Race and Ethnic Relations American and Global Perspectives PDF
Race and Ethnic Relations American and Global Perspectives PDF
Relations
American and Global Perspectives
EIGHTH EDITION
±±
±±
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±± Martin N. Marger
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PREFACE XV
part i
The Nature of Ethnic Relations 1
chapter 1
Introduction: Some Basic Concepts 3
chapter 2
Ethnic Stratification: Majority and Minority 28
chapter 3
Tools of Dominance: Prejudice and Discrimination 50
chapter 4
Patterns of Ethnic Relations: Assimilation and Pluralism 80
part ii
Ethnicity in the United States 105
chapter 5
Immigration and the Foundations of the
American Ethnic Hierarchy 107
iii
iv brief contents
chapter 6
Native Americans 138
chapter 7
African Americans 164
chapter 8
Hispanic Americans 211
chapter 9
Asian Americans 247
chapter 10
White Ethnic Americans 281
chapter 11
Jewish Americans 312
chapter 12
The Changing Context of American Race and Ethnic Relations:
Current and Future Issues 337
part iii
Ethnic Relations in Comparative Perspective 369
chapter 13
South Africa: Society in Transition 371
chapter 14
Brazil: Racial and Ethnic Democracy? 399
chapter 15
Canada: Ethnic Model of the Future? 431
chapter 16
Global Issues of Ethnic Conflict and Change 464
GLOSSARY 498
REFERENCES 505
INDEX 564
Contents
PREFACE XV
part i
The Nature of Ethnic Relations I
chapter 1
Introduction: Some Basic Concepts 3
The Global Nature of Ethnic Relations 4
Race and Ethnic Relations 6
Basic Questions 6
A Comparative Approach 7
Ethnic Groups 8
Characteristics of Ethnic Groups 8
Ethnicity as a Variable 12
Race 13
Race as a Biological Notion 14
The Social Construction of Race 16
Race and Ethnicity: A Synthesis 18
Racism 19
The Ideology of Racism 19
The Functions of Racism 20
The Development of Racism 21
Cultural Racism 25
v
vi contents
SUMMARY 26
SUGGESTED READINGS 27
chapter 2
Ethnic Stratification: Majority and Minority 28
Stratification Systems 28
Power and Stratification 29
Stratification and Ideology 29
Ethnic Stratification Systems 30
Minority Groups 30
Types of Minorities 31
Dominant Groups 33
Middleman Minorities 35
The Relativity of Dominant and Minority Status 36
Ethnic Strata: Clarity and Mobility 37
Ethnicity, Class, and Power 39
The Relationship of Ethnicity to Social Class and Power 39
Ethnicity, Class, and Power Reconsidered 41
The Origins of Ethnic Stratification 43
Forms of Contact 43
Outcomes of Contact 44
Minority Responses to Subordination 46
Pluralistic Minorities 46
Assimilationist Minorities 47
Secessionist Minorities 47
Militant Minorities 48
SUMMARY 48
SUGGESTED READINGS 49
chapter 3
Tools of Dominance: Prejudice and Discrimination 50
Prejudice 51
Stereotypes 52
Social Distance 58
Discrimination 59
The Range of Discriminatory Behavior 60
Types and Levels of Discrimination 61
Theories of Prejudice and Discrimination 64
Psychological Theories 64
Normative Theories 67
contents vii
Power-Conflict Theories 73
Theories of Prejudice and Discrimination: An Assessment 77
SUMMARY 78
SUGGESTED READINGS 79
chapter 4
Patterns of Ethnic Relations: Assimilation and Pluralism 80
Theoretical Models of Ethnic Relations 81
Conflict and Order 81
Assimilation 82
Dimensions of Assimilation 83
Theories of Assimilation 86
Factors Affecting Assimilation 90
Assimilation as a Societal Goal 92
Pluralism 93
Systems of Ethnic Pluralism 93
Pluralism in the United States 98
The Variability of Ethnic Relations 98
A Typology of Multiethnic Societies 100
Colonial (Segregationist) Societies 100
Corporate Pluralistic (Multicultural) Societies 102
Assimilationist Societies 102
SUMMARY 103
SUGGESTED READINGS 104
part ii
Ethnicity in the United States 105
chapter 5
Immigration and the Foundations of the American Ethnic
Hierarchy 107
The Social, Political, and Economic Factors of Immigration 108
The Onset of Large-Scale Immigration 108
The Structural Forces of Modern Immigration 109
Individual Dynamics of Immigration 110
Settlement and Adaptation 112
Early Immigration to America and the Establishment of Anglo
Dominance 113
Population Components 113
Creation of the Dominant Ethnic Culture 114
viii contents
chapter 6
Native Americans 138
Conquest and Adaptation 139
European Contact 139
Displacement and Depopulation 140
Government Policies and American Indians 142
American Indian Demographics 147
American Indians in the Class System 152
Socioeconomic Status 152
Recent Economic Projects 154
Prejudice and Discrimination 156
The White View of Native Americans 157
Violence against American Indians 159
Assimilation and American Indians 159
Cultural Assimilation 159
Structural Assimilation 161
SUMMARY 162
SUGGESTED READINGS 163
chapter 7
African Americans 164
Development of the Black Minority 165
Slavery: Paternalistic Domination 165
Racial Caste: The Jim Crow Era 170
Fluid Competition: The Modern Era 173
Black Demographics 179
contents ix
chapter 8
Hispanic Americans 211
The “In-Between” Status of Hispanics 212
Manner of Entry 212
Hispanic Americans and Race 213
The Development of the Latino Minority 214
Mexican Americans 214
Puerto Ricans 218
Cuban Americans 219
Dominicans, Central Americans, South Americans 221
Hispanic American Demographics 222
Latinos in the Class System 225
Socioeconomic Status 225
Cubans: A Special Case 228
Latinos and Political Power 230
Latinos in the Corporate World 232
Prejudice and Discrimination 233
Hispanic Stereotypes 234
Discriminatory Actions 237
Hispanic American Assimilation 239
Cultural Assimilation 239
Structural Assimilation 242
Assimilation: Looking Ahead 244
SUMMARY 245
SUGGESTED READINGS 245
x contents
chapter 9
Asian Americans 247
Immigration and Settlement 247
The First Wave 248
The Second Wave 250
Asian American Demographics 255
Asian Americans in the Class System 257
Socioeconomic Status 257
Ethnic and Class Factors in Upward Mobility 262
Asian Americans and Political Power 265
Prejudice and Discrimination 267
The Anti-Asian Heritage 267
Prejudice and Discrimination in the Modern Era 270
Asian Americans as a “Model Minority” 274
Asian American Assimilation 275
Chinese and Japanese Patterns 275
The Future Path of Asian American Assimilation 277
SUMMARY 279
SUGGESTED READINGS 280
chapter 10
White Ethnic Americans 281
Why Study White Ethnic Groups? 281
Irish Americans 282
Immigration and Settlement 283
Power and Social Class 286
Prejudice and Discrimination 290
Assimilation 294
Italian Americans and Other White Ethnics 295
Immigration and Settlement 296
The Italian American Population Today 297
White Ethnics and Social Class 297
Political and Economic Power 299
Prejudice and Discrimination 301
Assimilation among Italian Americans 304
The Future of Ethnicity for White Ethnics 307
The Disappearance of White Ethnicity? 307
Euro-Americans: A New Ethnic Group? 308
SUMMARY 309
SUGGESTED READINGS 310
contents xi
chapter 11
Jewish Americans 312
Immigration and Settlement 313
Immigration Patterns 313
Jewish American Demographics 315
Jewish Americans in the Class System 316
Socioeconomic Status 316
Ethnic and Class Factors in Upward Mobility 318
Political and Economic Power 322
Prejudice and Discrimination 324
The Elements of Anti-Semitism 324
Anti-Semitism in the United States 325
Assimilation Patterns of Jewish Americans 330
Cultural Assimilation 330
Structural Assimilation 331
Looking Ahead: The Future of Ethnicity among Jewish Americans 333
SUMMARY 335
SUGGESTED READINGS 335
chapter 12
The Changing Context of American Race and Ethnic Relations:
Current and Future Issues 337
Issues of the Newest Immigration 338
Economic Issues 338
Social and Cultural Issues 340
Issues of Immigrant Adaptation and Integration 342
A Revitalized Nativism? 345
Arab Americans 346
Cultural Assimilation or Pluralism? Competing Goals 352
Multiculturalism: The New Pluralism 352
The Continuing Gap between Euro-Americans and Racial-Ethnic
Minorities 354
Compensatory Policies 355
Affirmative Action: The Debate 356
The Legal Issues of Affirmative Action 358
The Politics of Affirmative Action 360
The Future of Affirmative Action 362
Looking Ahead 363
A Negative View 363
A Positive View 364
SUMMARY 366
SUGGESTED READINGS 367
xii contents
part iii
Ethnic Relations in Comparative Perspective 369
chapter 13
South Africa: Society in Transition 371
The Development of Ethnic Inequality 372
White Settlement 372
British vs. Boers 374
The Afrikaner Ascendancy 376
Ethnic Stratification 376
The Whites 377
The Coloureds 379
The Asians 380
The Africans 380
Prejudice and Discrimination 381
The Dynamics of Apartheid 382
Apartheid and Economic Inequality 385
Enforcement of Apartheid: Coercion 386
Socialization to Apartheid: Ideology 387
Building a New Society 390
Forces of Change 390
Looking Ahead 392
SUMMARY 397
SUGGESTED READINGS 398
chapter 14
Brazil: Racial and Ethnic Democracy? 399
Major Features of Brazilian Society 400
Racial and Ethnic Features 400
Development of the Brazilian Ethnic Mélange 401
Settlement and Slavery 401
The Brazilian and American Slave Systems 402
European Immigration 406
Ethnic Stratification 407
The Brazilian Multiracial System 408
The Brazilian Ethnic Hierarchy 412
Prejudice and Discrimination 415
Prejudice 415
Patterns of Discrimination 418
contents xiii
chapter 15
Canada: Ethnic Model of the Future? 431
Ethnic Dimensions 431
Formation of the Canadian Ethnic Mosaic 433
The Evolution of Two Nations: The English-French Schism 433
Language and Identity: Basic Features of the Dual Nation 439
Canada’s Other Ethnic Groups: The Third Force 442
Aboriginal Peoples 446
Ethnic Stratification 448
The Vertical Mosaic 449
Ethnicity and Class in Canada Today 450
Prejudice and Discrimination 451
Immigration and Racism 452
Ethnic Attitudes 453
Discriminatory Actions 454
Stability and Change 455
Melting Pot vs. Mosaic 455
Explaining Canadian Pluralism 456
Multiculturalism in the Modern Era 458
Looking Ahead 460
SUMMARY 461
SUGGESTED READINGS 463
chapter 16
Global Issues of Ethnic Conflict and Change 464
The Global Expansion of Ethnic Diversity 464
Shifting Patterns of Immigration 464
Immigration and Ethnic Change in Western Europe 467
Ethnic Nationalism and Conflict: Some Contemporary Examples 471
The Resurgence of Ethnic Nationalism 471
The Rwandan Genocide 472
xiv contents
GLOSSARY 498
REFERENCES 505
INDEX 564
Preface
Race and Ethnic Relations: American and Global Perspectives is intended to ex-
plore race and ethnic relations in a global context, while covering extensively
groups and issues in American society. The need for such a comparative approach
seems especially critical today in light of the increasing ethnic diversity of the
United States and most other contemporary societies, as well as the prominence of
ethnic conflicts in virtually all world regions. With immigration at unprecedented
levels, Americans have become increasingly mindful of their society’s changing ra-
cial and ethnic configuration and its attendant economic, cultural, and political is-
sues. Though usually uninformed about complexities, they have also become at
least vaguely aware of comparable issues in other societies. This awareness is epi-
sodically heightened by mass media accounts of ethnic conflict in societies as dis-
tant and exotic as Rwanda and Kosovo, as well as those closer geographically
and culturally, such as Canada and Northern Ireland. With the prevalent forces of
globalization and international migration, it has become clear that racial and ethnic
issues are no longer confined to specific societies but are linked through social net-
works, political arrangements, and economic systems.
Curiously, American social scientists have not always kept pace in adapting to
the global context of race and ethnic relations. Some continue to focus almost ex-
clusively on the United States, paying only incidental attention to ethnic patterns
and events in other societies. In line with this view, texts in the field of race and
ethnic relations have ordinarily provided no more than cursory coverage to ethnic
issues outside the American sphere—if at all. Students, therefore, often continue to
think of racial and ethnic, or minority, issues as uniquely American phenomena.
A growing number of social scientists, however, have come to see the utility
and relevance of a more cross-national approach to the study of race and ethnicity.
Such an approach distinguished Race and Ethnic Relations from other texts in the
field when it was first published in 1985. Its objective was to provide readers with
xv
xvi preface
issues of race and ethnic relations in the United States: large-scale immigration and
its social, political, and economic effects; the persistent gap between Euro-Americans
and racial-ethnic groups; and policies designed to address that gap.
Part III, ETHNIC RELATIONS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE, exam-
ines several societies that stand as intriguing comparisons to the United States.
Chapter 13 deals with South Africa, not long ago the most rigidly racist society
on the globe. Today South Africa serves as an important case for students of con-
temporary ethnic relations, illustrating how oppressive systems of ethnic inequality
can undergo fundamental change in a surprisingly brief time with a minimum of
violence. Brazil, examined in Chapter 14, is ideally suited to a comparison with
the United States, given its past history of slavery and its multiracial composition.
Canada, the focus of Chapter 15, is often seen as a northern replica of the United
States, but in its ethnic ideology and policies, it stands in sharp contrast to
American society. In a number of ways, Canada may represent a future model for
multiethnic societies. Chapter 16 explores the global nature of contemporary ethnic
conflict, focusing first on the increasing ethnic diversity of western European socie-
ties and the ensuing problems of integrating new culturally and racially diverse pop-
ulations. This is followed by an examination of several contemporary cases of ethnic
conflict: the Rwandan genocide of 1993; the breakup of the former Yugoslavia
and the resultant ethnic wars that were waged throughout the 1990s; and the
generations-old ethnic conflict in Northern Ireland. Some discussion is devoted
to the emergent religio-ethnic conflict in Iraq and its similarity to the Yugoslav
breakup. Each of these cases demonstrates how in the modern world societies can be
consumed with ethnic differences, despite the apparent lack of racial distinctions.
Studying the ethnic composition and dynamics of these societies enables
American students not only to explore unfamiliar social terrains, but to reach a
more informed understanding of the structure and social forces of their own society
and, to some extent, even their own discrete social worlds. Students will surely rec-
ognize differences between the United States and other multiethnic societies, but
they will also observe patterns that seem intrinsically common to all. All of these
cases lend themselves to easy comparison with the United States and comparative
points are drawn throughout each chapter. No prior familiarity with any of these
societies is assumed, either on the part of instructors or students.
Several major changes have been introduced in Part II of this edition. In the
United States, the reshaping of the society’s ethnic configuration through immigra-
tion continues unabated and all chapters reflect that ongoing process. More specifi-
cally, Chapter 5 now contains an entire section devoted to immigration, including
discussion of immigration theories, factors that stimulate international migration,
and historical patterns of American immigration. New to Chapter 7, African
Americans, is an expanded discussion of the increasing diversity of the American
black population, which now includes a sizable foreign-born element. Similarly,
Chapter 8, Hispanic Americans, includes greater coverage of Central and South
American and Caribbean groups, in addition to updated coverage of the three ma-
jor Latino groups. Arab Americans, one of the society’s newer and growing ethnic
populations, are discussed in an expanded section of Chapter 12, which also in-
cludes an amplified discussion of the economic and social impact of current
immigration.
Chapter 10, White Ethnic Americans, has been entirely rewritten. Previous edi-
tions had included a chapter on Italian Americans as the prototypical white ethnic
group, but this new chapter includes materials dealing with a broader range of
white ethnics. Roughly one-half of the chapter is devoted to Irish Americans, repre-
senting the most significant specific group of the first great wave of European im-
migration to America. The second half of the chapter covers Italian Americans, the
largest group of the second great immigration wave, presenting much of the mate-
rial contained in previous editions. Also discussed in this chapter is the notion of
“whiteness” and the fluid nature of “race.”
A noteworthy trend in American society is the blurring of racial-ethnic identi-
ties and sentiments as a result of rising levels of intermarriage. The traditional clas-
sification scheme of racial and ethnic groups in the United States, as a result, has
come under more scrutiny and its relevance is increasingly questioned. It now
seems apparent that the commonplace racial-ethnic categories employed by various
societal institutions are losing analytic significance, though they obviously remain
of paramount importance as the building blocks of ethnic stratification. Within
the chapters that compose Part II, this trend and its potential consequences are ad-
dressed, particularly in Chapters 5, 7, and 12.
The societies examined in Part III continue to be intriguing and apposite com-
parative cases vis-à-vis the United States. Although the fundamental features of eth-
nic relations in these societies have not changed radically since publication of the
seventh edition, each continues to evolve either in the direction of greater harmony
or more intense conflict. These movements are described in each chapter. Readers
will notice that the self-standing chapter on Northern Ireland has been dropped,
with much of the material dealing with that society now included as part of
Chapter 16. Expanded coverage of the Rwandan genocide and its aftermath, as
well as a discussion of Iraq as a case of nascent religio-ethnic conflict, are also
new to this chapter.
ANCILLARIES
Race and Ethnic Relations: American and Global Perspectives, Eighth Edition, is
accompanied by an array of supplements prepared to create the best learning envi-
preface xix
ronment inside as well as outside of the classroom for both the instructor and the
student. All of the continuing supplements for Race and Ethnic Relations have been
thoroughly revised and updated. I invite you to take full advantage of the teaching
and learning tools available to you.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As with past editions, I greatly appreciate the support of the editorial and produc-
tion staff at Wadsworth. Also to be acknowledged are the reviewers for this edition
who contributed helpful insights and suggestions: Maxwell Kwenda, Cameron
University; Frank Weed, University of Texas, Arlington; Kellie Hagewen,
University of Nebraska, Lincoln; David Musick, University of Northern Colorado;
Mark Kelly, University of Central Missouri; David Monk, California State
University, Sacramento; James Rodgers, Hawkeye Community College; Zengie
Mangaliso, Westfield State College. Finally, Rochelle Bogatz and Jay Harward con-
tributed enormous patience and skill in guiding the book through its production
phase.
Chapters 1 through 4 introduce some basic concepts, terms, and theories of the
field, and in so doing, erect a framework for analyzing ethnic relations in the
United States (Part II) and in several other societies (Part III).
Another, implicit, objective of Part I is to explain the sociological approach to
race and ethnic relations. This approach is fundamentally different from the manner
in which relations among racial and ethnic groups are commonly viewed and inter-
preted. Sociologists see everyday social occurrences differently than laypersons do,
and they describe them differently as well. They go beneath the superficial to un-
cover the unseen and often unwitting workings of society, frequently exposing the
erroneousness of much of what is considered well-established knowledge. The soci-
ologist Peter Berger has put it well: “It can be said that the first wisdom of sociol-
ogy is this—things are not what they seem” (1963:23). This is particularly so in the
study of race and ethnic relations.
For example, most people, if asked, could attempt an explanation of why
black-white relations in the United States have been customarily discordant, and
they might even venture to explain why conflict is so commonplace among ethnic
groups in other parts of the world. They would probably explain that humans are
belligerent “by nature” or that there are “inherent” differences among groups, cre-
ating unavoidable fear and distrust. Although these explanations are direct and ap-
parently simple to comprehend, they do not necessarily stand up when subjected to
sociological analysis. Groups with different cultural origins and physical traits may
indeed clash quite commonly, but as we will see, social factors are more significant
than innate tendencies when accounting for that discord.
The subject matter of sociology—or any of the social sciences—is not the ab-
struse world of physics or chemistry but the everyday life of people. Because the
objects of their study are so much a part of common human experience, sociologists
often seem to make unnecessarily complex what appears to be quite simple. But the
1
2 part i THE NATURE OF ETHNIC RELATIONS
application of rigorous theory and methods and the use of precise terminology are
the chief distinguishing features of the sociological approach, in contrast to the
more unencumbered ways of problem solving that most people employ. In short,
sociologists apply a scientific approach to analyzing human relations. And in doing
so, they find that much of what is taken for granted as commonsensical is not so
simple or common and perhaps not at all “sensical.” In studying race and ethnic
relations, therefore, it is necessary to establish more precise terms for various racial
and ethnic phenomena and to become aware of the major theories and research
findings that underlie the sociological approach to this field.
Race and ethnic relations cannot be explained with a single analytic tool or
with one general theory. Sociologists are not in agreement on all issues in the field.
At times, in fact, they may be diametrically opposed. But it is necessary to under-
stand that the very nature of scientific inquiry makes such a lack of consensus an
almost foregone conclusion. Scientists, whether physical or social, recognize no ab-
solute explanations or unchanging theories. Like any science, sociology poses more
questions than it answers. In the following chapters, therefore, we will find no ex-
planations that have not been questioned, tested, and retested. Though we can ob-
tain no final answers to many puzzling questions using the sociological approach,
we can sharpen immeasurably our insight into the whys and wherefores of relations
among different racial and ethnic groups. But we must be prepared to accept the
frustration that often accompanies examining new ideas about what is old and fa-
miliar and employing new methods of observing what has customarily been seen
uncritically.
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I
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INTRODUCTION ±± C H A P T E R
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3
4 part i the nature of ethnic relations
in which race and ethnicity no longer carry significant social and economic conse-
quences for people; blacks, by contrast, see race and ethnicity as still very much a
major determinant of their life chances.
The division between blacks and whites, however, no longer dominates so thor-
oughly the content of race and ethnic relations in the United States as it had for
most of the twentieth century. Almost from its very beginnings, American society
was ethnically diverse. But for the past several decades, large-scale immigration
has transformed it into a profoundly more heterogeneous nation. Literally dozens
of new groups, varied in racial and ethnic characteristics, have reconfigured the
U.S. population. Virtually no region of the country and no community has been un-
affected by this newest influx of immigrants. With increasing ethnic diversity has
come public debate—often passionate and shrill—over issues of affirmative action,
multiculturalism, and immigration itself. With the burgeoning of American ethnic
diversity have also come new problems of ethnic division and conflict.
These were no better illustrated than in the public response to the terrorist at-
tack on the United States on September 11, 2001. When it was realized that the
perpetrators of the attack were associated with Arab Muslim terror networks,
Arab Americans, one of America’s newest ethnic populations, became widespread
targets of verbal and, in some cases, physical abuse. In the aftermath of the destruc-
tion of the World Trade Center in New York—in which almost 3,000 people were
killed—threats were made against stores owned by Arabs and against Muslim
schools, several mosques were firebombed, and people who appeared to be Arab
were set upon. In several cases airline passengers and flight crews refused to fly
with Arab passengers, and the Arabs were removed from the flights (Harden and
Sengupta, 2001). People were verbally or physically attacked who were not even
Arab or Muslim but were mistaken for them. Sikhs, for example, followers of an
Indian religion that has no relation to Islam, had to struggle to explain to an un-
comprehending public that despite their turbans and beards they were not followers
of Islam and were in no way associated with the views of Muslim extremists
(Goodstein and Lewin, 2001). A national public opinion poll found that more than
one-third of Americans felt they now had less trust in Arabs living in the United
States, and a majority supported requiring people of Arab descent, even if they were
U.S. citizens, to be subjected to special, more intensive security checks at airports
(Gallup Organization, 2001c).
Seven years after that fateful day in 2001, Arab Americans and Muslims in gen-
eral remain the targets of suspicion, stereotyping, and negative reactions. Almost
one-quarter of Americans candidly admit that they would not like to have a
Muslim as a neighbor; nearly one-third say they would feel nervous if they knew a
Muslim man was flying on the same airplane as themselves; and four in ten
Americans favor more rigorous security measures for Muslims than for other U.S.
citizens (Saad, 2006).
stemming from race and ethnicity are the most severe, persistent, and irresolvable
facing the society. In recognizing the critical nature of these problems, however,
many forget or fail to observe that they are not unique to the United States. Most
of the modern world’s most deadly conflicts in the past few decades have been
rooted in ethnic divisions. One of the most devastating conflicts of recent times con-
tinues to rage in Iraq, for example, where the U.S. invasion in 2003 ignited a clash
of religiously based ethnic groups that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of
deaths and the displacement of millions. Other ongoing ethnic conflicts, marked
by periodic outbursts of violence, occur in Sri Lanka, India, Burundi, Rwanda,
Angola, Sudan, Nigeria, Lebanon, Kenya, Bosnia, Spain, Northern Ireland,
Indonesia, and Russia. Moreover, much of Western Europe, like the United States
and Canada, has been affected by a greatly increased flow of immigration, made up
of people sharply different racially and ethnically from the native population. This
has produced social tensions that have sparked episodes of ethnic violence and anti-
immigrant political movements. As we look at the contemporary world, it becomes
evident that ethnic conflict in some degree is a basic feature of almost all modern
societies with diverse populations.1
RESURGENT ETHNICITY Social scientists had maintained for many years that indus-
trialization and the forces of modernization would diminish the significance of race
and ethnicity in heterogeneous societies (Deutsch, 1966). They felt that with the
breakdown of small, particularistic social units and the emergence of large, imper-
sonal bureaucratic institutions, people’s loyalty and identity would be directed pri-
marily to the national state rather than to internal racial and ethnic communities.
The opposite trend, however, seems to have characterized the contemporary
world.2 Indeed, the past fifty years have witnessed the emergence of ethnic con-
sciousness and division around the globe on a scale unprecedented.
In developed nations, ethnic groups thought to be well absorbed in the national
society have reemphasized their cultural identity, and new groups have demanded
political recognition. In the United States the emergence of black ethnic conscious-
ness in the 1960s stimulated ongoing social movements among other ethnic groups,
including Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, American Indians, and even those
of European origin. A new wave of immigration begun in the 1970s further height-
ened U.S. ethnic issues. In Western Europe, ethnically based political movements be-
came evident in Britain, France, Spain, and Belgium. Throughout Eastern Europe,
the late 1980s brought massive economic and political change, rekindling ethnic
loyalties that had been suppressed for several decades. And in Canada, the tradi-
tional schism dividing English- and French-speaking groups widened, threatening
to break up the Canadian nation.
1
The seriousness of ethnic conflict in the modern world is highlighted by the fact that, during the five
decades from 1945 to 1994, perhaps as many as 20 million people died as a result of ethnic violence
(Williams, 1994).
2
Connor (1972), in fact, contends there is much evidence to support the thesis that modernization re-
sults in increasing demands for ethnic separatism. Blumer (1965) has also shown that industrialization
does not necessarily lead to more benign ethnic relations or to displacement of the established ethnic
order.
6 part i the nature of ethnic relations
In the developing nations, too, the ethnic factor has emerged with great
strength. World War II marked the end of several centuries of imperialist domina-
tion of non-Western peoples by European powers, and many new nations were cre-
ated in Africa and Asia, the political boundaries of which were often carved out of
the administrative districts of the old colonial states. Many of these artificial bound-
aries were drawn with little consideration of the areas’ ethnic composition. As a re-
sult, the new nation-states often found themselves faced with the problem of inte-
grating diverse cultural groups, speaking different languages and even maintaining
different belief systems, into a single national society. The upshot has been numer-
ous ethnic conflicts.
In short, racial and ethnic forces have emerged with great power in the modern
world. In all societies they are important—in many cases the most important—
bases of both group solidarity and cleavage. As we look ahead, their impact is not
likely to diminish throughout the twenty-first century.
Basic Questions
1. What is the nature of intergroup relations in multiethnic societies? Ethnic rela-
tions commonly take the form of conflict and competition. Indeed, we can
easily observe this by following the popular media accounts of ethnic relations
in the United States and other nations, which are usually descriptions of hos-
±±
±
Table 1.1 ±±± Ethnic Diversity of Selected Nation-States
tility and violence. However, intergroup relations are never totally conflictual.
Ethnic groups do not exist in a perpetual whirlwind of discord and strife; co-
operation and accommodation also characterize ethnic relations. Just as we
will be concerned with understanding why conflict and competition are so
common among diverse groups, we will also investigate harmonious conditions
and the social factors that contribute to them.
2. How are the various ethnic groups ranked, and what are the consequences of
that ranking system? In all multiethnic societies, members of various groups are
treated differently and receive unequal amounts of the society’s valued re-
sources—wealth, prestige, and power. In short, some get more than others and
are treated more favorably. Moreover, this inequality is not random but is well
established and persists over many generations. A structure of inequality
emerges in which one or a few ethnic groups, called the dominant group or
groups, are automatically favored by the society’s institutions, particularly the
state and the economy, whereas other ethnic groups remain in lower positions.
These subordinate groups are called ethnic minorities. We will be concerned
with describing this hierarchy and determining how such systems of ethnic in-
equality come about.
3. How does the dominant ethnic group in a multiethnic society maintain its place at
the top of the ethnic hierarchy, and what attempts are made by subordinate
groups to change their positions? The dominant group employs a number of di-
rect and indirect methods (various forms of prejudice and discrimination) to pro-
tect its power and privilege. This does not mean, however, that subordinate
groups make no attempts to change this arrangement from time to time. In fact,
organized movements—by African Americans in the United States or Catholics in
Northern Ireland, for example—may challenge the ethnic hierarchy. One of our
chief objectives, then, will be to examine the ways in which systems of ethnic in-
equality are maintained and how they change.
4. What are the long-range outcomes of ethnic interrelations? When ethnic groups
exist side by side in the same society for long periods, either they move toward
some form of unification or they maintain or even intensify their differences.
These various forms of integration and separation are called assimilation and
pluralism. Numerous outcomes are possible, extending from complete assimi-
lation, involving the cultural and physical integration of the various groups, to
extreme pluralism, including even expulsion or annihilation of groups. Usually,
less extreme patterns are evident, and groups may display both integration and
separation in different spheres of social life. Again, our concern is not only
with discerning these outcomes, but also with explaining the social forces that
favor one or the other.
A Comparative Approach
The study of race and ethnic relations has a long tradition in American sociology,
beginning in the 1920s with the research of Robert Park, Everett Hughes, and Louis
Wirth. These scholars were among the first to focus attention on the relations
among ethnic groups, particularly within the ethnic mélange of large U.S. cities
8 part i the nature of ethnic relations
such as New York and Chicago. The sociology of race and ethnic relations has pro-
gressed enormously since that time, and it now constitutes one of the chief subareas
of the sociological discipline.
With few exceptions, however, American sociologists have continued to con-
centrate mainly on American groups and relations, often neglecting the analysis of
similarities and differences between the United States and other heterogeneous soci-
eties. But if we are to understand the general nature of race and ethnic relations, it
is necessary to go beyond the United States—or any particular society—and place
our analyses in a comparative, or cross-societal, framework. It is now obvious that
ethnic diversity, conflict, and accommodation are worldwide phenomena, not un-
ique to American society. However, because most research in race and ethnic rela-
tions has been the product of American sociologists dealing with the American ex-
perience, we are often led to assume that patterns evident in the United States are
similar in other societies.
This book adopts a comparative perspective in which the United States is seen as
one among many contemporary multiethnic societies. Because readers are likely to be
most familiar with American society, however, the center of attention will fall most
intently on American groups and relations. Even in those chapters in which other so-
cieties are the major focus (Part III), attention will be drawn to U.S. comparisons.
A comparative approach not only enables us to learn about race and ethnicity
in other societies, but also provides us with a sharper insight into race and ethnicity
in the United States. It has often been observed that we cannot begin to truly under-
stand our own society without some knowledge of others. Moreover, in addition to
the differences revealed among societies, similarities may also become apparent. As
the sociologists Tamotsu Shibutani and Kian Kwan have pointed out, comparing
American ethnic relations with those of other societies “reveals that patterns of hu-
man experience, though infinitely varied, repeat themselves over and over in diverse
cultural contexts” (1965:21). Discovering such generalizable patterns of the human
experience is the ultimate aim of all sociological efforts.
ETHNIC GROUPS
Although they are now familiar and commonly used, the terms ethnic group and
ethnicity are relatively new, not even appearing in standard English dictionaries un-
til the 1960s (Glazer and Moynihan, 1975). Groups generally referred to today as
“ethnic” were previously thought of as races or nations, but these terms clearly
have different meanings.
Such unique cultural traits are not trivial but are fundamental features of social life
such as language and religion.
Unique cultural traits, however, are not sufficient alone to delineate ethnic
groups in a modern, complex society. Can we speak of physicians as an ethnic
group? or truck drivers? or college students? Obviously, we would consider none
of these categories “ethnic” even though they are composed of people who exhibit
some common behavioral traits that identify them uniquely within the larger
society. Clearly, we need further qualifications for distinguishing ethnic groups.
themselves and are defined by others in ethnic terms. Many Americans continue to
think of and identify themselves as ethnics even though they exhibit little or no un-
derstanding of or interest in their ethnic culture. Do third- or fourth-generation
Irish Americans, for example, really share a common culture with their first-
generation ancestors? Wearing a button on St. Patrick’s Day proclaiming “I’m
proud to be Irish” is hardly a display of the traits of one’s Irish American forebears.
Yet an ethnic identity may remain intact for such persons, and they may continue to
recognize their uniqueness within the larger society. Thus, despite the lack of a
strong cultural factor, the sense of Irish American identity may be sufficient to sus-
tain an Irish American ethnic group.
We thus have two views of the ethnic group: (1) it is an objective unit that can
be identified by a people’s distinct cultural traits, or (2) it is merely the product of
people’s thinking of and proclaiming it as an ethnic group. To avoid the extreme of
either of these views, sociologist Pierre van den Berghe defines the ethnic group as
both an objective and a subjective unit: “An ethnic group is one that shares a cul-
tural tradition and has some degree of consciousness of being different from other
such groups” (1976:242). As he points out, it is foolish to think that ethnic groups
simply arise when people so will it. Fans of a particular football team may feel a
sense of commonality and even community, but they surely do not compose an eth-
nic group. In short, there must be some common cultural basis and sense of ances-
try to which ethnic group members can relate. As van den Berghe notes, “There can
be no ethnicity (or race) without some conception and consciousness of a distinc-
tion between ‘them’ and ‘us.’ But these subjective perceptions do not develop at
random; they crystallize around clusters of objective characteristics that become
badges of inclusion or exclusion” (1978:xvii). Although ethnic boundaries are very
flexible, they are always founded on a cultural basis. At the same time, however, an
ethnic group cannot exist in an objective sense independent of what its members
think and believe. There must be a sense of commonality, and such a feeling of one-
ness arises generally through the perception of a unique cultural heritage.
TERRITORIALITY Ethnic groups often occupy a distinct territory within the larger
society. Most of the multiethnic societies of Europe consist of groups that are re-
gionally concentrated. Basques and Catalans in Spain, Welsh and Scots in Britain,
and Flemings and Walloons in Belgium are groups that maintain a definable terri-
tory within the greater society. Such multiethnic societies are quite different from
the United States, Canada, or Australia, where ethnic groups have for the most
part immigrated voluntarily and, though sometimes concentrated in particular
areas, are not regionally confined.
When ethnic groups occupy a definable territory, they also maintain or aspire to
some degree of political autonomy. They are, in a sense, “nations within nations.” In
some societies, the political status of ethnic groups is formally recognized. Each
group’s cultural integrity is acknowledged, and provision is made for its political re-
presentation in central governmental bodies. Such societies are best referred to not
only as multiethnic, but also as multinational (van den Berghe, 1981).
12 part i the nature of ethnic relations
Ethnicity as a Variable
Each of these characteristics—unique culture, sense of community, ethnocentrism,
ascribed membership, and territoriality—is displayed in varying degree by different
ethnic groups. These traits are variables that not only differ from group to group,
but also change at various historical times within any single ethnic group. Thus, we
should not expect to find all ethnic groups in a society equally unique in cultural
ways, strongly self-conscious and recognized by out-groups, or even ethnocentric.
The extent to which ethnic groups are noticeable and maintain a strong conscious-
ness among members depends on both in-group and out-group responses. Some
ethnic groups seek rapid assimilation and are accepted into society’s mainstream
relatively quickly. Others, however, may retain their group identity for many gen-
erations because of rejection by the dominant group, their own desire to maintain
the ethnic community, or a combination of these two. Jews, for example, have
maintained a strong group consciousness in most societies, largely as a result of
the historically consistent hostility to which they have been subjected but also be-
cause they have consciously sought to preserve their group identity.
groups may be both collectivities and categories. No single Italian American, for
example, can interact with every other Italian American. At the level of interaction,
then, there are really many smaller Italian American ethnic groups or communities.
All Italian Americans, however, can recognize similarities of culture and behavior
among themselves, can identify themselves as Italian Americans, and can maintain
a sense of group solidarity. Members of out-groups may also recognize these simi-
larities and identify an Italian American ethnic group. There is, then, in addition to
numerous ethnic communities, one larger, more abstract collectivity called Italian
Americans. Going one step further, journalists, pollsters, or even social scientists
may enumerate a group referred to as Italian Americans, regardless of the degree
of ethnic identification of the millions of individuals who make up this category.
INDIVIDUAL ETHNICITY For persons in multiethnic societies, the ethnic group be-
comes a key source of social-psychological attachment and serves as an important
referent of self-identification. Put simply, people feel naturally allied with those
who share their ethnicity and identify themselves with their ethnic group. Their be-
havior is thus influenced by ethnicity in various areas of social life. However, just
as ethnicity differs in scope and intensity at the group level, it also plays a varying
role for individuals. For some, it is a major determinant of behavior, and most so-
cial relations will occur among those who are ethnically similar. For others, ethnic-
ity may be insignificant, and they may remain essentially devoid of ethnic con-
sciousness. For most people in multiethnic societies, however, the ethnic tie is
important in shaping primary relations—those that occur within small, intimate so-
cial settings such as the family and the peer group. These relations include one’s
choice of close friends, marital partner, residence, and so on.
There are certainly other groups in modern societies to which people feel a
sense of attachment and that provide a source of identification. These include
one’s social class, gender, age, and occupation. Like ethnic groups, these also be-
come bases of solidarity and societal cleavage. But in multiethnic societies, ethnicity
is a primary base of loyalty and consciousness for most people and thus serves as a
strong catalyst for competition and conflict. Moreover, ethnicity is usually interre-
lated and overlaps with these other sources of group identification and attachment.
Most important, ethnicity is a basis of ranking, in which one is treated accord-
ing to the status of his or her ethnic group. In no society do people receive an equal
share of the society’s rewards, and in multiethnic societies, ethnicity serves as an ex-
tremely critical determinant of who gets “what there is to get” and in what
amounts. In this sense, ethnicity is a dominant force in people’s lives whether or
not they are strongly conscious of their ethnic identity and regardless of the degree
to which ethnicity shapes their interrelations with others.
RACE
Without question, race is one of the most misunderstood, misused, and often dan-
gerous concepts of the modern world. It is not applied dispassionately by laypeople
or even, to a great extent, by social scientists. Rather, it arouses emotions such as
hate, fear, anger, loyalty, pride, and prejudice. It has also been used to justify some
of the most appalling injustices and mistreatments of humans by other humans.
14 part i the nature of ethnic relations
The idea of race has a long history, extending as far back as ancient civiliza-
tions. It is in the modern world, however—specifically, the last two centuries—
that the notion has taken on real significance and fundamentally affected human
relations. Unfortunately, the term has never been applied consistently and has
meant different things to different people. In popular usage, it has been used to de-
scribe a wide variety of human categories, including people of a particular skin
color (the Caucasian “race”), religion (the Jewish “race”), nationality (the British
“race”), and even the entire human species (the human “race”). As we will see,
none of these applications is accurate and meaningful from a social scientific stand-
point. Much of the confusion surrounding the idea of race stems from the fact that
it has both biological and social meanings. Although it is impossible to do justice to
the controversies surrounding the notion of race in a few pages, several of the more
apparent problems attached to this most elusive of ideas can be briefly explored.
THE BASES OF RACIAL CLASSIFICATION That a person from one genetic population
can interbreed with a person from any other population creates a second difficulty
in dealing with the notion of race: answering the question, “What are the charac-
teristics that differentiate racial types?” Physical anthropologists distinguish major
categories of human traits as either phenotypes—visible anatomical features such as
skin color, hair texture, and body and facial shape—or genotypes—genetic specifi-
cations inherited from one’s parents. Races have traditionally been classified chiefly
on the basis of the most easily observable anatomical traits, like skin color; internal
and blood traits have been de-emphasized or disregarded. Today, the study of
human biological diversity rejects the approach that stresses the classification of
chapter 1 introduction 15
individuals into specific categories based on assumed common ancestry and empha-
sizes, instead, efforts to explain human differences (Kottak and Kozaitis, 1999).
This has occurred mainly because there is simply no agreement on which traits
should be used in defining races.
Attempts to clearly categorize humans have proved futile because differences
among individuals of the same group (or “racial type”) are greater than those
found between groups (King, 1981; Marks, 1995).3 As biologist Daniel Blackburn
(2000) has explained, all of the popularly used physical features to define races
(e.g., skin pigmentation, hair type, lip size) show gradients of distribution within
population groups within which sharp distinctions cannot be drawn. Despite obvi-
ous physical differences between people from different geographic areas, most hu-
man genetic variation occurs within populations. “Morphological features do vary
from region to region,” notes James Shreeve, “but they do so independently, not in
packaged sets” (1994:58). Specific human populations can be distinguished, but, as
geneticists Michael Bamshad and Steve Olson have explained, “individuals from
different populations are, on average, just slightly more different from one another
than are individuals from the same population” (2003:78).
Physical differences among people obviously exist, and these differences are sta-
tistically clear among groups. It is true that, through a high degree of inbreeding
over many generations and as adaptations to different physical environments,
groups with distinctive gene frequencies and phenotypic traits are produced. There
are evident differences, for example, between a “typical” black person and a “typi-
cal” white person in the United States. People may be said, therefore, to fall into
statistical categories by physical type.
But these statistical categories should not be mistaken for actual human group-
ings founded on unmistakable hereditary traits. Racial categories form a continuum
of gradual change, not a set of sharply demarcated types. Physical differences
between groups are not clear-cut but instead tend to overlap and blend into one an-
other at various points. Petersen aptly notes that humans are not unique in this re-
gard: “It follows from the theory of evolution itself that all biological divisions,
from phylum through subspecies, are always in the process of change, so there is
almost never a sharp and permanent boundary setting one off from the next”
(1980:236). Human subspecies, then, are not discrete units but, as King notes, are
arbitrarily differentiated parts of one continuous unit, the human species. “No sys-
tem of classification, no matter how clever, can give them a specificity and a sepa-
rateness that they do not have” (1981:10).
The popular division of the human population into three major racial group-
ings—Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid—is thus imprecise and subjective.
Moreover, this scheme excludes large populations that do not easily fit into a sim-
ple tripartite arrangement. Where, for example, should East Indians, a people with
Caucasian features but with dark skin, be placed? Or where do groups thoroughly
mixed in ancestry, like most Indonesians, fit? Because all human types are capable
of interbreeding, there are simply too many marginal cases like these that do not
3
The Human Genome Project, which has been mapping DNA, has drawn even sharper attention to the
fact that diversity within so-called racial groups is greater than between them.
16 part i the nature of ethnic relations
THE POPULAR BELIEF IN RACE Most simply, people attach significance to the con-
cept of race and consider it a real and important division of humanity. And, as
long as people believe that differences in selected physical traits are meaningful,
they will act on those beliefs, thereby affecting their interrelations with others. In
a famous maxim, the sociologist W. I. Thomas keenly asserted that “if men define
situations as real they are real in their consequences” (Thomas and Znaniecki,
1918:79). If, for example, those classified as black are deemed inherently less intel-
ligent than those classified as white, people making this assumption will treat
blacks accordingly. Employers thinking so will hesitate to place blacks in important
occupational positions; school administrators thinking so will discourage blacks
from pursuing difficult courses of study; white parents thinking so will hesitate to
send their children to schools attended by blacks; and so on.
The creation of such categories and the beliefs attached to them generate what
sociologists have called the self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton, 1968). This refers to a
process in which the false definition of a situation produces behavior that, in turn,
makes real the originally falsely defined situation. Consider the aforementioned
case. If blacks are considered inherently less intelligent, fewer community resources
chapter 1 introduction 17
will be used to support schools attended primarily by blacks on the assumption that
such support would only be wasted. Poorer quality schools, then, will inevitably
turn out less capable students, who will score lower on intelligence tests. The
poorer performance on these tests will “confirm” the original belief about black in-
feriority. Hence the self-fulfilling prophecy. The notion of black inferiority is rein-
forced, and continued discriminatory treatment of this group rationalized.4
The anthropologist Robert Redfield noted that “it is on the level of habit, cus-
tom, sentiment, and attitude that race, as a matter of practical significance, is to be
understood. Race is, so to speak, a human invention” (1958:67). The scientific va-
lidity of race, then, is of little consequence; rather, it is the belief system of a society
that provides its significance. As Benedict put it, “Any scientist can disprove all its
facts and still leave the belief untouched” (1959:99).
4
Such reasoning and its resultant consequences are precisely what characterized—and for whites, justi-
fied—the system of racially segregated schools in the U.S. southern states before the 1960s.
18 part i the nature of ethnic relations
disappeared from view, from public discussion and from modern memory, though
their flesh-and-blood members still walk the earth” (1998:2).
What is perhaps most important regarding the social classification of races is
that the perceived physical differences among groups are assumed to correspond
to social or behavioral differences. Thus, blacks are assumed to behave in certain
ways and to achieve at certain levels because they are black; whites are assumed
to behave and achieve in other ways because they are white; and so on. “What
makes a society multiracial” notes van den Berghe, “is not the presence of physical
differences between groups, but the attribution of social significance to such physi-
cal differences as may exist” (1970:10). Redfield has drawn an apt analogy: “If
people took special notice of red automobiles, and believed that the redness of auto-
mobiles was connected inseparably with their mechanical effectiveness, then red
automobiles would constitute a real and important category” (1958:67).
It is most critical, then, to look not simply at the racial categories that different
societies employ, but also at the social beliefs attached to those categories. Such be-
liefs are the product of racist thinking, which we will consider shortly.
RACISM
Racist thinking involves principles that lead naturally and inevitably to the differen-
tial treatment of members of various ethnic groups. As we will see in Chapter 2, in
no society are valued resources distributed equally; in all cases, some get more than
others. In multiethnic societies, ethnicity is used as an important basis for determin-
ing the nature of that distribution. Ethnic groups are ranked in a hierarchy, and
their members are rewarded accordingly, creating a system of ethnic inequality.
Groups at the top compound their power and maintain dominance over those
lower in the hierarchy. Such systems of ethnic inequality require a belief system,
or ideology, to rationalize and legitimate these patterns of dominance and subordi-
nation, and racism has usually served that function.
confusions: (1) the identification of racial differences with cultural and social differ-
ences; (2) the assumption that cultural achievement is directly, and chiefly, deter-
mined by the racial characteristics of a population; and (3) the belief that physical
characteristics of a population limit and define the sorts of culture and society they
are able to create or participate in.
Racist thought is most prevalent in societies in which physical differences
among groups are pronounced, such as differences between blacks and whites in
the United States or South Africa. But racism describes any situation in which peo-
ple’s social behavior is imputed to innate, or hereditary, sources. Racist beliefs are
therefore not limited to ideas about groups commonly referred to as “races” but
can apply to any ethnic group, whether distinguishable by physical characteristics
or culture. Jews in Germany during the 1930s, for example, were physically indis-
tinct from other Germans, but this did not prevent the creation by the Nazis of an
elaborate racial ideology pertaining to the Jews. Even in the United States, as we
will see in Chapter 10, the prevalent view of Irish immigrants to America in the
nineteenth century and later, southern and eastern European immigrants, was that
they were racially inferior.
Certain beliefs regarding behavioral and personality differences between men and
women are based on the same mode of thinking as racism. Men are assumed to be
innately better qualified for certain social roles on the basis of their masculinity, and
women are seen as quite naturally occupying other roles suited to their femininity.
Although most of the behavioral differences between men and women are attributable
more to social learning than to biology, the beliefs regarding the congenital nature of
these differences are accepted uncritically by many. The belief in the innate behavioral
differences between men and women has been referred to as sexism, but it is obvious
that the foundation of this ideology is similar to that of racism.
In recent years, the term racism has often been used in a sweeping and impre-
cise fashion, describing almost any negative thought or action toward members of a
racial-ethnic minority or any manifestation of ethnic inequality, not simply as an
ideology. However, prejudice and discrimination directed at ethnic group members,
as we will see in Chapter 3, take many different forms and need not involve or be
based on racist thought.
the character of white people leads very naturally to their social dominance. The
same explanation might be used by Protestants in Northern Ireland to account for
their dominance over Catholics in various areas of social life or by South African
whites to rationalize their past dominance of nonwhites.
In the racist mode of thought, the different social and cultural environments of
groups are not of major importance in accounting for their differences in social
achievement. And, as noted earlier, the perpetuation of beliefs in group superiority
and inferiority gives rise to the substantiation of those beliefs through the self-
fulfilling prophecy.
The belief in innate group differences leads naturally to actions and policies
that are expressions of that belief. The sense of group difference, historian George
Fredrickson writes, “provides a motive or rationale for using our power advantage
to treat the ethnoracial Other in ways that we would regard as cruel or unjust if
applied to members of our own group” (2002:9). If groups are effectively portrayed
as inferior, not only can they be denied equal access to various life chances but in
some cases enslaved, expelled, or even annihilated with justification. Slave systems
of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the Americas were rationalized by ra-
cial belief systems in which blacks were seen as incapable of ever attaining the level
of civilization of whites. Similarly, the enactment in the 1920s of strict U.S. immi-
gration quotas, favoring northwestern European groups and discriminating against
those from southern and eastern Europe, was impelled by an intricate set of racist
assumptions. Northwestern Europeans were seen as innately more adaptable to the
American social system, and other groups were viewed as naturally deficient in fa-
vorable social and moral qualities.
EUROPEAN COLONIALISM During the Age of Discovery, starting in the fifteenth cen-
tury, lands were conquered by Spain, Portugal, England, France, and Holland in the
Americas and Africa, and white Europeans encountered peoples for the first time who
were not only culturally alien but physically distinct as well. At first, the justification
for subjecting these groups to enslavement or to colonial repression lay not so much in
their evident physical differences as in what was seen as their cultural primitiveness,
specifically, their non-Christian religions (Benedict, 1959; Fredrickson, 2002;
Gossett, 1963). Even the United States engaged, to a lesser extent, in the colonial
game, taking possession of the Philippines and several Caribbean islands following
its war with Spain at the end of the nineteenth century.
“WHITE MAN’S BURDEN” With the scientifically endorsed belief that social achieve-
ment was mostly a matter of heredity, the colonial policies of the European powers
were now justified. “Race,” writes anthropologist Audrey Smedley, “became a
worldview that was extraordinarily comprehensive and compelling in its explana-
tory powers and its rationalization of social inequality” (1999:253). Native people
of color were seen as innately primitive and incapable of reaching the level of civi-
lization attained by Europeans. Economic exploitation was thus neatly rationalized.
And, because nonwhites represented a supposedly less developed human evolution-
ary phase, the notion of a “white man’s burden” arose as justification for imposing
European cultural ways on these people.
In short, the idea of race appropriately complemented the political and eco-
nomic designs of the European colonial powers. Sociologist Michael Banton notes
that “the idea that the Saxon peoples might be biologically superior to Celts and
Slavs, and white races to black, was seized upon, magnified, and publicized, be-
cause it was convenient to those who held power in the Europe of that day”
(1970:20). Banton adds that the coincidental appearance of these theories with the
demise of slavery in the early and mid-nineteenth century provided a new justifica-
tion to some for subordinating former slaves.
Racism should not be thought of as an opportune invention of European colo-
nialism. As van den Berghe explains, racist thinking “has been independently dis-
covered and rediscovered by various peoples at various times in history”
(1978:12). But it was in the colonial era that the idea was received most enthusias-
tically and firmly established as a social doctrine.
chapter 1 introduction 23
EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY RACIST THOUGHT The idea that race was immutably
linked to social and psychological traits continued to be a generally accepted theory
in Europe and North America during the early years of the twentieth century, aided
by the unabashedly racist ideas of writers such as Houston Stewart Chamberlain
and Count Arthur de Gobineau in Europe and Lothrop Stoddard and Madison
Grant in the United States. Grant’s book, The Passing of the Great Race, published
in 1916, was essentially a diatribe aimed at restricting immigration of southern and
eastern European groups, mainly Catholics and Jews, who were at that time most
numerous among American immigrants. Grant divided the European population
into three racial types—Alpines, Mediterraneans, and Nordics—and he attributed
to the latter (from Northwestern Europe) the most desirable physical and mental
qualities. Consequently, he warned of the degeneration of the American population
through the influx of southern and eastern Europeans, whom he classified as infe-
rior Mediterranean and Alpine types.
The impact of Grant’s and Stoddard’s books was extended by the development
of intelligence testing during World War I by American psychologists, whose find-
ings seemed to confirm the notion of inherent racial differences. On these tests,
Americans of Northwestern European origin outscored, on average, all other ethnic
groups. This result was taken by many as empirical evidence of the superiority of
the Nordic “race.” Intelligence was now seen as primarily hereditary even though
little attention was paid to environmental factors in interpreting test results. That
northern blacks outscored southern whites, for example, was attributed not to so-
cial factors such as better educational opportunities in the North but to the selective
migration of more intelligent blacks out of the South. This argument proved false,
however, because the same differences were shown between northern and southern
whites (Montagu, 1963; North, 1965; Rose, 1968).
BOAS AND THE BEGINNING OF CHANGE During the 1920s, cultural anthropologists
began to question the biological theories of race and to maintain that social and
cultural factors were far more critical in accounting for differences in mental abil-
ity. Chief among these theorists was Franz Boas, who pointed out the lack of evi-
dence for any of the common racist assertions of the day. Gossett explains Boas’s
critical role in reversing social scientific thinking on the notion of race: “The racists
among the historians and social scientists had always prided themselves on their
willingness to accept the ‘facts’ and had dismissed their opponents as shallow hu-
manitarians who glossed over unpleasant truths. Now there arose a man who
asked them to produce their proof. Their answer was a flood of indignant rhetoric,
but the turning point had been reached and from now on it would be the racists
who were increasingly on the defensive” (1963:430).
RACE AND INTELLIGENCE: RECENT CONTROVERSIES By the 1950s, social scientists had,
for the most part, discarded ideas linking race with intelligence and other social char-
acteristics. But the issue was given new impetus in 1969 when educational psycholo-
gist Arthur Jensen (1969) published a report suggesting that heredity was the major
determinant in accounting for the collective differences in IQ between blacks and
whites. Jensen’s theory, methods, and interpretation of findings were all quickly and
thoroughly challenged (Alland, 2002; Montagu, 1975; Rose and Rose, 1978).
24 part i the nature of ethnic relations
Twenty-five years after Jensen’s report was issued, Richard J. Herrnstein and
Charles Murray published a book, The Bell Curve, which refueled the debate re-
garding the impact of race on mental ability and set off much controversy.
Herrnstein and Murray presented a kind of Social Darwinistic thesis: Intelligence,
as measured by IQ, is in large part genetic. They premised a strong relationship be-
tween IQ and various social pathologies. Following this thinking, those with lower
IQs have a greater proclivity toward poverty, crime, illegitimacy, poor educational
performance, and other social ills. Because IQ is mostly genetic, they argued, there
is no way to change the condition of those with low intelligence through educa-
tional reforms or welfare programs. Because lower-intelligence people are reproduc-
ing much faster than higher-intelligence people, the society is faced with the possibility
of a growing underclass, increasingly dependent on the more intelligent and produc-
tive classes.
Perhaps the most controversial aspects of Herrnstein and Murray’s book con-
cerned the linkage of IQ and race. The authors pointed out that the average IQ of
blacks is fifteen points lower than the average IQ of whites—a differential, they
claimed, that held up regardless of social class and even when change in average
IQ for groups is taken into account. The implication, then, is clear: Blacks are infe-
rior to whites and are thus apt to remain in a state of dependency on the nonpoor
and continue to engage in antisocial activities. Herrnstein and Murray therefore
questioned the value of welfare payments, remedial educational programs, affirma-
tive action, and other efforts designed to raise the social level of the poor, who, in
the United States, are disproportionately black.
