form, and facial features DON’T GO TOGETHER AS A UNIT and the amount that heredity (versus environment) contributes to such phenotypical traits is often unclear.
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Changes in the environment can affect individuals during development, changing phenotypes WITHOUT altering genetics.
- Height and Weight can change drastically in a few generations with a diffeent diet and WITHOUT ANY GENETIC changes.
- Humanity has thousands of EVIDENT PHYSICAL TRAITS, from skin color and hair form to blood type and enzyme production.
Explaining Skin Color, Natural Selection, and Melanin
Explaining Skin Color – Prior to the 16th century, most of the world’s darkest-skinned populations lived closest to the equator, and a gradient of average skin color could be observed moving north from the region of the tropics in Africa.
- Over numerous generations NATURAL SELECTION has INCREASED the amount and size of MELANIN in the skin cells of people who live nearer to the equator, which means that it has become part of their genetic makeup.
- This does NOT hold true in the Americas, which were settled in the relatively recent past (no more than 20,000 years ago) by Asian ancestors of Native Americans.
This makes sense:
- Light skin in the tropics is selected AGAINST because it burns more easily, thus subjecting light-skinned individuals to a greater likelihood of infection and disease.
- UV absorbed through the skin stimulates the production of vitamin D, which aids in the absorption of calcium. Therefore, light skin would have been selected for, and dark skin selected AGAINST, in low-sunlight environments (further away from the equator where days get short for half the year).
- Folate is essential for pregnant women to prevent birth defects and in men for the production of sperm, but folate is destroyed by UV. Therefore, dark skin would be selected for and light skin selected against in tropical environments.
- Today, cultural adaptations allow the movement of people of all skin colors around the world.
- Skin color is determined by natural selection creating a balancing act between getting enough UV but not too much in each environment. Common ancestry is only one small determinant of skin color.
Race and Ethnicity or Ethnic Group
Race and Ethnicity – are CULTURAL categories. There is NO BIOLOGICALLY DEFINED RACE in HUMANS – NONE!
- Only CULTURAL constructions of human race are possible, even though the average person WRONGLY conceptualizes “race” in BIOLOGICAL terms.
- Most Americans fail to distinguish between ETHNICITY (which pertains to language and geography) and RACE (which refers to perceived PHENOTYPES).
- Given the lack of a distinction between race and ethnicity, it is probably BETTER to use the term “ETHNIC GROUP” instead of “race” to describe any such social group.
Perceptions of Race in the U.S.A. vs. Japan vs. Brazil, Hypodescent, “Not us”, Burakumin
The Social Construction of Race – Because the concept of RACE is CULTURALLY DETERMINED and not scientifically determined, the concept of RACE and the MANNER in which these ‘races’ are treated, varies from one culture to another.
UNITED STATES of AMERICA
In the U.S. there is a unique treatement of perceived races called…
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HYPODESCENT where RACE is most commonly ascribed to people at birth, although not necessarily on the basis of heredity or genotype.
- In the United States, children of a union between members of different groups are automatically placed in the minority group – rare outside of the contemporary United States.
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Race in the U.S. Census:
- U.S. Census has gathered data on race since 1790.
- Attempts to add a multiracial category on the census form have been opposed by minority groups. Why?
- Growing number of individuals who do NOT identify ONLY with one racial identity.
- The CANADIAN census asks specifically about visible minority status (phenotype) instead of race.
JAPAN
Despite the presence of a substantial (10%) minority population, the dominant racial ideology in JAPAN PORTRAYS themselves as racially and ethnically HOMOGENOUS.
- The (majority) Japanese define themselves by opposition to others, whether minority groups in their own nation or outsiders—anyone who is “NOT US.”
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BURAKUMIN – Japanese culture regards certain ethnic groups, such as the burakumin, as having a biological basis even when there is no evidence that they do.
- Burakumin are descendants of a historically low-status social class. (Similar to the “untouchables” in India’s Caste System)
- Despite the fact that Burakumin are physically and genetically indistinguishable from the dominant population, they are stigmatized as a separate, inferior race.
BRAZIL
Compared to the United States and Japan, Brazil (as well as the rest of Latin America) has FEWER EXCLUSIONARY CATEGORIES which permit individuals to change their racial classification.
- Although Brazil and the United States both have histories of slavery and “racial” mixing, no hypodescent rule developed in Brazil to ensure that whites and blacks (and other “races”) remained separate.
- Brazilian racial classification recognizes and attempts to describe a much GREATER RANGE of physical (phenotypical) variation that exists in the population.
- More than 500 distinct racial labels were once reported in Brazil – meant to recognize the great diversity within their nation in contrast to the handfull of racial distinctions made in the US (and even fewer in Japan “Us” or “Not us”)
- In Brazil, racial classification is flexible; individuals’ racial labels may change along with their phenotypical characteristics because of environmental factors.
Nations, Nationalities, and Ethnic Groups, Nation-States, “Imagined Communities, Negritude
NATION – used to be synonymous with TRIBE or ETHNIC GROUP, referring to a single culture sharing a single language, religioin, history, etc. NOW, NATION (and also “NATION-STATE”) refers to an autonomous, centrally organized political entity.
- Because of migration, conquest, and colonialism, most nation-states are NOT ethnically homogeneous.
- Only 18% of all countries have a single ethnic group that accounts for 90% or more of its population.
