Members of ethnic groups share certain beliefs, values, customs, and norms because of their common background.
Ethnic groups may define themselves as different because of language, religion, historical experience, geographic placement, kinship, or "race."
Markers of an ethnic group may include a collective name, belief in common descent, a sense of solidarity, and an association with a specific territory that 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.
Status Shifting
Sometimes our identities, a.k.a. social statuses, are mutually exclusive, while others are contextual.
Adjusting or switching one's status in different social contexts is called the situational negotiation of social identity.
In many societies a racial, ethnic, or caste status is associated with positions in the social-political hierarchy.
So-called minority groups have less power and less secure access to resources than do majority groups.
Ethnic groups often are minorities.
When an ethnic group is assumed to have a biological basis, it is called a race.
Discrimination against a race is called racism.
Race and Ethnicity
Race, like ethnicity, is a cultural category rather than a biological reality.
Ethnic groups, including "races," derive from contrasts perceived and perpetuated in particular societies, rather than from scientific classifications based on common genes.
Only cultural constructions of race are possible, even though the average person conceptualizes "race" in biological terms.
Most Americans fail to distinguish between ethnicity and race.
Given the lack of a precise distinction between human race and ethnicity, it is probably better to use the term "ethnic group" instead of "race" to describe any such social group.
The Social Construction of Race
Races are ethnic groups assumed (by members of a particular culture) to have a biological basis, but actually race is socially constructed.
Hypodescent: Race in the United States
In the United States, race is most commonly ascribed to people at birth, although not necessarily on the basis of heredity or genotype.
Rules of descent assign social identity on the basis of ancestry.
In the United States, children of a union between members of different groups are automatically placed in the minority group; this rule of descent, known as hypodescent, is rare outside of the contemporary United States.
In the United States, there is a growing number of interracial, biracial, or multiracial individuals who do not identify only with one racial identity.
A comparison between how the United States and Canada each treat race in their census underscores the socially and historically constructed nature of "race."
Not Us: Race in Japan
Despite the presence of a substantial (10%) minority population, the dominant racial ideology in Japan portrays the country as racially and ethnically homogeneous.
The (majority) Japanese define themselves by opposition to others, whether minority groups in their own nation or outsiders—anyone who is "not us."
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.
Despite the fact that burakumin are physically and genetically indistinguishable from the dominant population, they are stigmatized as a separate, inferior race.
Phenotype and Fluidity: Race in Brazil
Compared to the United States and Japan, Brazil (as well as the rest of Latin America) has less exclusionary categories that permit individuals to change their racial classification.
Brazilian racial classification recognizes and attempts to describe the physical (phenotypical) variation that exists in the population.
More than 500 distinct racial labels were once reported.
In Brazil, racial classification is flexible; individuals' racial labels may change along with their phenotypical characteristics because of environmental factors.
The racial labels that people use to describe themselves or others can vary from day to day.
Although Brazil and the United States both have histories of slavery and "racial" mixing, no hypodescent rule ever developed in Brazil to ensure that whites and blacks (and other "races") remained separate.
Ethnic Groups, Nations, and Nationalities
Nation and nation-state now refer to an autonomous, centrally organized political entity.
Because of migration, conquest, and colonialism, most nation-states are not ethnically homogeneous.
Nationalities and Imagined Communities
Nationalities are ethnic groups that once had, or wish to have or regain, autonomous political status (their own country).
Nationalities are "imagined communities" (a term coined by Benedict Anderson) since most of their members, though they feel comradeship, will never meet.
In the 18th century, language and printed media (e.g., novels, newspapers) played a crucial role in the growth of European "imagined communities."
Political upheavals, wars, and migration have divided many imagined national communities (e.g., Germany, Korea, the Kurds).
While colonialism often erected boundaries that corresponded poorly with preexisting cultural divisions, it also helped create new "imagined communities" beyond nations (e.g., the idea of négritude in West Africa).
Ethnic Tolerance and Accommodation
Assimilation
Assimilation occurs 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 may be forced depending on historical circumstances.
The Plural Society
Interethnic contact does not inevitably lead to assimilation.
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, and exchange with one another.
Multiculturalism and Ethnic Identity
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.
Basic aspects of multiculturalism at the government level are the official espousal of some degree of cultural relativism along with the promotion of distinct ethnic practices.
A number of factors have led the United States to move away from the assimilationist model 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.
Roots of Ethnic Conflict
Prejudice and Discrimination
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.
Chips in the Mosaic
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, and Korean- and Latino-owned businesses were looted and destroyed.
This violence expressed frustration by African Americans about their prospects in an increasingly multicultural society.
The attitudes expressed by some African Americans following the riots suggest a shortcoming in the multicultural perspective: Ethnic groups (in this case African Americans) expect other ethnic groups in the same nation-state (e.g., Korean Americans) to assimilate to some extent to a shared national culture.
Aftermaths of Oppression
A dominant group may try to destroy the cultures of certain ethnic groups (ethnocide) or force them to adopt the dominant culture (forced assimilation).
Ethnic expulsion aims at removing groups that are culturally different from a country.
The most extreme form of ethnic discrimination is genocide, the deliberate elimination of a group (such as Jews in Nazi Germany, Muslims in Bosnia, or Tutsi in Uganda) through mass murder.
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.
Colonialism refers to the political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power for an extended time.
Because the frontiers imposed by colonialism usually did not reflect preexisting cultural units, colonial nation-building frequently resulted in ethnic strife.
Cultural colonialism refers to internal domination—by one group and its culture/ideology over others (e.g., the domination over the former Soviet empire by Russian people, language, and culture, and by communist ideology).
Anthropology Today: The Basques
Under the Franco dictatorship (1936-1975), the Basques were executed, imprisoned, and exiled, and Basque culture was systematically repressed.
In the late 1950s disaffected Basque youths founded ETA, an organization that still exists and whose goal is complete Basque independence from Spain.
In the past few decades, the Basques have gained greater political autonomy, and the Basque language has experienced a resurgence.
Some 50,000 Basques now live in the United States, where many work as sheep herders.
Basque Americans have suffered from some discrimination.