As with Jensen earlier, Herrnstein and Murray’s thesis, findings, and conclu-
sions were overwhelmingly rejected by mainstream social scientists, who claimed
that the authors’ methods were flawed and their reasoning specious (Fischer et al.,
1996; Fraser, 1995; Jacoby and Glauberman, 1995). Moreover, many viewed the
book as much a statement of the political leanings of the authors as a work of so-
cial science. Specifically, Herrnstein and Murray were challenged on a number of
points. For one, IQ has been shown to measure only certain kinds of intelligence.
Furthermore, IQ is not fixed but is subject to variation within one’s lifetime and,
for groups, subject to change over generations. Perhaps most important, the authors
did not place sufficient weight on the environmental factors that enable people to
express their intelligence, regardless of IQ. Also, the authors reified “race,” refer-
ring to whites and blacks as if these were clear-cut, distinct genetic groups, ignoring
the countless variations within designated racial categories.
Theoretical views like Jensen’s and Herrnstein and Murray’s have appeared pe-
riodically, but the understanding that environment, not racial inheritance, is the key
influence in shaping social behavior clearly predominates in social science thinking
today (Marks, 1995; Nisbett, 2007).5 The preeminent view is that genetic differ-
ences among human groups are of minimal significance as far as behavior and intel-
ligence are concerned. Those scholars not subscribing to this view have, in van den
5
The issue of intelligence tests and differences among racial groups is well covered in Samuda (1975)
and Gould (1983). A simplified explanation of Jensen’s controversial position and a rejoinder by a
prominent geneticist are found in Jensen (1973) and Dobzhansky (1973). The arguments surrounding
The Bell Curve are detailed in Fraser (1995) and Jacoby and Glauberman (1995).
chapter 1 introduction 25
Berghe’s words, “been voices in the wilderness . . . and their views have not been
taken seriously” (1978:xxii). Yet as William Newman (1973) points out, ironically,
science itself created the myth of race that it is today still attempting to dispel.
Moreover, for many decades few sociologists questioned the prevailing ideas about
racial inequality. “Both popular and educated beliefs,” notes James McKee, “pro-
vided an unqualified confidence in the biological and cultural superiority of white
people over all others not white” (1993:27).
Cultural Racism
As scientific thinking on the issue of race has changed, a new, revised version of racist
theory has become prevalent. What has been called cultural racism rests on the notion
that the discrepancies in social achievement among ethnic groups are the result of cul-
tural differences rather than biogenetic ones (Banton, 1970; Schuman, 1982). Because
of an inability to adapt to the dominant culture, it is argued, economic and social han-
dicaps persist among certain ethnic groups. These inabilities are traced to a people’s
way of life—its culture—which hinders conformity to the norms and values of the
dominant group. Hence, these are seen as “dysfunctional cultures.”
The focus on culture rather than physical characteristics has created a type of
thinking that, although not racist in the classical sense, takes on some of the same
basic features. The ideology of cultural deprivation or dysfunctional cultures is
seemingly more benign than “old-fashioned” racism, which focuses on biological
superiority and inferiority, but critics have pointed out that the difference between
the two is not so sharp (Bobo and Smith, 1998; Ryan, 1975). They argue that cul-
tural deprivation, like traditional racist notions, emphasizes individual and group
shortcomings rather than a social system that, through subtle discrimination, pre-
vents minority groups from attaining economic and social parity with the dominant
group. The socioeconomic discrepancy between whites and blacks, for example, is,
in this view, a failure of the latter to conform to the work ethic and to obey institu-
tional authority, not inherent inferiority or racial discrimination (Sears, 2000).
Ali Rattansi points out the subtle convergence of cultural racism with classical,
biologically based racism in the implication that cultural differences are more or less
immutable:
Thus the supposed avariciousness of Jews, the alleged aggressiveness of Africans and
African Americans, the criminality of Afro-Caribbeans or the slyness of ‘Orientals,’ be-
come traits that are invariably attached to these groups over extremely long periods of
time. The descriptions may then be drawn upon as part of a common-sense vocabulary
of stereotypes that blur any strict distinction between culture and biology. (Rattansi,
2007:104–105)
Most critical is the notion that such cultural deficiencies are, if not immu-
table, certainly obdurate and not subject to rapid and straightforward change. As
Fredrickson has explained, racism need not be limited to biological determinism per
se, “but the positing, on whatever basis, of unbridgeable differences between ethnic
or descent groups—distinctions that are then used to justify their differential treat-
ment” (2002:137). As we will see in Part III, contemporary ethnic conflicts in various
world regions are based primarily on cultural differences, not racial distinctions.
26 part i the nature of ethnic relations
Recognizing cultural racism suggests that there is a wide range of racist think-
ing that can vary in form, substance, and effectiveness. It also demonstrates how the
concepts of race and ethnicity can overlap in shaping the perception of groups and
their members’ behavior and can, in turn, give rise to racist notions.
In sum, racism is a belief system that has proved tenacious, though modifiable
in style and content, in multiethnic societies. Even though popular thinking has
drifted away from the old biological racist ideas, more subtle racist notions have
taken their place. Racism, then, is a social phenomenon whose consequences con-
tinue to be felt by both dominant and subordinate ethnic groups.
SUMMARY
The major aspects of the study of race and ethnic relations are (1) the nature of re-
lations among ethnic groups of multiethnic societies; (2) the structure of inequality
among ethnic groups; (3) the manner in which dominance and subordination
among ethnic groups are maintained; and (4) the long-range outcomes of intereth-
nic relations; that is, either greater integration or greater separation.
An ethnic group is a group within a larger society that displays a common set of
cultural traits, a sense of community among its members based on a presumed com-
mon heritage, a feeling of ethnocentrism among group members, ascribed group
membership, and, in some cases, a distinct territory. Each of these characteristics
is a variable, differing from group to group and among members of the same
group.
Race is an often misused notion having biological and social meanings. Bio-
logically, a race is a human population displaying certain hereditary features distin-
guishing it from other populations. The idea is essentially devoid of significance,
however, because there are no clear boundaries setting off one so-called race from
another. Hence, there can be no agreement on what the distinguishing features of
races are, much less how many races exist. Further, the weight of scientific evidence
refutes any meaningful relationship of social and mental characteristics and race.
The sociological importance of race lies in the fact that people have imputed signif-
icance to the idea despite its questionable validity. Hence, races are always socially
defined groupings and are meaningful only to the extent that people make them so.
Racism is an ideology, or belief system, designed to justify and rationalize racial
and ethnic inequality. The members of socially defined racial categories are believed
to differ innately not only in physical traits, but also in social behavior, personality,
and intelligence. Some “races,” therefore, are viewed as superior to others.
The ideology of racism emerged most forcefully in the age of colonialism, when
white Europeans confronted nonwhites in situations of conquest and exploitation.
The idea that race was linked to social and psychological traits was given pseudo-
scientific validity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by American
and European observers, a view that was not reversed until the 1930s. Today, sci-
entific thought gives little credence to racial explanations of human behavior, stress-
ing instead environmental causes. Even though popular thinking has drifted away
from the old biological racist ideas, more subtle racist notions have taken their
place. The belief in immutable racial differences may no longer prevail, but the
chapter 1 introduction 27
idea that differences in group achievement stem from cultural deficiencies or lack of
effort by group members has become a compelling racist ideology.6
Suggested Readings
Benedict, Ruth. 1959 (1940). Race: Science and Politics. New York: Viking. A brief, classic
work by one of the most eminent American anthropologists that has had a profound im-
pact on social scientific thinking about race.
Davis, James. 2001. Who Is Black? One Nation’s Definition. University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press. Deals with the issue of racial identification and the variable, often
arbitrary, nature of racial classification in the United States as well as in other societies.
Glazer, Nathan, and Daniel P. Moynihan (eds.). 1975. Ethnicity: Theory and Experience.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. A collection of essays by prominent social
scientists that explore the concept of ethnicity.
Isaacs, Harold R. 1989. Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change. Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press. A finely written account of the strength of ethnic iden-
tity and its political consequences in contemporary societies.
Jacobson, Matthew Frye. 1998. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and
the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Through a historical
analysis, explains how the idea of “whiteness” as a racial identity in American society has
been subject to numerous changes.
Marks, Jonathan. 1995. Human Biodiversity: Genes, Race, and History. New York: Aldine
de Gruyter. Examines the biological basis of human differences, demonstrating the spe-
ciousness of the division of the world’s people into racial categories.
McKee, James B. 1993. Sociology and the Race Problem: The Failure of a Perspective.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Traces the development of the sociology of race rela-
tions, particularly in the earlier part of the twentieth century.
Montagu, Ashley. 1997. Man’s Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. 6th ed. Walnut
Creek, Calif: Alta Mira Press. A good explanation of the mythical nature of race.
Demonstrates that many alleged differences among so-called racial groups do not, in fact,
exist or are socially insignificant.
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States: From the
1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge. Illustrates the idea of race as a social con-
struct, emphasizing how race has been differently conceptualized in the United States in
response to changing political circumstances.
Rattansi, Ali. 2007. Racism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. A
clearly written, brief explanation of the history of the concept of race and its various usages.
Includes a description of the various forms of racism, including cultural and institutional.
Smedley, Audrey. 1999. Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview. 2nd
ed. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. A thorough exposition of the origins and social ap-
plications of racial ideas and racist ideologies. Shows, through historical analysis, how
race, until the last few decades, had been an effective social construction that rationalized
the power of dominant groups over others.
van den Berghe, Pierre. 1981. The Ethnic Phenomenon. New York: Elsevier. One of many
significant works on race and ethnic relations by van den Berghe. Includes his controver-
sial sociobiological interpretation of ethnicity.
6
As new genetic information is revealed through studies of DNA, many scientists are concerned that
people may begin to disregard environmental influences as they fixate on genetic ones, thereby creating
the bases for a reenergized biological racism (Harmon, 2007).
2
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CHAPTER
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Ethnic
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± Stratification
Majority and Minority
A prominent sociologist has suggested that the first questions asked by sociology
were these: “Why is there inequality among men? Where do its causes lie? Can it
be reduced, or even abolished altogether? Or do we have to accept it as a necessary
element in the structure of human society?” (Dahrendorf, 1968:152). Such ques-
tions remain fundamental to sociological inquiry and are particularly critical in the
study of race and ethnic relations.
Humans are unequal, of course, in many ways. They differ in physical features
and in mental capacities, talent, strength, musical aptitude, and so on. All these in-
equalities are a product of both social learning and genetic inheritance, although the
significance of each of these factors is, as we have now seen, not always clear.
Perhaps more important, however, people are also unequal in their access to social
rewards, that is, various forms of wealth, power, and prestige. These inequalities,
all primarily of social origin, are of greatest consequence in accounting for who
we are and who we ultimately may be as members of our society.
STRATIFICATION SYSTEMS
In all societies people receive different shares of what is valued and scarce. This un-
equal distribution of resources creates a system of stratification. A rank order, or
hierarchy, emerges in which people are grouped on the basis of how much of so-
ciety’s rewards they receive. Those at the top receive the most of what there is to
get, and those at the bottom the least. Societies may comprise any number of strata,
but in all cases this system of inequality is structured. That is, stratification is not
random, with groups and individuals occupying different positions by chance;
rather, social institutions such as government, the economy, education, and religion
28
chapter 2 ethnic stratification 29
operate to ensure the position of various groups in the hierarchy. Moreover, the
system of stratification in all societies is legitimized by an ideology that justifies
the resultant inequality. The pattern of stratification in a society therefore remains
stable for many generations.
Modern societies are stratified along several dimensions, the most consequential
of which is class stratification, in which groups are ranked on the basis of income,
wealth, and occupation. Gender and age are other important dimensions of stratifi-
cation. Multiethnic societies are also stratified on the basis of ethnicity, and it is on
this dimension that we will primarily focus.
explanation for social inequality centers on the belief that the society’s opportunity
structure is open, providing equal chances for all to achieve material success or polit-
ical power, regardless of their social origins. This presumably being the case, each
person controls his or her placement in the social hierarchy. Social success, then, is
explained as the result of one’s willingness to work hard; failure is the product of
lack of ambition or desire to improve oneself. Differences in wealth and power are
not denied, but they are seen as a result of individual capabilities and efforts rather
than the workings of a class system that ordinarily engenders success for the wellborn
and failure for the poor. In reality, however, the opportunity structure is hardly
equal, and the dominant values of individualism, competition, and achievement favor
those who are well off and can easily avail themselves of the opportunities for suc-
cess. As we will see, just as there are ideologies that explain and rationalize inequal-
ities in social class, so too there are ideologies that explain the differential treatment
of groups on the basis of ethnicity. These ideologies generally constitute some form of
racism, the basic components of which were discussed in Chapter 1.
To summarize, social stratification is a system of structured inequality in which
people receive different amounts of society’s valued resources. This inequality is rel-
atively stable over long periods and gives rise to social classes—groups of people of
approximately equal income and wealth. In multiethnic societies, ethnicity becomes
an additional—and critical—basis of stratification. Differential power underlies all
forms of inequality, and the system is underwritten by an ideology—propounded by
the dominant group but generally accepted by others—that justifies differences in
social rewards.
Minority Groups
DIFFERENTIAL TREATMENT Minority groups are those groups in a multiethnic society
that, on the basis of their physical or cultural traits, receive fewer of the society’s
rewards. In a classic definition, Louis Wirth defined a minority group as “a group
chapter 2 ethnic stratification 31
of people who, because of their physical or cultural characteristics, are singled out
from the others in the society in which they live for differential and unequal treat-
ment, and who therefore regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination”
(1945:347). Members of minority groups disproportionately occupy poorer jobs,
earn less income, live in less desirable areas, receive an inferior education, exercise
less political power, and are subjected to various social indignities. These inequal-
ities are the result of their social mark—the physical or cultural features that distin-
guish them. Moreover, as Wirth pointed out, minority group members are con-
scious of the fact that they are differentially treated.
SOCIAL DEFINITION The physical or cultural traits on which minority status is based
are socially defined. Thus any characteristic may serve as the basis of minority status
as long as it is perceived as significant. Let us suppose that in society X, hair color is
considered a meaningful distinguishing feature. If blond hair is deemed more desir-
able than black or brown, those with black or brown hair may be singled out and
treated differentially for no other reason than that their hair is not blond. The black-
haired and brown-haired populations of society X are minority groups.
DIFFERENTIAL POWER Minority groups are afforded unequal treatment because they
lack the power to negate or counteract that treatment. Blond-haired persons in our
fictional society can continue to treat nonblonds as less than desirable types and
withhold various forms of social rewards only if they maintain sufficient power to
do so. Minority status, then (like all forms of stratification), is above all a reflection
of differential power. In a dominant-minority system one group possesses sufficient
power to impose its will on others.
Types of Minorities
In its sociological meaning, the term minority can be applied to a variety of social
groups. Our chief concern is with ethnic minorities, those groups singled out and
treated unequally on the basis of their cultural or physical differences from the
32 part i THE NATURE OF ETHNIC RELATIONS
Dominant Groups
In the study of ethnic relations, it has been most common for sociologists to focus
primarily on minority groups. Ethnic relations, however, involve not only the pro-
blems of those at the bottom of the ethnic hierarchy, but also the manner in which
those at the top maintain their dominance. Obviously, the existence of minority
groups implies a majority group. In this regard, Hughes and Hughes have noted:
“It takes more than one ethnic group to make ethnic relations. The relations can
be no more understood by studying one or the other of the groups than can a chem-
ical combination by study of one element only, or a boxing bout by observation of
only one of the fighters. Yet it is common to study ethnic relations as if one had to
know only one party to them” (1952:158).
In the United States, for example, black-white relations for many decades were
portrayed as “the black problem in America,” and most studies dealt with the so-
cial and psychological problems faced by blacks because of their minority status.
Only in the 1960s did sociologists begin to show that intergroup relations between
blacks and whites were just as much a white problem because it was the dominant
white group that controlled the character and course of those relations more than
did blacks themselves. Our major concern is not the unique character of particular
ethnic groups per se as much as it is the social situation within which different
groups interact. It is thus necessary to look carefully at the nature and functions of
dominant as well as minority ethnic groups.
Most sociologists refer to a society’s majority group as the dominant group,
and that usage is adopted here. This avoids the tendency to think in numerical
terms in cases where the dominant group may not be a numerical majority. For
consistency, we might also refer to minority groups as subordinate groups, implying
the existence of a power relationship rather than a numerical one. However, be-
cause the term minority is so firmly fixed in the sociological literature as well as in
popular usage, we will continue to use it.
Most simply, then, we can define the dominant ethnic group as that group at
the top of the ethnic hierarchy, which receives a disproportionate share of wealth,
exercises predominant political authority, dominates the society’s cultural system,
and has inordinate influence on the future ethnic makeup of the society. Let us
look more closely at each element of the dominant group’s power.
POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC DOMINANCE Its power advantage in political and eco-
nomic realms enables the dominant group to acquire a disproportionate share of
the society’s wealth and to exercise maximum control of the means of production.
This does not mean, of course, that all those classified as part of the dominant eth-
nic group are equally powerful and wealthy. Rather, it means only that members of
the dominant ethnic group disproportionately enjoy those privileges. In the United
States, for example, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs), or Anglo-Americans,
historically have been, and to a great extent remain, the dominant ethnic group.
But obviously not all members of this category are part of the decision-making
elites of the polity or the economy. They are, however, disproportionately holders
of the most important positions in those institutions and are able to render deci-
sions that reflect the interests and values of Anglo-Americans generally. Thus,
34 part i THE NATURE OF ETHNIC RELATIONS
compared with other ethnic groups, Anglo-Americans own a greater share of the
society’s wealth, earn more income, acquire more and better education, work at
higher-ranking and more prestigious occupations, and generally attain more of the
society’s valued resources.
CULTURAL POWER In addition to the dominant ethnic group’s greater economic and
political power, its norms and values prevail in the society as a whole. The cultural
characteristics of the dominant group become the society’s standards. As
Schermerhorn explains, “When we speak of a ‘dominant group’ we mean that
group whose historical language, traditions, customs, and ideology are normative
for the society; their preeminence is enforced by the folkways or by law, and in
time these elements attain the position of cultural presuppositions” (1949:6).
The cultural supremacy of the dominant ethnic group in a multiethnic society
applies to major norms and values, not to every element of the society’s culture. In
any heterogeneous society, certain cultural traits of minority ethnic groups are
bound to seep into the mainstream. In the United States, to use a simple example,
egg rolls, bagels, tacos, and pizza are standard “American” fare. But items such as
foods represent only minor cultural components. There is no similar acceptance of
variety regarding the more basic aspects of culture such as language, religious val-
ues, political practices, and economic ideology. On these counts, ethnic groups are
expected to acculturate to the dominant group’s customs and ideals. In the United
States, for example, it is assumed that all groups will speak English, will maintain
Judeo-Christian ethics, will abide by democratic principles, and will accept capital-
ist values. Those who do not, remain outside the societal mainstream and may be
held in contempt. Although changes even in these areas of culture are usually evi-
dent over the long run, such changes are slow, deliberate, and may be accompanied
by controversy and open conflict. Bilingual education or bilingual government ser-
vices in the United States, for example, have often met with strong resistance.
CONTROL OF IMMIGRATION The dominant ethnic group, given its political, eco-
nomic, and cultural power, is able to regulate the flow and composition of new
members of the society (usually through immigration) and to determine the social
treatment of new groups after they have entered the society. Once its preeminence
has been established, the dominant group becomes synonymous with the “host” or
“receiving” society, or what Porter calls the charter group:
In any society which has to seek members from outside there will be varying judge-
ments about the extensive reservoirs of recruits that exist in the world. In this process
of evaluation the first ethnic group to come into previously unpopulated territory, as
the effective possessor, has the most say. This group becomes the charter group of the
society, and among the many privileges and prerogatives which it retains are decisions
about what other groups are to be let in and what they will be permitted to do.
(1965:60; see also Gordon, 1964)
No matter how liberal the immigration policies of a multiethnic society may be, cer-
tain restrictions or quotas are always imposed on groups that are highly unlike the
dominant group in culture or physical appearance. And in the same manner, those
immigrants whose origins are culturally and physically close to those of the domi-
chapter 2 ethnic stratification 35
nant group enjoy not only easier entrance, but also more rapid and less impeded
upward social mobility.1
Middleman Minorities
Certain ethnic groups in multiethnic societies sometimes occupy a middle status be-
tween the dominant group at the top of the ethnic hierarchy and subordinate
groups in lower positions. These have been referred to as middleman minorities
(Blalock, 1967; Bonacich, 1973; Bonacich and Modell, 1980; Turner and
Bonacich, 1980; Zenner, 1991).
Middleman minorities often act as mediators between dominant and subordinate
ethnic groups. They ordinarily occupy an intermediate niche in the economic system,
being neither capitalists (mainly members of the dominant group) at the top nor
working masses (mainly those of the subordinate groups) at the bottom. They play
such occupational roles as traders, shopkeepers, moneylenders, and independent pro-
fessionals. Middleman minorities therefore serve a function for both dominant and
subordinate groups. They perform economic duties that those at the top find distaste-
ful or lacking in prestige, and they frequently supply business and professional ser-
vices to members of ethnic minorities who lack such skills and resources.
Given their intermediate economic position, such groups find themselves partic-
ularly vulnerable to out-group hostility, emanating from both dominant and subor-
dinate groups. In times of stress they are natural scapegoats (Blalock, 1967). They
1
Petersen (1980) notes that the dominant group may not always be large and powerful enough to act
as a “host” to immigrants. He points to modern Israel as a case in which immigrants have been accul-
turated not to a host population but to an ideology of Zionism. Similarly, Argentina’s development in
the past 100 years has been marked by the economic and political ascendance of immigrants.
36 part i THE NATURE OF ETHNIC RELATIONS
are numerically and politically lacking in power and therefore must appeal to the
dominant group for protection, which will be provided as long as it is felt that their
economic role is necessary. But the role may still be seen as tainted, thus prompting
feelings of revulsion and discriminatory actions. Subordinate groups also view mid-
dleman minorities with disdain because they often encounter them as providers of
necessary business and professional services. Such entrepreneurs therefore come to
be seen as exploiters. In the United States, for example, Jews often operated busi-
nesses in black ghetto areas of large cities—a role increasingly assumed today by
new immigrants, especially Koreans. Conflict between these business people and
their neighborhood customers has been common.
Because they stand in a kind of social no-man’s-land, part of neither the so-
ciety’s dominant group nor a suppressed minority, middleman minorities tend to
develop an unusually strong in-group solidarity and are often seen by other groups
as clannish (Bonacich and Modell, 1980). Such in-group solidarity, as well as their
business success, creates resentment and antipathy, which in turn sustain a high
level of ethnic solidarity.
A number of groups that seem to fit the characteristics of middleman minorities
have been evident in almost all parts of the world. Jews in Europe have historically
been a classic illustration. As moneylenders in medieval times, they were a generally
despised group. They assumed this economic role, however, because for Christians,
moneylending was regarded as sinful. Such moneylending activity was nonetheless
necessary, and as non-Christians, Jews naturally came to fill this occupational niche.
The ethnic Chinese in various Southeast Asian societies, sometimes called the
“overseas Chinese,” have played a similar role (Chua, 2004; Dobbin, 1996;
Freedman, 1955; Zenner, 1991). In the Philippines, for example, the Chinese have
traditionally been highly successful in business but have also been the target of
much prejudice and discrimination by Filipinos. In Indonesia, too, the overseas
Chinese have been prominent as a middleman ethnic group. Although they make
up only 3 percent of the population of 240 million, they play a dominant role in
the economy, accounting for perhaps 70 percent of all private economic activity
(Chua, 2004; Schwarz, 1994). This has bred much resentment on the part of indig-
enous Indonesians, who view the ethnic Chinese as a cohesive and clannish group—
despite the fact that the Chinese have been in Indonesia since the nineteenth century
and in recent years have absorbed much of Indonesian culture. Episodes of violence
against the ethnic Chinese have been regular occurrences in the past few decades
(Chua, 2004; Kristof, 1998; Mydans, 1998).
Obviously, many individuals within groups that have been labeled middleman
minorities do not conform to the preeminent characteristics of this type; and even
the group as a whole may, at different times, display few of them. But the idea of
middleman minorities forces us to consider the many variations among minority
groups of a multiethnic society.
mal discriminatory treatment. Even for any single group, minority status is not a
simple matter to explain. Prejudice and discrimination may be quite strong at cer-
tain times and diminished at others depending on various economic, political, and
social conditions. Moreover, members of a particular group may experience rejec-
tion and denial in some areas of social life but not in others.
Whether a person is part of the dominant group or a minority group depends
in all cases on the social context. In some instances people will be part of one, and
in other instances they may find themselves part of another. For example, Jews in
American society are ordinarily designated a minority group. Yet from the stand-
point of blacks, who generally rank lower in economic class and prestige, Jews are
part of the dominant white group. Similarly, Appalachian whites who have mi-
grated to northern cities are often discriminated against and derisively referred to
as “hillbillies”; they are, then, a minority in that context even though they are usu-
ally white, Protestant, and Anglo-Saxon in origin; that is, indisputably part of the
society’s dominant ethnic group (Killian, 1985; Philliber and McCoy, 1981).
Group membership in a modern, complex society is rarely a simple matter of
“either-or” but instead takes the form of combinations that often yield confusing
and ambiguous statuses. Different ethnic designations alone can produce equivocal
statuses. For example, are Irish American Catholics responded to more generally as
whites (that is, part of the dominant group) or as Catholics (that is, part of a minority
group)? In different social contexts, either response may be expected. Among blacks,
Irish Catholics will be seen and interacted with primarily as white, and their religion
or national origin will be of no significance. Among white Protestants, however, their
religious identity will be stressed and their racial identity will be unimportant.
more strongly developed among members, and the competition and conflict among
ethnic groups are more sharply focused.
In most multiethnic societies, the degree of mobility between ethnic strata is
minimal. Particularly where physical differences, such as skin color, are pro-
nounced, extremely wide schisms develop between groups, and the lines of ethnic
division remain rigid and relatively impermeable for many generations. This is so
even when cultural differences are slight. African Americans, for example, are well
assimilated into the dominant culture, yet they remain more rigidly segregated than
others. In general, the more visible the differences between ethnic groups, the more
clear-cut and inflexible will be the divisions between them. Moreover, physical dif-
ferences ordinarily relate closely to the degree of inequality between the groups.
Wilson notes that “there are no known cases of racial groups in advanced nation
states having established equalitarian relationships” (1973:18).
Though it is nowhere common, ethnic mobility differs in degree in various mul-
tiethnic societies. In a few, the movement from one ethnic group to another is not
unusual. In Mexico and Peru, for example, people who may be Indians can move
into the mestizo group, the culturally and politically dominant group, merely by
dropping the use of their Indian language and adopting Spanish in its place, by
wearing shoes rather than the peasant huaraches, or sandals, and generally by prac-
ticing non-Indian ways (van den Berghe, 1978, 1979b). Physical visibility is not a
critical factor that prevents such movement. To a lesser degree, the same is true of
Brazil. Even in those societies with more rigid boundaries between ethnic groups,
mobility may be evident among those close to the dominant group in culture and
physical appearance, and such groups may be absorbed into the dominant group
over a few generations. But, in general, where groups remain culturally or physi-
cally distinct, mobility between ethnic strata is limited.
One interesting case of caste exists in Japan, where a pariah group, the
Burakumin, are indistinguishable physically from the rest of the population.
Nonetheless, the extreme discrimination imposed on this group has been justified
in terms of race. As De Vos and Wagatsuma explain, there is a commonly shared
social myth that the Burakumin “are descendants of a less human ‘race’ than the
stock that fathered the Japanese nation as a whole” (1966:xx). In the past,
Burakumin were required to wear unique identifying garb, were strictly segregated
residentially, and were limited to low-status occupations (Aoyagi and Dore, 1964).
Although they are today not as stigmatized as in the past, their social and economic
standing remains low and they still live mostly in isolated communities (Kristof,
1995; Petersen, 1997; Saito and Farkas, 2004).
Northern Ireland provides another example of a society where its two major
religio-ethnic groups, Protestant and Catholic, maintain a castelike relationship.
Social interaction other than work usually takes place among coethnics and contact
with members of the other group are very limited. Segregated neighborhoods,
schools, and recreational activities are the norm and intermarriage across ethnic
lines is severely constrained. As with the Burakumin in Japan, there are no apparent
physical distinctions that separate members of the two groups, but through subtle
and well-understood social signs, cues, and behaviors, one’s ethnic identity is
quickly established in all social situations.
The Burakumin in Japan and Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland illus-
trate how presumed group differences—though objectively slight or even nonexis-
tent—can form the basis of strong ethnic divisions. Group separation is maintained
through a perception of and belief in profound and unbridgeable differences.
Ordinarily, however, initial placement and subsequent mobility within an eth-
nic stratification system are affected greatly by visibility. Those who can be stigma-
tized on the basis of easily perceived differences are more easily discriminated
against and kept in a subordinate position than those whose visible differences are
negligible. It is for that reason that the Nazis forced German Jews, physically indis-
tinguishable from the rest of the German population, to wear yellow Stars of David
on their clothing.
SOCIETAL POWER Because all aspects of stratification are founded on power, what-
ever changes occur in the distribution of wealth, income, education, and other life
chances necessarily depend on the makeup of the society’s power elites—those who
chapter 2 ethnic stratification 41
formulate policies, guide the activities, and decide the significant issues of govern-
ment, the corporation, education, and other major societal institutions. In analyz-
ing the relationship between decision-making power and ethnicity, the key question
to be asked is, how open are the power elites to members of different ethnic
groups? To the extent that they are closed, the status of those groups in other di-
mensions of stratification will remain consistently low.
In most multiethnic societies, there is an apparent relationship between ethnic-
ity and access to important power positions. Some groups are favored over others,
and much ethnic conflict centers on the process of filling these elite posts. In the
United States, the ideology of equal opportunity does not always conform to the
reality of ethnic discrimination in elite recruitment. With slight changes from time
to time and from one elite sector to another, historically, the dominance of white
Protestants has been the general rule at the highest levels of government and the
economy.
Similar patterns can be discerned in other multiethnic societies. Israel, for ex-
ample, is a multiethnic society in which Jews of European origin have generally
ranked higher in the society’s income, occupational, educational, and political hier-
archies than Jews from North African and Middle Eastern societies (Cohen, 1968;
Goldscheider, 2002; Simon, 1978; Smooha, 1978).
INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT The link between class and ethnicity in any society is not
perfect; obviously, some do achieve significant upward mobility despite the handi-
cap of low ethnic rank. But we cannot generalize about groups as collectivities on
the basis of the achievement of an outstanding few. Popular interpretations of the
relative success or failure of ethnic groups, however, often rely on such faulty
generalizations.
For example, a widespread explanation for the inability of certain ethnic
groups to rise collectively in economic and political standing is “self-motivation”
(Schuman, 1982). It is assumed that individuals themselves, not social forces, are
mainly responsible for their social placement. The poor are poor, in this view, be-
cause they lack the motivation to improve themselves, and the wealthy are success-
ful because they have greater incentive. That a few from low-ranking minority
groups do actually achieve great social success, and that many from the dominant
group do not, serve to “confirm” this oversimplistic explanation.
42 part i THE NATURE OF ETHNIC RELATIONS
Individual talent, motivation, and ability are, of course, important factors in so-
cial success; but only after the competitive field has been severely thinned out by
ascribed characteristics such as class origin, gender, and ethnicity. Those with ad-
vantages by birth are assured relatively high achievement regardless of their individ-
ual capacities. Many in low-ranking groups may have abilities that are necessary to
high social achievement, but unless they can gain access to the proper staging of
those abilities through quality education, a good first job, and the nurturing of key
social connections, they will go unnoticed. One of the basic features of minority
groups, it must be remembered, is the social discrimination their members face in
important life chances such as these.
PRIVILEGES AND HANDICAPS In accessing the society’s rewards, members of the dom-
inant ethnic group—even those at the bottom of the economic and political hierar-
chies—often retain privileges not enjoyed by members of minority groups, even
those of upper-class standing. For example, before the 1960s in most cities of the
American South, black entertainers receiving huge salaries still could not stay at the
very hotels in which they were performing. A white person, regardless of income or
occupation, would not have experienced such exclusion on the basis of skin color.
Today, African Americans with high-status occupations—doctors, lawyers, man-
agers—commonly describe the suspicion their presence arouses in suburban, pri-
marily white, neighborhoods or prestigious shopping areas (Cose, 1993; Feagin
and Sikes, 1994).
Ethnic minority group members are burdened in other ways by their racial or
ethnic mark. In situations of interaction with dominant group members they are of-
ten viewed as representatives of their “race” or ethnic group. References made in
conversation to “your people” or questions of “how do (black people, Jews,
Chinese . . .) feel” about a particular issue assume that the minority person, simply
by virtue of the fact that he is a minority person, speaks for an entire group. Such
forms of address also imply that the minority person is an outsider, not fully part of
the social mainstream.
Because they are easily identifiable, minority group members also may suffer
the stress of collective remorse when a member of their group is portrayed in a neg-
ative light. Korean Americans (and many Asian Americans in general), for example,
spoke of the anxiety that they felt after learning of the shooting of 32 students at
Virginia Tech in 2007, collectively holding their breath, hoping that the shooter
chapter 2 ethnic stratification 43
was not Korean. Many expressed, almost apologetically, their dismay after learning
that the shooter was in fact Korean. The killer was constantly referred to by the
media as “Asian,” and later, more specifically as “Korean,” despite the fact that
he had grown up in the United States and was fully assimilated. His ethnicity, of
course, had no relation to the crime, but for the media, identifying and making re-
peated reference to it was pertinent. In contrast, consider the media treatment given
Timothy McVeigh, who bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1996, kill-
ing 168 people. Never was the fact that he was white and born and raised in the
United States, ever mentioned; it was simply not a relevant detail. Nor did all
“white” people suffer a sense of collective remorse for McVeigh’s heinous crime.
CHANGING CLASS POSITIONS The empirical link between class and ethnicity is com-
plex and subject to frequent change. The class position of particular groups or
large segments of those groups may be altered significantly from one generation
to another. For example, most members of white ethnic groups in the United
States today are part of the middle class or working class, though most of their
forebears entered the society at an appreciably lower level. A large proportion of
African Americans have also displayed a substantial change in class standing in
the past three decades.
Given such changes and the intricacies of the relationship between class and
ethnicity, we should not expect to find all members of a particular ethnic group
with the same economic and political rank or the same economic and political con-
cerns and attitudes. There is a range of classes within each ethnic group even
though, for the most part, group members remain concentrated at particular levels
of the society’s general class system.
Forms of Contact
To begin with, all systems of ethnic stratification are products of the contact of pre-
viously separated groups (Shibutani and Kwan, 1965). Put simply, the composition
of multiethnic societies depends on diverse groups coming together in some manner.
This entails the movement of people from one area to another but, more fundamen-
tally, from one political unit to another. People may move great distances and re-
main within the confines of the same political unit, as when a family in the United
States moves from New York to California. Ethnic stratification systems, however,
are created by the movement of people across national boundaries, usually bringing
with them different languages and cultural systems, or by the establishment of new
political boundaries. Multiethnic societies are formed through one or a combination
of several contact patterns.
44 part i THE NATURE OF ETHNIC RELATIONS
CONQUEST Conquest is a form of contact in which people of one society subdue all
or part of another society and take on the role of the dominant group. European co-
lonialism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries best exemplifies this pattern.
Through greater military technology, the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Belgians,
and Portuguese conquered peoples in a variety of world areas, including Asia,
Africa, Australasia, and North and South America. Indigenous groups were brought
under colonial rule and became economic appendages of the mother country.
VOLUNTARY IMMIGRATION The most common patterns by which ethnic groups come
into contact involve immigration. The migration of peoples from one society to an-
other may be either voluntary or involuntary. Voluntary immigration has been the
chief source of ethnic heterogeneity in the United States, Canada, Australia, and
New Zealand. All white ethnic groups in these societies have been the product of
voluntary immigration from European societies during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. In the United States and Canada, immigrants from Asia, Latin America,
and the Caribbean have, in recent decades, contributed even greater diversity to
these societies’ ethnically varied populations. Other societies that have relied
heavily on immigration include Argentina, Brazil, and Israel. In addition, many pre-
viously ethnically homogeneous societies, especially those of Western Europe, have
been infused with new racial and ethnic groups as a result of voluntary immigra-
tion since the end of World War II.
Outcomes of Contact
The way in which diverse ethnic groups initially meet has been shown to be a criti-
cal factor in explaining the emergence of ethnic inequality and the specific patterns
it subsequently takes.
chapter 2 ethnic stratification 45
NOEL’S MODEL Although the nature of initial group contact may be important in
giving rise to and shaping the eventual system of ethnic stratification, Donald Noel
(1968) has pointed out three additional factors: ethnocentrism, competition for
scarce societal resources, and an unequal distribution of power.
When culturally or physically dissimilar groups meet, ethnocentrism can be ex-
pected to typify intergroup attitudes. That is, divergent groups will judge each other
in terms of their own culture and their evaluations will usually be negative. The ex-
tent of these negative judgments will, however, depend on the degree of difference
between the groups: The more dissimilar they are, the more negative the judgment.
Studies measuring the degree of acceptance of members of different ethnic groups in
the United States, for example, have consistently shown those groups closest in cul-
ture and physical appearance to the dominant Anglo group (such as northwestern
Europeans) to be ranked more favorably than southern and eastern Europeans such
as Italians and Poles and considerably more favorably than African Americans,
Mexican Americans, and American Indians (Bogardus, 1959).
However, ethnocentrism alone, explains Noel, is not sufficient to produce ethnic
stratification. Groups may view one another negatively without the necessary emer-
gence of dominant-subordinate relations among them. An additional prerequisite is
46 part i THE NATURE OF ETHNIC RELATIONS
competition, structured along ethnic lines. When groups strive for the same scarce re-
sources, their interrelations take on the characteristics of competition and conflict.
Noel posits that the more intense such competition, the greater the likelihood of the
emergence of ethnic stratification. Within the competitive arena, those groups with
the greatest capacity to adapt to the social and physical environment will end up
higher in the ethnic hierarchy. Thus, in the American case, groups emigrating from
Europe arrived with different skills, which initially determined their occupational
place and subsequently enabled them to climb upward at different rates. In no case,
however, was any European group stationed below blacks, because the latter were
kept in a basically noncompetitive situation.
Differential power among the various groups is, according to Noel, the final
prerequisite for the development of ethnic stratification. Unless one can overpower
another, there is no basis for a stable rank order of ethnic groups, even if there is
competition and ethnocentrism among them. When there is a particularly wide
power gap between competing and ethnocentric groups, the emergent stratification
system is likely to be quite durable. Power breeds more power, and once estab-
lished, the dominant group uses its power to obstruct the competition of other
groups and to solidify its dominance. In the end, then, differential power among
the various groups is the most critical requirement for the emergence of ethnic strat-
ification (see also Wilson, 1973).
In sum, Noel’s theory postulates that competition for scarce resources provides
the motivation for stratification, ethnocentrism channels this competition along eth-
nic lines, and differential power determines whether one group will be able to sub-
ordinate others (Barth and Noel, 1972).
Pluralistic Minorities
Pluralistic minorities seek to maintain their cultural ways at the same time as they
participate in the society’s major political and economic institutions. Some groups
that enter multiethnic societies as voluntary immigrants adopt this position for a
time after their arrival and appeal to the dominant group to tolerate their
differences.
Some groups may carry the pluralistic idea further, opting out almost
completely from the larger cultural, economic, and political systems. Certain reli-
gious groups in the United States and Canada such as Hutterites, Amish, and
Hasidic Jews have chosen to segregate themselves even though they have not neces-
sarily been rejected by the dominant group. These groups view contact with the
larger society as a kind of contamination and a threat to their cultural integrity.
chapter 2 ethnic stratification 47
Thus, they may not use the public schools or participate in mainstream political
processes. Even economic matters may be largely self-contained within these groups
(Hostetler, 1993; Kephart and Zellner, 1994; Poll, 1969). Such groups have
achieved an accommodation with the dominant group in their society, permitting
them to practice cultural patterns that are clearly aberrant in terms of the main-
stream culture. Consider, for example, this description of the Amish:
At best, the Amish seek accommodation, or a state of equilibrium in which working
arrangements can be developed whereby they may maintain their unique group life
without conflict; in short, they seek a kind of antagonistic cooperation. The Amish
group’s aim, then, is merely tolerance for their differences, and they are not at all inter-
ested in assimilation, “Americanization,” or anything that would tend to merge them
with the American culture and society. (Smith, 1958:226)
Assimilationist Minorities
By contrast with pluralistic minorities, assimilationist minorities seek integration
into the dominant society. Wirth explained that such groups crave “the fullest op-
portunity for participation in the life of the larger society with a view to uncoerced
incorporation in that society” (1945:357–58). Thus, whereas the pluralistic minor-
ity will usually insist on endogamy and will enforce adherence to the norms and
values of the in-group, assimilationist minorities aim for eventual absorption into
the larger society.
Most Euro-American groups have maintained assimilation as their long-range
objective, though some have been more desirous than others of retaining their ethnic
heritage for several generations. Those groups closely similar to the dominant group
in culture and physical appearance will ordinarily assimilate more easily and thor-
oughly than others. Some may even reach the point of complete absorption into the
dominant group. For example, Northwestern European-origin ethnic groups (Dutch,
Scandinavian, and German) have been so completely assimilated over several genera-
tions that today they are virtually indistinguishable as ethnic units. However, such
cases are exceptional. Rarely are minority ethnic groups completely absorbed into
the dominant group, totally relinquishing their culture or physical identity. More-
over, even where assimilation is the group’s objective, the prejudice and discrimina-
tion the group encounters will often retard such efforts. In Chapter 4 the process of
assimilation and the factors that promote it are discussed at greater length.
Secessionist Minorities
Secessionist minorities desire neither assimilation nor cultural autonomy. Their aim
is a more complete political independence from the dominant society. Such groups
are usually what were earlier referred to as “nations,” not only aspiring to some
degree of political autonomy but also maintaining territorial integrity. The separat-
ist movement in the Canadian province of Quebec represents a contemporary seces-
sionist minority. In this case, a substantial element of the Quebec populace seeks
not only to retain the French language and French Canadian culture, but also to
establish an independent Quebec state. A similar movement in the Basque provinces
48 part i THE NATURE OF ETHNIC RELATIONS
of Spain seeks political autonomy for the Basque people, distinguished as they are
from the rest of Spain by language and culture (Douglas et al., 1999; Heiberg,
1989; Kurlansky, 1999). As we will see in Chapter 16, most nationalist movements
are the outgrowths of dissatisfaction on the part of ethnic groups stemming from
their minority status and treatment.
In addition to seeking separation from the larger society, a secessionist minority
may desire integration with another group or society to which it feels a closer cul-
tural and political similarity. For example, many among Northern Ireland’s minor-
ity Catholics seek to unite the six counties of Ulster (Northern Ireland) with the
Catholic-dominated Irish Republic.
Militant Minorities
Militant minorities seek as their ultimate goal not withdrawal, as do secessionist mi-
norities, but rather status as the society’s dominant group. The case of Latvia, a
small Baltic country, illustrates this. During the period when Latvia was ruled by
the Soviet Union, natives were in some ways reduced to minority status, particularly
regarding language and culture, which favored ethnic Russians. With the breakup
of the USSR, resulting in Latvian independence, a shift in political power to the na-
tive Latvian group occurred. As a result, Latvians not only replaced the Russian po-
litical elite, but also imposed language and citizenship measures that made non-
Latvians, including ethnic Russians, minorities (Chinn and Kaiser, 1996; Jubulis,
2001).
SUMMARY
Social stratification is a system of structured social inequality in which groups re-
ceive different amounts of the society’s wealth, power, and prestige and are hierar-
chically arranged accordingly. In multiethnic societies, ethnicity is a critical basis of
stratification. There is, therefore, a hierarchy of ethnic groups in which one, the
dominant group, maintains maximum power to determine the nature of interethnic
relations. Minority, or subordinate, groups rank in different places below the dom-
inant group, depending on their cultural and physical distance from it.
Dominant-minority relations are relations of power. Although there are other
bases for minority status such as gender and age, our focus is on ethnicity. On the
basis of their physical and cultural characteristics, ethnic minorities are distin-
chapter 2 ethnic stratification 49
guished from others in the society and given differential treatment. The power of
the dominant group is based on its disproportionate control of the society’s political
and economic resources and its ability to shape the society’s major norms and
values.
Ethnic rank commonly closely parallels rank in the society’s class system.
Members of minority ethnic groups are never randomly scattered throughout the
economic and political class hierarchies but tend to cluster at specific points.
Ethnic stratification is the product of contact between previously separate
groups. Initial contact may be in the form of conquest, annexation, voluntary immi-
gration, or involuntary immigration. The manner in which ethnic groups meet is a
decisive factor in explaining the shape of the system of ethnic inequality that ordi-
narily ensues. Following contact, groups engage in competition; view one another
ethnocentrically; and, ultimately, one imposes its superior power over the others,
emerging as the dominant group.
There are four types of ethnic minorities: pluralistic minorities, seeking to main-
tain some degree of separation from the larger society; assimilationist minorities,
aiming for full integration into the dominant society; secessionist minorities, seeking
political autonomy from the dominant society; and militant minorities, trying to es-
tablish dominance themselves.
Suggested Readings
Grusky, David B., and Szonja Szelényi (eds.). 2007. The Inequality Reader: Contemporary
and Foundational Readings in Race, Class, and Gender. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
A comprehensive collection of essays describing theories and practices of various forms of
social stratification, including those based on race and ethnicity.
Jackman, Mary R. 1994. The Velvet Glove: Paternalism and Conflict in Gender, Class, and
Race Relations. Berkeley: University of California Press. Analyzes how dominant groups
use persuasion, in the form of ideology, rather than force to create legitimacy and to sus-
tain systems of social inequality.
Lenski, Gerhard. 1966. Power and Privilege: A Theory of Social Stratification. New York:
McGraw-Hill. A classic work that examines the basis of structural inequality in its vari-
ous forms.
Shibutani, Tamotsu, and Kian M. Kwan. 1965. Ethnic Stratification: A Comparative
Approach. New York: Macmillan. A classic work that develops a theory of ethnic strati-
fication, drawing on case studies from around the world.
Steinberg, Stephen. 1989. The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity and Class in America. Updated
and expanded ed. New York: Atheneum. Deals with the issue of ethnic versus class fac-
tors in group mobility, leaning strongly toward the latter.
Wilson, William J. 1973. Power, Racism, and Privilege: Race Relations in Theoretical and
Sociohistorical Perspectives. New York: Free Press. Using a power-conflict approach, ex-
plains the development of racial stratification, illustrated with a comparison of the United
States and South Africa.
Zenner, Walter P. 1991. Minorities in the Middle: A Cross-Cultural Analysis. Albany: State
University of New York Press. Examines middleman minorities in a number of historical
and cultural settings.
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TOOLS OF DOMINANCE
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We have now seen that in most multiethnic societies, ethnic groups are arranged in
a hierarchy in which the dominant group receives a disproportionate share of the
society’s rewards because of its greater political, economic, and cultural power. It
is not enough, however, to simply proclaim that the dominant group is more pow-
erful, though this is, of course, the crux of the matter. We must also look at the
techniques by which dominance and subordination are maintained and stabilized
in systems of ethnic stratification.
To enforce its power and sustain its privileges, the dominant ethnic group em-
ploys certain tools:
• Widely held beliefs and values regarding the character and capacities of partic-
ular groups, which take the form of prejudices; that is, negative ideas regarding
subordinate ethnic groups and ideas expressing the superiority of the dominant
group. These beliefs often come together in a cohesive ideology of racism or
another deterministic notion; but at other times, they are applied to groups in a
somewhat disparate, unsystematic fashion.
• Actions against minority ethnic groups, including avoidance, denial, threat, or
physical attack. These actions are termed discrimination. Different forms of
discrimination may be applied, depending on how threatening the minority
group is perceived to be.
In this chapter, we look at some theories and research findings regarding preju-
dice and discrimination in multiethnic societies. This area of ethnic relations has
been the focus of much research, yielding a large amount of empirical data. In look-
ing at prejudice and discrimination, we will necessarily investigate some of the
social psychology of ethnic relations; that is, ethnic relations at the individual, or
interpersonal, level. Up to this point we have been concerned primarily with ethnic
50
chapter 3 tools of dominance 51
relations at the group, or structural, level; and our approach to prejudice and dis-
crimination will continue to emphasize the group dynamics and consequences of
these social phenomena. But here, more than in other aspects of ethnic studies, we
must pay closer attention to individual attitudes and motives, recognizing that, as
the sociologist C. Wright Mills put it, “Neither the life of an individual nor the his-
tory of a society can be understood without understanding both” (1956:3).
PREJUDICE
Most simply, prejudice involves a judgment, “based on a fixed mental image of
some group or class of people and applied to all individuals of that class without
being tested against reality” (Mason, 1970:52). It is, in other words, a generalized
belief, usually unfavorable and rigid, applied to all members of a particular group.
Although often defined as a prejudgment or preconcept founded on inadequate evi-
dence (Klineberg, 1968), prejudice is, as Berry and Tischler have pointed out,
“more emotion, feeling, and bias than it is judgment” (1978:235).
Ethnic prejudices are characterized by several specific features.
• They are categorical, or generalized, thoughts. Individuals are judged on the
basis of their group membership, not their personal attributes. A prejudicial
attitude may be directed at a particular person, but it is the person’s group and
its alleged traits that evoke this attitude rather than his or her individual actions
and qualities. Once the person’s group is known, his or her behavioral traits are
inferred. Thus, prejudice violates “the norms of rationality” (Pettigrew,
1980:821).
• They are inflexible. As the social psychologist Gordon Allport explains,
“Prejudgments become prejudices only if they are not reversible when exposed
to new knowledge” (1958:9). A prejudice is not simply an error in thought, but
is an error not subject to correction. Individuals develop emotional attachments
to certain beliefs and will not discard them in the light of contrary evidence.
People may proclaim that “some of their best friends” are members of a par-
ticular ethnic group that they generally view adversely. The implication is that
such persons do not exhibit the negative qualities ordinarily attributed to
members of their ethnic group. But instead of refuting the belief, which logic
would dictate, they serve only as “exceptions that prove the rule.” Such con-
trary evidence is recognized but excluded from the generalization; it thus has
no correcting effect (Allport, 1958).
• They are usually negative in content. That is, the specific traits ascribed to tar-
geted groups are considered inferior and socially undesirable. Of course, prej-
udices may be positive as well as negative. Ethnic group members maintain an
overly favorable image of their own group, just as they maintain overly unfa-
vorable images of certain out-groups. Indeed, all ethnic groups express ethno-
centric notions regarding their unique character. Moreover, what is often
interpreted as prejudice against out-groups may in fact be more a matter of in-
group bias; that is, favoritism toward members of one’s own group (Brewer,
1979; Jones, 1996). In studying ethnic relations, however, sociologists and
psychologists have been concerned almost exclusively with negative prejudices.
52 part i the nature of ethnic relations
Stereotypes
Stereotypes were first suggested in 1922 by political commentator Walter
Lippmann, who described them as “pictures in our heads” that we do not acquire
through personal experience. In the case of ethnic stereotypes, distinctive behavioral
traits of an ethnic group are selected by out-group members who exaggerate them
to construct what Shibutani and Kwan call “a shorthand depiction” of the group
(1965:86).
Rarely will people claim to dislike someone of another ethnic group merely be-
cause he or she is a member of that group. Instead, the adverse view will be
couched in “rational” terms. One dislikes Jews because they are “shrewd,” blacks
because they are “lazy,” or Italians because they are “loud and uncouth.” These
mental images of groups thus serve as supports for the negative beliefs that consti-
tute prejudice. Once we learn the stereotypes attached to particular groups, we tend
to subsequently perceive individual members according to those generalized images.
To stereotype someone, then, “is to attribute to that person some characteristics
which are seen to be shared by all or most of his or her fellow group members”
(Brown, 1995:82).
THE COMPETITIVE USE OF STEREOTYPES In the same way that wartime stereotypes are
used to rationalize hostility toward enemy nations, stereotypes are used by dominant
groups in multiethnic societies to sustain their competitive advantage over challeng-
ing or threatening ethnic groups. The negative images of blacks long held by whites in
the United States or South Africa have their counterparts in Northern Ireland, where
Protestants, the dominant ethnic group, have traditionally held adverse images of
Catholics. In these cases, the persistence of negative group images can be explained
as a rationale on the part of the dominant group for keeping the minority ethnic
group or groups in a subordinate position. As long as groups are perceived as unde-
serving, their social disadvantages can be justified (Devine and Sherman, 1992).
The competitive use of stereotypes may explain their very content. Simpson and
Yinger note, for example, that those groups that have successfully competed with the
dominant group cannot be labeled lazy or unintelligent, “so they are pictured as too
ambitious, and with a crafty kind of self-interested intelligence” (1985:155). This can
be seen clearly in the case of Jews in the United States and other societies where they
have exhibited an exceptional ability to achieve economic success. Allport (1958)
compares the admirable traits of Abraham Lincoln with the disliked traits of Jews
and finds them quite the same. Both are generally described as thrifty, hardworking,
eager for knowledge, ambitious, devoted to the rights of the average man, and emi-
nently successful in climbing the ladder of opportunity. The key difference, explains
Allport, is that the terms used to describe the Jews are often disparaging. Thus, thrifty
becomes “tight-fisted,” hardworking becomes “overambitious,” ambitious becomes
“pushy,” and concerned about human rights becomes “radical” (1958:184). Much
the same semantic reversals of positive traits have been used in describing Chinese
and East Indians in various Asian and African societies where they constitute eco-
nomically successful minority groups (Hunt and Walker, 1974; Kristof, 1998).
A related notion is “ambivalent stereotypes” (Fiske et al., 1999). The idea is
that one can envy and respect high-status groups for their competence, but dislike
them nonetheless. Asian Americans, as we will see in Chapter 9, are admired as a
“model minority” for their economic and intellectual accomplishments; at the same
56 part i the nature of ethnic relations
time they are often the victims of subtle discrimination. By the same token, one can
disrespect low-status groups for their incompetence, but still like them.
THE MASS MEDIA AND STEREOTYPES With their pervasiveness and enormous impact in
modern societies, the mass media—television and motion pictures, in particular—are
key conveyors of ethnic stereotypes. For example, until recently blacks in American
films traditionally played subservient characters and rarely were given starring roles ex-
cept in all-black productions (Brown, 1981; Sterngold, 1998a). Other racial and ethnic
minorities have fared little better. American Indians have been portrayed customarily
as savages and Hispanics as untrustworthy villains (Coward, 1999; Engelhardt, 1975;
Moore and Pachon, 1985). The early years of American television, the 1950s and
1960s, were marked by an almost total exclusion of minorities from the screen except
for stereotyped roles. The absence of blacks was due mainly to the fear held by net-
works and program sponsors of offending white viewers, especially in the South
(Sterngold, 1998a; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1977).
In the last four decades, the presence of ethnic minorities in sitcoms, news presen-
tations, and other programming has increased enormously, reflecting proportionately
their population segments (Dougherty, 2003; Greenberg and Brand, 1998; Wilson
and Gutiérrez, 1995). Nonetheless, the mass media continue to sustain ethnic stereo-
types. Media researcher Robert Entman has demonstrated how television news up-
holds the common stereotype of African Americans, for example, as “poor.” The
linkage of “black” and “poor” is so strong in the presentation of televised news, ex-
plains Entman, that “the white public’s perceptions of poverty appear difficult to
disentangle from their thinking about African Americans” (1997:33). Moreover, as
political scientist Martin Gilens explains, the undeserving character of welfare recipi-
ents, in the minds of many white Americans, has come to be associated specifically
with African Americans. Historically well-worn stereotypes of blacks—as lazy and
irresponsible—were first projected by the mass media in the mid-1960s when many
welfare programs were created or expanded. These negative images continue to influ-
ence the view of white Americans of the typical beneficiary of welfare (Gilens, 1999).
The stereotypical linkage of crime and violence with African Americans is similarly
bolstered by television news, especially at the local level.