- (As of 2003) about 70% of all coutries had an ethnic group that formed an absolute majority, with that majority accounting for about 65% of the population.
NATIONALITIES are ETHNIC GROUPS that once had, or wish to have or regain, autonomous political status (THEIR OWN COUNTRY).
- Nationalities are “IMAGINED COMMUNITIES” since most of their members, though they feel comradeship, will never meet.
- In the 18th century EUROPE, language and printed media (e.g., novels, newspapers) played a crucial role in the growth of European “imagined communities.” because these were the things that brought people together by offering a SHARED EXPERIENCE of reading the same novels and the same news.
- Many “imagined Communities” were divided by upheavals, wars, and migration (e.g., Germany, Korea, the Kurds).
NEGRITUDE – (BLACK IDENTITY) refers to the creation of new “imagined communities” in French-Speaking North Africa as the result of colonialism, which erected boundaries that corresponded poorly with preexisting cultural divisions.
Ethnic Tolerance, Assimilation, Plural Society, Fredrik Barth, Multiculturalism
Ethnic Diversity can be associated with positive group interaction and coexistence or with conflict.
ASSIMILATION is when a minority group adopts the patterns and norms of a dominant host culture to such an extent that it no longer exists as a separate cultural unit.
- Assimilation could be forced or voluntary depending on historical circumstances.
- Interethnic contact does NOT inevitably lead to assimilation.
PLURAL SOCIETY – (FREDRIK BARTH) defines plural society as a society combining ethnic contrasts, ecological specialization (i.e., use of different environmental resources by each ethnic group), and the economic interdependence of those groups.
- According to Barth, ethnic boundaries are most stable and enduring when:
- Groups occupy different ecological niches
- Do not compete
- Depend on each other’s activities
- Exchange with one another
- When different ethnic groups exploit the same ecological niche, the militarily more poiwerful group will normally replace the weaker one.
MULTICULTURALISM – is the view of CULTURAL DIVERSITY in a country as something GOOD and desirable.
- This view is opposed to assimilationism, which expects minorities to abandon their cultural traditions and values, replacing them with those of the majority population.
- Multiculturalism seeks ways for people to understand and interact that don’t depend on sameness, but rather on respect for differences.
- A number of factors have led the United States to move AWAY FROM the ASSIMILATIONIST model (of the early 1900 and before) and TOWARD MULTICULTURALISM.
- Large-scale migration—driven by globalization as well as population growth and lack of economic opportunity in “less developed” countries—is introducing unparalleled ethnic variety to host nations, particularly the “developed” countries of North America and Europe.
- Ethnic identities are used increasingly to form SELF-HELP ORGANIZATIONS focused on enhancing groups’ economic and political competitiveness and combating discrimination.
Ethnic Conflict, Prejudice, Discrimination (De Facto vs. De Jure), Rodney King, Ethnocide, Genocide, Forced Assimilation, Ethnic Expulsion, Refugees, Cultural Colonialism
PREJUDICE is the devaluation of a group because of its assumed behavior, values, capabilities, or attributes.
- People are PREJUDICED when they HOLD STEREOTYPES (fixed, often UNFAVORABLE ideas about what the members of a group are like) about groups and apply them to individuals.
DISCRIMINATION refers to policies and practices that harm a group and its members.
- DE FACTO DISCRIMINATION is practiced but not legally sanctioned.
- DE JURE DISCRIMINATION is part of the law.
It’s not always the ethnic majority that is at odds with minority ethnic groups, In North America, there is ethnic competition and CONLICT between newer arrivals (Koreans and Central Americans) and longer-established ethnic groups (African Americans.
- In the 1992 Los Angeles riots following the RODNEY KING verdict, much of the violence played out along ethnic lines: African Americans attacked whites, Koreans, and Latinos.
- This violence expressed frustration by African Americans about their prospects in an increasingly multicultural society.
Fueling ETHNIC CONFLICT are such forms of discrimination enforced by a dominant group to:
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DESTROY THE CULTURE of certain ethnic groups (ETHNOCIDE).
- Ex: Banning the language.
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Deliberately eliminate a group (GENOCIDE).
- Ex: Jews in Nazi Germany.
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Force them to adopt the dominant culture (FORCED ASSIMILATION).
- Ex: Anti-Basque Campaign by the dictator Francisco Franco – falls closely in line with ETHNOCIDE.
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ETHNIC EXPULSION aims at removing groups that are culturally different from a country.
- Expulsion may create REFUGEES, or people who have been forced (involuntary refugees) or who have chosen (voluntary refugees) to flee a country, to escape persecution or war.
CULTURAL COLONIALISM refers to internal domination—by one group and its culture/ideology over others.
- (Ex: The domination over the former Soviet empire by Russian people, language, and culture, and by communist ideology).
Ethnic Identification in the USA (2010 Census)
White (Non-Hispanic) – 197 mio (63.7%)
Hispnic – 50.5 mio (16.3%)
Black – 38.9 mio (12.6%)
Asian – 14.7 mio (4.8%)
American Indian – 2.9 mio (0.9%)
Pacific Islander – 0.5 mio (0.2%)
2 or more races – 9 mio (2.9%)
American Hispanics/Latinos, (2009)
Mexicans – 66.4%
Central/South Americans – 16%
Puerto Ricans – 8.9%
Cubans – 3.5%
Other – 5.2%
