Readings Flashcards
Charles Hirschman “ America’s Melting Pot Reconsidered”
• Annual Review of Sociology article
• Reviews theories of the elements of assimilation
• Measures of “assimilation” can be used for all racial and ethnic groups.
• Assimilation models are especially important in understanding the SES mobility of immigrant groups.
Idea of America as a “melting pot”
• evidence of assimilation: SES attainment, segregation, intermarriage, attitudes towards each other)
• Positive interpretation is that each new ethnic group will enrich the culture of the U.S.
• In practice, the U.S. has always worked to “Americanize” new immigrants
• In the early 20th Century, the growth of public schools in the Northeast focused on “undoing” what Italian parents might teach their children
• Idea that while it was probably too late for the immigrant adults to become “American” there was still hope for the children
• Keep in mind the explanations for racial
stratification:
- Class-based
- Race (discrimination; unequal opportunity, etc.)
- Cultural
Robert Park “Assimilation”
• The Chicago School of Sociology
- founders of modem sociological theory and research on race and ethnic relations
• Observed the changing ethnic and racial landscape of Chicago
• Felt it was a natural laboratory for study the incorporation of new immigrants
• Also known as a “Contact Hypothesis”
• 4 Steps of Assimilation Paradigm
- Contact (New ethnic or immigrant group is introduced to host society.)
- Competition/Conflict (Competes for resources (jobs, education, housing)
- Accommodation (Minority group is more or less accepted by dominant group – reaches an equilibrium)
- Assimilation (Minority group becomes part of the mainstream.
• Problem with paradigm hypothesis?
- Timing
- Not really testable. (One could argue that a group that has not yet assimilated will assimilate later.)
- Assumes a linear path to assimilation
- Still, this is the basic idea people think of when
considering immigrants
2010 Census Composition
• Almost all Asian Americans are either foreign-
born or have 1 foreign-born parent
• Almost 70% of Asian Americans are FB
• About 40% of Hispanics are FB
• <4% of White non-Hispanics are FB
• Blacks concentrated in the Southeastern US
• Hispanics concentrated in Southwestern US (Hispanic foreign born population overwhelmingly Mexican ~70%)
• Asians more spread out but also concentrated in California
•
Howard Winant “Race and Race Theory”
• wrote about racial formations in the US
• argues that ideas of race & white supremacy helped to (and arguably still helps to) justify colonization and empire building.
• He’s arguing for a more historical approach
• Deeper understanding of macro-micro link
- Macro – comparative historical; global imperialism
- Micro – day-to-day interactions b/w individuals of different races
KVG
• Chapter 4: Educational Attainment and SES of Immigrant Adults Overlap between race, ethnicity, and national- origin (point is that while pan-ethnic groups lump people with very different levels of SES together; still racial patterns exist.)
- among all races, Hispanics have the lowest education attainment and Asians have the highest; within the groups Guatemalans have the lowest and Cubans and Panamanians have the highest and Laotians+Cambodians have the lowest and Asian Indians have the highest respectively;
• Chapter 5: Race and ethnic differences in educational outcomes are present no matter what measure you use
- For Asians & Hispanics: how parental SES & immigration patterns are linked is crucial
- Children have VERY different family backgrounds
John Ogbu “Immigrant and Involuntary Minorities in Comparative Perspective”
• Nigerian-American Anthropologist
• Taught at UC Berkeley
• Began by studying educational outcomes of African American youth in Sacramento
- Tried to explain their lower performance in school
• Later, he attempted to expand his theory about the lower academic outcomes of blacks to incorporate other groups
• He wrote about notions of an “Oppositional Identity”; “acting black” defined in opposition to “acting
white.”
• Voluntary vs Involuntary minorities (see terms page)
Claude Steele and Anderson “Stereotype threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African Americans”
• Claude Steele is an African American Psychologist
• Currently Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford
• Has worked on this idea throughout his career
• Broadly speaking, it is the idea that members of a group internalize negative (and perhaps positive) stereotypes
• Ex: Boys versus Girls
- Boys are supposed to be better at math
- Girls are supposed to be better at reading
• Race and Ethnicity
- Asians are supposed to be good at math/sciences, but bad at writing & people skills
- Blacks are supposed to have lower academic outcomes but better at sports than others
- Hispanics may be seen as better dancers, more passionate, etc.
• Notion is also that those who are in the
majority are less affected by these stereotypes (Whites are seen as “normal”)
• Further explanation of stereotype threat in “terms” folder
Kao and Turney Chapter 7 “Adolescence…”
• Measures of Educational Outcomes
- Educational Achievement
• Grades
• Test Scores
- Educational Attainment
• Years of School Completed
• Likelihood of making certain transitions
- Differences in high school graduation rates
- Variation in entry to college
- College Graduation
• Other related outcomes
- Educational Aspirations
• Plans to complete college in 8th grade, 10th grade,
and 12th grade are positively correlated with eventual
graduation from college
- School Engagement
• How closely you identify with the school environment
• Teachers, peers, etc.
- Psychological Wellbeing
• Self esteem
• Self efficacy
- Delinquency
• Key Predictors of Educational Outcomes
- Parental SES
• Status Attainment (Wisconsin School)
- Parenting Styles
• Authoritarian
• Authoritative
• PermissiveWaters and Jimenez
• Four Primary Benchmarks of Assimilation
- socioeconomic status (SES): defined by education level, job and income
- spatial concentration: “in terms of dissimilarity in spatial distribution and suburbanization”
- language assimilation: whether they learn English and lose their native language
- intermarriage:
• Two factors shaping immigration but not being researched as much
- “geographic dispersal of immigrants to nontraditional receiving areas”
- “continuing replenishment of immigrants through ongoing immigration”
• “Theories of immigration assimilation developed during 20th century and culminated in Gordon’s “Assimilation in American Life” which highlighted generational change as the yardstick to measure changes in immigrant groups”
- First generation = less assimilated, less exposed to American culture
- Second + Third Generation = more assimilated, more exposed