The mass media, however, may also convey exaggerated positive images. De
Roche and de Roche (1991) studied episodes of five police series popular in the
1980s, comparing characterizations of black and white officers. They found that black
men in these dramas had been “counterstereotyped.” That is, not only were these men
not described with negative ghetto stereotypes, but they were portrayed in overly favor-
able terms in comparison with white officers. “In the collection of characters on which
we focused, black men are modeled for us as more bourgeois than their white counter-
parts, more self-directed and affectively well-managed, and more tasteful. . . . They
clearly confirm the traditional ideal of a stable, financially responsible husband/father,
and this in an era when female-headed, single-parent families are becoming increas-
ingly common in all social sectors” (de Roche and de Roche, 1991:86).1
1
The researchers found, however, that blacks in these police dramas tended to remain support charac-
ters, not as qualified as whites to head up their organizations.
chapter 3 tools of dominance 57
Although most observers agree that the electronic media are important trans-
mitters of ethnic stereotypes and attitudes, both positive and negative, studies have
indicated that their effect may be only to reinforce ideas already acquired before ex-
posure. Vidmar and Rokeach’s study (1974) of viewers of a popular television sit-
com of the 1970s, All in the Family, demonstrates this point. This program set a
precedent in its candid use of ethnic humor and its general treatment of ethnic-
related issues. The chief protagonist, Archie Bunker, is a humorous bigot who
voices well-established ethnic slurs and stereotypes and expresses blatant racist
ideas. The producers of the program argued that openly dealing with bigotry and
making the major character a laughable figure would serve to reduce societal prej-
udice. Poking fun at bigotry, it was felt, would force viewers to recognize their own
prejudices and thus reduce them. Others, however, argued that the program en-
couraged prejudice by introducing people, particularly children, to ideas they might
not otherwise be exposed to.
Vidmar and Rokeach hypothesized that a process of selective perception would
cause viewers to react differently to Archie Bunker’s bigotry, depending on their
prior attitudes. Viewers who were not prejudiced to begin with, they felt, would
see Bunker as a bigot and would understand the show’s satirical messages, whereas
prejudiced viewers would see Bunker as honest and candid. Two groups of respon-
dents—one made up of American adolescents, the other of Canadian adults—were
asked their reactions to the program; they were also given a set of attitudinal ques-
tions designed to measure their level of prejudice. The study’s findings confirmed
the selective-perception hypothesis: Reactions to the program varied in relation to
prior attitudes. Those less prejudiced recognized Archie Bunker as bigoted, rigid,
and domineering; those more highly prejudiced recognized him as down-to-earth,
frank, and hardworking.
Vidmar and Rokeach also hypothesized that those high in prejudice would not
watch the program as frequently as those less prejudiced. This hypothesis was based
on the well-researched notion that people expose themselves to social stimuli that
are compatible with their established views and attitudes. For example, campaign
speeches by political candidates are listened to or watched mainly by those who
are already committed to those candidates. In much the same way, it was thought
that because the show was a satire on bigotry, the more frequent viewers would be
those low in prejudice. However, Vidmar and Rokeach suggested that if many
viewers did not see the program as satire, it would be just as reasonable to predict
the opposite; that is, the more frequent viewers would be the most highly preju-
diced. Their data supported the latter view: The program seemed more appealing
to those more highly prejudiced.
This and other studies (see, for example, Sarlin and Tate, 1976) suggest that
television may only bolster ethnic stereotypes and attitudes already conveyed in
other socialization settings. Though the electronic media are unarguably pervasive,
their effectiveness in conveying the same messages to all viewers is by no means cer-
tain. Moreover, the extent and nature of television’s effect on how children of dif-
ferent racial and ethnic groups interact with each other, as well as how it affects
their attitudes toward and knowledge of different groups, are still subject to much
debate (Graves, 1999).
58 part i the nature of ethnic relations
Social Distance
Prejudice involves not simply mental perceptions of ethnic groups (the cognitive di-
mension of prejudice) but also emotions and a preparedness to act in a certain way
toward members of those groups (the affective and conative dimensions). If people
believe blacks to be lazy and shiftless, for example, they will also probably feel re-
sentment over welfare payments to blacks, who it is felt obviously do not deserve
such assistance. Similar payments to poor whites, however, may go unnoticed or
may be seen as merited.
The affective and conative dimensions of prejudice are reflections of social dis-
tance. Park (1924) first defined social distance as a degree of intimacy people are
prepared to establish in their relations with others. Feelings of social distance are,
according to Williams, “feelings of unwillingness among members of a group to ac-
cept or approve a given degree of intimacy in interaction with a member of an out-
group” (1964:29). It is, in a sense, an indication of how acceptable or objectionable
are various ethnic groups.
THE BOGARDUS SCALE In 1925 the sociologist Emory Bogardus constructed a tech-
nique to measure social distance between specific American ethnic groups. This so-
cial distance scale has continued to be used by sociologists as a general measure of
ethnic prejudice. Respondents are asked to indicate whether they would accept a
member of an ethnic out-group in varying social contexts, extending from very
close encounters to very remote ones. Bogardus asked his respondents to indicate
their willingness to interact with members of particular groups in the following
situations:
• Close kin by marriage
• Fellow club members
• Neighbors
• Workers in my occupation
• Citizens of my country
• Visitors to my country
• Persons to be excluded from my country
Each situation represents a lower degree of social intimacy, and assigning an
increasing numerical value to each allows a score to be computed for each ethnic
group. American social distance scales compiled by Bogardus and others over sev-
eral generations reveal the relative consistency of the group ranking from year to
year. WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants) are at the top of the scale, followed
by other northwestern European groups and, in descending order, southern and
eastern Europeans, Jews, and various racial-ethnic groups (Bogardus, 1925a,
1925b, 1959; Owen et al., 1981).
Studies of social distance in non-American societies indicate the similar con-
struction of a hierarchy (Bogardus, 1968; Lever, 1968; Pettigrew, 1960), but the ba-
sis of social distance may vary from one society to another. Whereas ethnic differ-
ences, particularly those with a physical basis, are the most significant criteria of
social distance for Americans, in other societies religion, class, or political ideology
may be more important factors in separating people (Banton, 1967).
chapter 3 tools of dominance 59
DISCRIMINATION
Whereas prejudice is the attitudinal element in enforcing ethnic stratification, dis-
crimination is the active, or behavioral, element. Discrimination, most basically, is
behavior aimed at denying members of particular ethnic groups equal access to so-
cietal rewards. Thus it goes well beyond merely thinking unfavorably about mem-
bers of certain groups. Dominant groups carry out actions or enact and enforce le-
gal or customary measures that in some way ensure that minority group members
are treated differently and adversely. Recall the most basic aspect of minority status:
differential and unequal treatment. Such treatment can involve a wide range of ac-
tions and measures in various realms of social life.
Although there are links between the two, prejudice and discrimination must be
dealt with as distinct phenomena. There is ordinarily a tendency for prejudicial atti-
tudes to accompany discriminatory behavior; but as we will see, one may occur with-
out the other. Moreover, although the two may be causally related in some instances,
in others there need be no cause-effect relationship. In any case, prejudice and dis-
crimination are most frequently mutually reinforcing (Simpson and Yinger, 1985).
It is important to stress that, like prejudice, discrimination is applied on the ba-
sis of group membership, not individual attributes. Antonovsky explains that
discrimination is a situation in which “individuals are denied desired and expected
rewards or opportunities for reasons related not to their capacities, merits, or be-
havior, but solely because of membership in an identifiable out-group” (1960:81).
Or, as Pettigrew defines it, discrimination is “an institutional process of exclusion
against an out-group, racial or cultural, based simply on who they are rather than
on their knowledge or abilities” (1980:821).
60 part i the nature of ethnic relations
Denial of
Verbal social Aggression
abuse resources against Genocide
Figure 3.1
| Spectrum of Discrimination
2
The Armenian genocide in 1915 is a strongly contested historical event. Turkey denies having carried
out the deliberate killings, maintaining that Armenian deaths—far smaller in number than a million—
were the result of the war that raged in the Ottoman Empire (of which modern Turkey and Armenia
were then a part) at that time.
chapter 3 tools of dominance 61
murder by the Nazis of 6 million Jews;3 and more recently, the massacre of entire
populations in Rwanda and Bosnia.
3
The literature on the Nazi holocaust is enormous, but two of the more comprehensive works are
Dawidowicz (1986) and Hilberg (2003). On theories and policies of genocide, see Kuper (1981) and
Fein (1993).
62 part i the nature of ethnic relations
the victims of the discriminatory actions: The Asian is still not hired; the black still
serves a longer sentence; and the Jew is still denied a home.
and where taxes are lower. The outlying location of these jobs, however, handicaps
African Americans who might qualify for them but who reside mainly in central cit-
ies. Qualified African Americans are therefore less likely to secure these jobs, but for
reasons that do not necessarily involve direct discriminatory practices by employers.
Businesses choose to locate in the suburbs not because they wish to avoid hiring
African Americans but simply because it is in their economic interests to do so.
When combined with the more overt discriminatory practices in housing that create
the concentration of African Americans in central cities, the outlying location of
commerce and industry has the effect of discriminating against African Americans.
In other words, the more overt discrimination in one institutional area—housing—
has created an indirect discriminatory effect in another—employment.
This indirect form of discrimination can also be seen in the area of education.
Because ethnic minority students commonly attend poorer quality inner-city
schools, they are automatically placed at a disadvantage in qualifying for well-
paying and promising jobs. Similarly, entrance into top-ranked colleges and univer-
sities will be more difficult for them because they will not be adequately prepared to
meet the rigid academic requirements. In both cases, there is no necessary intention
to discriminate. Decisions by employment managers or college admissions officers
may be quite rational, made not on the basis of applicants’ ethnicity but on objec-
tive employment and academic standards. What is overlooked is that the lower qual-
ifications of minority students are the result of attendance at inner-city public schools
that have inadequately prepared them for better jobs and colleges.
Such unintentional, yet effective, ethnic discrimination is repeated in a variety
of areas. Bankers, for example, who hesitate to lend to minority entrepreneurs be-
cause they fear they are poor credit risks may simply be engaging in practical busi-
ness tactics. Or the grocery chain that charges higher prices in its inner-city stores
than in its suburban stores will explain that such practices are necessary to offset
the higher operating costs in its central-city stores, due to higher rents or insurance
rates. Similar patterns emerge in medical services, administration of justice, and
other key areas of social life.
Perhaps most significant is that structural discriminatory practices are not only
unintentional, but largely unconscious. As Baron notes, “The individual only has to
conform to the operating norms of the organization and the institution will do the
discriminating for him” (1969:143). Discrimination, in other words, does not de-
pend in these cases on the actions of specific individuals or even organizations.
Instead, it is simply a function of the standard operating procedures of societal
institutions.
Because it is unintentional and largely unwitting, structural discrimination re-
mains difficult to detect; and even when it does become apparent, it is not easy to
determine who is ultimately responsible. Its obscurity, therefore, makes it difficult to
eradicate. Paradoxically, it is ordinarily carried out by individuals and groups who
do not consider themselves to be discriminators. Thus many who have purged their
own behavior of discriminatory actions may come to feel that it is minority ethnic
groups themselves who are mostly responsible for their subordinate status. The bur-
den of responsibility for social problems, then, is placed on the individual or the
group, not on patterns of discrimination that may be built into the institutional
structure. This is commonly referred to as “blaming the victim” (Ryan, 1975).
64 part i the nature of ethnic relations
Psychological Theories
Psychological theories of prejudice have focused on the manner in which antipathy
toward out-groups either satisfies certain psychic needs or complements the general
personality structure of certain people. In each case, the source of prejudice is traced
primarily to individuals rather than to the social forces weighing on them or the
groups within which they interact.
frustrated in his or her efforts to achieve a highly desired goal tends to respond
with a pattern of aggression. Because the real source of frustration is either un-
known or too powerful to confront directly, a substitute is found on whom the ag-
gression can be released. The substitute target is a scapegoat, a person or group
close at hand and incapable of offering resistance. The aggressive behavior is thus
displaced (Dollard et al., 1939). Minority groups in multiethnic societies have
served as convenient and safe targets of such displaced aggression. Allport (1958)
explains that racial, religious, or ethnic groups can be blamed unfairly for a variety
of evils because they are permanent and stable and can be easily stereotyped.
Therefore, they serve as more of an “all-purpose” scapegoat than those groups or
individuals who are blamed for specific frustrations.
The frustration-aggression, or scapegoating, theory of prejudice seems convinc-
ing at first glance. It is, as Allport notes, easily understood because of “the com-
monness of the experience” (1958:330). Everyone at times suffers frustrations of
their needs and desires, whether simple ones like seeing their favorite football team
lose a key game or significant ones like failing to gain a job promotion. When these
events occur, people are sometimes inclined to strike out at substitute targets such
as their spouse or children. If the frustration is continuous, they may begin to blame
more remote groups or institutions like “the government,” “bureaucrats,”
“blacks,” “Jews,” or “gays.”
Despite the common experience of frustration-aggression, however, this theory
leaves many questions unanswered. First, under what conditions will frustration not
lead to aggression? Psychologists have shown that the frustration-aggression se-
quence is not necessarily inevitable (Allport, 1958; Ehrlich, 1973). Nor is aggres-
sion always displaced; sometimes it is directed inward, and at other times it may
be thrust on the real source of frustration. This theory does not tell us how and
why these responses may be produced.
Another obvious shortcoming of the frustration-aggression theory is its failure
to explain the choice of scapegoats or targets of displaced aggression. Why are
some groups chosen rather than others? The notion that scapegoats are always
“safe goats”—defenseless and easily used—does not hold up when we consider
that minority group members may themselves harbor great antipathy for the domi-
nant group or express strong prejudices toward other minorities. A U.S. national
survey, for example, indicated that ethnic minorities are more likely than whites to
agree to negative stereotypes about other minority groups (National Conference,
1995).
Finally, we must consider the fact that the displacement of aggression on substi-
tute targets can bring at best a very short-lived relief of an individual’s anxiety.
Unless the actual source is attacked, the feeling of frustration will quickly recur or
even intensify. As Allport has put it, concerning frustration, “Nature never created
a less adaptive mechanism than displacement” (1958:332).
THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY The question of why prejudice exerts a strong in-
fluence on certain individuals but plays a relatively minor role for others is ad-
dressed by the theory of the authoritarian personality. The essence of this theory
is that there is a personality type prone to prejudicial thought. In the same way,
according to this view, there are basically tolerant personalities.
66 part i the nature of ethnic relations
situations, political situations; it is not a little demon that emerges in people simply
because they are depraved” (1970:6).
However, psychological theories such as frustration-aggression and the authoritar-
ian personality have been popular not only because they are more easily understood
than sociological theories emphasizing structural conditions, but precisely because
they focus the blame for ethnic antagonisms on disturbed individuals—those who are
pathological or overtly irrational in behavior and thought. This focus deflects attention
from society’s normally functioning institutions, which may compel people to think
and act negatively toward members of particular ethnic groups. Indeed, as will be
seen shortly, prejudice and discrimination are in most cases conforming thoughts and
actions, not those of a few maladjusted persons. As long as ethnic antipathy is thought
to be characteristic only of the sick few rather than a proper response to the expecta-
tions of the community or society as a whole, it can be seen as eradicable simply by
treating those few, not by painfully reexamining established societal institutions.
Whatever their effect on prejudice and discrimination, psychological compo-
nents must be seen in conjunction with political and economic structures out of
which intergroup relations develop and are sustained. William Julius Wilson asserts
that psychological explanations of prejudice and discrimination “prove to have lit-
tle predictive value when social factors are taken into account” (1973:39). These
social factors are the basis of normative theories, to which we now turn.
Normative Theories
Why do we often compliment a friend on his or her new hairdo or clothes when in
fact we think they are quite unattractive? Similarly, why do we many times feel
obliged to contribute to a class discussion or a business meeting when we really
have nothing meaningful to say? Sociologists explain such apparently inconsistent
thought and action as a product of situational norms by which we feel compelled
to abide. We understand that such actions are expected of us, and in most cases
we conform to those expectations even when we have a real desire to ignore or dis-
obey them. Norms are group standards that define how people are expected to act
in particular social situations. There are positive sanctions for conforming to and
negative sanctions for deviating from them. Because there are norms pertaining to
all social situations in which we find ourselves, these social “rules” enable us to pre-
dict others’ behavior, and in doing so they facilitate interaction. In a real sense, they
provide the society with order.
Prejudice and discrimination can be explained within the framework of social
norms. Rather than the thoughts and actions of a deviant few, they are conforming
responses to social situations in which people find themselves. When negative
thoughts about particular ethnic groups and discriminatory behavior toward them
are expected, individuals will feel compelled to think and act accordingly. Thus it is
to individuals’ social environment—the groups they belong to, the cultural and po-
litical values and customs operative in their society and community, and the pro-
cesses of socialization—that prejudice and discrimination can be traced.
Obviously, such explanations are considerably different from psychological theo-
ries, which focus not on the group contexts of individual thought and action but
on the individuals themselves.
68 part i the nature of ethnic relations
In this view, bigots emerge out of the social experiences to which they are ex-
posed. Frank Westie has succinctly explained the essence of normative theory:
“Individuals are prejudiced because they are raised in societies which have prejudice
as a facet of the normative system of their culture. Prejudice is built into the culture
in the form of normative precepts—that is, notions of ‘ought to be’—which define
the ways in which members of the group ought to behave in relation to the mem-
bers of selected outgroups” (1964:583–84). Normative theories thus concentrate
primarily on the transmission of ethnic prejudices through the socialization process
and on the social situations that compel discriminatory behavior (Dean and Rosen,
1955; Williams, 1964).
guided people’s actions and attitudes. In that system, blacks were not to be thought
of or treated in the same way as whites. For whites to avoid almost any contact
with blacks beyond the most purely functional (supervising them in a work situa-
tion, for example) was correct, expected, and positively sanctioned by societal
norms. For whites to deviate from such behavior would have been unusual and re-
sponded to with negative sanctions. John Stone (1973), in a study of British immi-
grants to South Africa in the 1970s, discovered that they frequently changed their
attitude toward the segregationist policy of apartheid. Before leaving Britain, the
majority was either opposed to or had no opinion about it; after living in South
Africa for a time, however, an even larger majority stated that it favored the policy.
Stone concluded that the change reflected not the manifestation of latent racist per-
sonalities but the need of immigrants to adapt to the ways of their new society:
“We are not witnessing the mass attraction of bigoted racialists to a segregational-
ist’s dream, rather we are observing how ordinary people, confronted by a particu-
lar social structure, will tend to conform to the attitudes, values, and norms implicit
in it” (1973:253).
REFERENCE GROUPS Even where societal norms dictate fairness toward different
groups, prejudice and discrimination may typify the behavior of some people who
have been exposed to reference groups that strongly prescribe such behavior.
Reference groups are those that provide individuals with standards by which they
shape their own patterns of action and from which they adopt important beliefs
and values. In a sense, they serve as models of thought and action. We ordinarily
think of the family as a reference group, but there are many others to which we
may look for behavioral guidance, even some of which we are not members. In
the latter case, we may aspire to membership and thus take on the ways and atti-
tudes of the group. This is most apparent in the early stages of socialization when
children begin to identify with particular occupational groups—firefighters, doc-
tors, nurses, and the like—or with sports and entertainment groups they admire.
As might be expected, studies have shown that individuals tend to adopt beliefs
and values congruent with those of the groups with which they identify.
Applying the concept of the reference group to prejudice and discrimination,
such thoughts and actions are normal responses of individuals when called for by
their reference groups. No one is immune to the pressures to conform—applied by
family, friendship cliques, or other significant groups. The fear of group rejection is
constantly present and serves as an effective disciplinary mechanism. Again, this
process is subtle, and the individual may not see such conformity as a response to
external coercion.
If the person’s reference groups change, attitudes and actions can be expected
to change accordingly. College students, for example, often face a challenge to their
well-formed values when they encounter new ideas from their instructors and class-
mates. These new ideas often involve social issues like ethnic prejudice. Pearlin’s
(1954) study at a southern women’s college in the 1950s demonstrated the effect
of a change in reference groups on students’ racial attitudes. Pearlin started with
the assumption that white students would find in the college environment senti-
ments more favorable to blacks than they had found in their precollege experiences.
But merely being exposed to new and positive ideas about blacks, he believed,
70 part i the nature of ethnic relations
MERTON’S PARADIGM Given the social, rather than the personality, origins of ethnic
prejudice and discrimination, changing social situations can produce fluctuations in
individual thought and behavior. Ethnic prejudice and discrimination are thus not
constant and unchanging but variable, depending on a number of situational factors:
the person’s definition of the situation, the compulsion to conform to societal and ref-
erence group norms, and the rewards—economic, prestige, political—to be gained by
acting and believing in such a manner. That attitudes and actions toward members of
particular ethnic groups may fluctuate within different social contexts is demon-
strated by Robert Merton (1949) in his well-known paradigm (Figure 3.2).
By combining the prejudicial attitudes or lack of such attitudes with the pro-
pensity either to engage in discriminatory actions or to refrain from them, Merton
suggested four ideal types. First, he denoted unprejudiced nondiscriminators, whom
he called “all-weather liberals.” These are people who accept the idea of social
equality and refrain from discriminating against ethnic minorities. Their behavior
and attitudes are thus consistent. A second type, also consistent in behavior and at-
titude, is prejudiced discriminators, whom Merton labeled “active bigots.” Such
PREJUDICE
Is the person prejudiced?
Yes No
Fair-Weather Liberal
Does the person discriminate?
Active Bigot
Yes Prejudiced, Not prejudiced,
and discriminates but discriminates
DISCRIMINATION
Figure 3.2
| Merton’s Paradigm
chapter 3 tools of dominance 71
people do not hesitate to turn their prejudicial beliefs into discriminatory behavior
when the opportunity arises. Members of organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan
or neo-Nazi parties in the United States or skinhead groups in Europe exemplify
such people. Both of these types, consistent as they are in belief and behavior, might
indicate by themselves support for the psychological perspective; that is, there are
prejudiced people or tolerant people, who may be expected to act accordingly.
Merton’s third and fourth types, however, demonstrate the situational context
and the effect it may have on people’s behavior. In these cases, behavior and atti-
tude are not consistent. Prejudiced nondiscriminators, or “timid bigots,” as
Merton called them, maintain negative beliefs about ethnic minorities but are pre-
cluded from acting out those beliefs by situational norms. If a situation requires fair
treatment toward ethnic groups who are viewed negatively by such people, fair
treatment will mark their behavior. For example, whites traveling from the
American South to northern states before the 1960s would find that the laws and
customs of the North required them to interact with blacks in a manner unheard of
in their home states. Lewis Killian described how white working-class southerners
who had migrated to Chicago responded to blacks in their new environment:
“The ‘hillbillies’ constantly praised the southern pattern of racial segregation and
deplored the fact that Negroes were ‘taking over Chicago.’ In most of their behav-
ior, however, they made a peaceful, if reluctant, accommodation to northern urban
patterns” (1953:68). The hotel and restaurant keepers encountered by LaPiere in
his previously cited study would also fall into this category.
Unprejudiced discriminators, whom Merton called “fair-weather liberals,” also
adjust their behavior to meet the demands of particular circumstances. When dis-
crimination is normative in the group or community, such people abide by those
patterns of behavior even though they may harbor no prejudicial feelings toward
members of the targeted group. To do otherwise would jeopardize their social
standing and might even constitute violations of the law. Such a situation was faced
in the pre-1960s American South by many whites who did not share the racial ani-
mosity of their neighbors. In a 1987 case, the owner of a pharmacy in Tifton,
Georgia, dismissed a black student pharmacist who had been placed in the store
as part of her training at the University of Georgia’s College of Pharmacy. She
was dismissed, the owner explained, because he feared negative customer reaction
(New York Times, 1987).
It must be remembered that each of Merton’s four cases is an ideal type and
thus does not reflect perfectly any individual’s behavior and attitudes. More realis-
tically, people can be expected to display higher or lower degrees of each. We
should also remember that prejudice and discrimination directed at one ethnic
group do not necessarily imply the same attitudes and behavior toward others.
Those who are antiblack are not necessarily anti-Catholic, and so on. One may be a
fair-weather liberal in one instance and a timid bigot in another.
Situational explanations of prejudice and discrimination like Merton’s
demonstrate that there is no necessary causal relationship between the two. The
conventional wisdom has generally assumed that prejudice leads to or causes dis-
crimination. Abundant sociological evidence, however, has shown not only that
this sequence need not occur but also that the very opposite is more common
(Pettigrew, 1979; Raab and Lipset, 1971). “What we call prejudices,” writes the
72 part i the nature of ethnic relations
STATISTICAL DISCRIMINATION Van den Berghe (1997) has suggested a model of dis-
crimination akin to Merton’s that links such behavior to stereotyping. He posits
that stereotypes are most often used in a rational way, enabling people to make
quick decisions about others in interactive situations where they have minimum in-
formation. (Recall this point in our discussion of stereotypes.) Statistical discrimina-
tion, in which people are treated negatively on the basis of beliefs about the cate-
gory of which they are members, is distinct from categorical discrimination, in
which people are treated negatively simply on the basis of being part of a socially
assigned category. The former is rational in that it is responsive to counterevidence,
whereas the latter form of discrimination is not. Van den Berghe contends that sta-
tistical discrimination is more common than categorical discrimination because it is
based on self-interest, whereas the latter is nonrational. Hence, stereotypes are not
necessarily to be seen as evidence of prejudice but are simply “guidelines in making
statistical discriminations in situations of imperfect information” (1997:5). Where
information is in short supply and costly, people will rely on stereotypes.
For example, because blacks appear to commit a disproportionate percentage
of violent crimes, whether due to a racist criminal justice system or to class bias,
whites stereotype blacks as “criminally inclined” and thus may discriminate against
blacks with whom they interact. In reality, the relationship of crime to such factors
as social class and age is stronger than the relationship of crime to race. But most
whites, living as they do apart from blacks, are not as attuned to class differences
among blacks. It is, then, less costly to discriminate on the basis of race—which is
more readily apparent—than class. Banks may make decisions about loans using
much the same calculus based on racial criteria, as a result granting fewer loans to
blacks or charging them higher interest rates. Again, the decision is a rational one:
“Money-lenders are in the business of evaluating risk as cheaply as possible and of
adjusting interest rates in direct proportion to assessed risk. . . . [F]rom the perspective
chapter 3 tools of dominance 73
of the bank ignoring race would be a costly mistake, unless the bank can develop a
more valid and equally cheap discriminator” (van den Berghe, 1997:12). Racial pro-
filing, wherein police select someone for investigation or stronger action on the basis
of race or ethnicity, may be seen in the same way.
Like Merton, van den Berghe demonstrates how discrimination is not necessar-
ily motivated by prejudice. “Modern industrial societies,” he notes, “are hot-beds
of stereotypy, not because they are populated by bigots, but because people have
little else to structure their relationships” (1997:13). Where race and ethnicity cre-
ate barriers to communication and where members of different groups live in segre-
gated areas, the chances of changing the criteria of statistical discrimination are
reduced.
Power-Conflict Theories
Though the normative theories of prejudice and discrimination appear to go well
beyond the earlier psychological theories, they stop short of explaining how or
why they arise in the first place. They basically explain the mechanics of prejudice
and discrimination, that is, how these social phenomena are transmitted and sus-
tained. To begin to understand their origins we must turn to power-conflict
theories.
Most simply, these theories view prejudice and discrimination as emerging from
historical instances of intergroup conflict (Bernard, 1951; Newman, 1973). In this
view, discrimination serves as a means of injuring or neutralizing out-groups that
the dominant group perceives as threatening to its position of power and privilege.
Negative beliefs and stereotypes, in turn, become basic components of the dominant
group’s ideology, which justifies differential treatment of minority ethnic groups.
When prejudice and discrimination are combined, they function to protect and en-
hance dominant group interests. And once established, prejudice and discrimination
are used as power resources that can be tapped as new conflict situations demand.
Prejudice and discrimination, in this view, are products of group interests and
are used to protect and enhance those interests. To understand negative ethnic be-
liefs and behavior requires a focus not on individual personalities or even on the
constraints and demands of different social situations, but on the economic, politi-
cal, and social competition among groups in a multiethnic society.
ECONOMIC GAIN Chief among power-conflict theories are those emphasizing the
economic benefits that derive from prejudice and discrimination. Simply put, preju-
dice and discrimination, in this view, yield profits for those who engage in them.
Different groups may be targeted because they present—or are perceived as pre-
senting—a threat to the economic position of the dominant group.
Colonial and slave systems, buttressed by elaborate racist ideologies, are obvi-
ous cases in which economic benefits accrued to a dominant group from the exploi-
tation, both physical and mental, of minority groups. We need not look at such
historically distant examples, however, to understand the relation between ethnic
antagonism and economic gain. In his study of black-white relations in the
American South of the 1930s, John Dollard showed that in every sphere of social
life—work, health, justice, education—the white middle class realized substantial
74 part i the nature of ethnic relations
THE SPLIT LABOR MARKET THEORY Whereas conventional Marxist thought holds
that the profits of ethnic hostilities redound primarily to the owners of capital,
others maintain that it is workers of the dominant ethnic group who are the chief
beneficiaries of prejudice and discrimination. If ethnic minorities are kept out of de-
sired occupations, the favored workers, rather than the capitalists, are viewed as
gaining the most from discriminatory institutions. This is the crux of sociologist
Edna Bonacich’s split labor market theory (1972, 1976).
According to Bonacich, there are three key groups in a capitalist market: busi-
nesspeople (employers), higher-paid labor, and cheap labor. One group of workers
controls certain jobs exclusively and gets paid at one scale, and the other group is
chapter 3 tools of dominance 75
confined to jobs paid at a lower rate. Given the imperatives of a capitalist system,
employers seek to hire workers at the lowest possible wage and therefore turn to
the lower-paid sector when possible as a means of maximizing profits. Recent im-
migrants or ethnic groups migrating from rural areas in search of industrial jobs
ordinarily make up this source of cheap labor. These groups can be used by em-
ployers as strikebreakers and as an abundant labor supply to keep wages artificially
low. Because these groups represent a collective threat to their jobs and wages,
workers of the dominant ethnic group become the force behind hostile and exclu-
sionary movements aimed at curtailing the source of cheap labor. Wage differen-
tials, in this view, do not arise through the efforts of capitalists to prevent
working-class unity by favoring one group over another, but through the efforts of
higher-paid laborers to prevent lower-paid workers—mainly of low-status ethnic
groups—from undercutting their wages and jobs. This goal is achieved through
various forms of prejudice and discrimination.
The split labor market theory is supported by historical evidence in American
society. Successive waves of European immigrants during the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries traditionally served as a source of cheap labor and became the
targets of nativist movements, usually backed strongly by labor unions. Following
the cessation of European immigration, northward-migrating blacks from the rural
South assumed a similar role, touching off periodic racial violence in many cities.
Depending on how threatening they were perceived by native workers, various
groups at different times were the objects of worker-inspired hostility. For example,
efforts in the nineteenth century to restrict the Chinese to particular occupations
and to limit their immigration was spurred largely by white workers fearing a del-
uge of cheaper labor. Lyman notes that after 1850, “It was the leadership of the
labor movement that provided the most outrageous rhetoric, vicious accusations,
and pejorative demagoguery for the American Sinophobic movement” (1974:70).
In a study of Japanese immigrants in Brazil and Canada, Makabe (1981) found
support for the split labor market theory. Japanese immigrants entering Canada, spe-
cifically British Columbia, in the pre–World War II years experienced an extremely
harsh reception from native Canadians. Makabe explains that among white workers
the rejection of the Japanese was unusually cruel. This is accounted for by the fact
that the Japanese entered the Canadian economy at the bottom, enabling employers
to pay them lower wages and thereby undercutting the more highly paid native work-
ers. Striving for upward mobility, the Japanese found themselves in direct competi-
tion with those immediately above them in economic position—white workers. The
result was discrimination against the Japanese in the workforce and pressure to halt
all Japanese immigration. In Brazil, however, the Japanese experienced a significantly
different situation. Rather than entering the labor force in competition with higher-
paid workers, they found themselves with skills and financial resources superior to
those of most native workers, who themselves were mostly severely disadvantaged
former slaves. Little competition and, hence, little conflict arose between them be-
cause they did not seek similar occupational positions.
GROUP POSITION Herbert Blumer (1958) posited that prejudice is always a protec-
tive device used by the dominant group in a multiethnic society in ensuring its ma-
jority position. When that group position is challenged, prejudice is aroused and
76 part i the nature of ethnic relations
model, these are negative reactions by members of the dominant group who see
their economic, political, and status privileges—their group position—threatened
by blacks and other minorities seeking upward social mobility.
4
Westie (1964) asserts that the prejudice of minority group members has been largely ignored by social
scientists. He suggests that this may be a result of the sympathy social scientists usually display for so-
cial underdogs. Moreover, interethnic conflict is usually perpetrated by members of the dominant
group, and the prejudices of minority group members are seen mainly as responses to these actions.
Westie maintains that, however well intended this view may be, it has produced social science literature
“which gives the impression that the minority person can ‘do no wrong’” (1964: 605).
5
There are also certain negative effects of prejudice and discrimination on the dominant group. See, for
example, Bowser and Hunt (1981).
78 part i the nature of ethnic relations
SUMMARY
Prejudice and discrimination are techniques of ethnic dominance. Prejudice is the
attitudinal dimension of ethnic antagonism. Prejudices are categorical, inflexible,
negative attitudes toward ethnic groups, based on simplistic and exaggerated group
images called stereotypes. Discrimination is the behavioral dimension and involves
actions designed to sustain ethnic inequality. Discrimination takes various forms,
ranging from derogation to physical attack and even extermination. Discrimina-
tion occurs at different levels: micro (or individual), macro (or institutional), and
structural. Micro discrimination is carried out by single persons or small groups,
usually in a deliberate manner; macro discrimination is rendered broadly as a result
of the norms and structures of organizations and institutions; structural discrimina-
tion occurs obliquely in an unwitting and unintentional manner and is the indirect
result of discrimination in other, more blatant forms.
There are three major theoretical traditions in explaining the origins and pat-
terns of prejudice and discrimination. Psychological theories focus on the ways in
which group hostility satisfies certain personality needs; prejudice and discrimina-
tion, in this view, are traced to individual factors. Normative theories explain that
ethnic antagonisms are conforming responses to social situations in which people
find themselves. Power-conflict theories explain prejudice and discrimination as
products of group interests and as tools used to protect and enhance those interests;
focus is placed not on individual behavior or on group dynamics but on the politi-
cal, economic, and social competition among a society’s ethnic groups.
chapter 3 tools of dominance 79
Suggested Readings
Allport, Gordon W. 1958. The Nature of Prejudice. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Presents
perhaps the most complete examination of the origins and forms of prejudice, stressing
psychological factors. A classic work that has stood the test of time.
Duckitt, John. 1992. The Social Psychology of Prejudice. New York: Praeger. A thorough
conceptual and theoretical analysis of the causes and intergroup dynamics of prejudice.
Knowles, Louis L., and Kenneth Prewitt (eds.). 1970. Institutional Racism in America.
Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Describes historical and modern-day patterns of
institutional discrimination in the United States.
Lester, Paul Martin, and Susan Dente Ross (eds.). 2003. Images That Injure: Pictorial
Stereotypes in the Media. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. A collection of articles that describe
and analyze how media-generated ethnic and gender stereotypes are created and firmly
implanted in American culture.
Levin, Jack, and William Levin. 1982. The Functions of Discrimination and Prejudice. 2nd
ed. New York: Harper & Row. Examines prejudice and discrimination by focusing on
the consequences of these thoughts and actions for both dominant and minority groups.
Schuman, Howard, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence Bobo, and Maria Krysan. 1997. Racial
Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations. Rev. ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press. Through a review of relevant survey data, traces the changing racial at-
titudes of Americans during the past five decades.
Simpson, George Eaton, and J. Milton Yinger. 1985. Racial and Cultural Minorities: An
Analysis of Prejudice and Discrimination. 5th ed. New York: Plenum Press. Explains the
psychological and sociological origins and effects of prejudice and discrimination, with a
comprehensive review of significant studies regarding these phenomena.
4
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CHAPTER
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Patterns of Ethnic
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± Relations
Assimilation and Pluralism
The chief question we pursue in this chapter is, “What is the nature of relations
among diverse groups in a multiethnic society?” Specifically, when various ethnic
groups meet, what is the outcome of that contact? We have already seen that the
emergence of a system of ethnic stratification, with its attendant prejudice and dis-
crimination, is most common. But other dimensions and processes of group rela-
tions create a variety of interethnic patterns.
Judging from frequent news accounts of violence and general hostilities in mul-
tiethnic societies, it would seem that ethnic relations are, as a rule, conflictual.
Indeed, almost all theorists have viewed conflict as a fundamental, if not perma-
nent, feature of relations between ethnic groups. Donald Young’s observation
from more than seven decades ago seems no less accurate today: “Group antago-
nisms seem to be inevitable when two peoples in contact with each other may be
distinguished by differentiating characteristics, either inborn or cultural, and are ac-
tual or potential competitors” (1932:586).
Though it may not always be overt and extreme, conflict is the primary under-
lying facet of systems of ethnic inequality. In this regard, Berry and Tischler note
that “if we recognize the fact that conflict involves also those subtle, restrained
forms of interaction wherein one seeks to reduce the status of one’s opponents,
and not to eliminate them entirely from the conflict, then perhaps it is true that con-
flict invariably occurs when unlike peoples meet” (1978:123). No matter how ap-
parently stable and peaceful dominant-minority relations may seem, latent conflict
may reveal itself in periodic and unanticipated eruptions. Ethnic relations, then, are
by definition relations of conflict. The dominant group may mobilize its power
through force, ideology, or both to ensure its dominance, and minority groups will
respond with counterforce, accommodation, or submission.
80
chapter 4 patterns of ethnic relations 81
ASSIMILATION
Most simply, assimilation means increasing similarity or likeness. As Yinger defines
it, assimilation is “a process of boundary reduction that can occur when members
of two or more societies or of smaller cultural groups meet” (1981:249). Similarly,
Harold Abramson defines it as “the processes that lead to greater homogeneity in
society” (1980:150). Each of these definitions stresses that assimilation, is best
seen as a path, or trajectory on which ethnic groups may move. It is a process, not
a fixed condition or state of relations.
chapter 4 patterns of ethnic relations 83
The end point of this homogenizing process is, for an ethnic group, “the
disappearance of an ethnic and racial distinction and the cultural and social differ-
ences that express it” (Alba and Nee, 1999:159). Or, for the society as a whole, it is
“the biological, cultural, social, and psychological fusion of distinct groups to
create a new ethnically undifferentiated society” (Barth and Noel, 1972:336).
Following this idea to its logical end point, with complete assimilation there are
no longer distinct ethnic groups. Rather, there is a homogeneous society in
which ethnicity is not a basis of social differentiation and plays no role in the distri-
bution of wealth, power, and prestige. This does not mean, of course, that other
forms of social differentiation and stratification such as age, gender, and class do
not exist; it means only that the ethnic forms are no longer operative. In essence,
a society in which all groups have perfectly assimilated is no longer a multiethnic
society.
This complete form of assimilation, however, is rarely achieved either for a so-
ciety as a whole or for specific groups and individuals within it. Instead, assimila-
tion takes different forms and is evident in different degrees. In other words, it is a
variable that “can range from the smallest beginnings of interaction and cultural
exchange to the thorough fusion of the groups” (Yinger, 1981:249). Therefore, in
examining the assimilation of ethnic groups, the question that must concern us is
not simply “Are groups becoming more alike?” but “To what extent and in what
ways are they becoming more alike?”
Dimensions of Assimilation
Assimilation can be seen in four distinct, though related, dimensions: cultural, struc-
tural, biological, and psychological. Our concern is mostly with the first two, but let
us briefly examine each of these.
may continue to recognize and respond to them as ethnic groups. What has been
achieved, however, is a measure of political and economic equality.1
The distinction between primary and secondary levels of structural assimilation
is important because it is clear that the entrance of ethnic minorities into formal rela-
tions with the dominant group must precede relations within intimate social settings.
Groups may achieve a significant degree of secondary structural assimilation without
moving beyond this level into the primary type. Most Euro-American ethnic groups,
for example, have reached a point at which they enjoy relatively equal access to jobs,
political authority, and other important life chances. They have, in other words, be-
gun to enter into full participation in all institutional areas of American society.
Moreover, for most, primary relations are no longer limited largely to the ethnic
group. For African Americans and other racial-ethnic groups, however, although
they have begun to achieve substantial integration in the economy, polity, and edu-
cation, that has not been the case in clubs, cliques, neighborhoods, and intermarriage.
1
Schermerhorn (1970) has used the term integration in a somewhat different but related way. As he
defines it, integration is “a process whereby units or elements of a society are brought into an active
and coordinated compliance with the ongoing activities and objectives of the dominant group” (66).
The key to integration in this sense is a mutual acceptance of the scope and nature of activities and
group objectives by both the dominant group and minority groups. Thus societies may be integrated
around a system in which extreme segregation and inequality are accepted by all parties. Schermerhorn
postulates that “when the ethos of the subordinates has values common to those in the ethos of the
superordinates, integration (coordination of objectives) will be facilitated; when the values are contrast-
ing or contradictory, integration will be obstructed” (172). See also Kuper (1968).
86 part i the nature of ethnic relations
Theories of Assimilation
PARK’S RACE RELATIONS CYCLE American sociologists in the 1920s, led by Robert
Park, were intrigued by the ethnic polyglot that had emerged in cities of the U.S.
2
The issues of ethnic identity at the individual level are detailed in De Vos and Romanucci-Ross
(1975), Horowitz (1975), Romanucci-Ross and De Vos (1995), and Shibutani and Kwan (1965).
chapter 4 patterns of ethnic relations 87
Northeast and Midwest, and they began to focus their studies on the social forces
that brought these groups together or sustained their differences. Park was one of
the first to suggest a cycle of race or ethnic relations through which groups would
pass in a sequence of stages, leading ultimately to full assimilation.
Park explained that groups first come into contact through migration and sub-
sequently engage in competition, often characterized by conflict. Out of such com-
petition eventually emerges some form of accommodation among the groups, lead-
ing finally to assimilation. Park maintained that this four-stage cycle pertained to
race relations everywhere, not simply the United States. Moreover, he saw the se-
quence as “apparently progressive and irreversible” (1950:150).
A view of ethnic assimilation not unlike Park’s race relations cycle has been
generally popular in American society. The prevailing thought is that over several
generations, group boundaries break down, and the society becomes more homoge-
neous. However, Park’s model has been subject to much sociological criticism over
the years. Some have noted the cycle’s lack of applicability to many groups (Lyman,
1968a). Although it has seemed to describe fairly accurately the experiences of most
European immigrant groups in the United States (as well as in Australia, Canada,
Argentina, and other immigrant societies), it does not conform to the patterns dis-
played by more salient—that is, racial-ethnic—groups and those that have entered
involuntarily.
Critics of Park’s and other cyclical theories of ethnic relations have also pointed
out that such cycles are rarely complete; that is, there are too many truncated
instances (Shibutani and Kwan, 1965). As Barth and Noel (1972) point out, inter-
ethnic contact can produce stable outcomes—such as exclusion, pluralism, or con-
tinued ethnic stratification—that do not lead inevitably to assimilation. Finally,
some have criticized the model’s claim of irreversibility (Barth and Noel, 1972;
Berry and Tischler, 1978). They note that the cycle may be terminated at any point,
and groups may even revert to earlier stages.3
3
Geschwender (1978) disputes the interpretation of Park’s race relations cycle as absolute, maintaining
instead that it is “situationally specific.” He sees Park’s cycle as an ideal type, not to be taken as inevi-
table. Rumbaut (1999) also points out that Park recognized that the eventual outcome of relations
among racial groups could take several different forms.
88 part i the nature of ethnic relations
±±
±
Table 4.1 ±±± Gordon’s Stages of Assimilation
Stage Characteristics
Cultural or behavioral assimilation Change of cultural patterns to those of
(acculturation) host society
Structural assimilation Large-scale entrance into cliques, clubs,
and institutions of host society on primary
group level
Marital assimilation (amalgamation) Large-scale intermarriage
Identificational assimilation Development of sense of peoplehood based
exclusively on host society
Attitude receptional assimilation Absence of prejudice
Behavior receptional assimilation Absence of discrimination
Civic assimilation Absence of value and power conflict
Source: Milton M. Gordon, Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins,
New York: Oxford University Press, 1964, p. 71. Copyright © 1964 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Reprinted by
permission.
movement to the next phase. Minority ethnic groups may become very much like
the dominant group in behavior and values but still remain structurally segregated.
Structural assimilation, the second stage, is essentially what was previously re-
ferred to as primary, or informal, structural assimilation. This stage is the most crit-
ical for it is the key to all subsequent stages: “Once structural assimilation has oc-
curred, either simultaneously with or subsequent to acculturation, all of the other
types of assimilation will naturally follow” (Gordon, 1964:81). Presumably, as peo-
ple of minority and dominant ethnic groups interact within close, intimate social
settings, the other stages of assimilation necessarily occur, much like falling domi-
noes: Minority group members increasingly intermarry with those of the dominant
group, relinquish their ethnic identity, no longer encounter prejudice and discrimi-
nation, and fully agree with the dominant group on issues involving values and
power conflicts. Indeed, the remaining stages (three through seven) in Gordon’s
scheme can be subsumed under structural assimilation. The dominant group’s ac-
ceptance of members of a minority ethnic group into primary relations implies, for
example, the absence of prejudice and discrimination and the likelihood of in-
creased intermarriage.
It is with structural assimilation, then, that full assimilation involving all other
stages becomes inevitable. But, as Gordon notes, cultural assimilation, the first
stage, does not necessarily lead to structural assimilation; it may continue to be
the extent of assimilation for many generations (see also van den Berghe, 1981;
Wagley and Harris, 1958). Minorities may take on all or most of the cultural
ways of the dominant group but still be refused entry into primary relations with
its members. African Americans are an evident illustration of this. Though thor-
oughly assimilated regarding the major elements of the dominant culture (such as
language and religion), they remain unassimilated at the structural level (specifically
the primary structural level). In short, groups may become culturally alike yet re-
main in relatively segregated subsocieties.
chapter 4 patterns of ethnic relations 89
TIME OF ENTRANCE In general, the more recent a group’s entry into the society, the
more resistance there is to its assimilation (Mack, 1963). Other things being equal,
the simple factor of time will ease the fear and suspicion that accompany the en-
trance of strangers. Groups with alien ways are seen differently after they have
lived in the society for several generations. Examples abound in the United States,
beginning with the influx of large numbers of Irish immigrants in the early
chapter 4 patterns of ethnic relations 91
nineteenth century. Given the very substantial assimilation of Irish Americans to-
day, the hostile reception encountered by the first generation is easily forgotten.
DEMOGRAPHIC FACTORS The degree and rate of assimilation for minority ethnic
groups is also affected by their size and the concentration of their population
(Blau, 1977; Frisbie and Neidert, 1977). The entrance and assimilation of groups
relatively small in number will be resisted less forcefully than that of groups repre-
senting a competitive threat. Van den Berghe (1981) suggests that smaller groups
are assimilated more easily because they have fewer resources and therefore depend
on the larger society and because they necessarily interact more frequently with
out-group members.
The concentration or dispersion of ethnic groups also bears on their assimila-
tion. Concentration in particular neighborhoods and geographical areas or in
certain occupations tends to retard assimilation because the group is better able to
retain its cultural ways and resist intrusions of the dominant group (van den
Berghe, 1981). Dispersal, on the other hand, leads to unavoidable contact and inter-
action with the dominant group and thus speeds up the assimilation process.
CULTURAL SIMILARITY No matter how or when the group enters the host society, or
what its demographic patterns, assimilation will occur relatively quickly if the
group is culturally similar to the dominant group (Berry and Tischler, 1978; van
den Berghe, 1981). Those groups in the United States that have followed the assim-
ilation route furthest have, predictably, been culturally closest to Anglo Protestants.
In general, the more compatible the culture of the minority group with the domi-
nant group’s, the greater will be the force and speed of assimilation.
VISIBILITY In almost all multiethnic societies, the most critical factor in determining
the degree and rate of assimilation of ethnic groups is visibility. Where physical dif-
ferences are obvious, manner of entrance, temporal factors, demographic patterns,
and even cultural similarity are of much less consequence. For racial-ethnic groups,
structural separation remains far more persistent than for groups that are only cul-
turally distinct. Observers of American ethnic relations have long interpreted the
retarded structural assimilation of blacks, for example, as a product chiefly of visi-
bility (Park, 1950; Warner and Srole, 1945; Wirth, 1945; Yinger, 1981). The visi-
bility factor is also evident in the case of Asian Americans who may be culturally
indistinguishable from the dominant group, but because of their racial distinction
are assumed to be outsiders. Second-, third-, and even fourth-generation Asian
Americans are commonly faced with having to respond to questions of “Where
do you come from?” or to comments like “You speak English so well.”
In short, physical differences delay the process of assimilation more than do
other factors. Harold Isaacs has poignantly described this dilemma: “An individual
can change his name, acquire a new language, ignore or conceal his origins, disre-
gard or rewrite his history, abandon his ancestral religion or convert to another
one, adopt a different nationality, embrace new mores, ethics, philosophies, styles
of life. But there is not much he can do to change his body” (1989:46). Thus, the
more visible the group or individual, the longer and more difficult is the process of
structural assimilation.
92 part i the nature of ethnic relations
PLURALISM
Like assimilation, pluralism entails several dimensions and forms.4 In all cases,
however, the retention or even strengthening of differences among ethnic groups is
presumed. Thus, in a general sense, pluralism is the opposite of assimilation.
Abramson defines pluralism as “conditions that produce sustained ethnic differenti-
ation and continued heterogeneity” (1980:150). In brief, pluralism involves social
processes and institutions that encourage group diversity and the maintenance of
group boundaries.
Just as assimilation occurs in different degrees and at different stages, so too
must pluralism be understood as a variable for groups and societies. Ethnic plural-
ism never entails an absolute separation of groups. Recall the definition of ethnic
group as a distinguishable group within a larger society. Thus, in a pluralistic soci-
ety there is always some common political or economic system that binds various
ethnic groups together. If this were not so, there would not be a multiethnic society
but several distinct societies in themselves. Within the broad confines of a common
political or economic system, however, groups may differ widely.
4
Pluralism as applied to political systems refers to the relative dispersion of power among various in-
terest groups in a society. This is different from its usage in describing ethnic relations. See Marger
(1987).
94 part i the nature of ethnic relations
participating freely and equally within common political and economic institutions
(Barth and Noel, 1972; Shibutani and Kwan, 1965). Some have referred to this
condition as accommodation, wherein the minority group “desires equality with,
but separation from, the dominant group and the dominant group agrees to this
arrangement” (Kurokawa, 1970:131). Technically, of course, if equality with the
dominant group is reached, there are no longer dominant-minority relations; there
are relations among ethnic groups, but they are not hierarchical and invidious.
Equalitarian pluralism corresponds, like assimilation, to the order model of so-
ciety, in which balance and cohesion are emphasized. Differences among groups are
recognized and even encouraged, but within the framework of a larger set of
agreed-on principles. All groups give allegiance to a common political system, par-
ticipate in a common economic system, and understand a common set of broad eth-
ical values (Williams, 1977). In a sense, ethnic groups become political interest
groups that compete for the society’s rewards (Glazer and Moynihan, 1970). But
these competitive differences do not lead necessarily to serious cleavages and con-
flict; rather, they are dealt with by a reasonable give-and-take within the context
of the consensual rules of the society.
There may be vast cultural differences among ethnic groups, but their essence is
not threatened because tolerance of such differences is integral to the social order.
Relations between ethnic groups are thus confined mainly to functional areas such
as government and the marketplace, not affective ones such as the family or friend-
ship circles.
5
This type of political arrangement has been described by Lijphart (1977) and others (McRae, 1974;
van den Berghe, 1981) as consociational.
chapter 4 patterns of ethnic relations 95
(the latter spoken only by a very small number)—is perhaps the most obvious and
successful multilingual system (McRae, 1983). Canada, with its French- and English-
speaking groups, is another familiar multilingual (in this case, bilingual) society,
though, as we will see in Chapter 15, multilingualism there has been the source of a
severe social divide.
In societies characterized by corporate pluralism, ethnic groups consist mainly
of homogeneous, territorially concentrated peoples who have long historic roots in
their native area. They have become part of a larger national society either through
conquest or by voluntarily relinquishing sovereignty to a central state in order to
secure economic and political benefits. Such societies are not at all similar to multi-
ethnic societies like the United States, in which ethnic groups have been formed pri-
marily by voluntary immigrants who came from distant societies, severed most of
their native roots, and dispersed geographically after arrival.
The cultural divisions among ethnic groups in corporate pluralistic societies are
much sharper than those among groups in the United States, where the English lan-
guage tends to become a great commonizing factor. Structural separation is also
stronger, given the territorial concentration of groups. In Switzerland, for example,
each ethnic group remains geographically distinct; and in Canada more than
80 percent of French-speaking people reside in one province, Quebec. By contrast,
ethnic groups in the United States are scattered, though regional concentrations of
particular groups are noticeable (such as Mexican Americans in the Southwest or
Swedish Americans in the upper Midwest). Ethnic concentrations in the United
States more often take the form of urban pockets or neighborhoods.
With their retention of language and their territorial base, ethnic groups in cor-
porate pluralistic systems are integrated only in their mutual allegiance to a larger
national government and the need to participate in a national economic system.
Ideally, no single group is dominant, and each is afforded an approximately pro-
portionate share of the society’s rewards (Wagley and Harris, 1958). No corporate
pluralistic society, of course, has met this ideal, though some have achieved a
greater degree of group equality than others.
Equalitarian pluralism seems like an ideal way of managing an ethnically di-
vided society and assuring relative equality among the various groups. But if we
can judge from contemporary societies that have attempted this path to ethnic har-
mony, the results are mixed. The breakup of Yugoslavia is a tragic illustration of an
equalitarian pluralist system that failed. Here, several ethnic nationalities, living for
the most part in distinct territories, made up a state that provided roughly propor-
tional political power for each. But the system collapsed in 1991, giving rise to one
of the most brutal episodes of ethnic warfare that has been witnessed in modern
Europe. This case is discussed in more detail in Chapter 16. In the case of
Canada, with a number of features of this type of pluralism, the results have been
far more benign, as we will see in Chapter 15. Cases like Belgium and Switzerland,
where interethnic relations have been balanced and harmonious for many decades,
appear to be exceptional, and even in those societies periodic group conflict is evi-
dent. Belgium, for example, experienced a national crisis in 2007 when its two
regionally concentrated ethnic communities, French-speaking Walloons and Dutch-
speaking Flemings, could not reach an agreement on the country’s future direction.
So serious was the discord that many feared Belgium as a unified nation-state
96 part i the nature of ethnic relations
would be irreparably broken up. The assertion of Wagley and Harris (1958) that
pluralistic aims perpetuate some degree of conflict and the subordination of one
group by another is well taken. Indeed, conflict, whether latent or active, seems to
be endemic to pluralist systems. The level of conflict, however, is much greater in
societies with inequalitarian pluralist systems, to which we now turn.
EXPULSION AND ANNIHILATION Inequalitarian pluralism may reach the point of ex-
pulsion or even the annihilation of minority ethnic groups. Neither of these out-
comes is without precedent in recent Western history. The deportation of Chinese
from the United States in the nineteenth century, the detention of Ukrainians in
Canada during World War I, and the internment of Japanese in both the United
States and Canada during World War II, are notable examples of expulsion. As
for annihilation, destruction of native groups by white settlers in North America,
Australia, and South Africa in the nineteenth century as well as in Latin America
earlier are all relevant examples. A more deliberate and methodical case is the
98 part i the nature of ethnic relations
CONTACT
Ethnic group A
Ethnic group B
Ethnic group C
Competition and
stratification
Eq
ua
n
lita
tio
r
ila
ian
Inequalitarian pluralism
sim
pl
As
ur
ali
sm
Integration Corporate
pluralism
Caste
Amalgamation Political
autonomy
Expulsion
or
annihilation
Figure 4.1
|
Relations among Three Ethnic Groups, Beginning with (1) Initial Contact, Followed by
(2) Emergence of Competition and Stratification, and (3) Movement in One of Three General
Directions
but this is only one side of the issue. Perhaps more important are the goals the
dominant group wishes for the minorities (Schermerhorn, 1970). When the
objectives of dominant and minority groups are congruent, conflict is reduced;
when they are in opposition, conflict is unavoidable.6
In sum, all these processes and outcomes of ethnic contact are relations of power—
power of minority groups and, of course, power of the dominant group. In any sit-
uation of ethnic contact, one must first ask, “Who has power and to what ends can
they apply it?” On that question hinges the eventual nature of relations among
groups.
6
Schermerhorn (1970) has suggested that multiethnic societies may experience centripetal and centrifu-
gal forces in regard to dominant-minority group relations. Centrifugal forces drive groups apart,
whereas centripetal forces thrust them toward closer relations.
chapter 4 patterns of ethnic relations 101
±±
±
Table 4.2 ±±± Three Types of Multiethnic Society
Type of Society
Colonial Corporate Pluralistic
Feature (Segregationist) (Multicultural) Assimilationist
Initial contact Conquest of Annexation or Mainly voluntary
between dominant indigenous voluntary immigration but
and minority groups by immigration involuntary immigration
groups dominant group and conquest for salient
or involuntary minorities
migration of
minorities
Relations between Paternalistic or Ideally equalitarian, Competitive
dominant and competitive but often competitive
minority groups
Nature of Caste or Class hierarchy Class; class and ethnicity
stratification castelike; caste within each ethnic generally overlap, but
and ethnicity group minority group
overlap closely members are dispersed
throughout general class
system
Segregation Very rigid; Voluntarily rigid; Mild and largely
between groups explicitly groups often voluntary for groups
defined and concentrated in culturally and physically
enforced by distinct territories similar to dominant
tradition and group; rigid and
law involuntary for salient
minorities
Institutional High except in High except in Low in polity and
separation among economy economy and central economy; variable in
ethnic groups government other areas
Physical and Sharp physical Usually slight or no Broad range of physical
cultural differences differences; physical differences; types; sharp cultural
between dominant sharp cultural key cultural differences initially
and minority differences, at difference usually
groups least initially language or religion
Main objectives of Inequalitarian Equalitarian Assimilation; some
ethnic policy pluralism pluralism degree of unofficial
structural pluralism for
salient minorities
Degree of conflict High eventually Relatively low except Variable but generally
among ethnic though usually on matters pertaining high between racially
groups subdued for to cultural and distinct groups
long periods political rights
Examples Antebellum U.S. Switzerland, United States, Brazil,
South, colonial Malaysia, Canada Israel, France
India, South (partially)
Africa under
apartheid
102 part i the nature of ethnic relations
Assimilationist Societies
Assimilationist societies differ from either of the first two types in that there is no
recognized obligation or objective in protecting the retention of ethnicity. If ethnic
groups survive, they do so because of voluntary actions by the groups themselves or
because of informal patterns of prejudice and discrimination—not through the de-
signs of political institutions, as in a corporate pluralistic society, or the segregation-
ist dictates of a dominant group, as in a colonial society.
In these societies, there is a dominant group and a large number of minority
ethnic groups, the latter in various stages of cultural and structural assimilation.
chapter 4 patterns of ethnic relations 103
SUMMARY
Although intergroup conflict seems intrinsic in multiethnic societies, groups follow
one of two general paths: increasing integration or increasing separation. The for-
mer is called assimilation and the latter pluralism. Each is a process through which
groups pass as well as an outcome of group relations.
Assimilation can be viewed at four distinct but related levels: cultural, structural,
biological, and psychological. For our purposes, emphasis is placed on the first two.
Cultural assimilation is the adoption by one ethnic group of another’s (usually the
dominant group’s) cultural traits. Structural assimilation is the increasing social in-
teraction between different ethnic groups at both the primary and secondary levels.
Pluralism occurs in two different forms in multiethnic societies, equalitarian and
inequalitarian. In the former, groups retain their cultural and much of their struc-
tural distinctness but participate on an equal basis in a common political and eco-
nomic system. In the latter, ethnic groups are also structurally separated, but they
are grossly unequal in political and economic power.
104 part i the nature of ethnic relations
Multiethnic societies can be placed in a typology on the basis of several key char-
acteristics. Colonial, or segregationist, societies are those in which groups meet
through conquest or involuntary migration of minorities; inequalitarian pluralism
prevails, with a castelike stratification system in place. In corporate pluralistic, or
multicultural, societies, annexation of territory or voluntary migration brings previ-
ously separate groups together. Segregation between them is high, usually in distinct
areas, though it is mainly voluntary; equalitarian pluralism is the predominant form
of ethnic relations. Assimilationist societies emerge mainly from voluntary immigra-
tion of groups, though other contact situations may also be apparent. The degree of
segregation between groups varies on the basis of cultural and physical visibility, as
does the level of institutional separation and intergroup conflict. Assimilation of an
ethnically varied population is the long-range societal objective.
Suggested Readings
Alba, Richard, and Victor Nee. 2003. Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation
and Contemporary Immigration. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Reconsiders and revitalizes the assimilation model, and demonstrates that, contrary to the
thinking of many sociologists, it remains applicable to America’s newest immigrant
groups.
Banton, Michael. 1983. Racial and Ethnic Competition. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press. Explores the competitive relations among racial and ethnic groups using
different societies as illustrative cases. Proposes an application of rational choice theory,
commonly used by economists, to race and ethnic relations.
Gordon, Milton M. 1964. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and
National Origins. New York: Oxford University Press. A seminal explanation of ethnic
assimilation in its various forms. Presents a theoretical model that remains influential in
the study of race and ethnic relations.
Hirschman, Charles, Philip Kasinitz, and Josh DeWind (eds.). 1999. The Handbook of
International Migration: The American Experience. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Contains a number of essays by immigration researchers offering new perspectives on as-
similation and pluralism.
Horowitz, Donald. 1985. Ethnic Groups in Conflict. Berkeley: University of California
Press. Examines the sources of ethnic conflict in multiethnic societies, and the possibilities
for reducing it, with special emphasis on the developing nation-states of Asia and Africa.
Schermerhorn, R. A. 1970. Comparative Ethnic Relations: A Framework for Theory and
Research. New York: Random House. Not an easy read, but a valuable theoretical work
that tries to analyze race and ethnic relations with a set of universally relevant principles.
van den Berghe, Pierre. 1978. Race and Racism: A Comparative Perspective. 2nd ed. New
York: Wiley. A brief, but significant, work that presents a theoretical framework and a
useful typology for analyzing race relations. Four multiracial societies are compared: the
United States, Mexico, Brazil, and South Africa.
±±
±±
±±
Ethnicity in the
II
±±
±±
P A R T ±±
±±
±±
United States ±
In Part II our focus is the United States. Following a description of the development
of the American ethnic hierarchy in Chapter 5, several groups, each of them
broadly representative of a particular American ethnic experience, are dealt with
in depth. Chapter 6 examines the society’s indigenous peoples, American Indians,
followed by chapters devoted to African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, white eth-
nics, and Jews. These five (several are panethnic categories that include a number
of distinct ethnic groups) represent the full range of the American ethnic mosaic.
Each chapter is organized around four issues, the theoretical basis for which
was established in Part I: the establishment of the group as an ethnic minority; its
past and present place in the ethnic stratification system; current and past patterns
of prejudice and discrimination directed against it; and the degree to which its
members have assimilated into the mainstream society.
Chapter 12 concludes this part with an examination of the most salient current
ethnic issues of American society.
105
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5
±±
±±
±±
Immigration and ±±
±±
±± C H A P T E R
±±
±±
the Foundations ±
of the American
Ethnic Hierarchy
In the range of its ethnic diversity, the United States is unmatched in the contempo-
rary world. It is a society whose population derives from virtually every region of
the world, encompassing people of every imaginable culture, displaying equally
varied physical characteristics. Ethnic diversity, however, is not a new American
phenomenon. Although its heterogeneity has expanded in recent decades, from the
outset of European settlement in the 1600s, a continuous flow of newcomers added
fresh ingredients to the American potpourri. It is not an exaggeration to describe
the United States as the world’s greatest experiment in social relations. No society
before it and few since have attempted to blend such a varied and steadily changing
mix of human elements.
That America is a nation of immigrants is now a well-worn cliché. The histo-
rian Oscar Handlin professed that when he began to write a history of immigrant
groups in the United States, he discovered that the immigrants were American his-
tory. With the exception of American Indians and some Mexican Americans, all
ethnic groups in the United States trace their origins to other societies. Even those
exceptional groups, of course, were at one time migrants to North America. But
how the various groups entered American society, the ways they adapted and were
responded to, and their initial placement in and subsequent movement along the
ethnic hierarchy all differed enormously.
In this chapter, we trace the formation of the United States as a multiethnic so-
ciety and the development of its ethnic hierarchy. As explained in Chapter 2, groups
may make initial contact in several ways, including conquest, annexation, and
107
108 part ii ethnicity in the united states
voluntary and involuntary immigration. That initial form of contact is critical in de-
termining each group’s subsequent rate and manner of absorption into the main-
stream society. In the case of American Indians, conquest was the nature of contact;
and for a few Hispanics, annexation. These cases are discussed in greater detail in
Chapters 6 and 8. It has been through immigration, however—both voluntary and
involuntary—that most groups entered American society and subsequently took
their place in the ethnic hierarchy.
We begin with a brief discussion of the dynamics of immigration and some of
the themes that sociologists and demographers have put forth in explaining this
human phenomenon. We then trace the several major periods of large-scale immi-
gration to the United States, focusing on how, in the process, the society’s ethnic
configuration has changed. Finally, we describe the contemporary ethnic hierarchy
and how the changing makeup of the population is leading to new intergroup rela-
tions and trends.
unlimited movement. “Steamships,” writes historian William Van Vugt, “made the
world smaller so that emigration was no longer as great a step as it had been”
(1999:13). Although immigration had been a constant phenomenon throughout
all of human development, its scope now reached epic proportions.
quality of life might serve as lures to potential immigrants. The United States,
Canada, Brazil, and Argentina provided this pull for Europeans in the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. These countries needed settlers to develop and culti-
vate their vast empty lands. Later, as industrialization took hold, they required huge
work forces that could build an industrial infrastructure and provide a labor force
for their factories and mines.
This perspective on immigration is based essentially on neoclassical economic
principles. Labor markets operate much as markets for commodities and are shaped
by basic supply (“push”) and demand (“pull”) dynamics. Thus, where there is a
need for labor or where wages are high, people will move to fill those positions.
Similarly, where unemployment is high and wages low, immigration will decline.
Potential migrants, it is assumed, engage in cost-benefit calculations, weighing their
circumstances at home against the expected future payoff of migrating. When stay-
ing becomes less beneficial than moving, individuals and their families will be in-
clined to consider migration.
Numerous intervening variables are factored into the migration decision (Lee,
1966). Migration entails acquiring sufficient resources to make the move; families
or individuals may want to migrate but lack the financial means to do so. Or, con-
sider information. People may think of migrating, but unless and until they acquire
knowledge of a promising receiving society they will go nowhere. This in large mea-
sure explains why the abjectly poor, for whom migration would seem a perfectly
rational choice, rarely migrate: they lack the necessary financial and informational
resources. Psychic costs and benefits may also be considered. Migrating to a new
society almost always involves some degree of trauma, giving up familiarity with
the home society and adapting to a new one. Not all have the wherewithal to en-
dure such a heavy psychological burden or choose to put their families through the
change.
These social networks create what has been called a migration chain, wherein
people tend to immigrate to locations which have already been settled by other fam-
ily members, friends, or coethnics. This typified the European immigration streams
to America of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Most of the workers in
a plant or factory, for example, might have been from one country, but even more
specifically from one region or town, having been recruited by employers or by co-
workers. These migration streams were strengthened as well by the creation of eth-
nic institutions—churches, businesses, boarding houses—that served the needs of
expanding ethnic communities.
Demographer Douglas Massey has explained that once these migrant networks
are in place, there need be no economic incentive for the flow of migration to con-
tinue. Migration becomes self-sustaining in a process he refers to as “cumulative
causation”: “Every new migrant reduces the costs and risks of subsequent migra-
tion for a set of friends and relatives, and some of these people are thereby induced
to migrate, thus further expanding the set of people with ties abroad and, in turn,
reducing costs for a new set of people, some of whom are now more likely to decide
to migrate, and so on” (1999:45).
THE CONTEXT OF RECEPTION How immigrants adapt and how well they succeed in
a new society is only partially a function of the personal efforts, choices, and skills
that they bring to the labor market. The political and social environment they are
met with may be receptive or it may be hostile. What government policies are in
place to deal with immigrants? What is the attitude toward immigrants among
native-born residents? What support systems provided by family, friends, and
coethnics do immigrants find, and is there a thriving ethnic community to meet
their unique cultural needs? A combination of these factors—what Portes and
Rumbaut (2006) call the “context of reception”—will determine how and at what
speed immigrants move either in the direction of assimilation or pluralism in their
adaptive patterns and will affect, in the long term, their ultimate level of success.
1
From Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot, 2nd ed. Copyright © 1970
by MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Reprinted by permission.
chapter 5 immigration and the foundations of the american ethnic hierarchy 115
aged to conform” (1975:16). The societal power of the Anglo core group also
remains evident, as indicated by its continued overrepresentation among political
and economic elites. It is true nonetheless that its power has been diminished in
the past few decades by the increasing penetration of non-Anglo groups into these
positions (Alba and Moore, 1982; Davidson et al., 1995).
The makeup of the dominant group itself has changed somewhat as other white
Protestant groups have melded with it. Today the dominant ethnic group in
American society may be said to broadly comprise white Protestants, because those
Protestants from other northwestern European societies—namely, the Scandinavian
nations, Germany, and the Netherlands—have blended almost imperceptibly with
those of British origins. White Protestants, then, have varied national roots, but
their common Protestantism and racial character have neutralized any meaningful
national differences among them. References to the WASP, Anglo, or Anglo-
American group, then, should be understood to mean “white Protestants of various
national origins.” These terms are used interchangeably to denote the dominant
American ethnic group and its core culture.
DOMINANT CULTURAL VALUES AND COMPETING IDEOLOGIES Ideologies and public poli-
cies concerning American ethnic relations have historically reflected the cultural
preferences and the economic and political interests of the WASP, or Anglo, core
group in several ways.
To begin with, the preeminence of Anglo cultural values has consistently under-
lain public policies in education, language, law, welfare, and religion. The ascen-
dancy of the English language, the English legal system, and with few exceptions,
the Christian faith, was never seriously challenged. From the beginning, the expec-
tation held sway that entering groups—immigrant, conquered, or enslaved—would
conform to this core culture.
At certain times—especially in the early years of the twentieth century when eth-
nic diversity seemed to reach a high point—the idea of the melting pot called into
question the inevitability as well as the desirability of Anglo cultural dominance. The
idea was that the cultural differences among the many immigrant groups, so conspic-
uous at that time, would disappear through a gradual blending process. Different eth-
nic cultures, it was felt, would eventually fuse into a single “American” culture as a
kind of hybrid creation. Although the notion of a melting pot remained symbolically
popular for many decades, it never found manifestation in public policy or gained
widespread allegiance. In any case, the idea was incomplete because the place of non-
Europeans in this ideal social brew was never fully dealt with. The melting pot was
belied as well by the fact that the boundaries among the European groups did not dis-
appear, nor were their cultures ever entirely diluted by WASP norms and values.
Another competing ethnic ideology that gained prominence at times is cultural
pluralism. As explained in Chapter 4, the objective of cultural pluralism, rather
than a fusion of diverse ethnic groups, is the preservation of each. In the past, cul-
tural pluralism in the United States never found more than token acceptance at the
level of public policy. In recent times, however, schools, universities, and govern-
ment agencies have acknowledged the pluralistic nature of American society and
have made efforts to affirm multiculturalism as the society’s dominant ethnic ideol-
ogy (Glazer, 1997).
116 part ii ethnicity in the united states
Secondary
Cultural Structural Primary Structural
Assimilation Assimilationa Assimilationb
to America, bringing millions who would begin to populate every region of the
country. Equally important is that for the first time non-Anglo groups of significant
size began to enter the society, although immigration from Britain continued
unabated.
As noted earlier, immigration during these years was driven primarily by a
combination of labor needs in the expanding American economy and the disloca-
tions occurring in Europe due to the breakdown of the agrarian order and the rise
of industrialism. In addition to the declining agricultural sector and emergent indus-
trialization, the Napoleonic Wars created much political and economic instability in
Europe, providing an additional catalyst for immigration. The United States held
out promise of a new beginning for those who were displaced from their land,
who were unable to find a place in the newly emergent economic and social orders,
or who were fleeing political revolt. These strong push conditions were accompa-
nied by a growing demand for labor, both agricultural and industrial, in the New
World. The demand for workers was made more pressing by the abolition of the
African slave trade. Without new settlers, the vast resources of the United States
could not be exploited, and as a result, efforts to recruit immigrants were made by
state and territorial governments and many emergent industries.
SCOPE AND DIVERSITY Between 1840 and 1860, more than 4 million people entered
the United States—equal to about 30 percent of the entire free population of the
nation in 1840 (Levine, 1992). In proportion to the total population, it was the
greatest influx of newcomers in American history. By 1860 the population of
most of America’s largest cities was nearly half foreign-born. Much of this immi-
gration was driven by the establishment of regular steamship voyages between
Europe and America. What had been a dangerous and costly voyage of weeks by
sailing ship became a relatively uneventful crossing of days by steamer. Moreover,
this new form of trans-Atlantic travel provided mental comfort to immigrants who
were no longer faced with what had seemed an irreversible decision. Now immi-
grants knew they could more easily return if America failed to meet their expecta-
tions or if they could not adapt to life removed from the old country.
The immigrants’ origins were varied; they included not only those from Britain
and other northwest European societies but also, in the West, Chinese; in New
England, French Canadians; and in the Southwest, Mexicans. The two most sizable
groups arriving during this era, however, were the Germans and the Irish. After the
Civil War, most immigrants continued to come from Germany, Ireland, and Britain,
but a substantial number came from Scandinavia as well. Altogether, more than
2 million Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes came to the United States after 1860
(Dinnerstein et al., 2003).
This initial period of large-scale immigration marked the entrance not only of
non-British people in large numbers, but also, for the first time, significant numbers
of non-Protestants. Most of the Irish were Catholics, as were about half the
Germans. As a result, nativist—specifically anti-Catholic—actions and rhetoric be-
came widespread. Catholics were seen by many as a seditious element and
Catholicism as basically incompatible with American ways (Higham, 1963). By
mid-century, however, anti-Catholic nativism had begun to wane as national atten-
tion turned to the issue of slavery. Moreover, as the American industrial economy
chapter 5 immigration and the foundations of the american ethnic hierarchy 119
THE GERMANS Germans had settled in America as early as the seventeenth century;
they were, in fact, the largest non-British group during the colonial period. But
German immigration developed on a massive scale beginning in the 1830s, with
the largest numbers coming in two great waves. In just seven years, from 1850 to
1857, almost 1 million Germans arrived; and between 1865 and 1885, 2 million
more. By the late nineteenth century, Germans were the second largest ethnic group
in the society, exceeded only by the British. Whereas most of the Irish remained in
eastern cities, particularly New York and Boston, German immigrants dispersed
westward throughout the Northern tier of states from New York to the
Mississippi River. Many settled in several large Midwestern cities, including
Cincinnati, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Detroit, and Chicago. There they established eth-
nically homogeneous neighborhoods—so-called Kleindeutschlands, or Little
Germanys—that would grow with the continued arrival of new immigrants
(Dinnerstein et al., 2003; Rippley, 1984).
The class origins of the Germans were more varied than those of the Irish, who
were mostly poor and unskilled. Most Germans were tradesmen, industrial work-
ers, small shopkeepers, farmers, and professionals; only a small percentage were
unskilled laborers (Keil, 1991). With the growth of manufacturing, German crafts-
workers became the core of the burgeoning U.S. industrial working class (Levine,
1992). Many of the craftsmen and merchants took up residence in small towns
while farmers, attracted by rich lands, settled in large numbers in the midwestern
states of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Ohio. In religion, too, the Germans were a diverse
immigrant population. Roughly half were Protestant and half Catholic, but there
was a small German-Jewish element as well.
In addition to economic circumstances, some German emigrants were driven
by political crisis. One small but very influential segment of the German immigra-
tion of this period was a group known as “Forty-Eighters.” Forced out of
Germany because of their participation in an unsuccessful revolution in 1848,
they took political refuge in the United States. They subsequently exerted an inor-
dinate influence not only on German American affairs, but also on national issues.
They were vehemently antislavery, as well as anticlerical, and they sowed the seeds
of the American labor movement that emerged in the late nineteenth century
(Levine, 1992).
120 part ii ethnicity in the united states
SCOPE AND DIVERSITY These new immigrants not only represented the numerical
peak of European immigration to the United States, but also radically changed the
ethnic character of the society. To begin with, most were from southern and east-
ern European societies, whose cultures were alien to those of Britain and north-
western Europe. Most important, they were non-Protestant—primarily Catholic
and secondarily Jewish. Although most of the earlier Irish were Catholic, in other
respects they were not so culturally distant from the Anglo-Americans. Likewise,
the Germans may have spoken a different language, but over half were Protestant,
and they were not looked on by the dominant Anglo group as cultural inferiors.
Finally, the new immigrants were mainly people whose class origins were lower
than those of previous groups, except perhaps the Irish. They were chiefly peasants
from the poorer states of Europe—southern Italy, Russia, Poland, Greece, and the
many parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The shift in immigrant origins was brought about by a number of factors. First,
the growth of industry in Britain and Germany furnished more labor opportunities
for their populations. Hence, the pressures to migrate were reduced. German immi-
gration to the United States, for example, dropped from 1.5 million in the 1880s to
0.5 million in the 1890s (Dinnerstein and Reimers, 1999). In addition, problems
that had been experienced earlier in northern European countries now spread to
southern and eastern Europe, creating food shortages and high unemployment and
thus an incentive for people to leave.
Pull factors also changed. With the closing of the Western frontier, land was no
longer the chief lure of immigrants to the United States. The expanding American
industrial economy, however, now exerted an even stronger pull. Factories, mines,
and mills demanded ever greater numbers of workers, and unskilled immigrants
supplied the major part of this need.
An important feature of the New Immigration was that many who went to
America expected to return to their origin societies. Consequently, a major portion
of the immigration comprised men unaccompanied by their families. Their objective
was to earn enough money to enable them to return to their native towns or vil-
lages and purchase land or establish themselves in an enterprise. Many did just
that. Although records are nonexistent and only rough estimates can be made, per-
haps one-third of all immigrants during this period remigrated back to their home-
lands or to other societies (Thistlethwaite, 1991).
chapter 5 immigration and the foundations of the american ethnic hierarchy 121
The largest of the new immigrant groups were Italians, mostly from the south
of Italy, and eastern European Jews, mostly from Poland and Russia. Both tended
to concentrate in cities of the Northeast, especially New York. Another major com-
ponent of the New Immigration was Slavic groups, including Russians, Ukrainians,
Slovaks, Slovenes, Croatians, Serbs, Bulgarians, and especially Poles. Together,
these groups made up about 4 million of the new immigrants. Other central
European groups, including Hungarians, Czechs, and Armenians, also were part
of the immigration of this era.
Other societies in addition to the United States attracted large numbers of
European immigrants during this great age of international migration. These in-
cluded Australia, Brazil, Canada, and Argentina. In the latter two countries, in
fact, immigration rendered an even more profound demographic effect, proportion-
ately, than in the United States (Baily, 1999; Thistlethwaite, 1991). However, in
absolute numbers and ethnic variety, American immigration was far greater.
SETTLEMENT PATTERNS The settlement patterns of the immigrants of this period dif-
fered in some respects from the Old Immigration. Whereas many immigrants of the
earlier great wave were attracted by the opportunity to own land and therefore set-
tled in rural areas, the new immigrants were mainly industrial workers who settled
in cities and towns that supported those industries. As a result, rather than dispers-
ing geographically, the new immigrants tended to concentrate in urban areas, par-
ticularly of the Northeast and Midwest. It was here that industrial expansion was
occurring and the most alluring work opportunities were being offered. The growth of
these industrial centers was rapid and profound. From 1900 to 1920, Milwaukee’s
population, for example, increased by more than 60 percent; Cleveland’s by more
than 120 percent; and Detroit’s by almost 250 percent (U.S. Census Bureau, 1920).
Although it was aided by a steady rural-urban movement of farmers and lumbermen,
the primary elements of this population increase were the foreign-born. As seen in
Table 5.2, the foreign-born composed more than 30 percent of the population of seven
of the fourteen largest cities in 1900.
Once they entered the United States, the different immigrant groups migrated to
various cities and regions, determined in large measure by the groups’ occupational
proclivities. Particular groups seemed to be channeled to specific industries. The
Polish immigration illustrates this tendency. Census labor reports show that the
overwhelming majority of Polish immigrants were classified as laborers or workers
in manufacturing; few were found in agriculture or the professions, in clerical or
sales positions, or in building trades (Hutchinson, 1956). In a sense, the Polish im-
migrant to the United States was a migrant laborer, not so much an immigrant as a
“temporary worker,” intent on returning home. Historian Caroline Golab (1977)
explains that prior to their emigration, Poles already had much experience in the
industrial sphere because they had been migrating to various European societies
during the late nineteenth century. “It was rare,” she writes, “to find a Polish immi-
grant who had not migrated to some other part of Europe or within his own coun-
try before coming to America” (1977:74). Hence, Poles were familiar with town
and city life and with machines and factories. Quite logically, then, upon arriving
in the United States they migrated to the same industries that had used them in
122 part ii ethnicity in the united states
±±
±
Table 5.2 ±±± Foreign-Born in the Fourteen Largest U.S. Cities, 1900
Europe, such as heavy metals and mining. This accounts for the readiness of Poles
to settle in cities of the Great Lakes, such as Chicago, Buffalo, Detroit, and
Milwaukee, as well as in the anthracite region of western Pennsylvania, where these
industries were most prevalent at the turn of the century and in the several decades
that followed. As we will see in Chapters 10 and 11, similar factors operated for
immigrant Italians and Jews in accounting for their occupational inclinations.
The new immigrants in the cities tended to settle in depressed areas, inhabiting
run-down tenements that had been vacated by earlier ethnic groups such as the
Irish. The concentration of immigrants in these areas was partially the result of sim-
ple economic necessity; such housing was available and affordable. The creation of
ethnic enclaves in large cities, however, was also the product of the natural attrac-
tion of immigrants to areas inhabited by those who had preceded them to America
and came from the same towns and regions. New immigrants sought the security
and support of coethnics and thus gravitated to common areas. “Life in the Italian
quarter,” writes Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, “provided a coherence and familiarity
which drew immigrants irresistibly toward it” (1982:118). It was much the same
for other groups. As the skeleton of the ethnic community was shaped, others
were attracted, creating in turn the need for larger and more complex ethnic
institutions.
More than ethnic needs, however, residential clustering and the building of eth-
nic communities resulted mostly from the attraction of work opportunities in
specific locations. In their classic study of Polish immigrants, Thomas and
chapter 5 immigration and the foundations of the american ethnic hierarchy 123
Znaniecki (1918) explained that in large cities the desire to live near work was a
stronger consideration than the desire to live near one’s fellow ethnics. Thus institu-
tions catering to immigrants—churches, groceries, banks—followed the residential
concentration created by employment opportunities. Moreover, one should not ex-
aggerate the ethnic homogeneity of these urban areas, as movies and novels have so
often portrayed them. Although there certainly were neighborhood concentrations
of immigrants and their children from particular countries, these pockets were never
as ethnically pure as has been commonly assumed, nor did they endure much be-
yond the first two immigrant generations (Hershberg et al., 1979).
RESURGENT NATIVISM AND THE END OF THE SECOND WAVE The sharp cultural and
class differences of the new immigrants provoked a strongly antagonistic reaction
from the dominant group. Americans questioned how the immigrants would ulti-
mately fit into the society and, abetted by popular notions of Social Darwinism,
widely assumed their cultural inferiority (Jacobson, 1998).
Prompted by the continued influx, nativist feelings and racist theories reached
an apex by the early 1920s, resulting in restrictive quotas that curtailed large-scale
European immigration once and for all. The quotas were deliberately designed to
favor the sending countries of northwestern Europe and to limit immigration from
southern and eastern European countries. Previously, with no quotas and few stipu-
lations other than health requirements, an open door, in effect, had existed for
Europeans. The restrictive legislation represented a symbolic closing of the door.
Even prior to the passage of this legislation, immigration from Europe had been
curtailed by the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Although immigration resumed
at high levels for several years after the war, the quotas that were established in
1924 changed the makeup of newcomers back to mainly northwestern Europeans.
Moreover, immigration to the United States of all groups dropped precipitously
from 700,000 in 1924 to fewer than 300,000 the following year. Not until the early
1970s would the number again approach the level of immigration reached prior to
the mid-1920s.
In addition to restrictive quotas, immigration was discouraged by the Great
Depression of the 1930s. Unemployment reached record levels, and the United
States was therefore no longer seen as an attractive destination. Fewer immigrants
arrived during the 1930s than during any decade of the previous hundred years. In
fact, more people left the United States during this time than entered as immigrants.
As the world again plunged into war in the late 1930s, a further obstacle to immi-
gration was imposed. The historical flow of American immigration can be seen in
Figure 5.1.
Figure 5.2 shows the major ancestry groups that currently make up the Euro-
American population, which derives primarily from the two main periods, old and
new, of European immigration.2
2
The diversity of the European component of the American ethnic configuration is actually greater
than shown in Figure 5.2 because only the largest ancestry groups are included.
124 part ii ethnicity in the united states
Period
ion
on
ion
tus on
tio
ti
Hia grati
t
t
gra
gra
gra
gra
Im ent
Im st
we
sc
mi
mi
mi
mi
mi
w
Old
Na
Ne
Ne
Im
Im
Im
2,000
1,800
Immigrants (thousands)
1,600
1,400
IRCA *
1,200 Legalization
1,000
800
600
400
200
0
1820 1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2006
Figure 5.1
| U.S. Immigration Currents, 1820-2006
*IRCA refers to the amnesty provision of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, under
which 2.7 million unauthorized foreign residents were transferred to legal immigration status.
Source: U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1996, 1998, Department of Homeland Security, 2007.
Irish (12.0%)
English (9.6%)
Italian (6.0%)
Polish (3.4%)
French (3.3%)
Scottish (2.0%)
Scotch-Irish (1.8%)
Dutch (1.8%)
Norwegian (1.6%)
Swedish (1.5%)
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Figure 5.2
| Largest Euro-American Ancestries, in millions
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007f.
125
126 part ii ethnicity in the united states
African Americans, public sentiment now seemed prepared to do the same with im-
migrants, bringing the reality of immigration laws into line with the rhetoric of
equal opportunity. Also contributing to the acceptability of change were the senti-
ments and efforts of the new presidential administration that entered Washington in
1961. John F. Kennedy, in his 1960 campaign for the presidency, had explicitly
pledged to work toward the removal of discriminatory immigration regulations.
As with much of the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s, the revision of immi-
gration laws was enacted in large measure as a tribute to Kennedy after his assassi-
nation in 1963.
In 1965, when the revision was passed, few predicted the enormous numbers
that would enter the United States as a result, nor could they foresee the profound
impact this legislation would subsequently have on the ethnic makeup of the soci-
ety. The ensuing massive and immensely diverse immigration led to an unprece-
dented level of heterogeneity of the U.S. population. The two previous periods of
substantial immigration, occurring in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,
had been primarily European in origin. Though resisted by nativist forces, these im-
migration periods did not essentially threaten the basic cultural and racial makeup
of the society. The connotation of immigrant in the United States was “of European
descent.” The modern period of immigration, however, marked the onset of a
movement that ensured that the society’s ethnic configuration, and thus its culture,
would not be in the future what it had been for most of its history.
ETHNIC MAKEUP Numbers alone do not tell the whole story of the current period
of American immigration. Perhaps more important, the character of immigration
has been radically changed from that of past eras. Whereas the vast majority of im-
migrants throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were from
European societies, today most are from Latin America and Asia (Figure 5.3). The
ramifications of that change have had a ripple effect throughout virtually all eco-
nomic, political, and social institutions.
Figure 5.4 shows the leading countries of origin of immigrants to the United
States. Clearly countries of Latin America and Asia predominate. But the sheer diver-
sity of non-European immigrants is quite astonishing. Among the Asians, for exam-
ple, are Filipinos, Koreans, Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodians,
Laotians, and Hmong. From the Middle East have come Palestinians, Iraqis,
Iranians, Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians, and Israelis. Those from Africa include
Somalis, Ethiopians, and Nigerians. And from Latin America, the national origins
of the immigrants cover the entire Central and South American regions, in addition
to the Caribbean.
MOTIVATING FORCES What has prompted this newest large-scale immigration to the
United States? Obviously the changes in immigration law in 1965 provided the fa-
vorable legal conditions and thus the necessary vehicle. But essentially the same
push-pull factors that motivated past immigrants to America have been functioning
for the newest wave. Although many have come as political refugees (mostly from
Southeast Asia, Cuba, and Central America), most immigrants have responded to
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1820 – 1841– 1861– 1881– 1901– 1921– 1941– 1961– 1981–
1840 1860 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000
Years
Northern Southern Asia Latin America Other*
and Western and Eastern and Caribbean
Europe Europe
Figure 5.3
| Regions of Origin of U.S. Immigrants, 1820-2000
*Canada is the origin of the majority in this residual category.
Source: U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services, 1984, 1998, Department of Homeland Security, 2003.
128 part ii ethnicity in the united states
16
14
12
10
Percent
bl an
o
na
or
ca
ne
ic
di
ub
bi
na
ad
pu nic
hi
ai
ex
In
om
ic
pi
C
C
m
et
lv
M
Re mi
ilip
Ja
ol
Sa
Vi
o
C
Ph
El
Figure 5.4
| Leading Countries of Origin of U.S. Immigrants, 2006
Source: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2007.
the population and economic pressures of their societies of origin. Most, in other
words, seek economic betterment and improved social conditions. A national sur-
vey asked foreign-born adults living in the United States what they preferred about
America in comparison with their homeland. Some answered political freedom, fair
treatment under laws, safety from crime, or moral values. But the most common
answer was job opportunities (Saad, 1995).
Immigration to the United States, as well as to other industrialized societies of
North America, Europe, and Australia, accelerated in this period, mostly because of
the widening gap between rich and poor nations. The economies of the latter, many
of them newly independent states, were generally incapable of supporting rapidly
growing populations, thereby creating a migration push. Most of the world’s popu-
lation growth has occurred since the end of World War II, and the overwhelming
majority of that growth has taken place in the less developed countries. Moreover,
the gains in economic development made by many of these countries during the
1960s and 1970s slowed or reversed in the 1980s due to economic recession, grow-
ing debt, and internal political conflicts. Those conditions induced further pressures
to migrate to the wealthier countries, like the United States, whose advanced econ-
omies promised better employment opportunities and a superior quality of life.
If poverty and overpopulation, as in the past, have provided the major push
factors for the contemporary flow of immigration to the United States and other
industrialized countries, pull factors are also similar to those that stimulated past
chapter 5 immigration and the foundations of the american ethnic hierarchy 129
immigration waves: the changing structure of the U.S. economy, especially the ex-
pansion of low-wage jobs (Sassen, 1998).
SETTLEMENT PATTERNS Although the Newest Immigration has affected virtually all
U.S. regions and states, it has had the most radical demographic effect on a few
states, namely California, New York, Illinois, Texas, and Florida. So great has the
change been in California that the state has been transformed into one where non-
Hispanic whites are no longer the numerical majority. Similarly, though immigrant
groups have dispersed widely, specific groups remain concentrated in particular re-
gions. Asians, for example, have settled mostly in California; Latinos in the
Southwest and Florida; and almost all new groups have large communities in
New York City.
Like so many American immigrants of past generations, many today come
with few expectations of remaining permanently in the United States. A great num-
ber do leave, and many (particularly from Mexico) engage in a continual back-
and-forth movement. But also like their predecessors, many who at first see their
immigration as temporary become firmly ensconced in their new society. The result
has been, as in earlier eras of immigration, the flourishing of ethnic enclaves in cit-
ies that have attracted large numbers of new immigrants. Some, namely New York
and Chicago, remain meccas for new immigrants, much as they were in the past.
But others—Sunbelt cities like Los Angeles, Miami, and Houston—are new focal
points of the Newest Immigration. Table 5.3 shows the U.S. cities that contain
more than 1 million immigrants.
Although most of the newest immigrants have settled in the largest cities, virtu-
ally no U.S. city or town has been unaffected. Many immigrants have leapfrogged
over the central cities and settled in suburban communities, a pattern not common
in the past. As an example, consider Bridgewater, New Jersey, an affluent township
forty miles from New York City. Seemingly immune to ethnic changes occurring in
the City and its surrounding communities, Bridgewater had been a solidly white,
middle-class enclave. Its Asian population had been almost invisible in 1980, but
twenty years later Bridgewater was 10 percent Asian, and its schools were teaching
students speaking forty-one native languages (Chen, 1999). Numerous small towns
not in metropolitan areas are even more unexpected destinations for new immi-
grants. In Maine, for example, Lewiston’s population of 36,000 was augmented in
2001 by more than 2,000 Somali immigrants (Belluck, 2002).
CLASS RANGE Another evident feature of the Newest Immigration is its class range.
Unlike past great waves of immigration, in which most newcomers were either
poor or of modest means, the latest influx is made up of individuals and families
who span the entire class spectrum, from low-level, unskilled workers to highly ed-
ucated professionals. Those from Latin America tend to have less education and
fewer skills, while those from Asia generally have more education and higher occu-
pational skills (Mather, 2007). The result of this socioeconomic variety has been
equally diverse patterns of settlement and adaptation among immigrants.
balanced. In fact, the majority of immigrants from some countries (the Philippines,
Korea, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic, for example) are women (Rumbaut,
1996). Immigrant women have disproportionately filled jobs in the low-wage ser-
vice sector—such as hotel and restaurant workers—and in certain labor-intensive
industries. In San Francisco, for example, the garment industry is the largest
manufacturing sector, employing more than 25,000 workers; 90 percent are
women, most of them Asian immigrants (Louie, 2000).
tion. And, in all of these societies, the changing ethnic composition has brought
forth heated public debate, just as in the United States: Are immigrants becoming
too numerous? Is the society’s cultural integrity threatened? Are immigrants taking
jobs from native workers? We will revisit these issues as they have affected the
United States in Chapter 12 and in Western European nations in Chapter 16.
To recognize that we are in an age of immigration should not lead us to think
that immigration is a uniquely modern phenomenon. As noted at the outset of this
chapter, immigration has been ongoing since the very emergence of human socie-
ties. Nonetheless, it would hardly be exaggerating to declare that today we are in
a period in which the dimensions of immigration are greater, and its consequences
loom larger, than in any previous era in human history. And there appears no like-
lihood that the tide of international migration will recede in the foreseeable future.
As long as there is a global stratification system, well-off nations with strong econ-
omies will attract people from nations with weak economies and severe population
pressures. It seems apparent, then, that the issues and social consequences of large-
scale immigration and increasing global diversity will be with us for many decades.
CHANGING RACIAL AND ETHNIC CATEGORIES Another, perhaps more significant, fac-
tor makes those projections less compelling than they initially seem. Even if demog-
raphers were capable of making accurate predictions, their estimates do not take
into consideration that the categories currently used to classify the population by
race and ethnicity are likely to change in the future.
In 1977 the U.S. federal government, as a means of monitoring and enforcing
civil rights legislation and affirmative action programs, adopted a set of ethnic
132 part ii ethnicity in the united states
categories by which people could be classified and counted (Wright, 1994). These
were subsequently adopted by virtually all government agencies, including the U.S.
Census Bureau, as well as by educational institutions, corporations, and the mass
media. Five racial-ethnic categories were put in place, and they have been changed
only in minor ways since then: white, black, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander,3 and
1980 2000
6% 1% 1% 4% 1%
12%
12%
12%
80% 71%
2030 2050
7% 1% 1%
9%
19%
24%
60% 53%
13%
13%
Figure 5.5
| Ethnic Makeup of the United States
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2000b.
3
In 1997, in preparation for the 2000 U.S. Census, “Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders,” previ-
ously included with “Asian”, were constituted a category of their own. On the 1997 changes in racial-
ethnic categories, see Hattam, 2005.
chapter 5 immigration and the foundations of the american ethnic hierarchy 133
“MIXED RACE” PEOPLE The failure of the commonly used racial-ethnic classifica-
tion scheme to accurately reflect the increasingly mixed blend of the U.S. popula-
tion has led in recent years to calls for the creation of a “mixed race” category.
Presumably this would account for those individuals who fall through the cracks
of the current system; that is, those whose parentage reflects more than one racial-
ethnic category. The 2000 U.S. Census stopped short of creating such a category,
though it did, for the first time, give people the choice of identifying themselves
with more than one racial category—an option chosen by 2.4 percent of the popu-
lation (Lee, 2001).
The creation of a mixed-race category would more comfortably fit a growing
segment of the population, but it would do nothing to make the racial-ethnic classi-
fication scheme any less arbitrary; it would only create another category that carries
no more real meaning than any of the others. Moreover, creating a mixed-race cat-
egory, as explained in Chapter 1, raises the implication that there are “pure” races
to begin with. As one researcher has put it, “insofar as there is no biological foun-
dation for the three or four acknowledged races, neither is there a biological foun-
dation for mixed-race groups” (Zack, 2001:52).
In reality, of course, there has been a mixed-race population in American soci-
ety from the very beginning. In earlier times, when the essential racial division was
black/white, the so-called one-drop rule arbitrarily crystallized this racial dichot-
omy. In effect, one had to be either black or white; there were no in-between cate-
gories.4 Blacks were defined as those having black ancestors; that is, “one drop of
black blood.” But the percentage of black ancestry (what fraction constituted one
drop?) varied from state to state. In some it was one-fourth; in others, one-eighth,
one-sixteenth, or even one-thirty-second (Davis, 2001). At the turn of the last
century, the one-drop rule was essentially the law of the land; even today it affects
racial classification (Hollinger, 2005). Most of the U.S. black population, in fact,
has some white ancestry, and a small portion of the white population has some
black ancestry (Blackburn, 2000; Smedley, 1999).
CONTINUED ETHNIC DIVERSITY One unmistakable fact does emerge from the confu-
sion accompanying attempts to classify and quantify the American population by
race and ethnicity: The United States continues to evolve into an ever-more hetero-
geneous society. In the twenty-first century, America’s ethnic character will be more
culturally and physically diverse than it was in the twentieth century. And despite
the efforts of some to preserve groups’ social boundaries, the trend toward a fading
of those racial and ethnic lines seems irreversible.
Despite the virtually unparalleled heterogeneity of the United States today, it is
interesting—if bemusing—to consider how misinformed most Americans are about
4
In fact, the U.S. Census during the nineteenth century did provide an “intermediate” racial category,
“mulatto,” which was dropped in 1920 when black was defined as “anyone with any black ancestry”
(Davis, 2001).
chapter 5 immigration and the foundations of the american ethnic hierarchy 135
the ethnic makeup of their society. Most cannot describe the actual size of various
ethnic groups with anything even approaching accuracy. This has been demon-
strated by national surveys over the past decade, in which Americans grossly exag-
gerate the size of racial and ethnic minorities. The typical American estimates the
size of African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American populations to
be more than twice as large as they actually are (Carroll, 2001). This seriously dis-
torted picture of the American ethnic configuration is bound to influence people’s
attitudes and actions regarding ethnic-related issues such as immigration, affirma-
tive action, and multiculturalism.
5
Using a combination of these factors means that some will offset others. For example, although Jews
and Asians rank higher in their aggregate economic class position than northwestern Europeans, they
still do not fully interact at the primary level with those groups, and the extent of prejudice and dis-
crimination directed against them is much greater. Hence, when all these factors are considered, Jews
and Asians are part of the intermediate tier of groups rather than the top.
136 part ii ethnicity in the united states
SUMMARY
Following its conquest of the indigenous peoples and enslavement of blacks, the
Anglo core group established its social and political dominance and exercised the
power of selection over those who came afterward. American ideologies and public
policies regarding ethnic groups and issues have consistently reflected Anglo cul-
tural preferences and Anglo economic and political interests. Based on those
thoughts and actions, an ethnic hierarchy has been shaped, and the rank order of
groups has not essentially changed.
The ethnic diversity of the American population blossomed forcefully during the
approximately 100 years between the 1820s and 1920s. Two massive waves of
European immigration took place. The Old Immigration, during the first fifty years
of that period, brought mainly groups from northern and western Europe, the larg-
est among them the Irish and Germans. During the second fifty years, the New
Immigration consisted primarily of groups from southern and eastern Europe. The
cultural distinctiveness of the latter provoked a nativist movement that ultimately
resulted in the passage of restrictive immigration laws, ending, in effect, further
large-scale European immigration.
The contemporary period of immigration, referred to as the Newest Immigration,
was launched by the passage of immigration reforms in 1965, which ended country-
of-origin restrictions. Whereas previous periods of heavy immigration had consisted
mostly of European groups, the Newest Immigration is made up in largest part of
groups from Asia and Latin America. The scope of the Newest Immigration has ex-
ceeded even that of the early 1900s, previously the heaviest period of immigration to
the United States. As a result, an ethnic reconfiguration of the U.S. population is oc-
curring. Asian and Latin American groups are growing, and Euro-American groups
are declining in size.
The American ethnic hierarchy today is made up essentially of three comprehen-
sive tiers: white Protestants of various national origins at the top; white ethnics of
various national origins, along with most Asian Americans, in the middle; and
Hispanic Americans, African Americans, and American Indians at the bottom.
Suggested Readings
Baltzell, E. Digby. 1964. The Protestant Establishment: Aristocracy and Caste in America.
New York: Vintage. A fascinating social history of the WASP upper class, especially its
efforts to maintain its ethnic purity. Argues that the WASP upper class has become a cas-
telike group, whereas societal power has passed to a more ethnically diverse elite. A
chapter 5 immigration and the foundations of the american ethnic hierarchy 137
138
chapter 6 native americans 139
European Contact
When Europeans crossed the Atlantic beginning in the late fifteenth century, they
found two continents inhabited by millions of people.1 Native peoples extended
over the entire Western Hemisphere, from the Arctic to the tip of South America.
These “Indians,” as the Europeans called them, were by no means homogeneous
but were organized into hundreds of tribes or nations, some quite advanced in so-
cial organization and technology. They practiced a wide variety of subsistence pat-
terns ranging from hunting and gathering to intensive agriculture (Crawford, 2001).
They were different from the Europeans, however, and the white invaders ethno-
centrically interpreted these physical and cultural differences as proof of inferiority
and lack of civilization.
Estimates of the indigenous population north of the Rio Grande at the time of
Columbus’s arrival range from 1 million to 18 million (Crawford, 2001; Thornton,
1995; Ubelaker, 1988). Like the more numerous natives of what is today Latin
America, these peoples spoke many different languages, conformed to disparate cul-
tural systems, and were organized in a variety of economic and social forms. There
were, then, no “American Indians” per se but rather a great number of diverse eth-
nic groups, viewing themselves as different from one another as from the European
invaders (Lurie, 1991).
1
The number of indigenous people inhabiting North and South America at the time of European dis-
covery is disputed among anthropologists and historians. Estimates range from less than 10 million to
more than 100 million (Dobyns, 1966; Kroeber, 1939; Utter, 1993). As one researcher has declared,
“Prior to the late nineteenth century, all numbers are uncertain, and a uniquely correct number of na-
tives never will be had” (Jaffe, 1992:2).
140 part ii ethnicity in the united states
were preliterate and at a technological level far below that of the Europeans. A
combination of these traits contributed to the image of Indians as savage and infe-
rior and, consequently, to the rationale for their exploitation and annihilation. As
Alvin Josephy has written, “In the Western Hemisphere, Indians, to the whites,
were all the same, and the newcomers disagreed among themselves only over the
extent to which the native populations differed from, or seemed to be inferior to,
Europeans” (Josephy, 1969:279).
Contact and even ethnocentrism among alien ethnic groups will not in them-
selves create dominant-subordinate relations, however. Competition over valued re-
sources is a third factor, and in the case of Indian-white relations, land provided the
necessary ingredient. The settlers’ objective was to secure land for agricultural pro-
duction. From the outset, divergent cultural perceptions of “property” led to misun-
derstandings and hostilities between Indian and settler. Indian lands were held
communally, not as private property. Whites consequently perceived them as basi-
cally unoccupied. Furthermore, most Indians did not engage in European-style
farming, which led to the view that these lands were underutilized and thus justifi-
ably occupied by those who would cultivate them in a “proper” manner.
In the end, however, it was the differential power between Indians and settlers
that proved the crucial element in establishing dominance and subordination. In
particular, the deciding factor in the European conquest of indigenous peoples in
all parts of the Western Hemisphere was the Europeans’ technological skills, which
gave them a tremendous advantage in war. When the vastly superior arms of the
colonialists were combined with the inability of Indians to resist the diseases intro-
duced by the Europeans, it was inevitable that whites would prevail in the struggle
for resources and that Native populations would decline.
THE BRITISH TRIUMPH The British, too, were engaged in the fur trade and, like the
French, entered into alliances with Indian nations. The British-French rivalry in the
fur trade led to deadly conflict among the Indian nations attached to each country.
Moreover, as a result of their economic and political relations with the Europeans,
native Indians’ cultural institutions and forms of social organization were radically
transformed in numerous ways.
More than the Spanish and the French, the British valued land as a resource,
and their colonial activities eventually became focused on that goal. Britain was in-
terested in having colonists permanently settle the land and farm it rather than sim-
ply exploit it for minerals and furs. With the triumph of the British in North
America in the late eighteenth century, the crux of Indian-white relations shifted
from the fur trade to issues of land. The British colonial government as well as its
successor, the newly independent United States, sought to control the acquisition of
lands by American settlers and to protect the rights of Indians, but both govern-
ments failed. The quest for land by British colonists proved insatiable, leading ulti-
mately to a displacement of the indigenous population.
At the start of the nineteenth century, Indian-white relations evolved into a con-
frontation in which the rapacious quest of white settlers for land led to ever-greater
efforts to dispossess Indians of lands they were occupying. Two paths to this objec-
tive became apparent: Indians would be separated from their lands either through
assimilation (by encouraging them to abandon their communal patterns of land-
holding in favor of private property) or through removal (by relocating them
through negotiated purchase of land or through conquest) (Cornell, 1988). These
two paths were not mutually exclusive; rather, they were complementary, not only
in a practical sense, but also as a way of satisfying the objectives of settlers, who
wanted land, and reformers, who sought to “civilize” the Indians with American
culture. This dual objective, notes historian Robert Berkhofer, was a constant pat-
tern throughout most of American history: “From the founding of the nation until
recent times, and some would include today as well, United States policy makers
placed two considerations above all others in the nation’s relation with Native
Americans as Indians: the extinction of native title in favor of White exploitation
of native lands and resources and the transformation of native lifestyles into copies
of approved White models” (1979:135).
By the late nineteenth century, most of the remaining Native population had
been forcibly resettled in reservations west of the Mississippi. It was not coinciden-
tal that reservations were located on lands that whites deemed virtually worthless
for farming or grazing.
Despite these adaptations, however, Indians remained politically fractured into many
scattered tribes. This made them vulnerable to American settlers’ intrusions and, ulti-
mately, divestiture.
As for diseases, perhaps nothing more severely affected the Indians’ physical
condition than the epidemics brought by Europeans, which decimated many tribes
from the very outset of their contact with settlers and explorers. These epidemics
continued, repeatedly, throughout the nineteenth century (Thornton, 1995;
Washburn, 1975). Native populations lacked immunity to smallpox, measles, chol-
era, typhoid, malaria, and other diseases; their effects were devastating.
SEPARATION The earliest U.S. policy toward Indians grew out of the struggle for
land that had characterized relations between Indians and the English settlers.
Various agreements between Indians and colonists essentially held that the Indian
nations were independent political entities and were to be dealt with on that basis.
This policy continued after U.S. independence. Specific bounded territories were
promulgated, separating Indian nations from Americans. Thus the paradoxical sta-
tus of Indians was, as Edward Spicer describes it, “a people within the territory of
the new nation and yet outside the processes of its political life” (1982:179).
2
It should be remembered that at the outset of contact between Indians and Europeans, it was not land
but other resources—in North America, furs—that Europeans sought. From the late eighteenth century
on, however, land was the major objective.
chapter 6 native americans 143
The legal status of Indian lands, however, quickly became hazy as settlers
coveted these lands and began to infringe on them. Indian lands were ceded irre-
versibly by treaties, usually entered into by Indians under duress or in ignorance
of their meaning, through fraudulent schemes perpetrated by whites, or by sheer
force. Moreover, treaties themselves provided no protection of those lands left to
the Native Americans because renegotiations and violations became standard prac-
tice whenever disputes arose. Where there was desirable land, whites eventually
took it. Clashes occurred repeatedly; the solution, from the American perspective,
was to engage the Indians in negotiation and land exchanges for their removal to
lands further west, where it was assumed these border issues would no longer
arise.
REMOVAL The Indian Removal Act of 1830 called for the relocation of all tribes
living in the eastern United States to lands set aside for them west of the
Mississippi River. This policy was pursued vigorously by President Andrew
Jackson, who represented the sentiments of settlers who saw Indian occupation of
desired lands as an obstacle to the development of white dominance. Removal was
rationalized by the view that Indians were not using land as “God had intended”;
that is, to farm in the way of the white man. As Governor William Henry Harrison
asked, “Is one of the fairest portions of the globe to remain in a state of nature, the
haunt of a few wretched savages, when it seems destined by the Creator to give
support to a large population and to be the seat of civilization?” (quoted in
Hagan, 1961:69).
This ten-year movement marked a time of great hardship and suffering for
Indians and resulted in the virtual destruction of many tribes, particularly those
that resisted removal. Perhaps the most infamous episode involved the forced mi-
gration of the Cherokees in 1838, an affair referred to as the “Trail of Tears.” In
the summer of that year, the U.S. Army rounded up all 16,000 Cherokees and held
them for months in disease-infested camps. The march west to Oklahoma extended
over the autumn and winter, and by its end, 4,000 had died (Wright, 1992). As one
historian has described it, the removal of Indians at best “resembled closely the pio-
neering experience of thousands of their white contemporaries” and at worst “ap-
proached the horrors created by the Nazi handling of subject peoples” (Hagan,
1961:77). The Indian Removal Act was perhaps the most devastating single action
taken by the federal government in destroying Indian cultures and societies.
THE WESTERN INDIANS After the American Civil War, the U.S. government took
steps to put an end to Indian resistance that stood in the way of western develop-
ment. Thus the locus of Indian affairs shifted to the tribes of the Plains, the
Southwest, and the Far West. The result was the further dispossession of Indian
lands through military campaigns as well as the signing of treaties that were
quickly broken by the government when their terms impeded settlement.
A key part of this effort was the suppression of the Ghost Dance religious
movement. The Ghost Dance religion had been founded by a prophet, Wovoka, of
the Paiute tribe. Believers were convinced that they could drive whites from Indian
lands and restore their traditional way of life by following certain rituals, particu-
larly a ceremonial dance. In the late 1880s, the movement spread across the plains.
144 part ii ethnicity in the united states
The U.S. government viewed the Ghost Dance as a serious threat; in 1890, follow-
ing the killing of Sitting Bull, one of the movement’s leaders, the government or-
dered troops to move on the Ghost Dancers. This led to the slaughter of hundreds
of Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee near the Pine Ridge Reservation in South
Dakota (Brown, 1972). This incident represented the culmination of military force
against Indians, and from that point forward, Indian resistance ceased. Wounded
Knee became a symbol of the federal government’s destructive anti-Indian policies.
In addition to military force, the Plains Indians were decimated by disease and
by the extermination of the buffalo (or bison), which had been the very heart of
their way of life. They depended on it not only for food, but also for clothing and
shelter. The herds were drastically reduced when white hunters shot them, harvest-
ing meat and hides. In a matter of only a few years, as many as 15 million buffalo
were virtually extinguished. The passing of the buffalo further diminished the
power of Western Indians to resist white settlement. The choice they now faced
was between depending on government handouts and adopting the Euro-American
way of life (Wexler, 1995).
ALLOTMENT AND COERCIVE ASSIMILATION By the latter part of the nineteenth century,
armed resistance to federal policy had ended. Government officials and reformers
now advocated a policy that they felt would once and for all solve the Indian
problem: Reservation lands would be broken up and allotted to individual tribal
members. Unallotted lands would then be sold to non-Indians. This policy was for-
malized in 1887 with congressional passage of the Dawes Act (also called the
General Allotment Act). The policy of allotment further diminished those lands re-
maining in Indian possession, leaving them with even fewer productive resources.
Furthermore, the administrative effects of the Dawes Act led to an even greater in-
trusion of the BIA (the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the government’s major agency for
dealing with Indians) into Indian affairs, further diminishing native cultures and
weakening tribal political institutions.
As a means of coercing Indians into an acceptance of their now virtual power-
lessness in the face of the federal government, a policy of forced assimilation was
put into place. The policy of breaking up Indian lands and assigning title to indi-
viduals was, by itself, intended to make over Indian families, using white settlers
as the model: “hard working and economically motivated” (Spicer, 1982:183). But
part of the policy also consisted of specific attempts to assimilate Indians into the
mainstream society. In cooperation with religious groups, efforts were made to
eradicate native cultures and impose the American way of life. This meant destroy-
ing native religions and putting Christianity in their place, denying Indians native
languages and substituting English, and generally reducing education to an effort
to “civilize” Indians. Native American children were placed in government-run
boarding schools, which indoctrinated them with the belief that Euro-American cul-
ture was vastly superior to “primitive” tribal cultures. Separated from their families
for years at a time, the children were taught to speak English, wear Western cloth-
ing, and pray as Christians; failure to behave accordingly merited stern punishment
from school authorities (Adams, 1995). The BIA commissioner in 1889 bluntly
stated his bureau’s intent: “The Indians must conform to ‘the white man’s ways,’
peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must” (quoted in Cornell, 1988:56).
chapter 6 native americans 145
At the start of the twentieth century, then, Indians were impoverished and
virtually at the mercy of the federal government, whose paternalistic policies con-
tinued to reflect white ethnocentrism. By that time, the Indian population had
been reduced to fewer than 250,000. Indians were now officially wards of the
federal government and were thus no longer seen or dealt with as separate
nations.
A NEW APPROACH TO INDIAN AFFAIRS In the 1930s an effort was made to reverse the
decades of neglect and exploitation that had characterized government policies vis-
à-vis American Indians. It was also an attempt to create a more pluralistic system
of Indian-white relations. John Collier, enlightened and sympathetic toward Native
causes, was appointed to head the BIA during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s
first term. Collier proposed major changes in Indian policy that included tribal
self-rule and efforts to encourage Native cultural preservation. Most important
was his proposal to end the allotment system created by the Dawes Act, which
had resulted in the loss of much Indian land. Congress passed the Indian
Reorganization Act (IRA) in 1934, which included a number of Collier’s recom-
mendations. It was not met with enthusiasm by all Indians, however. Some were
committed to assimilation, and others were not prepared to accept at face value
any measure offered by the federal government. Still others saw the act as simply
one more form of paternalism. Most tribes, however, approved it. The IRA, though
failing to fundamentally alter the status and condition of Native Americans, did
result in halting some of the more egregious aspects of past Indian policy. It pro-
hibited further allotments of tribal lands and encouraged Indians to establish self-
governing systems within their tribes. Moreover, Collier reduced the heavy-handed
control of Indian life by the BIA and reduced efforts aimed at forced cultural
assimilation.
TERMINATION AND ITS REVERSAL In the 1950s another turnabout in the govern-
ment’s approach to Indian affairs emerged with a new policy known as
“termination.” In essence the objective was, once again, assimilation. Termination
essentially meant the end of the federal government’s responsibility to provide vari-
ous social, educational, and economic services to Indians; it also ended government
protection of Indian lands and property held in trust for the tribes (Senese, 1991;
Wilkinson, 2005). In a sense, Indians would now be entirely on their own.
Moreover, the tribal organization of Indian life was seen as a relic of the past,
and it was felt that Indians should be dealt with on an individualistic, not a com-
munal, basis. The idea was that they should be treated no differently from other
citizens. To accomplish this, it was proposed that the reservation system be disman-
tled and the federal government’s unique role toward Indians be severed. No longer
would treaty obligations be recognized, and the sovereign status of tribes would be
eliminated.
Most Indians strongly resisted termination, realizing that the ultimate result
would be the loss of tribal lands as well as Native cultures. The failure of termina-
tion led to a return to a policy more in line with the IRA during the next three de-
cades. Reversing its position again, federal policy toward American Indians in the
1970s moved in the direction of greater autonomy for tribal governments.
146 part ii ethnicity in the united states
RED POWER A major influence on the government’s decision to reverse the policy
of termination was the Red Power movement. During the late 1960s and early
1970s, Native Americans put pressure on the federal government to address
Indian issues and needs and to reassert Indian rights. Moreover, as with other
ethnic groups, American Indians during that time began to reaffirm their ethnic
identity. These ideas and actions, in total, came to be known as the Red Power
movement. Specifically, the aim of Red Power was to end the federal policy of ter-
mination, return Indians to traditional cultural ways, and review and revitalize
Indian communities. As it took shape, Red Power in many ways emulated similar
movements occurring at that time among African Americans and Latinos. It
brought the grievances and general plight of Native Americans to public awareness
through numerous incidents—marches, protests, sit-ins, and demonstrations.
Perhaps the most publicized and attention-grabbing event of the Red Power
movement was the nineteen-month occupation of Alcatraz Island, an abandoned
federal prison in San Francisco Bay, beginning in 1969. Many Indian activists saw
this as the spark that ignited the Red Power movement. Following Alcatraz, several
other occupations took place in various locations around the country. The siege at
Wounded Knee in the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1973, however,
overshadowed the others. The conflict actually began as an internal power struggle
among the Oglala Sioux tribe. Eventually it involved not only the two sides of the
tribe, but also federal law enforcement officials, the BIA, local citizens, nationally
prominent entertainers who lent their celebrity endorsement, national religious
and legal organizations, and the national news media (Josephy et al., 1999).
One of the major groups involved was AIM, the American Indian Movement.
AIM had been founded in 1968 by a group of young Indian men, including
Dennis Banks, and had been one of the major organizing units of the earlier
Alcatraz occupation.
Wounded Knee culminated in a standoff between AIM and federal officials that
continued for more than two months, with sporadic violence resulting in several
deaths and many injuries. Banks and Russell Means, another activist leader, were
subsequently arrested and charged with inciting to riot and conspiracy. The choice
of Wounded Knee was hardly random. This location held great symbolic signifi-
cance for American Indians because it had been the site where the U.S. cavalry
had massacred hundreds of Sioux men, women, and children in 1890. After
Wounded Knee, the militancy of Red Power subsided relatively quickly, however,
and was replaced with a more legalistic approach to preserving and enhancing
Indian cultural and economic interests.
Alcatraz and Wounded Knee took on great symbolic meaning for Native
Americans and helped to stimulate ethnic reidentification among Indians who had
drifted into an urbanized assimilation path. A renewal of ethnic pride and con-
sciousness became evident and a cultural renaissance emerged on many Indian re-
servations (Kelly and Nagel, 2002).
1999; Wilkinson, 2005). The effect was a renewal of tribal sovereignty and, in ef-
fect, a reversal of the policy of termination. Many of the reservations’ social and
economic functions were now assumed by tribal governments.
In the 1980s the Reagan administration made severe cuts in federal assistance
to American Indians. As with all other federal agencies, the Reagan approach was
to remove the federal government from activities and turn these over to the
private sector. In 1983 alone, aid was cut by more than one-third, affecting
programs on all reservations (Worsnop, 1992). These policies reflected a philosoph-
ical rejection of self-determination that had seemed to hold sway in the 1970s, but
they were short-lived. By the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, self-
determination once again dominated government policy as Congress and the courts
made decisions that strengthened the sovereignty of Indian nations (Josephy et al.,
1999; Wilkinson, 2005). In 1990, for example, Congress enacted the Native
American Languages Act, intended to promote the use and development of Indian
languages.
Recent politics of American Indians have focused primarily on political self-
determination and on the protection of remaining Indian lands. Indians have, in
the past two decades, generally experienced greater empowerment than at any
time since the nineteenth century. Much of this power has been the result of the
leverage that tribes have been able to exert in their control of valuable minerals
and other resources that are now part of Indian-controlled areas. Increasingly they
have made effective legal challenges to what they have interpreted as incursions into
their lands. Moreover, many tribes, as we will see, have become adept at business
affairs and have developed numerous enterprises on reservations.
A consistent theme of power imbalance seems to run through the history of
U.S. government policy vis-à-vis Native Americans. At all times, whatever the issues
or whichever administration formulated policy, Indians themselves lacked the polit-
ical power to defend their interests. They were always reactors to, never initiators
of, policies affecting their welfare. At certain times the object of government mea-
sures was to assimilate Indians to the cultural ways of whites, whereas at other
times, Indians were seen as unassimilable and thus to be left alone. In either case
—with few exceptions—gross neglect typified the attitudes of policy makers, and
each succeeding generation of Native Americans has felt the consequences of that
neglect.
to tribal benefits. In the Cherokee Nation, for example, there are descendants of
black slaves owned by Cherokees, freed blacks who were married to Cherokees,
and the children of mixed-race families known as black Cherokees, all of whom
were part of the migration to Oklahoma in 1838 (Nieves, 2007a). In 2007, in a
highly controversial move, the Cherokee Nation revoked the tribal citizenship
of about 3,000 of the descendants of slaves owned by the tribe. Tribal leaders
later restored partial rights to some of these black members, though not full
citizenship.
RESERVATION INDIANS The American Indian population is split between those living
on and those living off the 278 federal Indian reservations. The largest of these re-
servations is the Navajo, covering 16 million acres of land in Arizona, New
Mexico, and Utah, with a population of 143,000. Most other reservations, how-
ever, are much smaller. The second largest is the Pine Ridge Reservation in South
chapter 6 native americans 149
Cherokee 974,328
Navajo 335,905
Choctaw 185,874
Sioux 175,799
Chippewa 169,301
Apache 133,026
Blackfeet 125,338
Iroquois 93,419
Pueblo 90,508
Creek 77,908
Figure 6.1
| Ten Largest American Indian Tribal Groupings, 2006*
*American Indian tribal grouping alone or in any combination
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007f.
Dakota and Nebraska, with a population of only 11,000. Figure 6.2 shows the
geographic size and location of American Indian reservations.
URBAN INDIANS Most non-reservation Indians live in urban areas. Indeed, the
movement of American Indians to cities has been a continuous process. Federally
sponsored urban relocation programs begun during the 1950s impelled much of
this movement. In 1960 only about one-quarter of American Indians lived in urban
areas; by 2000 about 60 percent did so.
Tables 6.1 and 6.2 show those states and metropolitan areas where Indians are
most numerous. As is evident, Indians are concentrated in a few states, mostly in
the West. The largest populations are in California, Oklahoma, Arizona, and New
Mexico.
A recent demographic development is the increasing repopulation of the Great
Plains by American Indians. This is an area of the United States, wedded largely to
agriculture, from which whites are out-migrating as farming becomes less profit-
able. The only significant population gains are occurring among American Indians,
who continue to return. States like Nebraska, Montana, and the Dakotas continue
to lose white population, while the overall Indian population has grown since the
mid-1980s. Although they still make up only a small fraction of the total popula-
tion of these states, Indians are being lured back because of the promise of jobs,
mainly in the casinos that have been established on many reservations. Moreover,
the bison is making a comeback in the northern Plains, with more than 30 tribes
controlling large herds (Egan, 2001).
150
part ii ethnicity in the united states
Figure 6.2
| American Indian Reservations (Federal and State)
Source: U.S. Census Bureau.
chapter 6 native americans 151
±±
±
Table 6.1 ±± States with the Largest American Indian and Alaskan
± Native Populations*
*American Indian or Alaskan Native alone, not in combination with other racial categories.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007a.
±±
±
Table 6.2 ±± Metropolitan Areas with the Largest American Indian
± Populations
ECONOMIC MEASURES Table 6.3 indicates some of the economic discrepancies be-
tween American Indians and the general population. As can be seen, median house-
hold income is well below that of the total population, and the percent of persons
in poverty is twice as high. The social and economic conditions on reservations are
especially dismal and remain resistant to significant change. Three of the ten poor-
est counties in the United States are Sioux reservations in South Dakota.
Income and poverty rates vary somewhat from tribe to tribe, but in no case do
they even come close to the rates for whites or even the national average. In 2006,
median household income for American Indians was about two-thirds the median
household income for non-Hispanic whites. The comparative poverty gap is even
wider, with the American Indian rate almost three times the rate for whites.
Of particular consequence is the serious Native American unemployment rate.
A combination of poor education and geographical isolation has created extremely
severe employment problems both on reservations and in urban areas. The rate of
unemployment on Indian reservations varies but in all cases is well above the na-
tional average. On some—the Kickapoo reservation in Texas, for example—it is as
high as 70 percent (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2003). While urban Indians
are less impoverished than reservation Indians, they remain concentrated near the
bottom of the class system, experiencing high rates of unemployment and difficulty
in adjusting to urban economies that no longer can absorb workers with low skills
and education. The urban migration of American Indians is not likely to decline
radically and thus will continue to render profound economic—as well as social
and cultural—effects on Indian life.
±±
±
Table 6.3 ±±± Socioeconomic Status of American Indians, 2006
Education
High school graduates 76.8% 84.1% 88.9%
College graduates 12.7% 27.0% 29.9%
Median household income $33,834 $48,451 $52,375
In poverty 27.0% 13.3% 9.3%
Unemployed 6.5% 4.1% 3.3%
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007f.
chapter 6 native americans 153
HEALTH Economic insecurity and low educational achievement translate into other
measures of deprivation. Although improved, the health of American Indians is still
worse than that of the general population by almost every indicator. For example,
Indian deaths from tuberculosis are 600 percent higher than for other Americans
(Indian Health Service, 2006). Seriously insufficient health care delivery has con-
tributed to lower health standards among Indians. On reservations, there are fewer
154 part ii ethnicity in the united states
than half the number of doctors and nurses per capita serving the general popula-
tion (Worsnop, 1992). Poor diet also contributes greatly to Indian health problems,
particularly on reservations. The rate of diabetes, for example, has reached epi-
demic proportions. Further, suicide and alcoholism rates are considerably higher
among Native Americans than among the general population. American Indians
15 to 24 years old commit suicide at three times the national average for that age
group (Nieves, 2007b). And the mortality rate from alcoholism among American
Indians is over six times the rate among the rest of the U.S. population (Indian
Health Service, 2006).
In sum, although new policies and favorable court decisions have clearly im-
proved some of their economic and social conditions, Native Americans, both res-
ervation and urban, continue to lag behind the general population on most mea-
sures of socioeconomic status. Despite progress, the proportionate gap between
American Indians and the general population has not closed appreciably. Life ex-
pectancy of Indians, for example, has risen nearly ten years (from 65.1 to 74.5
years) since 1976. Yet the difference in life expectancy relative to other Americans
has changed very little (Indian Health Service, 2006; U.S. Commission on Civil
Rights, 2004). Similar wide disparities remain between Indians and the general
population in education, occupation, income, poverty, and unemployment, as we
have seen.
Continued Native American economic and social deprivation is in large mea-
sure explained as a result of the lack of attention and priority given to Indian needs,
especially by the federal government. For example, the Indian Health Service, which
is the primary health care provider for Native Americans, spends less than $2,000
per patient per year; this is about half of what the government spends on prisoners
and less than 40 percent of what it spends on the general population (U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights, 2004). That issues pertaining to American Indians of-
ten seem like an afterthought to policymakers may be in large part a result of the
fact that their population base is simply not large enough to translate into effective
political power. Hence, other minority ethnic groups may be better able to bring
their needs to the attention of both public and private agencies and therefore garner
proportionately greater benefits from assistance programs.
does not tax tribes or their wealth. This has provided opportunities to establish
businesses of various kinds, some of which have been extremely successful and
have resulted in significant economic benefits to Indian reservations. The Lac du
Flambeau Chippewa tribe in Wisconsin, for example, distributes Ojibwe brand
pizza in seven states, and the St. Regis Mohawk tribe of New York produces widely
sold fishing products. In Arizona and New Mexico, the Navajo reservation grows
produce that it sells in twenty-one states as well as Mexico and Canada, generating
millions of dollars of revenue (Trueheart and McAuliffe, 1995).
INDIAN CASINOS The largest and most significant of these enterprises is legalized
gambling (“gaming”). The economic revenues accumulated and the jobs created
by gaming have far exceeded those of other Native American projects. In many
cases, gaming has turned what were economically dormant Indian nations into
communities with a solid economic base from which other aspects of socioeco-
nomic improvement have been launched. In 1988 the federal government enacted
the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA), which provided for the operation of
gaming by Indian tribes, with the objective of promoting tribal economic develop-
ment and self-sufficiency. Since then, 420 Indian casinos and bingo parlors run by
227 tribes in thirty states have been established. In 2005 the industry produced al-
most $23 billion in revenues, almost double revenues in 2000 (National Indian
Gaming Commission, 2007).
Many Indian nations have used their profits from gambling enterprises as a
springboard to other forms of tribal economic development. Also, the emergence
of a thriving gaming industry on many reservations has led to the return migration
of many Native Americans who had been living in urban areas (Johnson, 1999).
The boom in casino gambling has resulted in an unanticipated twist of good
fortune for some Indian tribes, which are shifting suddenly from near destitution
to substantial wealth. Funds have been used to construct schools, health clinics,
and housing, and to capitalize other projects. The Pequots, for example, are buying
back their land and are investing in nongaming businesses. The Seminoles of
Florida, one of the most enterprising tribes in the gaming industry, are Florida’s
largest operator of casinos, from which they realized $800 million in revenue in
2005. Although most of the tribe’s business is its casinos, it also runs citrus, cattle,
and tobacco operations. In the Seminoles’ most ambitious venture, in 2006 they
purchased Hard Rock International, the famous music-themed chain of hotels, res-
taurants, and casinos, for $964 million (de la Merced, 2006).
Ironically, the success of some of these operations has redounded to non-
Indians by providing jobs as well as tax revenues to states. The Mashantucket
Pequots of Connecticut are a community of only a few hundred, but they operate
a casino—the world’s largest—that employs 10,000 people and is exceeded only by
the federal government as a contributor to the state’s treasury. Its annual revenue is
over $1 billion (Barlett and Steele, 2002; Johnson, 1999).
Some tribes have sought to take casino gambling one step further and establish
operations in areas near cities that are not on official Indian lands. This has been
referred to as “off-reservation gambling.” One such large-scale off-reservation proj-
ect has been run by the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewas, who generated $351
million in revenue in 2006 from their casino in downtown Detroit (Rivlin, 2007). In
156 part ii ethnicity in the united states
some cases proposals have been made to secure rights in exchange for long-standing
land claims. Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes in Oklahoma, for example, have offered
the state of Colorado $1 billion in exchange for 500 acres near Denver, where they
envision a huge casino and resort (Butterfield, 2005). They assert that Colorado
was their original homeland from which they were driven in the nineteenth
century.
Despite the real and potential financial rewards of casino gambling, however,
these have not yet proved to be the economic salvation of American Indians. The
popular perception of newfound wealth does not characterize the vast majority of
the Indian population. Clearly, the benefits have not been felt for all Indians, even
of those tribes that operate flourishing casinos. In fact, among all the tribes with
casino gambling, only a few near major population centers have thrived. Only 23
tribes account for nearly half of all revenue generated by tribal casinos (Rivlin,
2007). For the remainder, gambling revenues have not been great enough to appre-
ciably upgrade the quality of life. Furthermore, huge financial payoffs have com-
monly accrued not to tribal members but to outside—non-Indian—investors, who
in some cases have pocketed more than 40 percent of casino profits (Barlett and
Steele, 2002; Pace, 2000). Nor has the unemployment rate on most reservations
been significantly affected because so many of the casino jobs are occupied by
non-Indians. Above all, it must be remembered that two-thirds of all American
Indians belong to tribes that do not own Las Vegas–style casinos. There is also
fear among some Indian leaders that the attraction of tourists and the outside pro-
fessional and managerial personnel who help operate the casinos will result in a fur-
ther deterioration of tribal traditions and values (Pulley, 1999).
Whether casino gambling or other enterprises prove to be long-term sources of
tribal revenue is not at all certain. The immense success of a few tribes has distorted
the real condition of most, which have not benefited from profitable enterprises.
The fact remains obvious that as a part of the American ethnic hierarchy, Native
Americans are still in a very low position with unusually high unemployment and
poverty rates.
NATIVE AMERICAN STEREOTYPES AND THE MASS MEDIA The use of stereotypes in de-
scribing Native Americans proved critical in the production of a rationale for strip-
ping them of their lands and for efforts at dissolving their cultures. From the early
nineteenth century, the mass media played the major role in creating and commu-
nicating those stereotypes. As depicted in newspapers, which were aligned with
both government and business interests, Indians were obstacles to economic growth
and national expansion. Newspapers were also eager to offer their readers “color-
ful and exciting stories that confirmed the correctness of American values and
goals” (Coward, 1999:39). Journalists, in their stories, conformed to a standard-
ized, simplified view of Indians and their place in American society that could be
158 part ii ethnicity in the united states
announced a policy of no longer using nicknames of sports teams that were deemed
racially offensive.
In 2005, The NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association), the governing
body of U.S. college sports, brought this issue to further light when it banned
Indian mascots, logos, and nicknames from post-season tournaments. This fell short
of abolishing Indian references entirely, but put more pressure for change on uni-
versities still using Indian themes. A few universities (including Florida State) won
appeals of this decision after contending that they had received permission from
Indian tribes to use their names (Lapointe, 2006).
CURRENT PATTERNS For most of American history, then, forced cultural assimila-
tion—that is, the disintegration of Native cultures—has been the primary objective
of dominant political and social institutions. That objective has never been fully ac-
complished, but the continual assault on Native cultures has resulted generally in a
significant dissolution of Indian cultural influences on individuals, especially re-
garding language. Dozens of tribal languages continue to exist and function and
there are efforts to revive their use, at least as a way of affirming Indian identity
(Hitt, 2005). But their practice is common mostly on reservations, and the propor-
tion of Indians not also speaking English is low. Quite clearly, English today is the
prevailing language among Native Americans. Many of those who are younger and
have migrated to urban areas have been cut off from other tribal cultural influences
in addition to language, such as religion; hence, in some ways, their ethnic distinct-
ness becomes increasingly difficult to sharply define.
Despite the steady dilution of Native American culture, the emergence of a
strong pan-Indian movement in recent years has emphasized common Indian values
and practices, which may serve as a shield against more complete cultural assimila-
tion. In the past three decades, American Indian art and other manifestations of
Indian culture have seemed to proliferate. Many new tribal museums have been es-
tablished, and numerous tribal and urban Indian powwows and arts festivals are
held annually. Also evident is an explosion of Native American literature, music,
and film, as well as the founding of the National Museum of the American Indian
in Washington, D.C. (Josephy et al., 1999).
There is, then, a somewhat contradictory pattern of cultural assimilation that
has been occurring among American Indians. As Native Americans have increas-
ingly moved off the reservations into urban areas and have intermarried with
non-Indians, they have shed many tribal traditions. However, as Josephy and his
colleagues (1999) have explained, a countervailing pattern has emerged, bringing
about a kind of “retraditionalization.” The same urban Indians who enter the main-
stream society return to the reservation periodically to take part in traditional prac-
tices as a means of reconnecting with past roots and Indian identity. These opposing
trends have led to internal debates among Indians, raising questions of “Who is an
‘authentic’ Indian?” “Who is entitled to tribal membership?” “Who should repre-
sent Indians before the federal government?” and “Who should be eligible for affir-
mative action benefits?” (Glaberson, 2001; Tobar, 2001). Those are questions that
will continue to plague efforts at building a more cohesive American Indian ethnic
population.
chapter 6 native americans 161
Structural Assimilation
In examining the structural assimilation of Native Americans, it is important to
keep in mind that this is an ethnic population divided into two demographic parts:
those living on and those living outside the reservations. In either case, as already
seen, Native Americans today remain at or near the bottom of the society’s occupa-
tional, educational, and income hierarchies. This collective position has stifled rapid
movement into mainstream economic and political institutions.
Intermarriage may also reduce the number of persons who, in the future, will iden-
tify themselves ethnically as Indians. However, the existence of tribes and of rela-
tively cohesive Indian communities on reservations, where intermarriage rates
remain lower, would seem to preclude the complete disappearance of American
Indians as part of the American ethnic system (Eschbach, 1995; Qian and Lichter,
2007). At the same time, it is unlikely that steady movement in the direction of as-
similation will be seriously impeded as Native American ethnicity is increasingly
diluted.
INDIANIZATION The idea of an American Indian ethnic group has, from the outset
of European-Native contact, been a construct of whites. The extreme cultural and
social diversity of the Native population was dissolved into a collective notion that
created a single category. Among Indians, supratribal consciousness, though emer-
gent in the early part of the twentieth century, did not become a well-developed
movement until the 1950s and 1960s. This may have been largely a result of
Indian migration to the cities (Cornell, 1988, 1990; Fixico, 2000). In the urban en-
vironment, Indians discovered that tribal identities and interests no longer held
much usefulness as they found themselves in political and economic competition
with other ethnic groups. This Indian ethnic consciousness, developed in the urban
communities, reached back to the reservations through returning migrants.
In recent years, then, American Indians have begun to coalesce into a coherent
ethnic group, in a kind of “cross-tribalism” or “pan-Indianism.” Tribal identities
remain, but increasingly Indians have begun to develop an Indian consciousness
that transcends tribal divisions. In a sense, what is emerging is an “American
Indian” ethnic group (Nagel, 1995). This unity may result in greater political effec-
tiveness and a stronger public awareness of Indian issues and problems.
SUMMARY
The conquest by European settlers of Native Americans took the form of contact,
ethnocentrism, competition over land, and the imposition of white dominance
through superior force. Indians were exploited and largely annihilated in the nine-
teenth century. By the start of the twentieth century, American Indians were essen-
tially wards of the state.
Though the Indian population was decimated in the nineteenth century through
war, disease, and the breakup of tribal cultures, in recent decades it has been on the
rise, due largely to the tendency of more people to claim Indian ancestry. About
half of all Indians live in urban areas rather than on reservations. Urban Indians
are somewhat better off economically, but all Indians rank near the bottom of the
stratification system. On various measures of socioeconomic status—income, educa-
tion, occupation, health—the gap between American Indians and Euro-Americans is
extremely wide. Some tribes have benefited from the establishment of gambling ca-
sinos, but the long-term benefits of these economic projects are not yet evident.
Native Americans have been viewed by whites since the early nineteenth century
as both savage and noble. Indian stereotypes, which have been promulgated in the
twentieth century primarily through films, have been strongly resistant to change.
chapter 6 native americans 163
Suggested Readings
Brown, Dee A. 1970. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American
West. New York: Henry Holt. A classic work that chronicles the decline of Native
Americans during the period of Western expansion between 1860 and 1890.
Cornell, Stephen. 1988. The Return of the Native: American Indian Political Resurgence.
New York: Oxford University Press. Traces the historical development of Indian-white
relations and concludes with a discussion of the emergence of a pan-Indian ethnic group,
one transcending particular tribal identities.
Coward, John M. 1999. The Newspaper Indian: Native American Identity in the Press,
1820–90. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Describes how common negative stereo-
types of American Indians were created and communicated to the public by newspapers
in the nineteenth century.
Deloria, Vine, Jr. 1988. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press. A history of Indian-white relations, written from the
American Indian perspective.
Nagel, Joane. 1996. American Indian Ethnic Renewal: Red Power and the Resurgence of
Identity and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. An analysis of the social and
historical forces that account for the increasing number of Americans who choose to
identify as Indians.
Snipp, C. Matthew. 1989. American Indians: The First of This Land. New York: Russell
Sage Foundation. A detailed collection of demographic and social statistics on Native
Americans.
Weatherford, Jack. 1988. Indian Givers: How the Indians of the Americas Transformed the
World. New York: Ballantine. Examines a number of New World Indian technologies,
particularly agricultural, that had a lasting effect on the Western world.
Wilkinson, Charles. 2005. Blood Struggle: The Rise of Modern Indian Nations. New York:
Norton. Traces shifting federal policies toward American Indians and the emergence in
the 1970s of the modern tribal sovereignty movement. Offers an optimistic view of the
future of independent tribal communities.
Wright, Ronald. 1992. Stolen Continents: The Americas through Indian Eyes since 1492.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Analyzes five Indian cultures: two North American (Cherokee
and Iroquois), two Mesoamerican (Maya and Aztec), and one South American (Inca).
Describes how each culture dealt with the European colonial assault and how each de-
veloped afterward.
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African Americans
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1
Whether African American rather than black is a more appropriate and acceptable term for the
American black population is a debated point. A survey in 2001 by the National Urban League found
that three-quarters of blacks preferred the term African American (Stafford, 2001), but other polls indi-
cate that most people do not have a strong preference for either (Gallup Organization, 2001e). In this
book, the terms are used interchangeably. Technically, however, whereas black stresses the racial dis-
tinction that sets off this group from others, African American emphasizes the group’s ethnic identity;
that is, its culture and historical origins (Patterson, 1997).
164
chapter 7 african americans 165
THE CHOICE OF BLACKS Other groups in the colonies seemingly could have served
as slaves; only blacks, however, were inevitably to qualify. Other groups were
treated harshly, and even the enslavement of some was seriously considered. The
Irish were dealt with particularly severely, and attempts were made to enslave
Indians. Why, then, in the end, were only blacks chosen for indeterminate bondage
(that is, slave status)? The historian Oscar Handlin gives us some clues. In the mid-
seventeenth century the colonies were in dire need of labor; immigration from
Europe therefore had to be stimulated. As a result, the colonies adopted legislation
that promised better conditions for servants and expanded the opportunities
2
This broad historical subdivision of the black experience conforms generally to that delineated by
William Julius Wilson (1980).
3
Jordan (1969), however, maintains that some blacks were enslaved even before the 1660s.
166 part ii ethnicity in the united states
In sum, the cultural and physical differences of blacks were important ratio-
nales for their enslavement; but in the end the critical factor was differential power
(Geschwender, 1978; Noel, 1968). Although black skin and “heathenism” gave rise
to white ethnocentrism, this did not predetermine the choice of blacks. Rather,
blacks simply lacked a viable community from which they might have mustered suf-
ficient counterforce to resist slavery. Color became the visible symbol of slave sta-
tus, and gradually a racist ideology was developed to buttress the system.
The American form of slavery that evolved was unique, having had no prece-
dent in seventeenth-century England (Elkins, 1976; Handlin, 1957). Indeed, it was
a system different from any earlier forms of slavery. The Portuguese and Spanish
had already enslaved blacks in their colonies and had maintained slaves at home
since the early fifteenth century. But the status of slaves in these societies differed
somewhat from that of their American counterparts. As we will see in Chapter
14, in Brazil and other colonies of Portugal and Spain, slaves maintained certain
property and family rights and were often freed. In the American form, however,
the slave was essentially an object not to be afforded common human privileges.
In the final analysis, the evolution of slavery in the United States was primarily
a consequence of economic rationality, prompted above all by the demand for
cheap labor in the underpopulated colonies. “The use of slaves in southern agricul-
ture,” explains historian Kenneth Stampp, “was a deliberate choice (among several
alternatives) made by men who sought greater returns than they could obtain from
their own labor alone, and who found other types of labor more expensive”
(1956:5). Although it had existed in all the colonies at one time or another, slavery
by the middle of the eighteenth century was confined to the South, where plantation
agriculture had become the foundation of the economy. In the North, political and
moral factors had been influential in the decision to abandon slavery; but more im-
portant, the system was seen there as a hindrance to continued industrialization.
Racist ideology was not limited to the South, however. Most northerners were
likewise unprepared to accept blacks as equals and subscribed to basically similar
ideas. Fredrickson notes that “a common Northern dream depicted an all-white
America where the full promise of equality could be realized because there was no
black population to be relegated to a special and anomalous status” (1971:323).
Even antislavery forces included at least one school of thought (whose supporters
included Abraham Lincoln) holding that only by establishing a colony for blacks
in the Caribbean or in Africa would the issue of slavery and the racist fears of white
Americans be solved.
After the 1830s, almost all whites of whatever persuasion agreed that blacks
were inferior to whites in certain fundamental qualities, especially intelligence and
initiative, and that those differences were essentially unchangeable. Because of these
differences, an integrated society, it was maintained, was not feasible. Barring their
elimination, therefore, continued subordination of blacks was natural and necessary
(Fredrickson, 1971). These ideas did not change fundamentally until well into the
twentieth century.
The development of a racist ideology, then, is best seen as a response of south-
ern slaveholders to the threat of abolition of the slave system, but a response that
gained national acceptance. Perhaps most significant in contributing to the general
acceptance of biological racism were the ideas of Social Darwinism, which gained
widespread recognition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Indeed,
the fullest flowering of the racist ideology did not occur until after slavery had been
abolished (Woodward, 1974).
distance that is of greatest importance. In the pre–Civil War South, a rigid stratifi-
cation system was enforced through a well-understood racial etiquette, in which
physical contact was not uncommon but the social places of whites and blacks
were not violated. Social intimacy might often be seen between master and slave in
the form of concubinage between white men and black women or the raising of
white children by black “mammies.” It was out of this apparent physical closeness
that emerged the myth of racial harmony in the Old South. But such intimate per-
sonal contacts in a paternalistic system are always relationships between unequals.
Moreover, the degree of physical intimacy between the two groups should not
be overstated. On large plantations, where most black slaves were held, personal
relations with masters were limited to household servants. The majority of slaves
were field hands who rarely came into physical contact with the white master or
his family.
Although most blacks in the South remained in rural slavery, a few hundred
thousand free or quasi-free blacks, most concentrated in cities, lived within the slav-
ery regime. But these free blacks were scarcely better protected by law than slaves,
and the degree of discrimination mounted against them was not significantly less.
They could make contracts and own property, but in most other respects their civil
rights were not much greater than slaves’ (Stampp, 1956; Woodward, 1974).
Furthermore, blacks living in the North, though not subjected to slavery, were by
no means accepted by whites into the mainstream society. As Wilson describes it,
“Whites rejected slavery as an acceptable institution in the North but were unwill-
ing to endorse the view that blacks should receive social, economic, and political
equality” (1973:94).
SLAVERY AND THE WHITE POPULATION The immediate effects of slavery on blacks
were obvious, but the impact of the system on whites must be considered more
carefully. Most whites in the South did not accrue direct benefits from the slave
system. In fact, most whites were small farmers who owned no slaves. In 1860
there were 385,000 owners of slaves among 1,516,000 free families in the South.
Moreover, the typical slave owner held only a few slaves. In 1860, 88 percent
held fewer than twenty, 72 percent held fewer than ten, and 50 percent held fewer
than five (Stampp, 1956). Obviously, large slave owners—the planter class—repre-
sented only a tiny fraction of the southern white population. Most of the slaves,
however, were concentrated in those few large plantations.
For the elite planter class, slavery provided substantial economic and social re-
wards; for smaller slaveholders, it offered correspondingly more modest benefits.
But what did slavery provide for nonslaveholders, and why did they so universally
accept it? Clearly, it could provide them no direct economic payoff; but it could
serve as a means of controlling potential economic competition from blacks. In ad-
dition, it furnished to poor white farmers a kind of prestige that could be derived
from the thought of belonging to a superior “race” (Stampp, 1956). In short, both
fear of competition from blacks and social-psychological rewards account for the
acceptability of slavery by nonslaveholders. Moreover, the power of the ruling
planter class to impose its racist ideology on all whites, regardless of social class,
was substantial. As explained in Chapter 2, nonruling groups ordinarily accept
for the most part the prevailing social system in the belief that it works in their
170 part ii ethnicity in the united states
interests and is justifiable, even though it may work primarily in the interests of the
powerful few.
In sum, the 200 years of slavery were a period in which the subservience of
blacks to whites was legitimized in the South and informally recognized in the
North. In addition, a racist ideology emerged out of the slave system that continued
to influence the perception of blacks by whites well into the twentieth century.
THE END OF RECONSTRUCTION The process of denying blacks competitive power re-
sources had begun well before 1877, but that year serves as a historical benchmark
ending Reconstruction. The results of the presidential election of 1876 were dis-
puted, and as a means of breaking the impasse, the Democrats and Republicans
agreed to a compromise: Federal occupying troops, guaranteeing protection to
blacks, would be removed from the South in exchange for the electoral votes of
southern Democrats for the Republican candidate, Rutherford B. Hayes. This was
not simply a symbolic action; it enabled whites to establish further control over the
black population without fear of interference by the federal government. By that
time, the planter class had already reasserted its traditional place of power, and
the economic dependence of blacks on their former masters was revived with the
advent of the sharecropping system. With the removal of the federal government’s
oversight, the drive to reinstitute white dominance was given greater impetus.
Perhaps the most significant mechanism in this process was the disenfranchise-
ment of blacks. When it became apparent that they might hold the balance of polit-
ical power between competing white factions, efforts to deny voting rights to blacks
began in earnest. This put an end to the incipient alliance that had begun to form
within the Populist movement between poor blacks and poor whites. Through vari-
ous constitutional provisions, blacks were effectively disenfranchised throughout
the South by the first decade of the twentieth century. In South Carolina, for exam-
ple, a clause was adopted that called for two years’ residence, a poll tax of $1, the
ability to read and write any section of the U.S. Constitution or to understand it
when read aloud, the owning of property worth $300, and the disqualification of
convicts (Franklin, 1980). Such measures, of course, automatically disqualified
most blacks from the registration rolls.
chapter 7 african americans 171
4
A poignant description of the constant terror and degradation to which blacks were subjected is pro-
vided in the works of Richard Wright, one of the great black writers of the twentieth century. See espe-
cially Black Boy (1945) and Uncle Tom’s Children (1938).
172 part ii ethnicity in the united states
5
Washington’s and Du Bois’s major ideas concerning the place of blacks in American society and their
approach to change are contained in Rudwick and Meier (1969).
chapter 7 african americans 173
This was brought about by demographic and economic changes in the society that
placed the two groups in direct competition.
Industrial expansion in the North created an increased demand for labor, and
along with immigrants from Europe, blacks from the South began to fill these places.
If jobs were the key “pull” factor impelling black out-migration from the South, the
declining cotton economy and the continued enforcement of Jim Crow were the chief
“push” factors. The demographic changes involving the black populace were pro-
found. In 1910 almost 90 percent of blacks were living in the South, but eighty years
later, little more than half remained there. Streams of blacks from the South to the
North and West reached epic proportions from 1940 to 1970, with almost 1.5 mil-
lion leaving in each of these three decades. Moreover, this migration was almost
wholly to the cities, making blacks an increasingly urbanized population.
With their movement to the cities, black workers began to pose a labor threat
to white workers in the North, and the violence and intimidation that had charac-
terized southern race relations became a national phenomenon. Adding to the ten-
sion created by job competition was the discontent expressed by the many black
World War I veterans who had been exposed to more liberal social conditions in
Europe. As well, racist ideology, premised on the belief that blacks were inferior
to whites, was no less accepted by most people in the North as in the South. As
Fredrickson notes, “The migration of blacks . . . from the directly oppressive condi-
tions in southern rural areas to the somewhat freer atmosphere of the urban North
did not alter the conviction of most whites that they were lower-caste people, born
to serve” (2002:93). The upshot of the rising competition for work and housing,
the growing impatience of blacks, and the pervasiveness of racism was an increase
in the frequency and severity of black-white hostilities. Serious race riots occurred
in numerous cities throughout the first two decades of the century (Rudwick,
1964; Rudwick and Meier, 1969; Tuttle, 1970).
In sum, black-white relations from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 to the
1940s involved a system of restrictive competition (Wilson, 1973). The forces of
industrialization created the potential for significant changes in the structure of
race relations, and blacks were now theoretically capable of competing with whites,
in contrast to their previous slave status. But in fact, strict segregation in most areas
of social life and the denial of political participation severely limited their accumu-
lation of competitive resources—jobs, education, and housing. Wilson has noted
that when groups lack the necessary political resources, whatever opportunities are
created by industrialization are offset by new controls imposed by the dominant
group. “Race relations become competitive, but only in the narrowest sense”
(1973:64). Blacks could offer little resistance because of the strength and resolve
of whites of all classes to maintain the discriminatory system through both legal
and extralegal mechanisms. Furthermore, the system was buttressed by a scientifi-
cally endorsed racist ideology, which posited the innate inferiority of black people.
resources are increased to the point at which it can begin to challenge the dominant
group’s authority and invalidate racist stereotypes. Members of the minority begin
to move into positions formerly occupied only by the dominant group; in the pro-
cess, institutional racism is exposed and challenged, and individual racism is seri-
ously undermined. As these changes occur, some members of the dominant group
begin to question the legitimacy of racial discrimination and either refrain from
practicing racist norms or openly attack the racist system. As Wilson explains,
“The greatest threat to any form of racism, then, is the significant entry of minority
members into upper-status positions within the larger society” (1973:59).
The mid-twentieth century was clearly that period in which the acquisition of
power resources by blacks impelled the most forceful challenge to the American
racist system. This challenge involved the efforts of organized pressure groups as
well as unorganized forces. Together they made up what became the most compel-
ling U.S. social movement of the twentieth century.
THE NASCENT CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT Several factors account for the emergence
of the movement for black rights after World War II. Much of the impetus had
been established in the 1930s, when the Roosevelt administration began to appoint
blacks to nonpolicymaking government advisory positions (Franklin, 1980;
Myrdal, 1944). Moreover, blacks benefited from the administration’s relief pro-
grams even though these continued to be administered in a discriminatory fashion
(Roediger, 2005). Another significant inroad made by blacks in the 1930s was their
entrance into the labor movement, specifically the Congress of Industrial
Organizations (CIO). Unlike the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the CIO
was relatively nonexclusionary in its organizing activities. Representing industries
in which most black unskilled laborers were employed (steel, automobiles, mining,
clothing), the CIO now afforded blacks labor union participation in significant
numbers for the first time.
Wartime conditions in the 1940s opened new areas of work to blacks and pro-
vided an even greater push to the northward migration that had been occurring
since the early part of the century. Jobs in the defense plants of cities like Detroit,
Chicago, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and New York attracted a new surge of migrants
from the South, whites as well as blacks. Blacks, however, continued to suffer the
effects of discrimination in the distribution of these jobs. As a result, black labor
leader A. Philip Randolph organized the March on Washington Movement and
threatened to mobilize millions of blacks in protest. Hoping to squelch mass unrest,
President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941 issued an executive order prohibiting racial
discrimination in federal jobs and created the Fair Employment Practices Committee
to monitor the order. Randolph’s movement was an early sign of the effectiveness
of black protest, which would reach much greater heights after the war.
In addition to the economic opportunities World War II provided, it presented
white political leaders with a dilemma: How could the United States support a rac-
ist system at home while it was at war abroad with the most flagrantly racist re-
gime, Nazi Germany? This inconsistency was difficult to reconcile without a greater
commitment to black rights. Moreover, following the war, racist policies proved an
international liability in dealing with the emerging nations of nonwhite Africa and
Asia. As a result, the federal government now seemed more amenable to efforts at
chapter 7 african americans 175
THE BROWN DECISION AND THE END OF JIM CROW Perhaps the most momentous sin-
gle government action during the 1950s that stimulated the push for black ad-
vancement was the Supreme Court decision of 1954 in the case of Brown v.
Board of Education of Topeka. In that case, the Court ruled invalid the separate
but equal doctrine, which had been upheld in the famous Plessy v. Ferguson deci-
sion of 1896. The 1954 decision basically removed the legal foundation of segrega-
tion and thus marked the beginning of the end of the entire Jim Crow system.
Influenced by the testimony of social scientists, the Court made clear in its ruling
that separate schools were inherently unequal and imposed an inferior status on
black children, causing irreparable psychological change. School segregation laws,
the Court declared, therefore violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment of the Constitution. This clause stipulates that no state shall deprive
people of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or deny them the
equal protection of the law. The Brown ruling was subsequently used as the legal
basis for court decisions that struck down other segregated institutions.
The significance of the Brown decision cannot be overstated, for it provided the
spark to ignite a surge of hope among blacks that had begun to build in the 1940s.
Lewis Killian has described its psychological impact on blacks: “The authority of
the law of the land was now cast on the side of change, not on the side of the status
quo. Any Negro with even the vaguest idea of what the Supreme Court had said
now had good reason to hope for an improvement in his life and, even more so,
in the life of his children” (1975:43). The drive for integration and an end to socie-
tal discrimination may be said to have begun with Brown. One year after this deci-
sion was handed down, the civil rights movement was symbolically launched with
the boycott by blacks of the segregated bus system of Montgomery, Alabama.
NONVIOLENT PROTEST From the late 1950s to about 1964, nonviolent protest and
civil disobedience were the chief tactics of the Civil Rights Movement. The basic
idea was that individuals had a moral duty to disobey the law when it was clearly
unjust. This was a strategy that had been applied many times historically in a vari-
ety of social settings, its most notable success occurring in the 1940s in India,
where Mahatma Gandhi led the movement for independence from Britain (Sibley,
1963). The technique was to actively oppose the law but in a peaceful fashion. The
proponents of nonviolent protest, Martin Luther King Jr. in particular, emphasized
that it was necessary to win over the opposition through friendship and under-
standing, not through defeat or humiliation. Those participating in sit–ins at segre-
gated lunch counters, freedom marches, or freedom rides were therefore prepared
to accept suffering without retaliating in kind (King, 1964).
Hostile white retaliation against demonstrators and civil rights workers, much
of it in the South carried out by civil authorities, included shootings, beatings,
firebombings, and even killings. A pivotal year was 1963, when several key events
occurred. Police brutally suppressed black demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama;
a Birmingham church was firebombed, killing four black children; and National
Guardsmen were used to carry out the court-ordered desegregation of the University
176 part ii ethnicity in the united states
of Alabama. These events were given prominent media attention and galvanized pub-
lic and governmental support for black civil rights. This supportive mood climaxed in
the summer with a march on Washington of more than 200,000 people. One year
later, the most comprehensive civil rights measure since the Civil War was enacted,
prohibiting discrimination in voting, public facilities, schools, courts, and employ-
ment. And in 1965 the Voting Rights Act was passed, ending the systematic disenfran-
chisement of southern blacks.
SHIFTING FOCUS FROM THE SOUTH In essence, the civil rights acts of 1964 and 1965
signified the demise of official segregation and discrimination in the United States.
But the end of de facto racial separation and inequality was not yet in sight.
Moreover, black leaders became increasingly aware of the discrepancy between
what had been accomplished in a legal sense and what had not been accomplished
in the actual improvement of life conditions for most blacks. This was sharply evi-
dent in northern cities, where blacks were concentrated in depressed ghettos. The
black movement, accordingly, shifted its focus from the South to the urban areas
of the Northeast and Midwest. This shift signaled a move not only in the geograph-
ical locus of protest, but also in the goals and tactics of the movement itself.
Securing legal rights was not the primary aim of black protest in the North, as
it clearly had been in the southern states. Technically, those rights had been in place
for many decades. Instead, emphasis was placed on economic issues—jobs, housing,
education, and all other life chances—which, through discriminatory actions, were
being denied or poorly provided to most blacks. These issues, however, did not lend
themselves to the kind of direct amelioration that had been the case with previously
state-approved segregation and denial of civil rights. Legal maneuvering and sit-ins
were inapplicable to socioeconomic problems.
As a result, the black movement passed temporarily through a more militant
phase, in which many black leaders now proclaimed that ending racism required
systemic changes in economic and political institutions, changes that purely nonvio-
lent protest had failed to address. The shift away from defensive and nonviolent
tactics produced not only more militant rhetoric, but also serious urban violence
throughout the late 1960s (Bergesen, 1980; Jacoby, 1998; National Advisory
Commission on Civil Disorders, 1968).
1975). The ideology of black power (or black nationalism) was espoused most ve-
hemently by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and, later,
by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Less militant black protest organiza-
tions, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) and King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), however,
remained steadfastly committed to integration.
Black power was widely interpreted as the advocacy of militant tactics against
the white power structure, and the stridency of its proponents represented what
seemed to many whites a kind of racism in reverse. Black power, however, com-
prised a twofold campaign: to assert control over the development of the black
community with minimal interference by whites and to instill self-pride among
blacks, who, in the view of black power advocates, had for generations internalized
the white stereotyped image of black people.
The black community in the United States was seen essentially as a colonial
people dominated by white institutions—hence the rejection of integrationist objec-
tives. Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton stated this position: “The fact is that
integration, as traditionally articulated, would abolish the black community. The
fact is that what must be abolished is not the black community, but the dependent
colonial status that has been inflicted upon it” (1967:55). Blacks were urged to
build genuinely black communities by taking control of school boards, businesses,
and political bodies in their areas of the central cities. Only by closing ranks and
asserting power within their own communities, it was felt, could blacks emerge as
a viable political force, able to compete within a pluralistic system.
The development of a black communal identity and pride that had long been
stifled by white oppression prompted an acceptance of African cultural roots that
had previously been consciously shrouded. As Isaacs contends, the slogan for which
the black radicalism of this period is likely to be remembered is “Black is beautiful.”
“In both its literal and its symbolic meanings,” he notes, “it became the password
to a measure of self-acceptance by black Americans that generations of earlier lead-
ers and tribunes of the people had sought in vain to achieve” (1989:85–86).
The militant phase of black advocacy was short-lived. In the late 1960s, public
concern with black civil rights in general was increasingly displaced by preoccupa-
tion with the Vietnam War. Most important, with the advent of the Nixon admin-
istration, it became clear that the federal government’s response to black nationalist
goals and tactics would be severely repressive (Button, 1978). The militant stage of
the movement came to an end, according to Killian, not because the racial crisis had
passed but because the white power structure effectively demonstrated the dangers
of such measures by imprisoning, assassinating, or forcing into exile the most “dra-
matically defiant” black leaders (1975:155).
Though ephemeral and seemingly unsuccessful in achieving its long-range
goals, the black power phase of the civil rights movement may, in retrospect, be
judged more positively. First, black nationalism in the 1960s created a degree of
self-pride among blacks that had not been achieved by previous nationalist move-
ments such as Garvey’s in the 1920s. Second, short-run profits in the form of
increased government assistance followed the urban turbulence. Although it is com-
monly believed that violence is counterproductive to groups employing such tech-
niques in political protest, historical evidence seems to reveal the contrary. When
178 part ii ethnicity in the united states
ASSESSING THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA By the early 1970s the “Second Reconstruction”
had ended, and blacks began to take stock of their advances and failures of the
previous two decades. Most important, the legal infrastructure of the system of seg-
regation in the South had been dismantled. No longer could state and local ordi-
nances prevent blacks from entering public facilities previously reserved for whites.
Unlike the first Reconstruction following the Civil War, white vigilante groups like
the Ku Klux Klan were limited in their influence and were not supported either ma-
terially or morally by most whites. Most important, the federal government
accepted the commitment to black civil rights and effectively countered state and
local governments that sought to sustain segregation in some form. This was in
sharp contrast to the abandonment of southern blacks by the federal government
during the post–Civil War period.
A second major achievement of the Civil Rights Movement of the post–World
War II era was the expansion of black economic opportunities and the consequent
emergence of a sizable black middle class. But it is also in the economic realm that
the movement’s most glaring failures were to be found. As we will see in the following
section, blacks accumulated much greater competitive resources, such as white-collar
jobs, middle-level income, and higher education, than at any previous time. These
were not distributed equitably among the black population, however. Thus,
although the black middle class expanded considerably, the conditions of a significant
black underclass, submerged mainly in urban ghettos, were not seriously affected.
Finally, if the decline of biological racist ideas was clearly on the horizon as
early as the 1930s, the postwar period of black-white relations, despite its volatility,
chapter 7 african americans 179
seemed to further diminish the persuasiveness of this ideology. The notion of innate
black inferiority—biological racism—was no longer given credence by the vast ma-
jority of white Americans.
Black Demographics
POPULATION Representing about 13 percent of the population—36 million persons
—African Americans were until recently the largest ethnic minority in the United
States, a distinction now held by Hispanic Americans. This figure includes all those
who, in the 2000 U.S. Census, identified themselves as either entirely or partially
black. The latter, however, made up only a tiny portion (less than 5 percent) of
the total. Much of the population growth among African Americans in recent
years stems from the entrance of newer ethnic elements—immigrants from the
Caribbean and from African nations.
BLACK ETHNIC DIVERSITY As we will see, the African American population is inter-
nally divided between middle- and working-class families on the one hand and
poor families on the other. Indeed, so wide has the gap emerged between these
two elements that almost four in ten African Americans today no longer see blacks
as a single racial-ethnic group (Pew Research Center, 2007b).
It is becoming increasingly difficult to describe the American black population
not only in broad class terms, however, but in ethnic terms as well. Though the
overwhelming majority of American blacks trace their heritage to slavery, an in-
creasing minority are voluntary immigrants or their descendants. Indeed, more
Africans have entered the United States since 1990 as voluntary immigrants than
entered as slaves before slave trafficking was outlawed in the early nineteenth cen-
tury (Roberts, 2005). Almost all foreign-born blacks come from the Caribbean
(about two-thirds) and Africa (30 percent). Specifically, the most sizable element
of contemporary black immigration to the United States has comprised people
from the West Indies—Haiti, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Dominican
Republic. Keep in mind that many of these immigrants are not necessarily seen as
“black” in their countries of origin, but are, by American standards, categorized in
that way.
Today more than 7 percent of the U.S. black population is foreign born and
that figure is estimated to rise to almost 10 percent by 2020. In three states: New
York, Massachusetts, and Minnesota, more than one quarter of the black popula-
tion is foreign-born. In New York City alone, over one–third of its more than 2
million blacks are foreign-born (Bernstein, 2005). About a third of foreign-born
blacks entered the United States during the 1990s and about 18 percent arrived in
2000 or later (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007b).
As a result of this new immigration, the American black population is evolving
into a somewhat broad, multicultural ethnic category similar to that of Asian
Americans and Hispanic Americans, though certainly to a lesser degree. Despite ra-
cial similarities, black immigrants culturally have little in common with African
Americans. As the American black population becomes more culturally diverse,
one can no longer make assumptions about group characteristics simply on the
basis of racial designation. Moreover, black ethnic diversity has created dilemmas
180 part ii ethnicity in the united states
of group and individual identity. The question is, “who is African American?”
Traditionally this term has been applied to blacks whose ancestry is traced to
American slavery. But does it now also include those blacks born in the Caribbean
or Africa, many of whom prefer to describe themselves as “Jamaican American” or
“Nigerian American” or “African.” As one Ethiopian-born activist explains, “If I
walk down the streets, white people see me as an African American. Yet African
Americans are saying, ‘You are not one of us.’ So I ask myself, in this country,
how do I define myself?” (Swarms, 2004:14). Or, as a Haitian immigrant in
Miami describes the reaction of his fellow high school students: “I was just another
brother until I opened my mouth” (Fears, 2002:31).
Although the reality of racial categorization in American society often brings
foreign-born blacks and African Americans together, sharp cultural differences
have at times made for tense relations between these two elements of the black pop-
ulation. Some in the traditional African American population see foreign-born
blacks as a new source of competition for jobs, education, and other social re-
sources and are reluctant to view them as genuine coethnics. In fact, immigrant
blacks generally rank higher than native-born blacks on various measures of socio-
economic status including education, income, and employment (Logan and Deane,
2003). Black economic and cultural differences have sometimes translated into in-
tragroup animosities. For example, psychologist Marvin Dunn, who has studied
black diversity in Miami, notes the common stereotypical views of African
Americans among Caribbean- or African-born blacks: “They are violent, they
don’t respect their elders, they have no sense of family, they don’t want to work.
They depend on welfare.” By the same token, African Americans often say of black
immigrants, “They’re here to take our jobs. They’ll work for nothing. They’re
cliquish. They smell. They eat dogs. They think they’re better than us” (Fears,
2002:31).
AK
3.4
WA NH
3.3 VT 0.8 ME
MT ND 0.5 0.6
0.3 0.6
OR MN
1.7 4.1 NY MA 6.0
ID SD WI
0.3 0.8 15.8
WY 5.7 MI RI 5.5
0.8 IA 14.0 PA CT 9.3
NV NE 2.2 10.0
OH NJ 13.1
6.9 3.6 IL IN
UT 11.7 DE 19.8
CO 14.7 8.1 WV
CA 0.8 VA MD 28.5
4.0 KS MO 3.1
6.2 KY 19.3 DC 57.8
5.1 11.2 6.8 NC
TN 21.2
AZ OK 16.3
NM 7.1 AR SC
3.0
2.3 15.3 28.9
MS AL CA
37.2 26.0 28.7
TX LA
HI 11.0 32.5
1.7
FL
15.1
25.0 or more
10.0 to 24.9
5.0 to 9.9
Less than 5.0
U.S. percent 12.2
Figure 7.1
| Percent Black By State, 2004
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007b.
±±
±
Table 7.1 ±± Metropolitan Areas with More than 1 Million Blacks
± (in thousands)
Percent of Total
Number Population
INCOME Depending on how the data are interpreted, there are grounds for both
positive and negative views regarding black income. The real income of black fam-
ilies increased substantially after World War II, especially during the 1960s (Farley
and Hermalin, 1972; Levitan et al., 1975). And the enormous expansion of the
black middle class is undeniable. Today, a majority of the black population have
middle-class incomes (Smith, 2001). This is the positive picture. But the negative
view arises when we look at the gap between median black income and median
white income. As shown in Figure 7.2, this gap has changed only slightly in the
past several decades. In 2006 median black household income was 62 percent of
median white household income—not significantly different from what it was in
the 1960s.
During the past five decades, the income gap between blacks and whites vacil-
lated: during some periods black median income rose relative to whites but at other
times blacks seemed to fall further behind whites (Holzer, 2001; Mishel et al., 2007;
Smith, 2001). What has remained constant throughout, however, is the income in-
equality between blacks and whites at all points of the class hierarchy. Thus, poor
blacks are generally poorer than poor whites, and affluent blacks are less well-off
than affluent whites.
However, this general picture should not obscure the fact that comparisons be-
tween black and white income are subject to a number of variables, including re-
gion and urban location. More important, the black population is polarized be-
tween relatively stable middle- and working-class persons on the one hand and
$60,000
$50,000
$40,000
$30,000
$20,000
$10,000
$0
1967 1970 1980 1991 2000 2006
White (non-Hispanic) Black
Figure 7.2
| Median Household Income of Blacks and Whites
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2004c, 2007f.
184 part ii ethnicity in the united states
those in poverty on the other. The substantially greater percentage of blacks below
the poverty line in comparison with whites accounts in large measure for the gen-
eral differences between black and white income patterns.
60
50
40
Percent
30
20
10
0
1959 1970 1980 1990 2000 2006
Figure 7.3
| Persons below the Poverty Level
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007f.
chapter 7 african americans 185
WEALTH Wealth, or property, refers to the economic assets that families possess—
homes, bank accounts, stocks and bonds, real estate, and so on. Wealth is ex-
tremely important as a determinant of class position because it can be invested
and thus earn income, or it can be accumulated and passed down to other family
members. It also reduces families’ reliance on wages and salaries, thus enabling
them to withstand financial crises like the loss of a job or a serious medical emer-
gency. Indeed, some contend that wealth is the single most significant factor in ac-
counting for the persistent difference between black and white socioeconomic
status. “Understanding the racial wealth gap,” writes Thomas Shapiro, “is the key
to understanding how racial inequality is passed along from generation to genera-
tion” (2004:6).
Regarding wealth, differences between blacks and whites are much greater
than differences in income. Blacks are less likely than whites to own any type of
wealth and the holdings of those blacks who do own wealth are far smaller than
for white wealth owners. For example, less than 7 percent of black households
own stocks compared to 23 percent of white households (Oliver and Shapiro,
1995; Shapiro, 2004). In fact, the typical white household has assets more than
ten times those of the typical black household (Figure 7.4). Home ownership—the
most significant form of wealth for most Americans—differs substantially among
white and black families; whereas 73 percent of white households own their own
homes, only 48 percent of black households do (Mishel et al., 2007).
Most black income, then, even within the middle class, does not originate from
property or self-employment. And, for single-parent families in particular, more
common among African Americans, the presence of only one breadwinner makes
it extremely difficult to accumulate wealth from savings (Campbell and Kaufman,
2006). Lacking significant wealth, most black families are unable to give their chil-
dren the financial assistance that provides advantages and opportunities (such as
buying a home or helping with school tuition) that translate into upward mobility.
OCCUPATION If income and wealth are the chief determinants of life chances, work
is, for most people, the medium through which income and wealth are acquired.
Hispanic 9,750
householders 1,850
Figure 7.4
| Wealth Differentials among Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2003b.
186 part ii ethnicity in the united states
Occupationally, African Americans as a group have improved their place over the
past several decades, progressively moving into better-paying and higher-status
jobs. In 1890 most black males were in agricultural jobs, and females were in do-
mestic and personal service occupations. By 1930 the structure of black employ-
ment had changed substantially, with an enormous drop in agriculture and an
increase in manufacturing. This was due, of course, mainly to the out-migration
of rural southern blacks to industrial cities of the North. But the most significant
occupational changes occurred between 1940 and 1970. Whereas in 1940 about
one-third of all employed blacks were farmworkers, by 1960 only 8 percent were,
and by 1970, 3 percent. By contrast, in 1940 only 6 percent of all employed blacks
were in white-collar occupations. By 1970, 24 percent were white-collar workers,
and by 2000, well over half were.
Although it is clear that blacks have been increasingly integrated into the main-
stream workforce, black-white disparities remain evident. Blacks are underrepre-
sented in jobs at the top of the occupational hierarchy and overrepresented at
the bottom. A far higher percentage of whites are in managerial and professional
occupations, whereas blacks predominate in service jobs such as cleaners, cooks,
security guards, and hospital attendants. Moreover, the apparent occupational ad-
vancement of blacks need not be seen only as a product of the decline of discrimi-
nation in employment. Much of it is due to changes in the occupational structure
itself as the economy shifted from an agricultural to an industrial base and subse-
quently to a service base.
Further, the discrepancy between blacks and whites in rate of unemployment is
wide (Figure 7.5). Since the end of World War II, black unemployment has been,
16
14
12
10
Percent
0
1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2006
White (non-Hispanic) Black
Figure 7.5
| Unemployment Rates for Persons Age 16 and Older
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 1979, 1999c, 2007a.
chapter 7 african americans 187
except for a few years, at least double that for whites. When one considers that gov-
ernment unemployment statistics do not account for those discouraged persons who
have given up the search for a job, the unofficial number and percentage of unem-
ployed is much higher.
EDUCATION As with income and occupation, there is room for interpreting educa-
tional data for African Americans both positively and negatively. Measured by
years of schooling, blacks have increased their educational achievement both abso-
lutely and relative to whites during the last five decades. Especially noticeable gains
were achieved in the number of high school graduates. Among the adult popula-
tion, 80 percent of blacks in 2006 had completed high school, compared with 89
percent of whites (Figure 7.6). Also, today there is only a slight difference in the
high school dropout rate for blacks and whites.
Substantial gains have also been evident in black college attendance and gradu-
ation. In 1960 there were 250,000 blacks attending college; by 2006 there were 2.8
million (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007f). As shown in Figure 7.6, whereas in 1980, 8.4
percent of adult blacks had earned at least a bachelor’s degree, in 2006, 17 percent
had done so. Black college attendance, however, has vacillated in the past two de-
cades, rising in some years and declining in others. A similar trend is apparent in
the number of blacks earning graduate degrees.
90
80
70
60
50
Percent
40
30
20
10
0
1960 1970 1980 1990 2006
White, high school grad or more Black, high school grad or more
White, college grad or more Black, college grad or more
Figure 7.6
| Educational Attainment of Persons Age 25 and Older
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007a.
188 part ii ethnicity in the united states
Class or Race?
It is clear that on all economic measures, blacks as a group—despite their advances
—continue to lag behind whites. The questions that such statistics prompt are
whether the persistent gap between blacks and whites is attributable to lingering
racism, whether deeper structural forces impede the attainment of economic equal-
ity, or whether something unique about the black experience contributes to the
group’s continued plight. The latter question is covered later in this chapter when
comparing African Americans with other American ethnic groups. The first two
questions have stirred a lively debate among sociologists for several years. The issue
is essentially this: Does racial discrimination continue to affect the economic status
of blacks more than their socioeconomic background and current circumstances?
That is, do blacks succeed or fail mainly on the basis of their skills and education,
or does the racial factor still play a major role in their economic destiny?
THE WILSON THESIS The issue of race versus class is addressed most directly in the
work of sociologist William Julius Wilson (1980, 1987, 1996). His basic position is
that although discrimination based on race accounted for the denial of necessary
economic resources to blacks in earlier times, the traditional patterns of black–
white interaction have been fundamentally altered so that class factors are today
the dominant influence on the life chances of African Americans: “In short,
whereas the old barriers portrayed the pervasive features of racial oppression, the
new barriers indicate an important and emerging form of class subordination”
(1980:2). Wilson does not maintain that prejudice and discrimination no longer
exist in American society, but that so far as access to power and privilege are con-
cerned, they are no longer of paramount significance.
Wilson explains that to understand the current plight of the black populace, it
is necessary to carefully subdivide it into at least three distinct classes: a black mid-
dle class consisting of white-collar and skilled blue-collar workers, which has ex-
chapter 7 african americans 189
panded measurably in the past few decades; a working class of semiskilled opera-
tives; and a lower class made up of unskilled laborers and service workers. At the
very bottom of this last group is an underclass that includes those whose income
falls below the poverty level, the long-term unemployed, discouraged workers who
have dropped out of the labor market, and those dependent mostly on government
assistance. It is the disjunction between the black middle class and working class,
on one hand, and the lower class (particularly its most destitute segment), on the
other, that is most important in explaining why economic statistics seem to indicate
a halt to economic progress for African Americans.
During the post–World War II decades, writes Wilson, middle-class blacks were
able to take advantage of the breakdown of racial barriers and as a result experi-
enced substantial upward mobility. Those in the lower class, however, were unable
to benefit from the expanded opportunities because of their lack of competitive skills
and education. In fact, their position deteriorated. Thus, according to Wilson, a
growing bifurcation has arisen within the black community between the “haves”
and the “have-nots.” This growing gap is a product of changes in the society’s eco-
nomic structure that have made lower-class, unskilled blacks an excess labor force
that is becoming a permanent underclass. The labor market today calls for jobs re-
quiring technical and educational skills, for which such persons cannot qualify.
Moreover, industry has moved to areas on the urban fringe, so that those low-level
jobs still available are outside the range of central-city blacks. The result is a semiper-
manent state of unemployment. The lack of job opportunities creates a vicious circle
in which blacks are forced to remain in inner-city ghettos, attending inferior schools
and thereby reinforcing their disadvantaged position in the labor market.
Wilson further explains that the problems of the black urban underclass—high
rates of joblessness, school dropouts, crime, teenage motherhood, and so on—have
been exacerbated by the exodus of middle- and working-class families from ghetto
neighborhoods, removing vital role models and a support system of basic institu-
tions. He points out that poverty in black urban areas in the past was not
characterized by the degree of social isolation that is such a striking feature of con-
temporary inner-city ghettos. Residents of these areas become concentrated in
disadvantaged areas of central cities and thus are increasingly cut off from the
mainstream society. As Wilson puts it, “the communities of the underclass are pla-
gued by massive joblessness, flagrant and open lawlessness, and low-achieving
schools, and therefore tend to be avoided by outsiders. Consequently, the residents
of these areas, whether women and children of welfare families or aggressive street
criminals, have become increasingly socially isolated from mainstream patterns of
behavior” (1987:58). Others have also noted the alarming scale of isolation of
inner-city black populations (Massey and Denton, 1993; Orfield, 1988).
Wilson believes that significant improvement in the economic condition of the
black urban poor is unlikely within the framework of current economic institu-
tions. It is important to reiterate Wilson’s key point, that it is not racial discrimina-
tion but the present occupational structure that sustains the black underclass.
Programs aimed at alleviating traditional forms of racial exclusion and encouraging
black competition with whites, such as affirmative action, are not relevant to the
key problem: the surplus of unskilled labor in a post-industrial economy that calls
for an increasingly better-trained workforce. Catastrophically high unemployment
190 part ii ethnicity in the united states
and incarceration rates among black youth and the burgeoning of low-income,
female-headed families unable to support themselves independently threaten to per-
petuate the black underclass, by some estimates as much as one-third of the black
populace.
Civil rights leaders as early as the 1960s recognized that the problems of the
black underclass were not the same as those of the black middle class when they
warned that, despite its political successes, the movement had not basically affected
the life chances of those in low-income inner-city areas. What is controversial in
Wilson’s thesis is that race is no longer seen as the key factor in the perpetuation
of these conditions. Although some agree fundamentally with his position or have
largely corroborated his findings, others have criticized him for too easily dismiss-
ing the continued influence of racial discrimination in the economic sphere or,
through their research, have offered findings that do not entirely support his con-
clusion (Cancio et al., 1996; Clark, 1980; D’Amico and Maxwell, 1995; Landry,
1987; Pinkney, 2000; Willie, 1978).
Some, for example, have pointed out that unemployment rates are higher for
blacks than for whites with the same educational attainment (Mishel et al., 2006)
and sometimes even higher than for whites with less education (Kasarda, 1985).
Critics view this as evidence of continued racial discrimination, albeit in institutional
rather than individual forms, in employment (Brown et al., 2003). Moreover, criti-
cism is made that Wilson and others who attribute the lower occupational status of
blacks to lack of education and skills ignore the extent to which failure to attain those
qualifications may itself be attributable to racial discrimination (Steinberg, 1995).
Another aspect of Wilson’s thesis concerns the question of whether middle-class
blacks have attained the equivalent status of middle-class whites, or whether their
middle-class status is marginal, making them “second-class” Americans despite
their personal achievements (Landry, 1987; Pattillo-McCoy, 1999). The path to
middle-class status for blacks has been much more tortuous than for whites, and
their middle-class position remains far more tenuous than for whites. Moreover,
subtle forms of discrimination against the new black middle class continue to be ev-
ident, including timeworn stereotypes and unconscious expressions of racism
(Feagin and Sikes, 1994). Oliver and Shapiro (1995; see also Shapiro, 2004) also
show the insecure perch of the black middle class by comparison with its white
counterpart. As they explain, the differences in assets that middle-class blacks and
whites hold are striking, and in their view these are critical to understanding the
precariousness of the black middle class.
POLITICAL POWER The gains made by African Americans in the realm of politics in
the past four decades have been largely a product of increased electoral participation.
chapter 7 african americans 191
Although an increasing number of blacks had begun to register and vote in the South
during the 1940s, legal impediments as well as threats of violence still discouraged
most from trying to exercise the ballot. As Gunnar Myrdal explained, “It is no test
of the franchise that some Negroes are permitted to vote in a given community, for
what is permitted to a few would never be permitted to the many” (1944:489). With
the advent of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, however, enormous gains were
achieved in black voter registration in the South, aided by the civil rights legislation of
1964 and 1965. In only eight years between 1964 and 1972, more than 2 million
blacks were newly registered in the southern states.
In the North, the expansion of black electoral power was not a product of the
civil rights movement but rather of the demographic changes that had occurred
during the three decades from 1940 to 1970. The transformed racial composition
of cities of the Northeast and Midwest accounted more for the rise in black elec-
toral power than any increase in black voting or concessions of power by whites.
As the central cities became increasingly black and the suburbs increasingly white,
blacks in the central cities found themselves with the numerical power to influence
the outcome of local elections.
The upshot of increased political participation in the South and altered urban de-
mographics in the North was a sharp rise in the number of black elected officials, par-
ticularly at the local and state government levels. Whereas in 1970 some 1,500 blacks
had been elected to political office, that number had swelled to over 9,000 by the
early 2000s (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004e). By the 1990s the election of blacks as
mayors of major cities had become commonplace, even in cities where blacks were a
minority of the population (Thernstrom and Thernstrom, 1997). Today, the election
of black officials at state and local levels of government is no longer exceptional.
Moreover, the black presence in national politics has become very apparent.
The black vote is an important swing factor in many elections as well as a signifi-
cant electoral force in its own right. And, black political power has risen as black
political participation has increased. Today there is only a slight difference in the
voting rates of whites and blacks (U.S. Census Bureau, 2006b).
The rising black presence in national politics has continued in the early years of
the new century. In 2004 African American Barack Obama was elected to the U.S.
Senate from Illinois by an overwhelming majority. This marked only the third time
in modern American politics that a black had been elected to the U.S. Senate. As
well, several blacks were serving in cabinet and advisory positions of the George
W. Bush administration, including, most significantly, secretary of state.
In 1999, 97 percent of whites said they were willing to vote for a black person
as president; in 1958 only 38 percent had expressed that view (Newport et al.,
1999). Whether Americans were prepared to act on this sentiment, however, had
never really been tested. At the time of this writing, the previously mentioned
Barak Obama appeared to be a serious contender for the presidential nomination
of the Democratic Party in the 2008 election. Regardless of the ultimate outcome
of the nominating process and the subsequent general election, the fact that
Obama was considered one of the favorites, that he was able to raise immense
campaign funds from diverse sources, and that opinion polls showed him to be
an attractive candidate to a wide spectrum of the public, indicated that the elec-
tion of a black U.S. president was no longer unimaginable.
192 part ii ethnicity in the united states
ECONOMIC POWER The assertion of political scientist Thomas R. Dye that “there
are very few blacks in positions of power in America” (1995:175) is more clearly
borne out in the corporate world than in the political. Relatively few African
Americans serve on the board of directors or in top-level executive posts of the
largest corporations, and these few are often token rather than bona fide decision-
making appointments. Typical is the automobile industry. African Americans make
up more than 14 percent of the industry’s workforce, but less than 4 percent of
corporate officers at General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler (Bodipo-Memba and
Butters, 2002). Even those who have achieved middle-management positions in
U.S. corporations are often assigned to race-related areas or to special marketing
(that is, minority) groups rather than to decision-making positions dealing with
production, planning, or the supervision of large numbers of employees (Clark,
1980; Collins, 1997; Jones, 1986).
Corporate management is an area of authority in U.S. society that is not ame-
nable to change through the electoral process; African Americans and other ethnic
minorities, therefore, are dependent on the inclinations of the corporate elite to
grant them a share of power. Although they are still disproportionately underrepre-
sented, an encouraging pattern is emerging in which blacks continue to increase
their presence in executive and managerial positions (Stodghill, 2007). In 2005,
eighteen of the 1,000 largest U.S. corporations were headed by African American
CEOs; this was three times their number in 2000 and nine times their number in
1993 (Meeks, 2005).
Residential Discrimination
The most evident, persistent, and consequential forms of racial discrimination in
American society are found in the area of housing. Moreover, the patterns of dis-
crimination here are direct and deliberate to a far greater extent than in the areas
of work and education, which are largely structural. The effects of lingering
racial discrimination in employment, for example, are debatable. Employers may
chapter 7 african americans 193
continue to discriminate against blacks, but the extent and impact of those actions
as well as their intent are difficult to precisely ascertain. Legal measures, in any
case, have made them uncommon. In education, too, although urban school sys-
tems are as segregated today as they were before the 1954 Supreme Court decision
barring segregated schools, these patterns are maintained more by residential segre-
gation and the past drawing of racially distinct school districts than by the con-
scious design of whites. Discrimination in housing, by contrast, is much clearer,
and its intent is not easily disguised. It is well recognized that less progress in break-
ing down racial barriers has been made in this sphere of social life than in any other
(Brown et al., 2003; Massey and Denton, 1993).
Because the patterns are so clear-cut, focusing on housing is essential in look-
ing at current forms of discrimination leveled at African Americans. However,
there are additional important reasons for concentrating more intently on residen-
tial discrimination. Its ripple effects touch every other area of social life (Farley et
al., 1979; Holzer, 2001; Massey and Denton, 1993; Sigelman et al., 1996; Steger,
1973). Where people live determines in largest part the schools they attend (and
thereby the quality of their education); the jobs they have access to (and thus their
occupational destiny); the benefits they receive from public institutions like hospi-
tals, recreational facilities, and transportation systems (and, as a result, their health
and well-being); and the commercial establishments they have access to (and thus
their style of life).
Moreover, the society’s residential arrangements determine the essential charac-
ter of interethnic relations. With continued segregation in housing, whites and
blacks are prevented from interacting at a personal level, thus reinforcing racial
attitudes and perpetuating structural pluralism. Though it is difficult to select one
element of the system of American ethnic relations and call it the “key” to the main-
tenance of conflict and misunderstanding, residential segregation is unquestionably
among the most fundamental. It would hardly be an exaggeration to proclaim that
the present pattern of housing in the United States is the chief obstacle to progress in
all other aspects of race and ethnic relations. Pettigrew has put the matter succinctly:
“The residential segregation of blacks and whites has emerged as a functional equiv-
alent for the explicit state segregation laws of the past in that it effectively acts to
limit the life chances and choices of black people generally” (1979:124).
and Alma Taeuber concluded that “a high degree of racial residential segregation is
universal in American cities. Whether a city is a metropolitan center or a suburb;
whether it is in the North or South; whether the Negro population is large or
small—in every case, white and Negro households are highly segregated from each
other” (1965:2). Their study showed that not only had segregation in housing not
lessened since the early 1900s, it had actually intensified in the 1940s and 1950s.
These trends changed little throughout the 1960s and 1970s despite greater
government activity in promoting desegregation, more liberal social attitudes, and
more middle-class blacks with sufficient incomes to afford better housing (Farley,
1985; Levitan et al., 1975; Massey and Denton, 1987, 1993; Orfield, 1985; Roof,
1979; Van Valey et al., 1977; White, 1987). Figure 7.7 shows the level of black-
1.0
0.9
0.8
0.7
Segregation Score*
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0.0
Chicago Detroit New York Los Miami Boston Atlanta Phoenix
Angeles
1980 2000
Black-White Residential Segregation in Selected Large
Figure 7.7
| Metropolitan Areas, 1980 and 2000
*The segregation score or index of dissimilarity is a measure of the extent of residential segrega-
tion between two groups. It indicates the percentage of one group that would have to move to
achieve total integration; that is, a population mix that corresponds to each group’s proportion of
the population of a designated area. For example, if a metro area were made up of 80 percent
whites and 20 percent blacks, the two groups would be represented in each neighborhood in that
same proportion. The index can range from 1, indicating total segregation, to 0, indicating total
integration. Thus, the higher the index, the greater the degree of segregation.
Source: Iceland and Weinberg, 2002.
chapter 7 african americans 195
white residential segregation in eight of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. As can
be seen, segregation did decline somewhat during the 1980s and 1990s. But the
simple fact remains that most African Americans, regardless of their social class or
the geographic area in which they live, continue to reside in predominantly black
neighborhoods. And this “residential color line,” notes Thomas Shapiro, “is the
key feature distinguishing African Americans from all other groups in the United
States” (2004:141).
Migration to the suburbs, a movement followed heavily by whites since the end
of World War II, has been replicated to some degree by blacks in recent years. The
share of blacks living in suburbs rose from 21 percent in 1980 to 27 percent in
1990 and 39 percent in 2000. This is still well below the rate of suburban residence
for whites, however, which is more than 70 percent (DeVita, 1996; Mumford
Center, 2001b). Moreover, rising socioeconomic status has not appreciably affected
the overall level of black segregation (Massey and Denton, 1987, 1993). Hence,
when blacks do move to suburban areas, they again find themselves for the most
part in racially segregated communities (Adelman, 2005; Charles, 2003; DeVita,
1996; Massey and Denton, 1987, 1993; Pattillo-McCoy, 1999).
RACE OR CLASS? Might these patterns be more a result of class than of race? That
is, might the persistence of black ghettos merely reflect the lower economic status
of blacks generally? If this were so, we could expect to find blacks and whites of
similar social class residing in racially mixed neighborhoods. But studies have
shown that blacks of every economic and educational rank are more highly segre-
gated from whites than are Hispanics and Asians (Iceland and Wilkes, 2006;
Massey and Denton, 1993).
Class factors, however, do play a role in determining patterns of residential
segregation. For one, middle-class blacks are more likely to live in less segregated
neighborhoods (Adelman, 2005). Even in the most highly segregated urban areas,
middle-class blacks are less segregated from whites than are poorer blacks. Also,
the resistance of whites to black incursions is reduced when blacks are perceived
as higher in social class. As Alba and his colleagues explain, “Whites are reluc-
tant to accept blacks as neighbors, but that reluctance is eased when the socio-
economic characteristics of African Americans are superior to those of whites
themselves” (2000:557). That is, there is evidence to support the notion that
whites avoid black neighbors for reasons related more to class than to race
(Alba et al., 2000; Harris, 1999; Iceland and Wilkes, 2006). However, stereotyp-
ing still plays a strong role in the makeup of neighborhoods and limits black
choices. As Alba and his colleagues (2000) point out, because whites are more
willing to accept black neighbors who are perceived as superior to themselves in
social class, blacks live in less affluent communities than do whites of the same
socioeconomic status. That is, whites seek out neighborhoods that are relatively
safe, clean, and have good public facilities (especially schools). Those conditions
are more prevalent in middle-class neighborhoods. Because blacks are commonly
stereotyped as poor, this leads to a form of statistical discrimination (discussed in
Chapter 3). For whites who have had no experience in an integrated environment,
this stereotype serves as the guiding mechanism for the choice of their neighbor-
hood’s racial mix.
196 part ii ethnicity in the united states
6
While there is agreement among analysts that blacks seem to prefer mostly black neighborhoods, the
debate centers on the reasons for that preference: a strong desire to live among coethnics, apprehen-
sions about white hostility, uneasiness about white cultural influences, or the view that integration
yields few benefits.
chapter 7 african americans 197
other lending institutions cooperated in the system by “redlining”; that is, designat-
ing certain areas within which real estate loans would not be made. Another device
used by real estate brokers was “block-busting.” By spreading word through a
white neighborhood of an impending black influx, agents would frighten whites
into selling their homes cheaply. These homes were subsequently sold to blacks at
inflated prices. In the process, all-white areas were transformed quickly into all-
black areas.
Where such tactics were unsuccessful, zoning regulations were established,
specifying certain types of housing that could be erected in particular neighbor-
hoods; these were designed to exclude low-income, mainly black, units. Restrictive
covenants, agreements made by homeowners not to sell to members of particular
groups, were also used to bar blacks (and in some cases other minorities) from
white residential areas (Roediger, 2005). Until the Civil Rights Act of 1968 prohib-
ited discrimination in housing, such covenants had been widely applied and were
even supported by law until 1948. When all else failed, violence and intimidation
were frequently used to deter blacks from buying or renting in all-white
neighborhoods.
Although these practices have been curtailed by antidiscriminatory legislation,
some are still evident (steering, redlining) while others have been replaced by more
subtle measures that sustain segregation (Massey, 2001; Massey and Denton, 1993;
Taeuber, 1975; Yinger, 1996). The discrimination African Americans face in secur-
ing home mortgages, for example, is an important factor in sustaining segregated
neighborhoods. Regardless of income, lending institutions—banks and mortgage
companies—are less inclined to approve blacks than whites, especially when homes
are located in suburban areas (Heath et al., 2002; Shapiro, 2004). Despite antidis-
criminatory statutes, such institutional forms of residential discrimination are diffi-
cult to detect and to effectively police.
Other racially related problems of American cities, including school segregation
and chronic unemployment, are in large part directly traceable to the perpetuation
of black ghettos. Residential discrimination, which is often overt, direct, and inten-
tional, naturally and often unintentionally produces indirect discriminatory effects
in other areas. Even physical health has been shown to relate to the persistence of
segregated housing (Massey, 2004). In sum, although racial discrimination in other
institutional realms of American society has broken down to a great extent, it re-
mains tenacious in residential patterns and continues to render a severely negative
impact on African Americans.7
Following the urban riots of 1967, the Kerner Commission issued its report on
civil disorders, warning that the United States was “moving toward two societies,
one black, one white—separate and unequal” (National Advisory Commission on
Civil Disorders, 1968:1). In no area of social life does this prognosis continue to
be verified better than in housing. Housing patterns between blacks and whites
are, as has been repeatedly demonstrated, qualitatively different from those between
7
Marston and Van Valey (1979) argue that there are some positive effects of residential segregation for
blacks; namely, that it creates and sustains an institutional structure that caters to blacks, induces ethnic
group consciousness, and in some cities produces local political clout.
198 part ii ethnicity in the united states
other groups. Massey and Denton (1993) have described this uniquely disadvan-
taged black urban environment as “hypersegregation,” that is, segregation across
several dimensions. No other racial-ethnic group, they show, experiences such mul-
tidimensional segregation. A majority of the African American population lives in
densely populated, segregated neighborhoods of America’s largest urban areas
(Logan et al., 2004; Massey, 2001; Wilkes and Iceland, 2004). This environment
shuts out most contact with whites except through participation in the labor force.
Thus African Americans living within the largest urban black communities remain
highly segregated and spatially isolated. Moreover, these extraordinarily high levels
of residential segregation almost ensure their continuation into the foreseeable
future.
1981; Schuman et al., 1997; Schwartz, 1967; Sheatsley, 1966; Williams, 1977). As
shown in Table 7.2, a relatively steady decline in white notions of black inferiority
has been measured since 1963. In the fifteen years between 1963 and 1978, the
percentage of whites who believed blacks to be innately less intelligent fell from
39 to 25. By the mid-1990s, only 12 percent maintained that view. It is true none-
theless that traditional negative stereotypes of blacks—poor, violent, irresponsible
—are still potent, if diminished (Waters, 1999).
SOCIAL DISTANCE White attitudes toward racial integration and various levels of
social distance have also changed in the past four decades. Most whites now
seem committed (at least verbally) to integration in most social areas entailing sec-
ondary relations. Only a tiny minority of whites nationwide object to contacts with
blacks on the job, in schools, or in public facilities.
But far less attitudinal change is noticeable when intimate contacts are in-
volved. Few blacks today, regardless of social class, are likely to socialize with their
white fellow employees outside the formal work setting (Sigelman et al., 1996).
And, as we have seen, most whites are opposed to living in areas with a high per-
centage of blacks (Carroll, 2007b; Farley et al., 1978; Pew Research Center, 2007a;
Schuman et al., 1997).
On the other hand, an overwhelming majority of whites no longer object to in-
terracial dating and marriage. This represents a significant change in the past sev-
eral decades. In 1987, less than half of whites approved of black-white dating; in
2007, 83 percent approved. Although there is a marked discrepancy among differ-
ent age cohorts—younger Americans are more tolerant than their parents and
±±
±
Table 7.2 ±±± White Americans’ Stereotypes of Blacks
grandparents—even among those over sixty years of age there is a clear shift to-
ward acceptance (Pew Research Center, 2007a).
Similarly, regarding marriages between blacks and whites, American attitudes
have changed dramatically (Figure 7.8). In 1958, almost all whites (and blacks as
well), disapproved of interracial marriages; approval gradually rose over the next
few decades, but well over half of whites still disapproved in 1983. By 2007, only
19 percent disapproved.
ATTITUDES AND ACTIONS Although white attitudes concerning discrimination and inte-
gration are apparently increasingly liberal, ambivalence arises when translation of
those attitudes into concrete actions is suggested. This is obvious in various ambits
of social life, including politics, jobs, housing, and education. Whites agree that blacks
should have equal rights in all these areas but are less committed to approving mea-
sures necessary to guarantee those rights (Pettigrew, 1979; Pew Research Center,
2007a; Schuman et al., 1997). For example, white attitudes favoring the principle
of school integration have continually risen since the 1970s, but support for school
busing to achieve integration has not followed suit (Schuman et al., 1997).
100
90
80
70
60
Percent
50
40
30
20
10
0
1958 1968 1978 1983 1991 1997 2003 2007
Year
Approval Disapproval
Figure 7.8
| Approval of Black-White Marriages among Whites*
*Does not include those expressing no opinion.
Source: Carroll, 2007a.
chapter 7 african americans 201
A similar inconsistency between attitude and action lies in the realm of hous-
ing. Although most whites favor racially integrated neighborhoods, white prefer-
ences for the degree of integration are quite different from those of blacks.
Whereas blacks seem to prefer a relatively even racial mix, whites prefer a mix in
which whites are clearly in the majority (Farley et al., 1979; Gallup Organization,
2003; Schuman et al., 1997; Sigelman et al., 1996). In a sense, there is a circular
movement in which prejudice feeds on segregation, and vice versa. As one observer
has noted, “The most well-documented and well-replicated finding in research on
the effect of interracial housing and neighborhood integration is that white preju-
dice declines with interracial contact, particularly interracial contact that occurs in
a situation where whites and blacks are of equal social status and are aware that
they share similar values” (Taylor, 1979:35). Increased contact, in other words,
seems to moderate racial prejudice, especially if the groups are of the same social
class. As mentioned earlier, a key reason for whites’ fears of black penetration of
their neighborhoods is the lower social class of blacks, not necessarily negative
racial attitudes alone (Alba et al., 2000; Farley et al., 1979; Iceland and Wilkes,
2006). Whites are concerned that their neighbors will be poorer and will have life-
styles very much at odds with their own. Although blacks moving into white neigh-
borhoods are generally similar to their white neighbors in socioeconomic status,
fixed negative images of blacks (as “poor,” “lazy,” “squalid”) often prevent whites
from perceiving the class distinctions among them—hence the continued resis-
tance to integrated residential areas. Without social contact, prejudicial attitudes
and images persist, in turn leading to intransigence on matters of neighborhood
desegregation.
Some go further than merely pointing out the reluctance of whites to link atti-
tudes with actions toward blacks or the inability to differentiate class and race,
maintaining that white attitudes themselves have not really changed as radically as
they appear. In the view of Picca and Feagin (2007), for example, although expres-
sions of racism are no longer as commonly overt as in the past, they have only
“gone backstage”; that is, confined to private settings where whites interact with
other whites, especially friends and relatives. Whites, they suggest, have learned dif-
ferent racial performances, depending on the social setting.
DOMINATIVE AND AVERSIVE RACISM Pertinent to this issue is the distinction between
dominative and aversive racism. With dominative racism, actions are taken to op-
press racial minorities and keep them subservient. Aversive racism, by contrast, is
characterized by inaction wherein racial minorities are simply ignored and avoided
when possible; relations at best become “polite, correct and cold in whatever deal-
ings are necessary between the races” (Kovel, 1970:54). Continued residential seg-
regation provides the backdrop for such aversive discrimination in various areas of
social life. While obvious and blatant forms of discrimination are no longer preva-
lent, more benign black–white relations are in large measure founded on intergroup
avoidance (Pettigrew, 1980).
Aversive racism is more difficult to detect and to deal with since it is not overt
but subtle in expression and often unconscious and unintentional (Bonilla-Silva,
2003; Dovidio, 2001; Dovidio and Gaertner, 1998). In such cases, people will
deny their prejudice and may express politically correct racial views, but when
202 part ii ethnicity in the united states
called upon to support substantive change (racially mixed housing or some form of
affirmative action, for example), they will balk.
Others have suggested similar forms of contemporary racism, subtle and not
sharply focused as the blatant racial discrimination of the past. Lawrence Bobo
(2004) refers to “laissez faire racism” as a combination of several factors: a contin-
uation of negative stereotyping of blacks, blaming blacks themselves for the persis-
tent black-white socioeconomic gap, and resistance to policy changes that address
the gap. Similarly, Tyrone Forman (2004) describes “color-blind racism” as the ten-
dency for white Americans to maintain that the United States, in the post-civil rights
era, is now a meritocratic society in which color no longer matters. Hence, what-
ever shortcomings remain for blacks are the result of individual effort, obviating
the need for compensatory measures like affirmative action. These subtle forms of
racial discrimination lead to what Forman calls racial apathy on the part of whites;
that is, a lack of concern over racial inequalities.
In his classic work dealing with black-white relations in the United States, the
Swedish social scientist Gunnar Myrdal (1944) described the disjuncture between
white attitudes and actions vis-à-vis blacks as “an American dilemma.” The di-
lemma, according to Myrdal, is the conflict between, on one hand, adherence to
the “American Creed,” entailing a belief in equality and Christian precepts, and
on the other, group prejudice and discrimination based on material and status inter-
ests. The dilemma remains evident today in many ways.
BLACK AND WHITE VIEWS OF RACIAL PROGRESS Black views of black progress are dra-
matically different from those held by whites. Surveys indicate that whereas whites
see problems as more of a “mopping up,” with basic changes having been made,
blacks perceive deeply rooted discrimination continuing to affect their chances in
work and education (Bobo, 2004; Gallup Organization, 2001a; Hochschild, 1995;
Jones, 2006; Pew Research Center, 2007a; Roper Center, 2001; Schuman et al.,
1997; Smith, 2000). Whites define racial progress mostly in political terms. If laws
have been changed that previously denied blacks access to critical institutions, then
it is assumed that an equal opportunity structure has been created and that blacks
are equipped to take advantage of those opportunities.
Blacks, in contrast, do not see simply a few remnants of the past that need at-
tention but a well-entrenched system that continues to block their socioeconomic
advancement. Moreover, even middle-class blacks, those who have seemingly
chapter 7 african americans 203
“made it” in an economic sense, continue to experience what they perceive as indig-
nities based on race (Cose, 1993; Feagin and Sikes, 1994) and express frustration
regarding future opportunities (Hochschild, 1995).
Also, blacks see a justice system that treats blacks differently from whites
(National Conference, 1995; National Urban League, 2001). A strikingly contrast-
ing view of the O. J. Simpson case provided stark evidence of this. Whereas most
whites saw Simpson as guilty and as having evaded justice, most blacks agreed
with the “not guilty” verdict and were inclined to believe that the jury was fair
and impartial (Whitaker, 1995). Many blacks saw the decision as a kind of sym-
bolic retribution for what they viewed as a criminal justice system that more com-
monly victimizes African Americans. The gap between whites and blacks in their
perception of how blacks are dealt with by the police in their communities remains
particularly wide (Gallup Organization, 2001a). And, the hugely disproportionate
percentage of blacks who are incarcerated in America’s prisons is seen by African
Americans as stark evidence of a skewed criminal justice system.
In his interviews of middle-class Americans, sociologist Alan Wolfe (1998) dis-
covered that whites did not naïvely believe that discrimination against blacks no
longer existed, but they maintained a much higher degree of optimism regarding
the rate of change than did blacks, whose anger stemmed from a perception of
change that was not occurring quickly enough. Wolfe also concluded that differ-
ences were based largely on conflicting definitions of fairness, equality, and other
terms of the racial debate: “When discussing issues of racial equality, most
Americans, black or white, rely on the same words: their disagreements are about
what the words mean” (1998:214).
DISCRIMINATION VS. INDIVIDUAL EFFORT Although whites generally recognize the dis-
advantaged status of a large proportion of the black population, there are striking
differences in black and white explanations for that depressed condition. Most
whites continue to view the problems as the result of blacks’ own shortcomings, not
social conditions or institutional forms of discrimination (Lipset, 1987; Schuman et
al., 1997; Sniderman and Piazza, 1993). The majority, however, no longer attribute
these deficiencies to biological inferiority (Schuman, 1982; Schwartz, 1967;
Sniderman and Piazza, 1993). Most often, whites see black disadvantages as a prod-
uct of “lack of ambition,” “laziness,” “irresponsibility,” or “failure to take advan-
tage of opportunities.” The prevalent attitude is, “If we did it, so can they.” Indeed,
some hold that the image of blacks as lacking ambition and being socially irresponsi-
ble is the most common negative black stereotype (Sniderman and Piazza, 1993).
Blacks, by contrast, see their plight as deriving primarily from discrimination or a
lack of the same opportunities as whites (Gallup Organization, 2003).
Structural forces that strongly affect people’s place in the stratification system
(such as the society’s changed occupational order or its basically altered demo-
graphic patterns) are not easily perceived. Thus social success or failure is apt to be
interpreted as primarily the result of individual effort. Moreover, the belief that each
member of society is personally responsible for his or her social lot is a basic compo-
nent of the prevailing American ideology. The society’s opportunity structure is pic-
tured as open, providing equal chances for all to achieve material success or political
power regardless of their class or ethnic origin. As a result, it seems only natural that
204 part ii ethnicity in the united states
whites would be more likely to attribute the lower social and economic achievement
of blacks to individual and group characteristics than to the workings of a class and
ethnic system that automatically favors the wellborn, especially those who are also
white, and disadvantages the poor, especially those who are black. In addition, the
more blatant forms of discrimination, which long held blacks in subservience—slav-
ery, the Jim Crow system—are easier to perceive and understand by whites than are
the indirect and largely covert forms of structural discrimination that continue to
render debilitating effects. Moreover, even at the individual level, discrimination in
less easily measured forms—poor service, racial slurs, fearful or defensive behavior,
lack of respect—is a commonplace experience for most blacks (Feagin and Sikes,
1994; Morin and Cottman, 2001) and renders a further injurious impact.
Cultural Assimilation
Because the African cultural heritage was largely destroyed under slavery, blacks
had little choice about the adoption of the dominant group’s major cultural traits,
especially religion and language.8 Some hold that in light of this historical fact, cul-
tural assimilation has been as fully accomplished for blacks as for any American
ethnic group (Gordon, 1964; Pinkney, 2000). However, although it is true that
blacks have adopted the dominant group’s major cultural forms, it is equally evi-
dent that an African American cultural variation has evolved in the United States,
one that clearly sets blacks apart from Anglo-Americans and other ethnic groups
(Hannerz, 1969; R. Taylor, 1979). African Americans have developed a linguistic
style, have molded a unique version of Protestantism, and have created black art
forms, especially in music.
8
There is an unresolved debate among sociologists and historians concerning the degree to which
blacks retained elements of their native African cultures under American slavery. Some, like Frazier
(1949), assert that blacks were essentially stripped of African cultural ways; others, like Herskovitz
(1941), maintain that remnants remained intact.
chapter 7 african americans 205
youths’ fashion. “So powerful and unavoidable is the black popular influence,” he
writes, “that it is now not uncommon to find persons who, while remaining racists
in personal relations and attitudes, nonetheless have surrendered their tastes, and
their viewing and listening habits, to black entertainers, talk-show hosts and sitcom
stars” (1995b:24). As a reflection of this cultural drift, in 2005 Oprah Winfrey was
found to be America’s favorite TV personality—a title she had won for the sixth
time in eight years (Harris Poll, 2006). “Blackness (or nonwhiteness),” notes jour-
nalist Leon Wynter, “now suffers less and less of a discount in the marketplace,
while whiteness commands less and less of a premium” (2002:136).
Structural Assimilation
Structural assimilation at the secondary level has begun in earnest for African
Americans as they increasingly acquire better jobs, higher incomes, and more
education, and enter into power positions. For the black underclass, however, sec-
ondary structural assimilation has been stymied, and the prognosis for future move-
ment in this direction is bleak. Even for the black middle class, of course, it is still
only in the incipient stages.
Structural assimilation at the primary level—as measured by residential pat-
terns, club memberships, friendship cliques, and intermarriage—remains low.
Whites today do have more personal contact with blacks than they did in the past,
but that contact continues to be minimal and casual (Sigelman et al., 1996).
Residential integration is a very basic prerequisite to other aspects of primary and
even secondary assimilation, but in this area, as we have seen, African Americans
have not followed the usual path of American ethnic groups. Though residential
dispersion accompanied upward class mobility for other groups, this has not oc-
curred for African Americans, who remain highly segregated despite advances in in-
come, occupation, and education.
Interracial marriage—the most important indicator of primary structural assimi-
lation—also remains at a low level (Alba and Golden, 1986; Lieberson and Waters,
1988; Qian and Lichter, 2007). Although the number of black-white marriages in-
creased from 65,000 in 1970 to 422,000 in 2005, it is still an unusual phenomenon
206 part ii ethnicity in the united states
considering that in the latter year there were more than 59 million married couples
in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 1998a; 2007a). Intermarriage of whites
with other ethnic minorities is rapidly increasing but this trend is not strong in relation
to African Americans (Lee and Edmonston, 2005; Qian and Lichter, 2007).
Blacks and whites may increasingly work, shop, vote, and attend school to-
gether, but the formal interrelations in these areas of social life do not extend very
far into more personal relations as neighbors, church members, close friends, or
marital partners. Clearly, the social boundaries that continue to thwart change are
stronger for African Americans than for any other American ethnic group.
THE ASSIMILATION MODEL In the 1960s and 1970s, many analysts applied the as-
similation model to African Americans, seeing their social evolution as generally
comparable to that of white ethnic groups. In this view, African Americans until
the 1960s were denied entry into the competitive mainstream but afterwards had
to contend with other ethnic groups for jobs, education, housing, and political
power. Changed societal conditions and group cultural differences were acknowl-
edged, but the most important difference between African Americans and other eth-
nic groups, in this view, was simply the time that African Americans had entered
the competition: They were latecomers (Glazer, 1971; Glazer and Moynihan,
1970; Handlin, 1962; Kristol, 1970; Sowell, 1981). The process, therefore, might
be longer and more painstaking, but eventually, African Americans, like other eth-
nic groups, would be assimilated into the mainstream of American society.
of slavery, none experienced the depth and persistence of racial prejudice and dis-
crimination, none was so totally divested of its native culture, and none was so in-
delibly marked.
Some social scientists in the 1960s and 1970s went further in distinguishing the
African American experience, contending that it was best characterized as “internal
colonialism”: blacks’ entry into the society was forced, their indigenous culture was
destroyed, they were oppressed by the dominant group, and they were the target of
a racist ideology (Blauner, 1969, 1972; Franklin and Resnik, 1973). Other ethnic
groups did not face similar circumstances.
Those who see African Americans as singular among American ethnic groups
argue that the vestiges of slavery have immeasurably handicapped them in their ef-
forts to compete with whites. The abolition of slavery did not change established
relations of dominance and subordination. Blacks continued to be relegated to the
lowest occupational levels and were denied fundamental political rights well into
the 1960s. Furthermore, the economic and political structures of American society,
they argue, have changed so basically from what they were for entering European
immigrant groups that comparisons with them are rendered vacuous. African
Americans simply cannot utilize economic and political institutions as European im-
migrants earlier did to secure better jobs, housing, and political clout and, thus, to
effectuate assimilation.
SUMMARY
The black experience is unique among American ethnic groups. No other group en-
tered the society so completely as involuntary immigrants, and no other group was
subjected to such fully institutionalized degradation. The aftereffects of slavery con-
tinue to influence the patterns of black-white relations and the place of blacks in the
social hierarchy.
Black-white relations can be divided into three major periods. Slavery, lasting
from the 1600s until 1865, was characterized by paternalistic domination in which
blacks were totally subservient, by law in the South and by informal processes in
the North. Following the brief interlude of Reconstruction after the Civil War,
black-white relations entered the Jim Crow era. Although no longer slaves, blacks
were forced back into a subservient economic role and, through legal and extralegal
measures, were denied the vote as well as other basic civil liberties. Moreover, a
fully legitimized system of segregation was developed in the South, abetted by the
application of a racist ideology. An era of fluid competition between blacks and
whites commenced in the 1930s, and in the 1960s the Jim Crow system was demol-
ished in the wake of the black civil rights movement.
As a collectivity, blacks in the past four decades have made significant strides in
income, occupation, and education. However, they continue to lag behind whites
on all measures of socioeconomic status. Furthermore, the gains of the past forty
years have not been experienced in a balanced fashion within the African
American community. One segment has taken its economic place in the working
and middle classes, but the other segment is an underclass—chronically unem-
ployed, undereducated, and acutely indigent. A debate has been waged between
those who see the economic problems of poor blacks mostly as a function of their
lack of skills and education and those who see these problems as a function of con-
tinued racial discrimination.
The levels of prejudice and discrimination against blacks have historically been
more severe and persistent than those against any other ethnic group in American
society. In the past several decades, however, these patterns have changed signifi-
cantly. White attitudes are more tolerant, and discrimination today is confined
mostly to the structural variety. Housing, however, is an area still largely unaffected
by changes in black-white dynamics.
Although African Americans have reached a high level of cultural assimilation
and are in the incipient stages of secondary structural assimilation, primary struc-
tural assimilation remains minimal. Little black-white interaction occurs outside
formal social settings such as work and education.
Sociologists have debated the relevance of either the assimilation model or a var-
iant of inequalitarian pluralism to African Americans. Although some in the past
maintained that African Americans were simply latecomers to the urban environ-
ment and would eventually display assimilation patterns much like those of white
ethnic groups, most today see African Americans as a group whose historical expe-
rience and current conditions are so distinctive that comparisons with white ethnic
groups are spurious.
chapter 7 african americans 209
Suggested Readings
Hacker, Andrew. 2003. Two Nations. Revised and updated ed. New York: Scribner.
Examines the continuing divisions and inequalities in various spheres of social and eco-
nomic life between blacks and whites in the United States.
Jacoby, Tamar. 1998. Someone Else’s House: America’s Unfinished Struggle for Integration.
New York: Free Press. A historical account of the growing divisions between blacks and
whites during and after the civil rights era, using three cities as a backdrop: New York,
Detroit, and Atlanta.
Killian, Lewis M. 1975. The Impossible Revolution, Phase II: Black Power and the
American Dream. New York: Random House. One of the best accounts of the origins,
strategies, and objectives of the black civil rights movement and the brief period of the
black power movement. A rather pessimistic prognosis for American race relations that
seems to have been borne out.
Lemann, Nicholas. 1991. The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It
Changed America. New York: Vintage. Chronicles the migration of blacks from the rural
South to the urban North.
Massey, Douglas S., and Nancy A. Denton. 1993. American Apartheid: Segregation and the
Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Traces the de-
velopment of residential segregation in U.S. urban areas. Argues that the maintenance of
two housing markets, black and white, is the key to understanding the continuation of
the economic gap and the social divisions between the two racial categories.
McWhorter, John H. 2000. Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America. New York:
Free Press. Presents a controversial argument that the consistently lower academic perfor-
mance of African American students is the result of a cultural attitude of anti-
intellectualism and the embracing of victimhood as an identity rather than a problem.
Myrdal, Gunnar. 1944. An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern
Democracy. New York: Harper & Row. One of the most influential books written about
race relations in the United States. Myrdal, a Swedish sociologist, challenged Americans
to recognize the inconsistency between their society’s commitment to social democracy
and its institutional discrimination against blacks.
Patterson, Orlando. 1997. The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America’s
“Racial” Crisis. Washington, D.C.: Civitas/Counterpoint. An outstanding analysis of
black-white relations in the United States, pointing out the significant changes of the past
several decades in ethnic attitudes and the improved socioeconomic conditions of African
Americans. Includes an innovative essay on the uses of affirmative action.
Shapiro, Thomas M. 2004. The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth
Perpetuates Inequality. New York: Oxford University Press. The author shows that, de-
spite the expansion of the black middle class, black families hold substantially fewer fi-
nancial assets than white families. This translates into differences in advantages and
opportunities and is the key, he maintains, to understanding the persistence of black-
white inequality in American society.
Stampp, Kenneth M. 1956. The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. New
York: Random House. Describes, in a very readable account, the nature of the American
slave system as it developed and functioned in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Thernstrom, Stephan, and Abigail Thernstrom. 1997. America in Black and White: One
Nation, Indivisible. New York: Simon & Schuster. Examines the economic, political, and
social status of African Americans by tracing changes from the end of Jim Crow and then
since the civil rights era. Takes an optimistic view, in contrast to Hacker’s Two Nations.
210 part ii ethnicity in the united states
Waters, Mary. 1999. Black Identities: West Indian Immigrant Dreams and American
Realities. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Describes issues of identity and
adaptation of black immigrants to the United States, who often find themselves involun-
tarily caught in the maelstrom of the American racial system.
Wilson, William J. 1996. When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor. New
York: Knopf. One of Wilson’s several works on the black underclass, arguing that the
continuation of black inner-city poverty is the result not of racial discrimination but of a
restructured urban economy.
8
±±
±±
±±
±±
±±
Hispanic Americans ±± C H A P T E R
±±
±±
±
There are more people of Mexican origin in Los Angeles than in all but one city in
Mexico; in New York City, there are more Puerto Ricans than in San Juan; and
only in Havana are there more Cubans than in Miami. Together, Hispanic
Americans number more than 41 million, almost 15 percent of the total U.S. popu-
lation. And the Hispanic American ethnic category is growing rapidly and substan-
tially. So rapid has the increase been, in fact, that today it has surpassed African
Americans as the country’s largest ethnic minority.
Hispanic Americans1 constitute several distinct ethnic groups, linked by a
shared language and a cultural heritage derived, in the main, from Spanish colonial-
ism. The most sizable groups among them are Mexican Americans—the largest—
followed by Puerto Ricans and Cubans (Figure 8.1). The rest are people from
Central and South America as well as a small group whose origins are traced to
Spain. Because they are the largest elements of the Hispanic American population,
in this chapter we focus mainly on Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and
Cubans.
1
Although the term Hispanic has been most frequently used in the past two decades, Latino is today
also commonly used to describe those of various Latin American origins. In this chapter, the two are
used interchangeably. The U.S. Census has, at different times, used a variety of terms to describe the
Hispanic American population. A 1995 government study found that a majority of Hispanic Americans
favored “Hispanic” (Tucker and Kojetin, 1996), similar to a Gallup poll finding in 2003 (Gallup
Organization, 2003). A survey of the Hispanic American population in 1992 (de la Garza et al., 1992),
however, found that most prefer to identify themselves in terms of their society of origin (Mexican,
Cuban, and so forth).
211
212 part ii ethnicity in the united states
70
60
50
40
Percent
30
20
10
0
Mexican Puerto Cuban Dominican Central South Other
Rican American American Hispanic
Figure 8.1
| Hispanic American Population
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007d.
Manner of Entry
Hispanic Americans have entered the society in a variety of ways. Although
Mexicans have come to the United States in the last hundred years as voluntary im-
migrants, they retain a heritage of having been absorbed into American society orig-
inally as a conquered group. The area that today is the American Southwest was
part of Mexico before being annexed by the United States in 1848 following the
Mexican War. Mexicans living on those lands were subsequently incorporated
into the United States, much in the fashion of classic European colonialism. Unlike
any other ethnic group (except, of course, Native Americans), Mexican Americans
today inhabit an area that was once part of their native society.
Puerto Ricans are a group not clearly part of either voluntary immigration or
conquest. Puerto Rico became a territory of the United States in 1898 following the
Spanish-American War, and in 1917 the inhabitants of the island were given the
status of American citizenship. This enabled them to immigrate freely to the main-
land with no restrictions. Puerto Ricans therefore are not technically immigrants,
even though they come to the mainland from a distinctly foreign culture.
The movement of Cubans to the United States in the past four decades has been
a voluntary immigration. Yet it has been different from those of most past groups
chapter 8 hispanic americans 213
Among the Hispanic groups in the United States, Cubans are the least racially
heterogeneous, most falling into the American category of “white” (Diaz, 1980).
Cuba itself is a racially variegated society, however, suggesting that the Cuban im-
migration has been racially selective (Portes et al., 1977). Most early Cuban immi-
grants were of higher social status in Cuba and hence whiter in color, whereas
many of the more recent immigrants have been of lower class origins and of darker
color (Pedraza-Bailey, 1985).
Mexican Americans
Relations between Mexicans and whites (Anglos) have, historically, been character-
ized consistently by conflict, albeit of varying intensity. Early in the contact between
these groups, a pattern of Anglo domination and Mexican subordination emerged.
And, as with American Indians, the vehicle through which domination was initially
established was physical conquest.
THE MEXICAN WAR Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1810, and at
that time its territory encompassed an area as far north as what is today
Colorado. Most of this northern Mexican region, far removed from the administra-
tive capital of Mexico City, was inhabited by Indians and a smaller number of
Mexicans. As a means of populating the area, the Mexican government in 1821
granted permission for foreigners—mainly Americans—to settle in the area that to-
day is Texas. By 1830 about 20,000 Anglos were living in the Texas region, consti-
tuting a numerical majority. Culturally and physically distinct from the indigenous
Mexicans and Indians, the Anglo settlers from the outset translated their differences
into contempt and hostility toward these groups.
The Mexican government could exercise only limited control over the Texas
colony, and pressures from Anglos for independence grew steadily. In 1835–1836,
the colony revolted and established itself as an independent republic. Mexico never
recognized the independence of Texas; when it became clear that the United States
favored annexation of the territory, much friction was created between the
American and Mexican governments, leading eventually to war in 1848.
The war proved disastrous for Mexico, which lost more than half its territory.
The United States acquired what are today the states of California, Colorado, New
Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and most of Arizona, in addition to Texas, which had been
annexed previously. Under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the war,
Mexicans living in what was now American territory were guaranteed the rights
of American citizenship if they chose to remain. Most did, and it was from this nu-
cleus that the Mexican American ethnic group evolved.
The significance of the Texas rebellion and the Mexican War cannot be over-
stated as factors in shaping subsequent relations between Mexican Americans and
chapter 8 hispanic americans 215
Anglos in the Southwest. The borderlands remained an area of overt conflict long
after the conclusion of the war, and this protracted hostility intensified the mutually
negative perceptions of Anglos and Mexican Americans (Grebler et al., 1970).
Anglo-Mexican conflict did not characterize all of the Southwest to the same de-
gree. In New Mexico, for example, relations between the two groups were relatively
peaceful by comparison with Texas, where the strife reached its most violent and
bloody form. But in all cases, the war left a residue of antagonistic feelings and
group images among Anglos and Mexicans that continued to color interethnic rela-
tions for many generations.
THE EMERGENCE OF ETHNIC STRATIFICATION Although their property rights and po-
litical rights were guaranteed by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexicans in
the newly acquired American territory found themselves increasingly displaced by
Anglos. Their property was taken through official and unofficial force and fraud,
and they were gradually transformed into a colonized workforce serving the area’s
labor needs. Mexicans were also dispossessed politically, as Anglos firmly estab-
lished themselves in power. The scenario of heavy immigration of Anglos followed
by the divesting of Mexicans’ economic and political power was played out some-
what differently from area to area. In New Mexico, for example, the indigenous
Mexican population, called Hispanos, did retain some political and economic
power. These people were descendants of the original Spanish settlers dating back
to the 1600s, and they did not identify themselves with the later-immigrating
Mexicans (DeSipio, 2006; Nostrand, 1973). In general, however, Anglos perceived
Mexicans as a conquered—and therefore inferior—people who quite naturally were
relegated to subordinate ethnic status (Alvarez, 1973).
The development of ethnic stratification in the Southwest seems clearly in ac-
cord with Noel’s (1968) theory, discussed in Chapter 2. All three factors necessary
to the emergence of an ethnic hierarchy—ethnocentrism, competition, and above all,
differential power—came into play after 1821 in the confrontation of Anglos and
Mexicans (McLemore, 1973). Anglos settling the region were most intent on secur-
ing land held by Mexicans—hence the ensuing competition. With them, they also
brought their racial attitudes, which led them to see Mexicans as an inferior people
whose exploitation could therefore be justified. Finally, with their numerical power
—and following annexation by the United States, their political power—Anglos be-
came the dominant group, displacing Mexicans both legally and by force.
MEXICAN IMMIGRATION As a result of the Texas and Mexican wars, the first
Mexicans were incorporated into American society through conquest. But subse-
quent generations of Mexicans entered the United States as voluntary immigrants.
Indeed, it must be remembered that the original Mexican Americans, those living
on annexed lands, were a relatively small group, perhaps no more than 75,000
(McWilliams, 1968). More than twice that number of Indians were living in the
same territory. The overwhelming majority of Mexican Americans, then, entered
as voluntary immigrants, motivated by the same push-pull factors as other immi-
grant groups.
The flow of Mexican immigration during the nineteenth and twentieth centu-
ries was dictated primarily by the labor needs of the American Southwest
216 part ii ethnicity in the united states
(Camarillo, 1979; Tyler, 1975). Most simply, movement across the border was
heaviest during periods when the demand for cheap labor was high. Although im-
migration was evident during the remainder of the nineteenth century following the
Mexican War, it reached enormous proportions during the twentieth century with
the expansion of the American Southwest and the corresponding inadequacies of
the Mexican economy. The pressures of a continually growing population and the
political destabilization brought about by the Mexican Revolution in 1910 further
impelled migration northward.
Between 1910 and 1930 the development of railroads, mining, and agriculture,
all labor-intensive industries, spurred the first great wave of Mexican immigration
into the United States (McWilliams, 1968). As the chief source of unskilled labor in
the Southwest, Mexicans became a subordinate labor force. They were commonly
kept in debt by their employers, paid less than others for the same work, concen-
trated in the least desirable occupations, often used as strikebreakers, and laid off
most easily in distressful times (Barrera, 1979).
When they represented an excess labor supply, Mexicans were driven back
across the border. During the 1930s, for example, not only were their jobs abol-
ished, but they served as convenient scapegoats for the area’s unemployment and
growing welfare rolls. Deportations were launched in which illegal immigrants
were rounded up and sent back to Mexico. Repatriations also took place in which
Mexicans, many of whom had been born in the United States, were induced to
leave the country.
During World War II, a severe labor shortage once again prompted the impor-
tation of Mexican workers. But by the early 1950s the deportations and repatria-
tions of the 1930s were grimly repeated in a policy called Operation Wetback,
designed to stem the flow of illegal Mexican immigrants. In five years, 3.8 million
persons were sent back to Mexico (Moore and Pachon, 1976). Relatively few were
actually deported in formal proceedings; most were simply rounded up and ex-
pelled. In the process, Mexicans were once again reminded of their tenuous status
in the United States. Persons who simply “looked Mexican” were stopped and re-
quired to present evidence of their legal status. Although there is some question
about the official number actually apprehended and deported (Garcia, 1980),
Operation Wetback in any case created fear and suspicion among the Mexican
American populace.
Today Mexicans are the country’s largest immigrant group, and their numbers
are swelled by a continual flow of illegal entrants. During the past three decades,
Mexicans have constituted about a quarter of all legal immigrants to the United
States. As in the past, economic conditions are the chief motive of this migration.
Puerto Ricans
The formation of the Puerto Rican minority in the United States differed consider-
ably from the development of the Mexican American community. To begin with,
Puerto Ricans are a relatively recent immigrant group. Even though they had main-
tained a presence on the mainland for most of the twentieth century, their numbers
were quite small until after World War II. The greatest influx occurred during the
1950s, when nearly 20 percent of the island’s population moved to the mainland.
Whereas in 1940 only 1,000 Puerto Ricans migrated, in 1953 almost 75,000 did
so (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1976). In the 1970s, as the U.S. economy
stagnated and low-skilled jobs disappeared, the migration to the mainland ceased
and, in fact, a net return migration was sustained throughout the decade. The
1980s, however, saw a second major flow of Puerto Ricans to the mainland, creat-
ing an increased population (Boswell and Jones, 2006).
The push-pull factors impelling Puerto Ricans to migrate have been similar to
those for other voluntary immigrant groups: a surplus population in an economi-
cally depressed society seeks economic betterment in a society that promises im-
proved conditions. Puerto Rican migration has therefore fluctuated, depending on
economic conditions both on the island and on the mainland. An unusually high
birthrate coupled with a seriously underdeveloped economy created great pressures
for out-migration from the island after World War II. Two factors increased the ap-
peal of the mainland United States. First, with citizenship rights, Puerto Ricans
could enter the country with no restrictions, quotas, or other legal steps. Second,
with the establishment of airline service, transportation between the mainland and
the island became relatively cheap and rapid. The migration process for Puerto
Ricans, then, was considerably less complicated than that for other groups.
Although the absolute size of the Puerto Rican migration to the mainland is not
among the largest compared with past groups, it is numerically significant in rela-
tion to the island’s population. By 1960 there were one-third as many Puerto
Ricans on the mainland as in Puerto Rico, and by 1970 one-half as many (Bahr et
al., 1979). In 2000 there were almost as many Puerto Ricans on the mainland as on
the island (Boswell and Jones, 2006). Moreover, migration statistics do not accu-
rately indicate the frequent back-and-forth movement between island and mainland,
so it is quite reasonable to assume that a much larger number of islanders have, at
one time or another, migrated. Indeed, during the three decades between 1940 and
2
La Raza (the race) is not similar in meaning to the North American idea of race but is a somewhat
vague concept denoting a common heritage or peoplehood.
chapter 8 hispanic americans 219
1970, it is unlikely that a single Puerto Rican family was unaffected by this move-
ment (Fitzpatrick, 1987; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1976).
To a limited extent, Puerto Ricans participated in the ethnic movements of the
1960s and early 1970s. Several groups emerged at that time, advocating control by
Puerto Ricans of their communities and emphasizing ethnic identity and pride. The
Young Lords, for example, a militant group in Chicago and New York, imitated
the activities of the Black Panthers in organizing Puerto Rican ghettos and calling
for a redress of squalid conditions (Lopez, 1980). As with black and Chicano polit-
ical activism, Puerto Rican militancy resulted in drawing the serious attention of na-
tional authorities to the Puerto Rican community for the first time. But as with
blacks and Chicanos, programs of federal and community agencies directed at
Puerto Ricans dwindled with the passing of militancy in the 1970s.
Today the Puerto Rican population is increasingly a second- and third-
generation ethnic group. This is especially evident in New York, where the largest
number of Puerto Ricans continues to reside. In 1950 more than 81 percent of all
Puerto Ricans on the mainland lived there, and in 1970, 62 percent did so. During
the 1970s and 1980s, Puerto Ricans began to disperse, with large communities devel-
oping in California and Florida (Torrecilha et al., 1999; Whalen, 2005). By 2000, less
than 40 percent of Puerto Ricans lived in the New York metropolitan area (Boswell
and Jones, 2006). Other significant Puerto Rican communities are found in Chicago,
Philadelphia, and northern New Jersey, especially Newark and Jersey City. The re-
mainder are primarily in cities of the Northeast. In addition, many—even those born
on the mainland—have returned to Puerto Rico (Navarro, 2000).
Cuban Americans
The conditions of immigration for Cubans and their subsequent settlement patterns
have been unlike those experienced by either Mexicans or Puerto Ricans.
Given its geographical proximity to Cuba, the United States often served as a
haven for Cuban exiles during times of political turmoil before and after the
Cuban movement for independence from Spain in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. In fact, one of the key figures of Cuban political history, José
Martí, sometimes called Cuba’s George Washington, spent much of his exile during
the 1880s in the United States. Small colonies of Cubans had for many years been
present in Key West, Tampa, Miami, and New York.
THE CUBAN REVOLUTION AND LARGE-SCALE IMMIGRATION In the 1960s, following the
revolution led by Fidel Castro, Cubans began to come to the United States in sig-
nificant numbers. Whereas pull factors of migration were stronger for Mexicans
and Puerto Ricans, push factors seemed more crucial for early Cuban immigrants.
Their chief motivation was political refuge rather than economic betterment.
Nonetheless, the underlying economic objectives of the émigrés should not be over-
looked. Because the revolution imposed a socialist system in Cuba, the power and
economic opportunities for most of the early immigrants—who were mainly
middle-, upper-middle-, or upper-class people—had been severely constricted. As
Portes has explained, “The wealthy, the successful, the powerful, the educated
saw their status challenged, their influence radically curtailed, and their economic
220 part ii ethnicity in the united states
position continuously menaced” (1969:506). Departure from Cuba, then, was not
simply politically inspired but was calculated in the hope of reestablishing a rela-
tively high socioeconomic status in the United States and returning to Cuba when
political conditions were favorable. For later Cuban immigrants, economic factors
in the decision to migrate were even more clearly apparent (Portes et al., 1977;
Wong, 1974).
Cuban immigration from 1960 onward was aided immeasurably by American
policies that in effect permitted the entrance of Cuban refugees without restriction.
The political objectives of this policy are not difficult to understand. The chilled re-
lations between the Cuban and American governments soon after the Cuban
Revolution were followed with strongly belligerent actions by the United States, in-
cluding an American-sponsored invasion of Cuba by Cuban exiles at the Bay of
Pigs in 1961 and imposing a trade embargo against Cuba in the same year. The
Cuban missile crisis of 1962 firmly established the Castro regime as a basic element
in the Cold War, and from that point forward Cuba became a bête noire for succes-
sive American administrations. Cuba was portrayed in the United States as a “com-
munist stronghold” and the Cuban people as “politically enslaved.” The emigration
of large numbers of Cubans, therefore, was seen as confirmation of this perspective,
and the refugees were welcomed enthusiastically.3
Large-scale Cuban immigration ceased in 1973 but resumed for a brief period
in 1980, when more than 125,000 people came to the United States. The conditions
under which this second immigrant wave left Cuba were graphically described by
the American media, and the manner in which they arrived—most in small boats
—further dramatized their entrance. They were dubbed Marielitos, in reference to
the port of Mariel, from which most of them departed Cuba. These immigrants
were generally lower in social class than the original Cuban refugees, and many
were black or mulatto. As a result, they did not find adjustment to American soci-
ety as smooth or their reception as enthusiastic. They experienced higher rates of
unemployment, low-paid work, and dependence on charity and public welfare.
Moreover, the presence of a criminal element among them served to taint the entire
group (Corral and Viglucci, 2005; Portes et al., 1985).
Except for part of the second wave, most Cuban immigrants entered the United
States with a strong family and kin support system that aided their adjustment con-
siderably (Portes et al., 1977). Indeed, following the initial immigration in the early
1960s, succeeding immigrants were encouraged to come to the United States by rel-
atives or friends who could offer them physical and economic assistance (Fagan
et al., 1968). Although the presence of friends and relatives has also characterized
the Mexican and Puerto Rican migrations (recall the network theory of immigra-
tion, discussed in Chapter 5), the support system of Cubans has been stronger and
more complete. Moreover, Cubans have experienced substantial economic success
and have therefore been able to offer greater assistance to those who have followed
3
For thirty-five years the U.S. federal government maintained an open-door policy for Cubans who fled
to the United States. Under the policy, they were given immediate permanent resident status—terms af-
forded no other immigrant or refugee group. The policy was effectively terminated in 1995 with the
elimination of Cubans’ automatic acceptance as political refugees (see Nackerud et al., 1999).
chapter 8 hispanic americans 221
them. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, by contrast, have remained collectively in a far
less secure economic position.
As we will see, the Cuban American population is markedly distinct from most
other Latino groups in demographic and socioeconomic features. It is older—me-
dian age is 41 compared to 27 for the rest of the Latino population—and the rate
at which Cubans acquire U.S. citizenship (60 percent) is more than double the rate
for other Hispanics (Pew Hispanic Center, 2006a). In terms of income, occupation,
and education it more closely resembles the non-Hispanic white population, and it
has not been subject to the prejudice and discrimination that Mexicans and Puerto
Ricans have historically experienced.
DOMINICANS Those from the Dominican Republic constitute the largest of the
newer Latino groups, about 2.6 percent of all Hispanic Americans. Dominicans
began arriving in large numbers in the 1970s and their percentage of the Latino
population has continued to grow. Between 1990 and 2000 the number of Do-
minican immigrants nearly doubled (Grieco, 2004). More than three-quarters of
all Dominicans have settled in the New York metropolitan area, where they are
one of its largest immigrant groups. The remainder are in just a few states, mostly
in the Northeast and Florida (Boswell and Jones, 2006).
When looked at in comparison with other Hispanic groups, Dominicans have
fared more poorly, resembling in many ways the Puerto Rican patterns of adapta-
tion and socioeconomic status (Hernández, 2007; Kasinitz et al., 2006; Reimers,
2006). Most Dominicans work in low-paying service or factory jobs and are handi-
capped by low levels of education. Roughly half of Dominican families are headed
by women, and they suffer a poverty rate considerably higher than the overall pov-
erty rate in New York, where most reside (Bernstein, 2005; Ojito, 1997). The racial
factor has also affected this group since most identify themselves as “mulatto” or
“black” (Pessar, 1995).
collectivity. In addition to six different national origins, the Central American pop-
ulation includes indigenous, Afro-Caribbean, European, and mestizo peoples.
On socioeconomic measures, compared to other Latino groups Central
Americans most closely resemble Mexicans: their level of education is low, their
household income is low, and they occupy mostly unskilled occupational positions.
There are, however, noticeable differences among the various Central American
groups. Nicaraguans have higher incomes, higher levels of education, and are more
apt to work in managerial and professional jobs than Guatemalans, Hondurans,
or Salvadorans (Chinchilla and Hamilton, 2007).
SOUTH AMERICANS Those whose origins are from South American countries make
up 5.5 percent of the Hispanic American population. The largest specific compo-
nents of this category are from Colombia (by far, the largest), Ecuador, and Peru.
There is also a sizable Brazilian population in the United States, though this
group is technically not part of the “Latino” world. It is difficult to estimate the
size of these groups because so many have come to the United States as illegal
immigrants, but it is certain that their numbers are substantially larger than cen-
sus figures would indicate (Margolis, 1998). Like others who preceded them,
these immigrants come in pursuit of economic betterment and many harbor ex-
pectations of returning to their origin societies after working for a period in the
United States.
A large number of immigrants from South America in recent years have been
drawn to the United States as a result of economic uncertainties in their home coun-
tries. As Helen Marrow has written, “In between periods of economic growth and
democratization, periods of recession and decline have hindered progress and in-
creased pressures to emigrate” (2007:597). In the early 2000s economic conditions
created hardships especially for middle-class families in countries like Argentina and
Venezuela who were well-educated and had skilled occupations but who found
themselves increasingly impoverished or even unemployed. Thus the push factors
motivating migration to the United States and other countries with strong econo-
mies intensified (Forero, 2001; Price, 2006).
South Americans in the United States exhibit stronger similarities to Cubans
than to other Latino groups. On average they are better educated, are concentrated
in higher occupational categories, and earn higher incomes. Still, it is important to
keep in mind that the category “South Americans” comprises not only a culturally
diverse population but one with noticeable socioeconomic differences among its
various groups.
GEOGRAPHIC TRENDS In recent decades the Hispanic population has been rapidly
dispersing widely throughout all regions of the United States. Indeed, few states
and regions do not now contain a Latino community of some size. This represents
a sharp break with past patterns of settlement, in which Hispanics entered and
mostly remained in the Southwest (Parisi and Lichter, 2007; Smith and Furuseth,
2006; Zuñiga and Hernández-León, 2005).
This dispersion has been particularly evident among Mexican Americans.
Mexican communities in the industrial cities of the Midwest had been in evidence for
several decades (Aponte and Siles, 1994), but the movement of Mexicans into other
regions, particularly the Southeast, has now become a substantial flow (Durand et
al., 2006; Smith and Furuseth, 2006). Consider that in Atlanta and Memphis,
Hispanics (mostly Mexicans), never in the past more than a minor element of the pop-
ulation in those cities, now dominate the construction and landscaping trades
(Schmitt, 2001a). Mexicans, along with some Central Americans, have become the
main source of labor for meatpacking plants in Omaha, Nebraska and numerous
other smaller midwestern cities. And they make up the bulk of the workforce in poul-
try plants in Delaware, North Carolina, and Arkansas (Viglucci, 2000) and seafood
processing plants along the East Coast (Durand et al., 2006). Mexicans have also be-
come a significant part of New York’s large Latino population (Bernstein, 2005).
Despite the growth of Latino communities throughout the United States, the
vast majority of Hispanic Americans are still concentrated within just a few states.
In fact, almost two-thirds of all Hispanics live in just four states—California, Texas,
Florida and New York. As is seen in Figure 8.2, it is in the southwestern states that
Hispanics predominate as a proportion of the total population.
Like African Americans, Latinos are primarily urban dwellers. Table 8.1 shows
the metropolitan areas with more than 1 million Latinos.
Specific Latino groups are similarly concentrated in just a few states and major
metropolitan areas. Although Mexican Americans can now be found in virtually ev-
ery state and region, fully one-half still live in two states alone, California and
Texas. Cubans are the most concentrated of the three major Hispanic groups,
with about two-thirds residing in the metropolitan Miami area. Other sizable
Cuban communities are found in New York, northern New Jersey, Tampa, and
Los Angeles, but in no way do they resemble the Miami community. Dominicans,
like Cubans, are concentrated in a single locale, New York City, where they now
constitute the city’s largest immigrant group.
Among the Central American groups, the major concentrations of
Salvadorans and Guatemalans are in Los Angeles, where about one-third of all
Central American immigrants reside. The largest cluster of Nicaraguans is in
Miami, where a community of 125,000 makes up the city’s second-largest
Hispanic group. In the past, Miami was primarily a Cuban American city, but
224 part ii ethnicity in the united states
AK
4.8
WA NH
8.5 VT 2.1 ME
MT ND 0.9 0.9
2.2 1.1
OR MN
9.6 3.5 NY MA 7.7
ID SD WI
8.9 1.7 16.1
WY 4.4 MI RI 10.5
6.7 IA 3.6 PA CT 10.6
NV NE 3.7 3.7
OH NJ 15.0
22.9 7.0 IL IN
UT 2..2 DE 5.9
CO 14.0 4.4 WV
CA 10.6 VA MD 5.4
19.2 KS MO 0.6
34.9 KY 5.8 DC 8.9
6.1 2.6 1.9 NC
TN 6.1
AZ OK 2.9
NM 6.4 AR SC
28.1
43.4 4.4 3.0
MS AL CA
1.5 2.0 6.7
TX LA
HI 34.9 2.7
7.9
FL
19.1
43.4 (NM)
20.0 to 39.9
10.0 to 19.9
5.0 to 9.9
Less than 5.0
U.S. percent 14.2
Figure 8.2
| Percent Hispanic by State, 2004
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007d.
±±
±
Table 8.1 ±± Metropolitan Areas with More than 1 Million Latinos
± (in thousands)
Percent of Total
Number Population
in recent years it has become a magnet for all Hispanic groups, including tens of
thousands from virtually every country in Central and South America and the
Caribbean (Alberts, 2006). In addition to Los Angeles and Miami, other large
Central American populations are found in New York, Houston, and San
Francisco (Miyares, 2006).
South Americans are the most dispersed among Latinos. Nonetheless, 70 per-
cent of all South Americans in the United States are found in just five metropolitan
regions: New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Washington, and Boston (Price, 2006). In
several New York City boroughs there are distinguishable Colombian, Ecuadorian,
Peruvian, and Argentine concentrations. Colombians have been settling in New
York since the 1960s and have made a significant imprint on the residential and
commercial life of certain neighborhoods. But even this group is composed mostly
of those who have come to the United States only in the past two decades
(Guarnizo and Espitia, 2007).
INCOME, WEALTH, AND POVERTY As shown in Table 8.2, despite moderate gains
during the past two decades, Hispanic household income remains only about 75
percent of non-Hispanic white income. While income for all Hispanic groups is
substantially lower than for whites, there is a range among the specific groups.
Cuban families and those from South America on average earn more than
±±
±
Table 8.2 ±±± Hispanic American Socioeconomic Status, 2006
Mexicans, who earn slightly more than Puerto Ricans. Dominicans are the lowest
income earning group among all Hispanics and a larger percentage is below the
poverty line.
Like African Americans, Latinos lag far behind whites in wealth (see Figure
7.1). Median net worth of Latino families is about 10 percent of whites’, and less
than half of Latino families own their homes, compared to three-quarters of whites
(Mishel et al., 2007).
With income and wealth well below average, Latinos—especially Mexicans and
Puerto Ricans—are, predictably, disproportionately among America’s poor. More
than one-fifth of all Hispanics are below the poverty line, a rate almost two and a
half times higher than that of non-Hispanic whites (Table 8.2). As with income,
however, there is a poverty range within the Hispanic American category:
Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans below the poverty line are more numer-
ous than Cubans. Indeed, among a significant part of the Latino population, eco-
nomic conditions are much akin to those of the black underclass (Fitzpatrick,
1995; Reimers, 2006).
OCCUPATION The low incomes and high poverty rates of Latinos, particularly
Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans, reflect their generally lower occupa-
tional levels. Except for Cubans and most South Americans, Latinos are underrep-
resented in the higher-status occupational categories and overrepresented in the
lower ones. For example, whereas almost 38 percent of non-Hispanic whites are
in managerial or professional occupations, only 17 percent of Hispanics are. At
the other end of the occupational hierarchy, 14 percent of non-Hispanic whites
but 20 percent of Hispanics are engaged in service jobs (U.S. Census Bureau,
2007f). Hispanics also exhibit high unemployment rates compared to non-
Hispanic whites (Table 8.2). And, as with African Americans, official statistics un-
derstate the extent of this problem.
Again, it is important to keep in mind the social class differences among Latino
groups. There are similarities among Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and
Central Americans, but Cubans and, to some extent, South Americans exhibit no-
ticeably higher statuses on various measures of income, occupation, and education.
For example, whereas only 14 percent of Mexicans are in managerial and profes-
sional occupations, the comparable figure among Cubans is 31, not radically differ-
ent from the percentage (38) of non-Hispanic whites. Looking at income levels for
the various groups reveals a similar picture (Table 8.2). Median household income
for Cubans is almost $10,000 more than for Dominicans. In fact, household income
for Cubans born in the United States is actually higher than for non-Hispanic
whites (Pew Hispanic Center, 2006a).
What accounts for the relatively low levels of income and occupation of most
Hispanic American groups? Although employment discrimination against Latinos
has historically been a factor for particular groups, especially Mexicans in the
Southwest and Puerto Ricans in New York, today low levels of education and their
relatively recent entry into the labor force seem most critical (Camarillo and
Bonilla, 2001). Large proportions of all Latino groups have immigrated to the
United States since 1965. As latecomers to the American postindustrial economy,
chapter 8 hispanic americans 227
they have necessarily occupied the least skilled and lowest-paying jobs. Like African
Americans, they have become disproportionately part of the most expendable ele-
ment of the workforce, generally lacking the requirements for positions above the
semiskilled or unskilled levels. Moreover, as an unusually young population,
Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans are most likely to lack market-
able skills and work experience. As the economic gap grows between those with
higher education and those without, Latinos have been especially hard hit, given
their relatively lower educational levels generally and the low proportion with col-
lege education specifically (Bean and Stevens, 2003; Carnoy et al., 1993).
The effects of lingering discrimination can in some cases present additional dif-
ficulties even after age, education, and lack of skills are accounted for (Meléndez,
1993). Here it is important to consider differences among specific Latino groups
and the regions where they live. Discrimination against Mexicans in the South-
west or Puerto Ricans or Dominicans in New York may be a continuing problem
in attaining higher-level jobs, but Cubans in Miami, by contrast, have faced no
such obstacles. Indeed, regarding employment, for them ethnicity may serve as a
positive rather than negative influence.
EDUCATION Perhaps the most serious factor in accounting for the lower occupa-
tional status and earnings of Hispanic Americans in general is their lower educa-
tional level. As shown in Table 8.3, only 60 percent of Latinos 25 years of age
and over have completed high school, compared with 89 percent of non-Hispanic
whites. The dropout rate among Latinos (24 percent) is also significantly higher
compared to those of both whites (7 percent) and blacks (12 percent). Advances
in recent years have begun to close this educational gap, however. The proportion
of younger Latinos who have completed high school is substantially higher com-
pared to older Latinos, and the proportion of Latinos over age 25 who completed
four years or more of college tripled between 1970 and 2006 (U.S. Census Bureau,
2008). Also, as with income, it is important to consider the differences in
±±
±
Table 8.3 ±± Hispanic American Educational Level, Persons Age 25
± and Older, 2006
educational attainment within the Latino category. As is seen in Table 8.3, for ex-
ample, the discrepancy between Mexicans and Dominicans on the one hand, and
Cubans and South Americans on the other is very great.
Reasons for the lower educational attainment of Latinos, particularly Mexican
Americans and Puerto Ricans, have been debated. Some contend that inappropriate
cultural values fail to encourage successful school performance; others maintain
that schools themselves, Anglo-dominated as they are, do not address the unique
needs of Latino students. One point about which there is general agreement is that
language difficulties intensify the academic problems of these students (Celis, 1992;
Moll and Ruiz, 2002; Orfield, 2002). Many Mexican American students in the
Southwest are from families with non-English-speaking backgrounds, making their
school experience trying, at best. Language problems create or exacerbate much of
the high dropout rate and poor academic performance among Puerto Ricans and
Dominicans as well.
In sum, Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans are underrepre-
sented at the higher levels of the mainstream economy and overrepresented among
the poor. In looking at the socioeconomic levels of these groups, it should be noted
that these are aggregate figures reflecting the groups’ general position in the
American stratification system. There will obviously be an entire range of occupa-
tional and income positions within each group despite their disproportionate con-
centration at the lower levels. Moreover, evidence indicates that when adjustments
are made for differences in human capital, especially education and English lan-
guage proficiency, there is little difference between Hispanics and whites in occupa-
tional status and earnings (Duncan et al., 2006). In general, however, these groups
have entered the U.S. workforce at an inopportune time. And, because they face the
same increasingly technical and high-skilled job market as African Americans with
a correspondingly low skill level, they will continue to make up a large segment of
the poor in the foreseeable future.
CLASS BACKGROUND Cuban immigrants to the United States, particularly the first
wave, brought with them a class background markedly different from that of
most other Latinos. A disproportionate number derived from the middle and upper
strata of prerevolutionary Cuban society. In their study of early Cuban refugees,
Fagan, Brody, and O’Leary (1968) found that professional and semiprofessional
occupations were heavily overrepresented among this group, whereas fishing and
agricultural jobs—those predominating in Cuba—were hardly represented at all.
chapter 8 hispanic americans 229
The occupational skills Cubans brought with them enabled them to work them-
selves more easily into the mainstream economy and climb rapidly even though
most of them experienced downward mobility when they first entered the United
States. Indeed, research has shown that among younger Cubans in the United
States, the rate of upward mobility has been similar to that of immigrants from
English-speaking countries (Massey, 1981b). In addition to their high occupational
status in Cuba, the refugees were far better educated than most Cubans, and most
were urban residents. Succeeding immigrant cohorts displayed a somewhat lower
class background but still represented a privileged sector of Cuban society (Portes
et al., 1977).
Cubans in the United States, then, differ radically from most other Hispanics in
their social origins. Unlike Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, early Cuban immigrants
were likely to have been occupationally successful and well educated before emi-
grating. These higher skill and educational levels have translated into rapid upward
mobility in the United States.
RACE The more rapid ascent of Cubans in the American ethnic system is ex-
plained in some part by the fact that most immigrant Cubans have been white
and therefore have not been exposed to the added handicap of racial discrimination
in the labor market, with which many Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans
have had to deal.
THE MIAMI ETHNIC ENCLAVE Another advantage Cubans have had over other
Hispanic groups has been the creation of an institutionally complete community
in Miami, where most Cuban Americans reside. An ethnic enclave economy was
established by early Cuban immigrants, composed of numerous small businesses
serving the ethnic community. In addition, a small manufacturing sector emerged
that subsequently employed other Cuban immigrants who arrived with fewer skills
and less financial capital. The presence of an ethnic subeconomy not only created
jobs for these immigrants, but also enabled them to avoid the secondary labor mar-
ket of the mainstream economy, where jobs ordinarily are temporary and do not
provide for occupational advancement. Many of the Cuban immigrant workers
who were employed by Cuban business owners eventually acquired the skills and
capital needed to open their own establishments, which created an expanding
Cuban subeconomy (Portes and Bach, 1985; Stepick and Stepick, 2002; Wilson
and Portes, 1980).
Neither Mexicans nor Puerto Ricans have been as demographically concen-
trated as Cubans, thus making the development of similar economic arrangements
impracticable. Moreover, neither group contained a substantial entrepreneurial
class, possessing both business capital and skills, that could re-create in the United
States the position it held in its country of origin and thereby serve as the nucleus of
an ethnic subeconomy.
U.S. GOVERNMENT POLICY Cuban economic success in the United States also has
been very much a product of the fact that Cubans were received as political mi-
grants—that is, as refugees—rather than as economic migrants. As a result, the
U.S. government provided aid to early-arriving Cuban immigrants that helped
230 part ii ethnicity in the united states
CUBANS AND OTHER LATINOS Despite the extraordinary achievement of Cubans rel-
ative to other Hispanic Americans, their economic success in the United States
should not be overstated. Although Cubans are certainly in a very different cate-
gory from Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans, their median income is still
below Anglos’, and their poverty and unemployment rates are higher. Moreover,
even though they are well represented in the higher-level white-collar occupations,
most are still in clerical, semiskilled, or service jobs. Moreover, the economic gap
between Cubans and other Hispanics is closing (Betancur et al., 1993; Pérez-
Stable and Uriarte, 1993; U.S. Census Bureau, 2007d). Many newly arriving
Latinos from South American countries, for example, bring the same economic re-
sources with them that early-arriving Cubans brought: high educational and occu-
pational skills. And, like Cubans, they do not face a racial disadvantage.
The economic success of Cuban Americans has been lauded so often that an
image has arisen of an ethnic group made up entirely of families that have pros-
pered in the United States. But this popular image belies an increasingly evident in-
ternal socioeconomic discrepancy. The first waves of Cuban immigrants who came
in the 1960s and 1970s have fared very well. More recent waves, however, arrived
with fewer economic resources and have not experienced the very favorable recep-
tion given the earliest immigrants. The result is an increasingly evident income dis-
parity within the group (Pérez, 2007).
several cabinet appointments. At least one Mexican American has served in the
Cabinet since 1988. Until the 2004 election there had been only two Latino U.S.
senators, both Hispanos from New Mexico. Currently, Senator Ken Salazar of
Colorado, like his predecessors, traces his ancestry to early Spanish settlers in the
Southwest.
THE OUTLOOK FOR LATINO POLITICAL POWER Unlike African Americans, Latinos,
with few exceptions, have not yet been able to exert significant electoral influence
at the national level. This is due primarily to two factors. One is the relative youth
of the Hispanic American populace, with a large element under age 18 and thus
not eligible to vote. Another substantial portion of the population is among the
age categories (18 to 24 years) that are least active politically. A second, and
4
Despite the strong influence of Hispanics, and Cubans specifically, a 2000 survey showed that many
key public and private power positions in Miami were still held by non-Hispanic whites (Branch-Brioso
et al., 2000).
232 part ii ethnicity in the united states
Hispanic Stereotypes
For as long as they have been part of the American ethnic mosaic, Mexicans and
Puerto Ricans have labored under strongly negative stereotypes. These have arisen
in response to the manner in which both groups became part of the society (more
so in the case of Mexicans than Puerto Ricans) and as manifestations of American
racist ideology.
MEXICAN AMERICANS Feelings of racial superiority on the part of Anglos and poli-
cies reflecting those beliefs have been obvious since the American conquest of the
Southwest in the nineteenth century. More than anything, the historical circum-
stances that originally brought Mexican and Anglo into confrontation fashioned a
set of group images that have remained stubbornly persistent.
As noted in Chapter 3, negative group images are ordinarily formed as a result
of some form of interethnic competition, usually economic. In the Southwest, land
and labor were the critical components in the development of mutual antagonism
between Anglos and Mexicans. “To the early American settlers,” writes Carey
McWilliams, “the Mexicans were lazy, shiftless, jealous, cowardly, bigoted, super-
stitious, backward, and immoral” (1968:99). These images subsequently served to
rationalize the dispossession of Mexicans’ lands and the exploitation of their labor.
The negative stereotyping of Mexicans was abetted by the fact that they were a con-
quered people. To the Anglos this only confirmed even more positively their inferior
nature. Correspondingly negative stereotypes of Anglos naturally arose in this situ-
ation. To the Mexicans, Anglos were “arrogant, overbearing, aggressive, conniving,
rude, unreliable, and dishonest” (McWilliams, 1968:99).
Also critical in the development of negative stereotypes of Mexicans were the
racial attitudes Anglo settlers brought with them to Texas. From the beginning,
Anglos viewed Mexicans as innately inferior on the basis of their racial characteris-
tics (Moore and Pachon, 1976). Mexicans were different in language, culture, and
religion, but they were also physically distinct from the Anglos. As a mestizo peo-
ple, they were not blacks, but neither were they whites. This in-between racial sta-
tus led to the classification of Mexicans as a separate racial group, one perhaps a
notch above blacks but clearly inferior to the Anglos.
The poverty and illiteracy of those Mexicans with whom Anglo settlers had the
most dealings further strengthened these negative views. McWilliams notes that
most of the Anglos who settled in the Southwest borderlands in the mid-
nineteenth century were middle-class people who failed to find a Mexican middle-
class counterpart. “If a larger middle-class element had existed,” he explains, “the
adjustment between the two cultures might have been facilitated and the amount of
intermarriage might have been greater” (1968:75). Although upper-class Hispanos
were initially seen in a different light, they too were eventually absorbed into the
adverse image.
The negative stereotypes of Mexicans that developed during and after the pe-
riod of conquest were maintained and even strengthened not only in the
Southwest, but also in the society generally. Mexicans were included among the
“undesirable” groups denoted by the Dillingham Commission in the early 1900s,
along with southern and eastern Europeans, falling somewhere between blacks, on
chapter 8 hispanic americans 235
one hand, and “white” Americans, on the other. It is instructive to note that despite
their undesirable status, Mexicans were so vital as a cheap labor supply in the
Southwest that they were exempted from the restrictive immigration laws drafted
at the time, largely on the basis of the commission’s report.
The stereotypes developed in the nineteenth century continued to influence the
views of Anglos in the Southwest and elsewhere throughout most of the twentieth
century. In his study of a south Texas community in the early 1970s, Simmons
(1971) found that Anglos believed Mexicans to be unclean, prone to drunkenness
and criminality, deceitful in dealings with Anglos, hostile, and unpredictable.
Among favorable images of Mexicans were their “romantic” rather than “realistic”
attitude and their fun-loving nature. But even the positive traits implied a childlike
and irresponsible character, making the Mexicans appear deserving of their subor-
dinate status.
Television and movies have played a large role in perpetuating negative stereo-
types of Mexican Americans, much as they have for African Americans and
American Indians. In Hollywood films, Mexicans have traditionally been por-
trayed as villains in confrontation with Anglos; even when they are allied with
the Anglo heroes, their roles are ordinarily subservient and often ludicrous (Berg,
2002; Petit, 1980; Wilson and Gutiérrez, 1995). Television commercials at times
have also perpetrated the villainous image of Mexicans (Martinez, 1972; Wagner
and Haug, 1971). For example, in one of their ads, the Frito-Lay Company fea-
tured a cartoon character, the “Frito Bandito,” who cunningly stole Fritos corn
chips from the kitchens of unsuspecting housewives, prompting the suggestion
that shoppers buy two bags. Following a strong protest by Mexican Americans,
the company was forced to remove the ad (Westerman, 1989; Wilson and
Gutiérrez, 1995).
As TV producers and mass media advertisers have become more attuned to a
growing Latino market, such stereotypical images are subject to change. Ten years
after it was forced to remove its Frito Bandito ad, for example, the Frito-Lay
Company advertised Tostitos, another corn chip product, this time with a character
who spoke with a lilting Spanish accent and presented a romantic image of a distin-
guished, cultured Latino (Wilson and Gutiérrez, 1995).
PUERTO RICANS Although they have not experienced a history of confrontation and
conflict with Anglos, as Mexicans have in the Southwest, Puerto Ricans have none-
theless commonly been stereotyped negatively. This is mainly a product of their ra-
cial distinction and their generally lower-class position. Because much of the Puerto
Rican population in the United States is dark-skinned, they often experience the
same forms of prejudice as non–Puerto Rican blacks.
The dilemma of Puerto Ricans regarding their racial status in the United States
is expressed dramatically by Piri Thomas, a dark-skinned Puerto Rican who has
written of his New York experience. Thomas tells of an early incident that thrust
on him the American race ethic. After applying for a door-to-door sales job, he is
told by the employment manager that he will be called when “the new territory is
opened up.” His white friend applies immediately afterward and is told to start “on
Monday.” Realizing what has happened, Thomas relates the story to his black
buddy, who tells him that “a Negro [sic] faces that all the time.” “I know that,”
236 part ii ethnicity in the united states
Thomas replies, “but I wasn’t a Negro then. I was still only a Puerto Rican”
(1967:104).5
As a group whose members are disproportionately among the poor, Puerto
Ricans have often been stereotyped as lazy, irresponsible, and welfare dependent.
This is no better illustrated than in the remark of businessman J. Peter Grace,
who, as head of the Reagan administration’s committee on governmental waste in
the 1980s, derisively described Puerto Ricans living in New York City as “all on
food stamps,” thus making the federal food stamp program “basically a Puerto
Rican program” (New York Times, 1982).
CUBANS Concentrated in a single city and having arrived more recently, Cubans
have not had the kind of national exposure that Mexican Americans or even
Puerto Ricans have had. Moreover, as a group that is for the most part physically
indistinguishable from the Euro-American population, Cubans automatically enjoy
a status that precludes racially based stereotypes. Their generally higher class posi-
tion has also provided some insulation from negative images.
Although the attitudes of Anglos toward Cubans in Miami were initially be-
nign, subsequent events created an increasing bifurcation between the two groups.
One area that has fueled Anglo resentment is language. Increasingly, Miami has
become a bilingual city, and this has met with Anglo resistance. In 1980 a referen-
dum was held to bar Dade County (Miami) from using public funds to conduct
official business in any language but English and from promoting any but
“American” culture. The measure, which narrowly passed, polarized the commu-
nity along ethnic lines (Burkholz, 1980; Castro, 1992; Boswell and Jones, 2006).
The county commission in 1993 voted unanimously to repeal the 1980 antibilin-
gualism ordinance.
The referendum on bilingualism disclosed the depth of the anti-Cuban senti-
ment among Anglos. A survey conducted immediately following the vote revealed
that nearly half of those who had voted for the ordinance did so as an opportunity
to express their protest, not because they saw it as a good idea. Further, more than
half the Anglos who supported the measure said they would be pleased if it “would
make Miami a less attractive place for Cubans and other Spanish-speaking people”
(Tasker, 1980). In recent years Miami has become a predominantly Hispanic city,
but language continues to draw the strongest divide between Hispanics and Anglos.
As one Anglo expressed it, “Sometimes, I feel like I’m a visitor in my own country”
(Morgan, 1998b).
An additional source of animosity has been Cubans’ rabid and sometimes viru-
lent politics, specifically as they relate to Cuba. Nothing better illustrated this than
the Elián González affair in 2000. It was perhaps the most polarizing single event
separating the Cuban and Anglo populations in Miami, and even more broadly,
the United States as a whole. Following his rescue at sea after his mother, along
with several others, had drowned in an attempt to sail to Miami from Cuba, six-
5
Although the problem of racial identity remains unsolved, New York Puerto Ricans often identify
themselves as “New Yoricans,” “New-Ricans,” or “Ricans,” terms implying recognition of and pride in
the synthesis of the two cultures (Duany, 1998; Rodríguez, 1989).
chapter 8 hispanic americans 237
year-old Elián was temporarily placed in the custody of his great-uncle’s family. The
family subsequently refused to release the child for return to his father’s custody in
Cuba, which set off a five-month standoff with the U.S. Justice Department. The
incident created a national drama—most Cuban Americans felt the child should
not be returned to his father in Cuba, but most Anglos in Miami, as well as in the
rest of the country, felt otherwise (Viglucci and Marrero, 2000). Many held that
Elián was being used by the Miami Cuban community as a political pawn in their
long-standing ideological war with Fidel Castro. The incident left Miami bitterly
divided.
Discriminatory Actions
The in-between status of Hispanic Americans—between Euro-American ethnic
groups, on the one hand, and African Americans, on the other—becomes more evi-
dent in looking at patterns of discrimination. Hispanic Americans have lacked the
heritage of a legal system that, in the case of African Americans, made discrimina-
tion legitimate. As a result, such actions have ordinarily been extralegal rather than
formally endorsed by the state. Moreover, although discrimination against Latinos
has been widespread and often intense, it has never been as profound and intransi-
gent as that experienced by African Americans.
This is illustrated by Pinkney’s study (1963) of one community with sizable
Mexican American and black populations. General patterns of discrimination for
both groups, he found, were similar but were much stronger in degree for blacks.
For example, greater acceptance of Mexican Americans was evident in public ac-
commodations such as hotels and restaurants as well as in residential areas and so-
cial clubs. Anglos also expressed greater approval for granting equal rights in
employment and residence to Mexican Americans. Pinkney attributed these differ-
ences in part to differences in skin color: Mexican Americans, closer to the domi-
nant Anglo group, were more acceptable.
That it has not been as rigid, intense, and formalized as that aimed at African
Americans should not disguise the severity of discrimination to which Latinos in
some circumstances have been exposed, particularly Mexican Americans in the
Southwest. Many of the actions against them in areas such as South Texas have
been similar in degree and scope to those experienced by blacks, including segre-
gated restaurants, churches, schools, and other public facilities (Burma, 1954;
Grebler et al., 1970). Roberto Suro describes this social environment:
In South Texas in the 1950s, discrimination against Latinos was different because it
was not based on the single immutable characteristic of skin color and because it
was not primarily a matter of law. Culture and convenience dictated that poor,
dark-skinned Mexicans should not mix with whites, that they should go to inferior
schools, and that they would always work at the bottom of the labor force. And
while segregation applied to all blacks, the discriminatory culture of South Texas
distinguished among Latinos, treating some like Mexicans and others not. (Suro,
1998:81)
Physical violence against Mexicans in the Southwest also has a long history.
McWilliams notes that in the mining camps of the nineteenth century, any crime
238 part ii ethnicity in the united states
committed was immediately attributed to Mexicans, for whom lynching was the ac-
cepted penalty. “Throughout the 1860’s,” he writes, “the lynching of Mexicans was
such a common occurrence in Los Angeles that the newspapers scarcely bothered to
report the details” (1968:130).
POLICE RELATIONS A particularly harsh and often turbulent relationship has tradi-
tionally existed between Mexican Americans and various law enforcement agencies
in the Southwest. The police and courts have seemed to consistently mete out a dif-
ferent standard of justice to Mexican Americans (Moore and Pachon, 1976;
Morales, 1972; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1970). Although the level of dis-
crimination in the criminal justice system has historically been unusually high in
Texas, several of the most serious large-scale incidents of the modern era have
taken place in Los Angeles. These include the notorious pachuco, or zoot suit, riots
of 1943 and the East Los Angeles riot of 1970. In both cases, the police played
major roles in either precipitating or sustaining the hostilities.
The events surrounding the zoot suit riots have been well documented (Garcia
and de la Garza, 1977; McWilliams, 1968). During the 1940s, the Los Angeles
press waged a virulent anti-Mexican campaign, creating a rancorous mood among
Anglos. Sensational accounts were presented of Mexican American youth gangs
whose members took to wearing bizarre outfits called zoot suits. Following an inci-
dent involving Mexican American youths and sailors stationed in Los Angeles, 200
servicemen began a four-day rampage, in which they drove through the Mexican
area in taxis, randomly attacking those on the streets. The Los Angeles police did
virtually nothing to halt the violence and in fact arrested many of the victims.
Serious rioting continued for almost a week, ending finally with the intervention
of the military police. This incident permanently damaged Mexican-Anglo relations
in Los Angeles for decades afterwards, and it confirmed the ever-precarious status
of the Mexican American community in an Anglo-dominated environment.
Although other such incidents have rarely garnered as much public attention, police
brutality (or indifference, as the case may be) in dealing with Mexican Americans
has been historically commonplace.
Cultural Assimilation
Unlike African Americans, Hispanic Americans were not stripped of their native
cultures on entering the society and have retained many ethnic traits, especially the
Spanish language. Nonetheless, Latinos are moving toward cultural assimilation,
though not necessarily in the same manner as Euro-American groups of the past.
States, only a minority of Hispanic Americans speak only Spanish, and most of
these are first-generation immigrants. As Latinos move to the second and third gen-
erations, English becomes their primary language (Alba, 2004; Pew Hispanic
Center, 2002; Portes and Rumbaut, 2006; Portes and Schauffler, 1996; Rumbaut et
al., 2006). Moreover, even among those who continue to use Spanish in the home,
the majority use English in other social contexts, like work and friendship groups.
De la Garza and colleagues (1992) found that not only did most U.S. citizens from
each of the three major groups use English or a mixture of English and Spanish at
home, but they preferred English-language media to either bilingual or Spanish-
language media. Further, more than 90 percent of Latinos supported the proposi-
tion that citizens and residents of the United States should learn English. Later
studies have confirmed even more strongly the view among an overwhelming ma-
jority of Latinos of the importance of learning and speaking English (Pew Hispanic
Center, 2006c). Clearly, then, contrary to a common public perception about the
maintenance of Spanish, most Latinos prefer English and support its usage.
The persistence of Spanish in some degree, however, has contributed to difficul-
ties in educational and occupational adaptation (Bean and Tienda, 1987).
Moreover, the tendency for Latinos to concentrate in particular cities and regions
and in some cases to maintain relatively tightly bound ethnic enclaves (Cubans in
Miami, for example) retards language assimilation (Portes and Truelove, 1987).
Some also believe that bilingual education, rather than accelerating adaptation to
English, has done the opposite (Chavez, 1998; Rodriguez, 1983).
A national survey of Latinos in 2002 indicated that language is strongly corre-
lated to acceptance of mainstream American values. That is, on key social issues,
the views of Latinos whose primary language is English (mostly of the third genera-
tion) are more in line with those of the society as a whole than of Latinos who ei-
ther speak mainly Spanish or are bilingual (Pew Hispanic Center, 2004b). For
example, 47 percent of Spanish-dominant Latinos find divorce acceptable, but 67
percent of English-dominant Latinos do, close to the same percentage (72 percent)
as non-Latinos. This pattern is evident on other social issues such as abortion,
homosexuality, and having children outside marriage.
pattern is not uncommon in the case of political exiles, whose commitment to their
adopted country is never complete. Resistance to cultural assimilation is particularly
evident among first-generation Cuban Americans, but this is changing with the sec-
ond and third generations, for whom there are no thoughts of return (Goodnough
and Gonzalez, 2006). In their analysis of Cuban Miami, Stepick and Stepick con-
clude that “In many respects, the children of Cuban immigrants have been assimi-
lated in characteristic American fashion. They have abandoned the self-identity la-
bel of American, but neither do they identify as Cuban. Instead, they strongly prefer
the hyphenated label Cuban-American” (2002:84). Furthermore, political realities
have prevented frequent back-and-forth movement between Cuba and the United
States, which has had a stabilizing effect on the Cuban American community.
Another important factor that has contributed to retention of the ethnic culture
among some Latinos is their residential concentration. This is especially apparent
for Cubans. Unlike Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, Cubans in the United States, espe-
cially those in Miami, have established a well-knit institutional structure that caters
exclusively to the unique social and cultural needs of the group. Raymond Breton
(1964) has suggested the idea of “institutional completeness” to describe the extent
to which the needs of an ethnic group are met by institutions within the ethnic com-
munity—businesses, churches, newspapers, schools, and so on. Ethnic communities
may range from those that are institutionally complete, in which members need to
make no use of the host society’s institutions, to those that are institutionally in-
complete, in which the network of interpersonal relations is almost totally within
the context of the host society. Cubans in Miami appear to be at the extreme of
institutional completeness. There is not even a need to learn English, because
Miami is very much a bilingual city. Television stations broadcast and newspapers
publish in Spanish; bilingual public schools are common; and food stores, restau-
rants, and businesses of all kinds cater to the unique ethnic needs of the Cuban
community.
To a lesser degree this characterizes other Latino communities. New York
City’s huge Dominican population, for example, is heavily concentrated in one
neighborhood, Washington Heights, within which almost all its cultural needs are
met. More than other Latino groups in the city, Dominicans are residentially segre-
gated and have the least exposure to non-Hispanic whites (Levitt, 2007).
For most Puerto Ricans and an element of the Dominican and Cuban popula-
tions, a racial factor complicates the assimilation process. For those darker in skin
color, the incentive to retain the Spanish language and culture is a product of their
perceived need to separate themselves from the African American population. It is
more advantageous, they feel, to be identified with the Latino populace than to be
lumped with non-Hispanic blacks. For those who are neither clearly white nor
black by American racial standards, the problem is even more acute, for they often
find themselves marginal to both categories. For example, among the Cuban
American population, a relatively substantial portion who came as part of the
1980 refugee wave are, in the American sense, racially defined as black, as are
many who were later arrivals. But they find themselves in a marginal position, pe-
ripheral to the larger Cuban community and unable to assimilate into the African
American community (Nordheimer, 1987; Ojito, 2000).
242 part ii ethnicity in the united states
FUTURE PATTERNS Despite the problems of language and proximity to their origin
societies, Latinos do appear to be moving along a trajectory of cultural assimila-
tion. The Latino National Political Survey revealed much evidence of this move-
ment (de la Garza et al., 1992). Regarding social networks and social distance, for
example, although members of each specific national-origin group felt closer to and
interacted more frequently with coethnics (that is, Mexicans with Mexicans,
Cubans with Cubans, and so on), most felt closer to Anglos than to any of the
other Hispanic national-origin groups.
The survey found that most Latinos do not identify themselves as members of a
panethnic group—Hispanic or Latino—but as members of their specific national
group or simply as Americans. Although members of the various groups expressed
common views on some issues and attitudes, on many they also expressed marked
differences. Hence, “to the extent that the Hispanic political community exists,
there is scant evidence that it is rooted in alleged distinctive cultural traditions
such as Spanish-language maintenance, religiosity, or shared identity” (de la Garza
et al., 1992:13–14). In sum, the survey found that Latinos were well within the
mainstream of American political thought and action. “There is no evidence here,”
the study concluded, “of values, demands, or behaviors that threaten the nation’s
cultural or political identity” (1992:16). Similar findings were reported in a national
survey of Latinos in 2002 (Pew Hispanic Center, 2002).
A recent study revealed a relatively steady movement along an assimilation tra-
jectory even for current Latino immigrants (Waldinger, 2007). The vast majority
were shown to maintain only a moderate level of engagement with the societies
from which they come. Although there are variations by country of origin, most
see their future in the United States; only among the most recent arrivals are contin-
ued close ties to their home countries evident. In general, the longer the immigrants
reside in the United States the more strongly they identify with it.
Moreover, as with African Americans, cultural assimilation is not entirely a
one-way process. Rather, there is a growing interchange of Latino and American
core cultures. Latino cultural influences are increasingly evident in American music,
language, fashion, and cuisine: Salsa and Latin jazz are now standard musical gen-
res; pop artists like Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin, and Marc Anthony sell millions
of records; Spanish is today the most popular foreign language, taught nationwide
in primary and secondary schools and in every U.S. college; and Americans prefer
salsas and picantes as often as they do that most American condiment, ketchup
(Fabricant, 1993; Garcia, 1999; La Ferla, 2001). In a sense, what we are witnessing
is continued assimilation alongside ethnic cultural affirmation—a phenomenon sim-
ilar to that experienced by earlier generations of immigrants.
Structural Assimilation
Despite shortcomings in income, occupation, education, and political power, each
succeeding Hispanic American generation has improved its status over that of the
previous one, and it appears that Latinos are moving into greater participation in
the society’s mainstream economic and political systems. The pace and extent of
secondary structural assimilation, however, have been uneven for the three major
chapter 8 hispanic americans 243
groups. Puerto Ricans have proceeded more slowly and less effectively than
Mexicans, who in turn have not progressed as rapidly as Cubans.
1976; Valdez, 1983). Later data indicate a continuation of that trend. In fact, evi-
dence suggests that Latinos are following the same generational patterns of inter-
marriage as European-descent groups did in the first part of the twentieth century
(Stevens et al., 2006). Compared to African Americans and Asian Americans,
Latinos have the highest levels of intermarriage with non-Hispanic whites (Qian
and Lichter, 2007). In 2005 there were 2.2 million couples in the United States in
which one spouse was of Hispanic origin and one not. These constituted more than
one-quarter of the 8 million couples in which the husband or wife were of Hispanic
origin (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007a).
SUMMARY
As part of the American ethnic system, Hispanic Americans occupy an intermediate
status between Euro-Americans and African Americans. Three major groups make
up the Hispanic American minority—Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans—but
groups from other Latin American and Caribbean societies have, in the past two
decades, become a large and significant component of this panethnic category.
Each group is concentrated regionally, and each is primarily urban. Although
Mexicans, the largest Hispanic group, have entered American society mostly as vol-
untary immigrants, their roots in the United States reach back to Spanish colonial
times before the American conquest of the Southwest. Puerto Ricans are technically
American citizens, yet they have arrived from a foreign culture, much as other im-
migrant groups have. Cubans are more recent arrivals and differ from Mexicans
and Puerto Ricans in class origins and racial features. Newer groups from Central
and South America and the Caribbean have entered as voluntary immigrants,
though some, particularly from Central American countries, arrived as political
refugees.
Hispanic Americans generally are below average on all measures of socioeco-
nomic status and are a large element of the American poor. There are differences
among the major groups, however, with Cubans and South Americans in a rela-
tively higher position than Mexicans, who are somewhat higher than Puerto
Ricans and Dominicans. Latinos are in a less developed stage of political participa-
tion than are African Americans and, like the latter, are underrepresented in top
positions in all institutional areas. Their potential power, however, is considerable.
The level of prejudice and discrimination directed at Hispanic Americans has not
been as intense as that experienced by African Americans but has been more severe
than that suffered by Euro-American ethnic groups. Mexican Americans have com-
monly been the chief targets of ethnic antagonism in the Southwest, where tradi-
tionally most have lived.
Compared with both African American and Euro-American ethnic groups,
Hispanics have displayed a slower pace of cultural assimilation, owing largely to
their relatively recent entrance into American society. However, movement in that
direction is clear, evidenced especially by the regularity of language assimilation.
The speed and extent of secondary structural assimilation for Latinos have gener-
ally resembled African American patterns, but at the primary level, Latinos have
outpaced African Americans, demonstrated by increasing residential and marital
assimilation.
Suggested Readings
Chavez, Linda, 1991. Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation.
New York: Basic Books. Argues that the economic and social assimilation of Hispanic
Americans is concealed by the flood of new Hispanic immigrants and by Hispanic leaders
with an interest in fueling separatism.
Fitzpatrick, Joseph P. 1987. Puerto Rican Americans: The Meaning of Migration to the
Mainland. 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. A comprehensive study of the
246 part ii ethnicity in the united states
early Puerto Rican experience in the United States, especially New York, where the bulk
of the Puerto Rican population has traditionally resided.
Grasmuck, Sherri, and Patricia R. Pessar. 1991. Between Two Islands: Dominican
International Migration. Berkeley: University of California Press. Examines one of the
newer, and growing, Hispanic groups in the United States, particularly the process of
their immigration from the Dominican Republic.
Massey, Douglas S., Jorge Durand, and Nolan J. Malone. 2002. Beyond Smoke and
Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Era of Economic Integration. New York: Russell
Sage Foundation. An analysis of immigration from Mexico—by far the largest migrant
stream to the United States—and the policies that have sought to control it.
Rieff, David. 1993. The Exile: Cuba in the Heart of Miami. New York: Touchstone.
Describes the Cuban community of Miami—how it has affected the Anglo community
and, conversely, how it has increasingly been transformed by American culture.
Rodriguez, Richard. 1983. Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez. New
York: Bantam. In this autobiography, Rodriguez tells of his Mexican American origins
and his path toward assimilation into mainstream American society. Argues strongly
against bilingual education.
Stavans, Ilan. 2001. The Hispanic Condition: The Power of a People. 2nd ed. New York:
HarperCollins. Through a combination of literature, history, and sociology, Stavans de-
scribes the connections between Latin American cultures and the emergent pan-Latino
culture of the United States.
Stepick, Alex, Guillermo Grenier, Max Castro, and Marvin Dunn. 2003. This Land Is Our
Land: Immigrants and Power in Miami. Berkeley: University of California Press. A good
primer on ethnic relations in the city the authors call “the de facto capital of Latin
America.”
Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo M., and Mariela M. Páez (eds.). 2002. Latinos: Remaking America.
Berkeley: University of California Press. A collection of essays by social scientists and
historians that analyze the adaptation of Latinos to American society in various realms of
social, political, and economic life.
Suro, Roberto. 1998. Strangers among Us: How Latino Immigration Is Transforming
America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Weaving personal accounts into his narrative,
Suro portrays the wide class and ethnic discrepancies among the specific groups that
make up the Hispanic American population. Describes how Latinos are changing
American society at the same time they are being changed by it.
9
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Asian Americans ±± C H A P T E R
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±
Asians have been in the United States since the early part of the nineteenth century.
Only in recent decades, however, have they emerged as a sizable element of the
American ethnic configuration. Like other ethnic populations, Asians have dis-
played variant patterns of settlement and adaptation and have been received by
the dominant group in different ways, depending on social, political, and economic
circumstances. As it has been with other groups, our objective is to trace the histor-
ical development of Asians in the United States and examine their place in the strat-
ification system, the forms of prejudice and discrimination they have encountered,
and their patterns of assimilation into the larger society.
At the outset, it is important to stress that Asian Americans constitute an ex-
tremely diverse panethnic category. In some ways it is even more disparate than
the Hispanic American category, most of whose groups share a common language
and religious tradition. To lump together those from numerous Asian societies
as “Asian Americans” is therefore a serious oversimplification. In fact, Asian
Americans consist of at least a dozen distinct groups, with extremely diverse cul-
tural and even physical features. Currently the largest groups are Chinese, Filipino,
and Asian Indian. But substantial populations of Japanese, Koreans, and
Vietnamese, as well as small numbers from other Asian societies, are included. The
term Asian American must be understood as nothing more than a convenient cate-
gory that enables us to look at the general characteristics of the various Asian
groups together, in comparison with other ethnic populations in the United States.
247
248 part ii ethnicity in the united states
numbers, Koreans and Filipinos. These first Asian immigrants were mostly un-
skilled laborers, recruited for construction or agricultural work. Following restric-
tive measures, very few additional Asians entered the society until the revision of
immigration laws in 1965. That marked the onset of the second period of immigra-
tion to the United States from Asia, which continues to the present.
The second, and current, immigration has been markedly different from the
earlier movement in that most of the new immigrants have been noticeably higher
in class origin, and many have been well educated and occupationally skilled.
Moreover, the new Asian immigration has been considerably more diverse in na-
tional origin, made up of people from almost every contemporary Asian society.
Today, except for the Japanese, Asians in the United States are predominantly
first-generation immigrants.
1
Chinese immigration over many generations has constituted one of the great diasporas. Today
Chinese communities can be found in almost every country of the world (see Poston et al., 1994).
Ethnic Chinese minorities have played an especially important economic role in most Southeast Asian
societies (Chua, 2004; Minority Rights Group, 1992).
chapter 9 asian americans 249
JAPANESE AMERICANS The formal exclusion of the Chinese provided for the en-
trance of Japanese immigrants beginning late in the nineteenth century. In their
early immigration and settlement patterns, the Japanese in some ways resembled
the Chinese who preceded them. Most of the first Japanese immigrants were males
who were confined to lower-status occupational positions. And, like the Chinese,
they soon came to be seen as a labor threat in California, where most had settled.
A reaction of severe antagonism culminated in formal legislation that prohibited
their further entrance. In 1907–1908, the United States and Japan entered into a
Gentlemen’s Agreement, which effectively restricted further Japanese immigration
to the United States. Under the terms of the agreement, only nonlaborers and rela-
tives of resident Japanese would be permitted to enter. The Oriental Exclusion Act
of 1924 carried the restriction a step further, effectively barring all subsequent
Japanese immigration.
Despite some similarities, in a number of important ways the early Japanese im-
migrant experience differed from that of the Chinese. To begin with, although they
initially worked in many of the same jobs as the Chinese, a large percentage of the
early Japanese immigrants gradually turned to farming, where they carved out a
niche for themselves in the California economy. More important, the sex ratio of
the Japanese immigrant population, though heavily male in the early years, eventu-
ally was balanced with the introduction of a substantial female immigration. The
Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907–1908 had permitted wives and families of men
250 part ii ethnicity in the united states
already in the United States to join them. As a result, the social difficulties created
by the demographic imbalance in the case of the Chinese did not materialize. With
families intact, the base was provided for a second generation and thus a natural
increase in the Japanese American population. By 1940 nearly two-thirds of the
Japanese in the United States were native born (Kitano and Daniels, 1995). Today,
unlike other Asian American groups, the Japanese have not increased their numbers
through large-scale immigration. As a result, the Japanese American population has
stabilized and is rapidly being surpassed by other, more recent, Asian groups.
The demographic and historical characteristics of the Japanese American group
today set it apart in some ways from others that make up the Asian American pop-
ulation. Perhaps most important, because most are native born, Japanese Americans
have a longer history in the United States and are generationally divergent from
others.2 As a result, Japanese American assimilation is more advanced than for
other Asian groups.
KOREANS In the early years of the twentieth century, a few thousand Koreans were
recruited to work the sugar plantations in Hawaii. Ironically, they were needed to
replace Chinese workers who had been barred by the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act.
Further Korean migration to the United States in any significant numbers did not
occur again until the late 1950s, following the Korean War, when many came ei-
ther as refugees or war brides. Prior to this time, the Korean population on the U.S.
mainland never exceeded 2,000 (Light and Bonacich, 1988).
In the post-1965 period, a formidable growth of the Korean ethnic group in the
United States occurred. Between 1970 and 1980 the Korean American population
increased five times—from 70,000 to 355,000. By 2000 Korean Americans num-
bered over 1 million. Like other Asian groups, Koreans have concentrated in
California, where almost one-third reside, and in the New York metropolitan area,
but in recent years there has been an increasing dispersion to other regions (Reimer,
2
Although the Chinese have an even longer history in the United States, most of the current Chinese
American population is foreign born.
chapter 9 asian americans 251
2006). Contemporary Korean immigrants have tended to be from the urban middle
class of Korean society, including many college-trained professionals. What’s more,
most have come as family units (Kitano and Daniels, 1995; Min, 1991).
Koreans in the United States have been especially prominent as owners of small
businesses, usually operated as family enterprises (Kim, 1981; Light and Bonacich,
1988; Min, 1988, 1995a, 2007). Indeed, Koreans have one of the highest rates of
small business ownership among all U.S. ethnic groups (Hoffman and Marger,
1991; Zhou and Kim, 2007). Korean-owned and operated convenience stores,
greengroceries, dry cleaners, manicure shops, and liquor stores have become com-
mon fixtures in many large American cities.
Even though Christians are a minority in Korea, about three-quarters of
Korean immigrants have affiliated with Christian churches in the United States
(Min, 2007). Korean immigrants’ Christian faith is a significant group characteris-
tic. Indeed, as one study describes it, “The Korean church is perhaps the single most
important ethnic institution anchoring this community” (Zhou and Kim, 2007). In
addition to religious needs, it provides educational and economic assistance and has
been vital in maintaining group solidarity.
The flow of immigration between 1970 and 1990, which had created such a
substantial increase in the Korean American group, declined considerably during
the 1990s, and some chose to return to Korea. Economic opportunities in Korea
were seen as more promising, and the political instability that had characterized
Korea in the past had been reduced. These factors diminished the appeal of immi-
gration to the United States. They also created an incentive to return to Korea. For
those who had been successful in the United States, having earned a university de-
gree or having run a profitable business, return represented an opportunity to enjoy
even greater success in their country of origin, where they may have felt more cul-
turally at ease. Return was also appealing for those who had experienced increasing
difficulties in adapting to American culture or who found that operating a small
business, so common among Korean Americans, was simply too risky in terms of
physical safety as well as economic security (Belluck, 1995; Min, 1995a). The image
of Korean shops being burned and looted during the Los Angeles riots of 1992 and
the frequent harassment of Korean shop owners in other cities made Korean
Americans more conscious of ethnic conflict, a condition not encountered in a ho-
mogeneous Korea.
Despite the return of many in the past decade, Korean Americans remain a sub-
stantial part of the Asian American population. In fact, the growth of this group in
the past several decades has been spectacular, rising from less than 100,000 in 1970
to more than 1.2 million today.
FILIPINOS Few people think of Filipinos3 when they consider the makeup of
America’s Asian population. Yet, Filipinos are one of the largest Asian American
groups. As with others, the liberalization of immigration laws in 1965 accounts
3
There is no “F” sound in Tagalog—the language, other than English, that is most widely spoken in
the Philippines. Hence, rather than Filipino, Pilipino is sometimes used as a preferred term of reference.
252 part ii ethnicity in the united states
for their rapid and substantial increase. Until very recently, only Mexicans had tra-
ditionally outnumbered Filipinos as immigrants to the United States.
The Philippines was a colony of Spain for more than three centuries before be-
coming an American possession in 1899. As a result, most Filipinos are Roman
Catholic and have Spanish surnames. After the Spanish-American War, the United
States took possession of the Philippines, and the American cultural influence be-
came dominant. Following independence in 1946, political ties between the two
countries remained close, and American cultural and economic influences continued
to be strong. English is one of the country’s major languages and is spoken by most
educated people. Historically and culturally the Philippines has had little in com-
mon with other Asian countries. Geographically, however, it is part of the Pacific
Rim, and thus Filipinos are considered Asian people.
No group better illustrates the link between immigration and labor needs than
do the Filipinos. Like the early Koreans, a few thousand Filipinos came to Hawaii
in the early 1900s, recruited as agricultural workers to replace the excluded
Chinese. Many more immigrated to the mainland in the 1920s as California farm
producers faced a labor shortage created by newly restrictive quotas limiting cheap
labor from Mexico. By 1930 almost 50,000 Filipinos were living on the mainland
of the United States, most in California (Mangiafico, 1988). Because the Philippines
at that time was a U.S. territory, Filipino immigrants were actually considered
American nationals though not U.S. citizens. Because of this, they were not subject
to the same kind of quota restrictions as other Asians until 1935, when the
Philippines was granted deferred independence.
Like the Chinese before them, early Filipino immigrants were almost entirely
single males. And with the general anti-Asian social and political climate on the
West Coast, where most settled, Filipinos found themselves subjected to the same
kinds of discriminatory actions as the Chinese and Japanese. Following the out-
break of World War II, the Philippines was a critical ally in the Pacific war against
Japan, and as a result, the social climate in the United States reflected a more toler-
ant view of Filipinos.
Along with discrimination, the low level of education of Filipino immigrants
produced a restricted range of occupational opportunities. Most worked as seasonal
agricultural laborers and in the service sector in low-status positions such as restau-
rant workers, hospital attendants, and hotel workers.
Between 1960 and 1970 the number of Filipinos in the United States nearly
doubled. Cultural compatibility—especially language—and political ties account
for the attraction of the United States for Filipinos. Also, the strong U.S. military
presence in the Philippines for more than four decades following World War II en-
abled many Filipino women to immigrate as wives of U.S. servicemen.
The social characteristics of the new immigrants are considerably different from
those of the earlier period. Most are now families with children, seeking the prom-
ise of better economic opportunities. Recent Filipino immigrants have also been
better educated than those of earlier decades, and many come with professional cre-
dentials, enabling them to move into highly skilled occupational fields like medicine
and education (Cariño, 1987). Nursing is the most common occupational niche
of Filipino immigrant health-care professionals, who make up a majority of
foreign-born nurses in the United States (Choy, 2007). Filipinos’ generally higher
chapter 9 asian americans 253
occupational positions, along with English proficiency, have dictated against the
formation of cohesive and distinguishable ethnic enclaves comparable to
Chinatowns (Agbayani-Siewert and Revilla, 1995).
VIETNAMESE The entrance of Vietnamese into the United States has been unlike
that of any other Asian group. Most have come as political refugees since the end
of the Vietnam War. Prior to that time, very few Vietnamese had been resident in
the United States.
Between 1966 and 1975, some 20,000 Vietnamese arrived in the United States,
but the Vietnamese immigration reached epic proportions following the fall of the
South Vietnamese government in 1975. In the nine years between 1975 and 1984,
more than 700,000 Southeast Asian refugees came to the United States, most of
them Vietnamese (Gardner et al., 1985). Perhaps the most dramatic entrance of
these refugees occurred in 1979 and 1980 when thousands fled Vietnam, Laos,
and Cambodia in crude boats. The United States absorbed more than 200,000 of
these so-called “boat people” in a period of fifteen months.
Most of the refugees coming in the second wave were unlike the earlier
Vietnamese in that they were relatively unskilled, less educated, and spoke little
English (Wong, 1986). For example, almost 80 percent of the Vietnamese coming
to the United States between 1965 and 1969 were college graduates, as opposed
to less than 16 percent of those who arrived between 1975 and 1980 (U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights, 1988). Their adjustment to American society, as a re-
sult, was far more difficult, and today they remain the most economically depressed
element of the Asian American population. The Vietnamese, then, display a bipolar
class breakdown—those who have successfully adapted to American society and are
at a comfortable economic level, and those at the opposite end of the class hierar-
chy, disproportionately among the unemployed, poor, and socially alienated (Weiss,
1994).4
Though the heaviest concentration of Vietnamese is in California, the group
has dispersed widely throughout the United States. Substantial Vietnamese popula-
tions can be found today in Houston, New Orleans, and Arlington, Virginia. The
largest communities, however, are in Orange County, California. In the adjoining
cities of Westminster and Garden Grove, thousands of Vietnamese have created a
Little Saigon, with a full range of institutions serving the ethnic enclave.
OTHER SOUTHEAST ASIANS During the 1980s, the Asian American population ex-
panded not only in size, but in diversity as well. In addition to the Vietnamese, sev-
eral hundred thousand refugees from other Southeast Asian countries arrived in the
United States following the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. The largest among
these were Laotians (mostly Hmong tribespeople from the mountains of Laos) and
Cambodians.
4
As a result of subsequent immigration waves, the Vietnamese in America today constitute not only a
class-diverse group, but also one that reflects a cross-section of Vietnamese society in terms of language,
religion, and region of origin.
254 part ii ethnicity in the united states
These groups, like many Vietnamese, have not easily adapted to American soci-
ety. The intention of U.S. policy when they entered as refugees was to resettle them
in various regions and cities. The expectation was that this would accelerate their
adaptation and would avoid any negative impact on the labor market in communi-
ties that might absorb a large concentration of refugees.
The resettlement of the Hmong, in particular, has been fraught with serious
problems (Beck, 1994; Hein, 2006). Culturally, the group had not been exposed
to Western ways before emigrating from a relatively isolated region of Laos, and
the class and educational characteristics of most of the refugees were significantly
lower than those of other Asian groups, further contributing to their problems of
adaptation.
ASIAN INDIANS5 Like the Chinese, Indians have a long heritage of immigration to
societies in all parts of the world. Until recently, however, the United States had
not been one of their principal destinations. In the nineteenth century, most had
gone as indentured servants to various parts of the British colonial empire, includ-
ing South Africa and a number of Caribbean societies. In the early years of the
twentieth century, a few thousand workers from India were recruited as agricul-
tural laborers in California and Washington, but because of immigration restric-
tions, the Indian population did not expand. Like other Asian immigrants at this
time, they experienced extremely virulent forms of discrimination. In this racially
hostile atmosphere, the relatively small Asian Indian population remained isolated
in agricultural communities, mainly in California.
As with other Asian groups, the liberalized immigration measure of 1965 repre-
sented the point at which Indians began to enter the United States in significant
numbers. And like the others, the new immigrants were sociologically quite distinct
from their earlier counterparts. Those who have come in recent decades represent,
for the most part, a highly educated and occupationally very skilled population.
Indeed, their educational level, compared with that of other ethnic groups, is quite
remarkable. Almost 70 percent of the adult Indian American population are college
graduates, and more than one-third have earned graduate or professional degrees.
Clearly, Indian Americans are one of the most highly educated segments of the
American population. What’s more, their income levels are far above average.
Most Indians coming to the United States represent a very select subset of the
Indian population—more educated, more skilled, and more generally privileged.
They are part of the worldwide migration of those with educational and occupa-
tional skills leaving developing societies in favor of the industrialized societies of
the West, where economic and professional opportunities are more plentiful. In
fact, many of the Asian Indian immigrants of the recent period have been students
at American universities who, after completing their studies, find employment and
remain in the United States. Asian Indian software engineers, scientists, and other
highly skilled technical workers constitute a huge segment of the workforce of the
American computer industry (Boxall, 2001). The relatively high occupational status
5
Increasingly, Asian Indians are referred to as “Indian Americans,” though the U.S. Census continues
to use “Asian Indian.”
chapter 9 asian americans 255
and high level of education of Indian immigrants in the past two decades have en-
hanced the speed and extent of their economic and social adaptation to American
society. Indians have also benefited from the fact that on arrival most are fluent in
English and have already been exposed to Western values.
In the past decade, the Asian Indian community in the United States has become
more diverse, with a larger commercial class augmenting the predominantly profes-
sional and technical character of the first post-1965 immigrants.6 Hence, in addition
to their place in skilled occupational areas, Asian Indians have played a significant
role as entrepreneurs in the small business sector; for example, more than half of all
motels in the United States today are owned by Asian Indians (Varadarajan, 1999).
This entrepreneurship is comparable to the economic path followed by the recent
generation of Korean immigrants. In California’s Silicon Valley, where their pres-
ence in the computer industry is so evident, immigrants who are not high-tech
workers—taxi drivers, restaurant workers, truckers, and so on—have begun to cre-
ate a more class-diverse Asian Indian community (Boxall, 2001).
It is important to understand that those classified as “Asian Indian” represent a
group that is internally quite diverse culturally. India itself is an ethnic potpourri,
with virtually dozens of languages and cultural communities. The religious division
among Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs is only the most apparent and profound vari-
ance. Moreover, the national and geographical origins of Asian Indians in the
United States are varied. Most have come from India, but sizable numbers have
come from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The term “South Asian” has
been used to refer to this culturally and nationally diverse collection of groups.
Ethnic Indians have come as well from countries where Indians had settled earlier
in the nineteenth century as part of the Indian diaspora. Among these are Indo-
Caribbeans, from Caribbean countries including Trinidad and Tobago and
Guyana (Sengupta and Toy, 1998), and those from Kenya and Uganda, who were
forced to flee these African countries when they were expelled by oppressive
governments.
GROWTH AND DIVERSITY Today, Asian Americans remain a relatively small part of
the total American population—just over 4 percent—but one that is rapidly grow-
ing not only in numbers, but also, as we will see, in economic and cultural signifi-
cance.7 In fact, the Asian American population is today the fastest-growing ethnic
minority in the United States. Between 1970 and 1980 it grew by 128 percent; be-
tween 1980 and 1990, by 108 percent; and in the 1990s, by 69 percent. It is
6
The post–World War II Indian immigration to Britain, by contrast, comprised not only a much larger,
but also a more heterogeneous population, with many unskilled and poorly educated people among
them (see Watson, 1977).
7
If those who claim Asian ancestry in combination with one or more other racial categories are in-
cluded, the figure jumps to 4.7 percent (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007e).
256 part ii ethnicity in the united states
projected that the current Asian American population of 12 million will almost
double by 2020, and by 2050 will be more than 34 million, representing 9 percent
of the total population (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007e). This rapid and sizable popu-
lation growth is attributable mainly to the fact that Asians now account for almost
a third of all immigration to the United States.
Figure 9.1 shows the breakdown of the Asian American population today. In
1970 the Chinese and Japanese formed the bulk of the Asian American population,
but today these two groups are less than one-third. The Chinese category remains
the largest component, almost 24 percent. The Asian Indian population has grown
more rapidly than any of the other Asian American ethnic groups during the past
decade and is now the second largest, with 18.6 percent. The Filipino, Vietnamese,
and Korean populations have also continued to grow steadily, each with more than
1.2 million. In contrast, the Japanese American population is growing much more
slowly because of very limited immigration from Japan and a low fertility rate.
REGIONAL CONCENTRATION Although they have begun to settle in all regions of the
United States, Asian Americans are most heavily concentrated in just a few states:
California, Hawaii, New York, and Texas. California by far has a higher percent-
age of Asians as part of its population than any other state, more than 12 percent
(Figure 9.2). This is over one-third of the entire Asian American population.
Among the specific Asian American groups, only Asian Indians have not clustered
in California, having dispersed more widely.
Like other ethnic populations that have arrived primarily in the post-1965 era,
Asian Americans dwell mostly in large urban areas. Indeed, urban residence charac-
terizes virtually the entire Asian American population, with almost one-third found
in just three metropolitan areas—Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco. As
shown in Table 9.1, Asians make up nearly 14 percent of the total metropolitan
population of Los Angeles, and in San Francisco they are almost 22 percent.
25
20
15
10
5
0
se
an
an
se
an
in
es
ne
ne
di
re
i
lip
As
m
In
Ko
hi
pa
Fi
na
er
C
Ja
et
ia
th
As
Vi
Figure 9.1
| Ethnic Composition of the Asian American Population
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007f.
chapter 9 asian americans 257
AK
4.4
WA NH
6.3 VT 1.7 ME
MT ND 0.9 0.7
0.4 0.7
OR MN
3.5 3.6 NY MA 4.6
ID SD WI
1.2 0.7 6.5
WY 1.8 MI RI 2.7
0.6 IA 2.2 PA CT 3.0
NV NE 1.2 2.2
OH NJ 7.1
5.7 1.5 IL IN
UT 1.4 DE 2.8
CO 4.1 1.1 WV
CA 2.0 VA MD 4.7
2.5 KS MO 0.4
12.1 KY 4.5 DC 2.9
2.1 1.2 0.9 NC
TN 1.7
AZ OK 1.3
NM 1.5 AR SC
2.2
1.3 0.9 1.1
MS AL GA
0.4 0.8 2.8
TX LA
HI 3.2 1.3
42.8
FL
2.0
42.8 (HI)
12.1 (CA)
5.0 to 9.9
1.0 to 4.9
Less than 1.0
U.S. percent 4.2
Figure 9.2
| Percent Asian by State, 2004
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007e.
Los Angeles metropolitan area, many of the Asian enclaves are now found in sub-
urbs rather than in the central city. Monterey Park is an interesting example. In the
early 1970s, it was a Los Angeles suburban town of mainly Anglos and Hispanics.
Now the population is about 50 percent Asian, mainly middle class, and most of its
businesses are Asian-owned (Fong, 1994; Horton, 1995).
Asian Percent
Population of Total
(in Metro
Thousands) Area
Bureau, 2007f). The income and educational levels of the latter are also consider-
ably lower than those for other Asian American groups. Another internal difference
is the tendency toward economic polarization. That is, members of specific Asian
American groups tend to cluster at the two extremes of the economic hierarchy, ei-
ther at or near the top (such as professionals and business owners) or at or near the
bottom (service workers and other low-status job classifications).
INCOME The household income of Asian Americans far exceeds that of most other
minority ethnic categories and, with the exception of the Southeast Asians, sur-
passes most Euro-American groups as well. In 2006, median household income
for Asian Americans was almost $64,000, which was $11,000 more than for non-
Hispanic whites (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007f).
Figure 9.3 shows significant internal differences within the Asian category,
however. As can be seen, the median income for Koreans is about two-thirds of
what it is for Asian Indians. Moreover, although most Asian groups have higher
family incomes than whites, they also have more family members in the labor force.
And, despite their high socioeconomic status relative to whites, Asian Americans do
not control a commensurate amount of wealth (Campbell and Kaufman, 2006).
The same internal discrepancy is evident regarding poverty (Table 9.2). The
Asian American poverty rate is lower than for the total U.S. population, but higher
than for whites. However, it is extraordinarily high for two relatively small
chapter 9 asian americans 259
Total population
White, non-Hispanic
Asian
Asian Indian
Chinese
Filipino
Japanese
Korean
Vietnamese
Figure 9.3
| Asian American Median Household Income, 2006
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007f.
Southeast Asian groups not shown in Table 9.2, Cambodians (21 percent) and
Hmong (34 percent).
OCCUPATION The rate of labor force participation for Asian Americans is higher
than that of any other ethnic category, and the range of occupations held by
Asian Americans is broad, extending from working-class jobs to professions such
as medicine and engineering.
Here the split between those of previous generations and the more recent immi-
grants is very evident. In striking contrast to the earlier Asian immigrants, most of
whom were unskilled laborers, Asians today are disproportionately among the most
highly skilled. A key feature of the immigration reform of 1965 was the preferential
treatment given to family members and to those with valuable occupational
±±
±
Table 9.2 ±± Poverty Rate of Asian Americans (percent of individuals),
± 2005
Poverty Rate
training. Because Asians had been virtually excluded for several decades, most of
the early post-1965 immigrants entered not as family members but as skilled work-
ers. As a result, many of the recent arrivals are found in the professions or in highly
skilled jobs. Since the 1970s, almost half of working Asian Americans have re-
ported professional and managerial occupations, (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007e; U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights, 1988). For the past twenty years, Asian immigrants to
the United States have been helping to fill shortages in a number of professional
and technical areas, especially computer engineering and medicine. For example,
16 percent of the nurses and 18 percent of the lab technicians in the Los Angeles
area are Filipino (Jacoby, 2000).
High occupational rank is characteristic of native-born and foreign-born Asian
Americans alike. Except for the Southeast Asian groups, Asian American men are
more heavily represented in white-collar occupations and less represented in blue-
collar occupations than are non-Hispanic white men. Almost 47 percent of Asian
Americans are in managerial and professional occupations, a rate considerably
higher than for other ethnic minorities and even for non-Hispanic whites. At the
other end of the occupational hierarchy, the percentage of Asians in service jobs is
about the same as for non-Hispanic whites and well below the percentage for
blacks and Hispanics (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007f). However, the sharp stratifica-
tion within the Asian American population is, again, very evident in the occupa-
tional world. At the same time that Asian Indians, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans,
and Chinese are disproportionately in high-ranking professional and technical
fields, a high percentage of Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians are in low-
paying, unskilled occupations.
Despite their comparatively large numbers in professional and technical posi-
tions, Asian Americans are underrepresented in managerial positions. And at the
very top of the corporate ladder, their numbers are as small as for African
Americans and Hispanic Americans. In 1990, 0.3 percent of senior corporate execu-
tives were Asian Americans (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1992) and were still
estimated to be less than 1 percent in 2004 (Zweigenhaft and Domhoff, 2006).
Asian Americans have often spoken of a glass ceiling, referring to the limits to
which they are able to rise in the corporate world. For example, in California’s
Silicon Valley, the major center of the American computer industry, Asians make
up as much as one-third of the engineering workforce. But they are not well repre-
sented in upper management at the larger companies. Some, as a result, choose to
start up high-technology enterprises of their own (Pollack, 1992). This was a route
taken earlier, in the 1950s, by the late An Wang, Chinese American founder of
Wang Laboratories, for many years one of the country’s largest computer compa-
nies. As Zweigenhaft and Domhoff conclude, it is still “the most frequent pathway
for Asians to take to become directors of Fortune-level companies” (2006:189).
Several explanations have been offered to account for the underrepresentation of
Asian Americans in executive posts. Some see them at a disadvantage in vying for ad-
ministrative jobs because of a lack of communication skills. Also, Asian Americans
are often stereotyped as docile and thus not prepared for leadership positions (Min,
1995b; Zweigenhaft and Domhoff, 2006). Despite their scant numbers in the execu-
tive suites of the American corporate economy, however, the extraordinarily high
level of education of most Asian Americans will likely accelerate their movement
chapter 9 asian americans 261
into top management positions at a faster rate than that of other minorities.
Furthermore, as the number of Asian Americans in the general population grows, cor-
porations will find it in their interests to seek out and place more Asian Americans in
higher-ranking positions, much as they have done with African Americans and
Hispanic Americans. Already there are indications that Asian Americans are rising
faster in the corporate world than any other minority group and are increasingly
occupying high-powered jobs in finance and advertising (Sakamoto et al., 1998).
ASIANS IN THE SMALL BUSINESS SECTOR A salient feature of the economic role played
by Asian Americans today is the unusually large number who choose to own small
businesses. Thirty percent of all minority-owned firms and over half of all sales of
such firms are Asian (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001j).
Among Asian American groups, the rate of business ownership among
Koreans, Asian Indians, Japanese, and Chinese exceeds the rate for all Americans.
Koreans have been especially prominent in small business (Kim, 1987; Light and
Bonacich, 1988; Min, 1988, 1991; Yoon, 1995). Indeed, among all U.S. ethnic
groups, a greater proportion of the Korean population is active in small business
enterprises (Hoffman and Marger, 1991). In New York and Los Angeles, with the
largest Korean American populations, Korean enterprises number in the thousands
(Kim, 1981, 1987; Light and Bonacich, 1988).
Several factors seem to account for the high rate of participation of Asians in the
small business sector. Most of their firms are family-operated businesses, in which
several or even all family members participate. As a result, labor costs are minimal,
and relatively small amounts of capital are needed. Many immigrants thus find small
enterprises attractive as opposed to the corporate sector, where there are limited op-
portunities for nonwhites, especially those who do not speak English fluently. Owning
a small business gives immigrants some independence and enables them to avoid hav-
ing to deal with what are seen as unreceptive dominant economic institutions.
EDUCATION The differences between Asian Americans and other minority ethnic
groups regarding education are striking. All Asian American groups are either close
to or exceed the average level of schooling of the white population. About 86 per-
cent of adult Asian Americans are high school graduates, nearly the same as for
whites. In the percentage of college graduates, however, the difference between
Asian Americans and all other ethnic groups is extraordinary. Asian Americans—
both men and women—are more likely to have earned a college degree than non-
Hispanic whites. As seen in Figure 9.4, nearly half of all adult Asian Americans
hold at least a bachelor’s degree; this compares to 30 percent among non-
Hispanic whites. Moreover, 20 percent of adult Asians hold advanced degrees, al-
most twice the percentage of whites. Many Asian immigrants, of course, are highly
educated before they enter the United States, making them distinctly different from
most contemporary Hispanic immigrants as well as Asian immigrants of past eras.
Notice in Figure 9.4 that despite the extraordinarily high educational levels for
Asian Americans generally, the Vietnamese are below average, and this holds for
other Southeast Asian groups—Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian—as well.
In academic achievement, Asian American students are well above the norm on
almost every measure. For example, Asian American high school students score
262 part ii ethnicity in the united states
Total population
White, non-Hispanic
Asian
Asian Indian
Chinese
Filipino
Japanese
Korean
Vietnamese
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Percent
Less than high school High school graduate or more Bachelor’s degree or more
Figure 9.4
| Asian American Educational Attainment, 2006
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, 2007f.
higher than students from any other ethnic group in mathematics scholastic apti-
tude tests and are second only to whites on verbal aptitude tests. In New York,
Asian enrollment in the city’s most elite specialized high schools has soared to as
high as 60 percent (Gootman, 2006). Predictably, Asian students enter top universi-
ties far out of proportion to their numbers. At Harvard and Yale, for example,
Asian Americans constitute 15 to 20 percent of U.S. students; at M.I.T., 27 percent;
and at elite University of California campuses they outnumber all other groups, in-
cluding whites (Egan, 2007). Moreover, Asian Americans have the highest gradua-
tion rate among all racial and ethnic groups at Division I colleges and universities
(American Council on Education, 2000).
Science, medicine, and other highly technical fields are academic areas in which
the excellence of Asian American students is especially apparent. But they are enter-
ing the humanities and the arts in increasingly greater numbers and are excelling in
those fields as well. For example, Asians and Asian Americans make up a large and
growing percentage of students at the most prestigious music schools such as
Juilliard, Eastman, and the New England Conservatory (Wakin, 2007).
category. There are differences among specific groups. For example, as previously
noted, more than half of all employed Asian Indians, Chinese, and Japanese are
professionals or managers, in sharp contrast to the occupations of most
Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians. The income and educational levels of the
latter are also considerably lower than those for other Asian American groups.
Second, not only is the Asian American population made up of many different
groups, but each group itself is internally varied, stretching over an entire range of
social class. Third, the Asian American population consists of two historical com-
ponents—those who came as early as the mid-nineteenth century, and those who
have come since 1965. As we have now seen, many of the more recent Asian
Americans have come with class and educational backgrounds very different from
those of earlier ones.
Taking these cautionary points into consideration, the economic and educa-
tional record of most Asian American groups remains remarkable when compared
to other parts of the American ethnic hierarchy. Why have Asian Americans moved
up the economic ladder more quickly than other ethnic groups, and why do they
seem to outdistance others in the realm of education? Is it because of a unique cul-
tural heritage, or are class factors more important? Might Asian Americans even be
innately different from other racial and ethnic groups? Attempts to explain the un-
usually high rates of Asian American mobility, educational achievement, and social
adaptation have employed several different lines of thought.
INNATE SUPERIORITY? Some contend that Asians are innately superior. A few highly
controversial studies have suggested, for example, higher average IQs of Chinese
and Japanese compared to others (Herrnstein and Murray, 1994; Lynn and
Vanhanen, 2002). As explained in Chapter 1, most social scientists do not recognize
the validity of such genetic arguments, whether applied to seemingly high-achieving
or low-achieving groups. Indeed, such explanations border on racist notions. As
noted in Chapter 1, social scientists have emphasized either structural opportunities
or cultural factors in explaining why some ethnic groups seem to display greater col-
lective achievement than others. The intelligence factor is one that nonetheless con-
founds observers because on certain measures of intelligence, Asian Americans seem
to consistently out-perform other ethnic groups.
values” (1981:295). He claims that values such as industriousness and the control
of impulses and emotions, which correspond closely to dominant American values,
were carried by Korean immigrants to the United States. A similar argument has
been advanced regarding the economic success of Japanese Americans, who it is
claimed brought values from Japan that were highly compatible with white,
Protestant, middle-class American values (Caudill and De Vos, 1956).
That cultural factors are of key importance in explaining Asian American edu-
cational and economic success is suggested by a study, conducted by University of
Michigan researchers, investigating the adaptation of Vietnamese refugees. At the
time of their arrival in the United States, most of the subjects of this study (part of
the boat people of the late 1970s) had completed little formal education, few had
any marketable skills, and only one in a hundred spoke fluent English. The re-
searchers found that despite these handicaps, many had achieved economic inde-
pendence after only a few years. Furthermore, whatever success they had realized
was almost entirely a product of their own efforts; the assistance of outside agencies
had played a very limited role (Caplan et al., 1989).
The academic achievement of school-aged children from these families was
more remarkable still. Despite their severe language deficiencies and family poverty,
after an average of only three years they were experiencing success in American
schools. On national standardized tests of academic achievement, 27 percent of
the refugee children scored in the ninetieth percentile on math achievement—almost
three times better than the national average. And despite their somewhat lower
scores in English-language proficiency, they earned higher grade point averages
than their peers (Caplan et al., 1991, 1992). The researchers found that this rapid
educational success was closely linked to a cluster of core values deriving from the
Confucian and Buddhist traditions of East and Southeast Asia: education and
achievement, a cohesive family, and hard work. These, they found, “are, if not
identical, congruent with what have been viewed as mainstream middle-class
American beliefs about the role of education in getting ahead” (1991:172).8
Other researchers have also emphasized the importance of Confucian values in
explaining the rigid work ethic that Asian Americans and their children seem to ex-
hibit. Kim (1981), for example, views Confucianism as a significant factor in ac-
counting for Korean business success. Zhou and Bankston (1998) also find this to
be an important part of the explanation for the educational success of Vietnamese
children. In addition to the sanctified place of education and the family, Confucian
thought stresses that people can always be improved with effort and instruction, va-
lues well suited to the competitive worlds of American business and schooling.
8
The researchers did find a critical difference between the two value systems, however, in their orien-
tation to achievement: “American mores encourage independence and individual achievement, whereas
Indochinese values foster interdependence and a family-based orientation to achievement” (Caplan
et al., 1992:41).
chapter 9 asian americans 265
portionate number of highly skilled and educated persons who make up the Asian
immigrant population. Hence, the existence of many doctors, engineers, and other
highly trained professionals among them is largely a function of their preimmigra-
tion class position. In some ways, today’s Asian immigrants represent a select sub-
set of the population of their origin societies. What has been referred to as a “brain
drain” consists of the out-migration of highly skilled and educated persons from
developing societies. Such persons recognize the more abundant opportunities to
employ their skills and training in the United States as well as the possibility of
earning substantially greater income. Hence, many are not poor, underprivileged
immigrants but are already imbued with achievement-oriented values along with
the class qualifications to implement those values.
The importance of a propitious opportunity structure, therefore, cannot be
overstated in explaining the rapid and substantial upward mobility of Asian
Americans, especially the more recent arrivals. Many are people who bring their
skills and training with them, enabling them to adapt more easily than others with
fewer skills and lower educational backgrounds. Structural opportunities, then, in
addition to a cultural heritage compatible with American achievement values, are
critical in accounting for the relatively rapid success of so many Asian Americans.
In this view, the importance of human capital, especially education, also accounts
for the relative success of groups with longer histories in the United States, namely
Japanese and Chinese Americans. Sakamoto and colleagues (1998) suggest that
William J. Wilson’s thesis (discussed in Chapter 7) of the declining significance of
race applies to Asian Americans in the last half century. In occupation and other mea-
sures of socioeconomic status, the disadvantages of racial distinctness, they claim,
have been substantially reduced—if not eliminated entirely—for these groups. Their
success is explained primarily as the result of high educational achievement.
Zhou and Kim (2007) suggest that it is a combination of both cultural va-
lues and structural conditions that account for the exceptional educational suc-
cess of Asian Americans. That is, cultural values that stress education need the
additional support of ethnic social structures to fully flourish. In their study of
Chinese and Koreans in Los Angeles, they found that beyond the public schools,
community institutions—Chinese and Korean language schools, ethnic media, eth-
nic churches, and ethnic businesses—played an important role in transmitting and
reinforcing Confucian educational values, thereby helping ensure the success of
children in high school and ultimately having them gain entrance to prestigious
universities.
POTENTIAL POWER Although Asian Americans still represent only a small percent-
age of the national population, their increasing visibility, numbers, and financial
power will necessarily force politicians to take notice of them, particularly in states
like California, where they are strongly concentrated. Already, for example, Asian
Americans have established themselves as significant campaign donors (Kirschten,
1992; Vitello, 2007). Perhaps most important, future issues may arise that will
have a mobilizing effect on the Asian American population. Widespread occur-
rences of discrimination, for example, real or perceived, are apt to solidify the dis-
parate Asian American ethnic groups and to create a more potent political base.
Interethnic competition and hostilities, such as the boycotts against Korean
shops by blacks or the attacks on Korean businesses during the Los Angeles riots
of 1992, may also stimulate Asian American political participation. A government
chapter 9 asian americans 267
THE ANTI-JAPANESE MOVEMENT Many of these same attitudes and actions were
cast on the later Japanese immigration. At the time of their first substantial en-
trance in the 1880s, the Japanese were received enthusiastically by large farm own-
ers and manufacturers, who saw them as a natural substitute for the Chinese
laborers who had been excluded by the restrictive measure of 1882. So long as
they occupied only menial or unskilled jobs, for which there was a shortage of
workers, they were seen as filling a need. But like the Chinese before them, they
soon found themselves the targets of labor groups who viewed them as potential
competitors. Anti-Chinese agitation easily shifted to the Japanese, with many of
the same stereotypes now applied to them, including the yellow peril (tenBroek et
al., 1968). Despite the Gentlemen’s Agreement between the United States and
Japan in 1907–1908 limiting Japanese immigration, as well as a California mea-
sure restricting Japanese ownership of land, anti-Japanese ferment never fully
subsided.
In many ways, the anti-Japanese movement of the 1910s and 1920s was merely
a continuation of the earlier anti-Chinese movement. Despite their modest group
size (in California, where most were concentrated, they numbered only 70,000 in
1919, little more than 2 percent of the state’s population), the Japanese were seen
by many as a threat to white dominance. The Japanese in California had become
successful farmers, and although they controlled only about 1 percent of
California’s farmland, their highly efficient agricultural practices produced more
than 10 percent of the value of the state’s crops (Kitano and Daniels, 1995).
Many whites were alarmed at the growing Japanese economic influence and began
to agitate for restrictions not only on further immigration, but also on the right of
the Japanese to own land in the state. California newspaper publishers William
Randolph Hearst and V. S. McClatchy emerged as two of the leading figures in the
anti-Japanese movement, outlining in their newspapers the themes of the Japanese
“threat.” Their propagandistic attacks claimed that the Japanese refused to assimi-
late, that their birthrate was so great they would eventually outnumber whites, and
that their “low standard of living” presented an unfair advantage in economic com-
petition with whites (McClatchy, 1978).
All these charges, of course, had been applied to southern and eastern
European immigrants as well, but the anti-Japanese campaign brandished a unique
fear of an immigrant “invasion.” Following World War I, a full-blown exclusionist
movement developed in California, designed to isolate those Japanese already in the
United States and, as one California politician described it, “to influence Congress
and the administration at Washington to enact such legislation, even if the amend-
ment of the Constitution be necessary, as will protect the white race against the eco-
nomic menace of the unassimilable Japanese” (quoted in Daniels, 1977:84).
chapter 9 asian americans 269
JAPANESE INTERNMENT Fueled by the shock of Pearl Harbor and reinforced by the
stereotype of Japanese treacherousness, the anti-Japanese movement culminated af-
ter the start of World War II with the internment of the Japanese population living
on the West Coast. No other series of events in American ethnic history, other than
the enslavement of African Americans and the genocidal measures employed
against Native Americans, was comparable to this action. Two months after the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, acting
on the recommendation of Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, issued Executive
Order 9066, authorizing the U.S. Army to remove any group viewed as a security
risk. Almost all those of Japanese ancestry living in California, Oregon,
Washington, and Arizona—120,000—were affected. They were subsequently
rounded up and sent to internment camps (called “relocation centers”) in several
Rocky Mountain states and in Arkansas. Having no time to prepare, most were
forced to quickly liquidate their businesses; many abandoned their homes and pos-
sessions, losing their life savings. They were permitted to carry with them only a
single suitcase of personal belongings.
The Japanese Americans were held in the detention camps almost until the end
of the war. In an ironic twist, thousands of incarcerated Japanese men were permit-
ted to enter the U.S. Army as a special unit; in the European theater, where they
fought the Nazis, they became one of the most highly decorated battle units in
American military history.
Several aspects of the Japanese incarceration stand out. To begin with, most of
the detained had been born in the United States and were American citizens. Hence,
people were denied their fundamental civil rights solely on the basis of their ethnic-
ity. In his final report, the commanding U.S. Army general responsible for carrying
out the Japanese removal put the matter bluntly: “The Japanese race is an enemy
race and while many second and third generation Japanese born on United States
soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become ‘Americanized,’ the racial
strains are undiluted” (quoted in tenBroek et al., 1968:263). Second, that the re-
moval of the Japanese was racially motivated was demonstrated by the fact that
Americans of neither German nor Italian ancestry were similarly treated despite
270 part ii ethnicity in the united states
the war against Germany and Italy. Moreover, after the war it was acknowledged
that the Japanese on the West Coast had never presented a military threat, and in
fact their incarceration may actually have retarded the war effort. The emptiness of
the security issue is reflected in the fact that the larger Japanese population in
Hawaii was never removed despite its more strategic location. In the end, the exclu-
sionist movement that had begun in California in the earlier years of the century
had accomplished its objective—removal of the Japanese. The fear, suspicion, mis-
perception, and envy bred by decades of negative stereotypes were released in a
grievous deed, responsibility for which was shared by nativist groups, farmers, en-
trepreneurs, the military, the courts, and state and federal politicians.
Not until 1983 did a congressional committee formally acknowledge the politi-
cal injustice that had been dealt the Japanese Americans, recommending a formal
apology and compensation of $20,000 in damages to each survivor of the incarcer-
ation. Legislation to accomplish this was enacted in 1988.9 The long-term effects of
the internment camps, of course, could not be erased so easily, particularly for first-
and second-generation Japanese Americans. For them, American democracy had
failed to provide its promise of protection for all citizens. Even for the third and
fourth generations, the World War II internment remains the paramount event of
the history of the Japanese in America.
Although the Japanese internment is the most infamous case of direct institu-
tional discrimination, all Asian groups have been subjected to various legal forms
of discrimination at one time or another. Indeed, during the early years of the cen-
tury, anti-Chinese and anti-Japanese measures were usually designed to apply to all
Asians. In California, intermarriage of whites and Asians, for example, was barred,
and residential segregation was enforced by restrictive covenants aimed specifically
at Asians. Even federal laws were designed to handicap Asians. Perhaps most re-
vealing, it was not until 1952 that federal legislation was passed making all Asian
immigrants eligible for U.S. citizenship (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1988).
9
A similar internment was carried out by the Canadian government at the start of World War II
against the 23,000 people of Japanese origin living in the West Coast province of British Columbia, 75
percent of whom were Canadian citizens (see Adachi, 1976; Daniels, 1981; Sunahara, 1980). In much
the same fashion as the U.S. Congress, the Canadian parliament in 1988 moved to formally apologize
to Japanese Canadians and to make a reparation payment of $19,325 to each survivor (Burns, 1988).
chapter 9 asian americans 271
they told him that he and one of his friends, also an Asian American, were “the
reason we’re all laid off.” A fight ensued, after which the two chased Chin and
clubbed him to death on the street. The attackers were fined $3,780 and given three
years probation after one pleaded guilty and the other pleaded no contest to
charges of manslaughter. The leniency of the sentence outraged the Asian
American community, and the U.S. Justice Department subsequently filed civil
rights charges against one of the attackers. He was convicted by a federal jury of
violating Chin’s civil rights and sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. That con-
viction was later overturned on appeal, however, and he was acquitted of all
charges, ending any further criminal prosecution (Moore, 1987). The Chin killing
and its aftermath still resonate strongly among many Asian Americans several de-
cades after the event (Clemetson, 2002).
In addition to the Chin case, several other incidents in the 1980s provoked
strong reactions. Each involved violent attacks on Asian Americans that resulted
in only nominal punishment by the courts (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,
1986). Other less arresting but no less severe anti-Asian actions, many motivated
by unadulterated racist sentiments, were reported in the 1980s and early 1990s
(Noble, 1995; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1992).
Two events of the late 1990s seemed to galvanize Asian Americans around is-
sues of perceived discrimination. In one case, some contributions given to the
Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the 1996 presidential election
raised by a Chinese American former official of the DNC were later found to be
illegal, having been channeled by overseas Asian political influence seekers.
Subsequent investigation of illegal contributions cast suspicion on Asian American
contributors who had done nothing wrong (Tajitsu Nash and Wu, 1997; Wang,
2003). In another incident, Wen Ho Lee, a Taiwanese-born U.S. citizen and former
government-employed nuclear scientist, was accused of espionage in 1999. He was
indicted on several dozen felony counts for downloading classified nuclear design
and testing information at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
Subsequently all but one charge was dropped in what was seen as a major embar-
rassment for federal prosecutors (Farhi, 2006; Wu, 2003). Both of these cases
caused much chagrin among Asian Americans, many of whom saw them as blatant
instances of anti-Asian stereotyping and discrimination.
harassment, theft, and vandalism of their businesses. Spike Lee’s 1989 film, Do
the Right Thing, is a graphic depiction of the tensions that often accompany the
establishment of Asian (mostly Korean) small businesses in African American
neighborhoods.
In a widespread pattern, black boycotts of Asian-owned businesses occurred
in several cities in the 1980s and 1990s including New York, Philadelphia,
Washington, and Los Angeles. During the Los Angeles riots of May 1992, shops
owned by Koreans in the South Central district, where most of the disturbances oc-
curred, seemed to be particular targets of looters and arsonists. Before the riots, re-
lations between Korean shopkeepers and their black customers had been volatile
for years and seemed to reach a high point when a Korean-born grocer shot to
death a fifteen-year-old black girl whom the merchant had accused of stealing a
bottle of orange juice. Black resentment grew even stronger when the woman gro-
cer, who was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, was given only a probationary
sentence (Mydans, 1992b; Ong et al., 1992). Discordant relations between Koreans
and blacks were most dramatic in Los Angeles as a result of the 1992 riots, but a
similar undercurrent was evident in the inner cities of other urban areas where
Koreans operated small businesses serving minority residents (Chesley and
Gilchrist, 1993; Goldberg, 1995; Wilkerson, 1993).
Friction between Koreans and blacks in business relationships should not be
seen as unique, however. Similar animosities have arisen among blacks and mer-
chants of other ethnic groups operating their enterprises in inner-city areas. In
Detroit, for example, most inner-city neighborhood groceries and liquor stores are
owned by Arab Americans or Chaldean Americans, who are seen in much the same
way as Koreans in other cities (Dawsey, 1992; Gerdes, 1993). Moreover, conflict
between neighborhood coethnics and shop owners of an outsider ethnic group has
a long tradition in many countries and has been evident in diverse parts of the
world in recent times (White, 1993).
much lower than the segregation of blacks from whites (Bayer et al., 2004; Logan
et al., 2004; Massey, 2001; Mumford Center, 2001a).
Chinese marriages involve non-Chinese, most of them whites. For Asian Americans
generally, intermarriage is noticeably higher than for African Americans and
Hispanic Americans (Lee, 1998; Lee and Edmonston, 2005; Qian and Lichter,
2007). Asian groups with the lowest level of intermarriage are those with the new-
est immigration cohorts, such as Asian Indians, Vietnamese, and recent Chinese
(Lee and Yamanaka, 1990). This may be seen as solid evidence of fading social
boundaries between Asian Americans and the larger society with each successive
generation. Indeed, as with Hispanics, Asian Americans give evidence of following
generational patterns of intermarriage that are similar to those of European-descent
groups during the early twentieth century (Stevens et al., 2006).
Often overlooked in considering assimilation among Asian Americans generally
is the fact that almost half of this population identify themselves as Christian
(Kosmin and Keysar, 2006). Among Koreans, a majority do. This religious com-
monality with the society’s dominant group has no doubt served for many as a
valuable support in advancing cultural assimilation.
1998; Levine and Rhodes, 1981; Montero, 1980; Tinker, 1973). Among his sample
of Japanese Americans, Montero (1980) found that 40 percent of the Sansei had
married a non-Japanese. This compared to only 10 percent of the Nisei and 1 per-
cent of the Issei. Kikumura and Kitano (1973) found a similar pattern and con-
cluded that Japanese Americans now choose marital partners as frequently from
outside the ethnic group as from within. Data on out-marriage of Asian
Americans in Los Angeles between 1975 and 1989 show a rate of more than 50
percent for Japanese Americans (Kitano and Daniels, 1995). More recent studies
confirm the strong trend toward exogamy among Japanese Americans, indicating
that, among Asian American ethnic groups, they are most likely to intermarry
with whites (Qian et al., 2001; Qian and Lichter, 2007).
In general, these studies indicate a progressive trend toward primary structural
assimilation and an increasing dilution of the Japanese American ethnic community
with each succeeding generation. In light of their rapid and extensive assimilation,
some have even begun to question the ability of Japanese Americans to maintain a
viable ethnic community into the next (Yonsei) generation (Montero, 1980; Onishi,
1995).10 Others, however, maintain that despite very strong assimilation tendencies,
Japanese Americans do not appear to be losing all cultural distinctiveness and iden-
tification (Kitano, 1976; Woodrum, 1981). One study, in fact, concludes that
Japanese Americans appear to have been able to successfully combine high levels
of structural assimilation with a strong retention of ethnic identity and group cohe-
sion (Fugita and O’Brien, 1991).
10
Montero (1980) notes that, ironically, the remarkable upward economic mobility of the Japanese in
America may lead to a diminution of the traditional ethnic values that helped to stimulate that ad-
vancement in the first place; hence, the loss of those values may create a leveling off of the achievement
of future generations.
278 part ii ethnicity in the united states
In Chapter 11 we will see that the assimilation of Jews in the United States has
advanced as far as in any society where Jews have lived in large numbers. Yet the
religious divergence between Jews and non-Jews remains a factor that continues to
impede full assimilation of Jewish Americans. The same can be said for Asians,
whose physical distinctiveness makes them even more indelibly conspicuous within
the larger society. Because of this visibility, Americans continue to see Asian minor-
ities as somehow not fully American, as “outsiders”—even though their ancestors
may have been in the United States for several generations, they may speak only
English, and they have no more ties to Asian societies than Swedish Americans
have to Sweden or Italian Americans to Italy. Because of racial visibility, ethnic
identity and consciousness among Asian Americans—regardless of the extent of
their assimilation—is not likely to fully erode.
As will be discussed in Chapter 12, the preeminence of multicultural ideology in
schools, universities, and the media has made it easier for ethnic minorities to pre-
serve or perhaps reaffirm aspects of the ethnic culture. This is no less the case for
Asian Americans. Multiculturalism is also helping to create a consciousness of what
may have been a quite inchoate Asian American panethnicity. Tamar Jacoby (2000)
maintains that young college-educated Asian Americans appear to be experiencing a
kind of ethnic reaffirmation in large measure as a product of the oppositional mul-
ticulturalism to which they are exposed in their university experience. Moreover,
the creation of institutionally complete ethnic enclaves in some areas where Asian
Americans constitute a significant portion of the population provides a further de-
fense against assimilation.
Despite these impediments to assimilation, Asian Americans, like Hispanic
Americans, appear to be reconciling the competing demands of ethnic retention
and incorporation into the societal mainstream. Asian Americans seem determined
to be both Asian and American, seeing no inherent incompatibility between the two
and no conflict in balancing them. Jacoby quotes a young Stanford graduate, who
asserts that “I’m determined to hold onto my Chinese heritage and my Chinese cul-
ture. But there’s absolutely nothing about America that I reject because of my
ethnicity.” And a Chinese business owner echoes this view, claiming that assimila-
tion and ethnic retention are “two parallel tracks, and there’s no reason to choose
between them” (Jacoby, 2000:25).
11
Jacoby points out that “the very term ‘Asian American’ traces back to the 1960s, when it was
coined, in the spirit of ‘Black Power’ and ‘Chicano Studies,’ as a kind of battle cry” (2000:22).
chapter 9 asian americans 279
experience of many European groups of the earlier immigration periods. Only in the
American context were Italians from various provinces in Italy, for example, desig-
nated and dealt with collectively as “Italians.” Through this common treatment by
Americans, an Italian American group consciousness was engendered, and eventually
Italians in America identified themselves primarily as “Italian” rather than as
“Calabrian,” “Sicilian,” or “Neapolitan.” Though surely a long-term process for
the various Asian American groups, such a collective identity may emerge more
clearly with each successive generation. Moreover, Asian Americans of diverse ethnic
origins themselves may increasingly recognize this collective designation as a useful
political strategy, just as Latinos are beginning to do (Espiritu, 1992; Shinagawa
and Pang, 1996). As separate and dispersed groups, none can exert the kind of polit-
ical leverage at the national or even local level that a more consolidated position may
produce.
SUMMARY
Asian Americans are a diverse collection of distinct ethnic groups, the largest
among them Chinese, Filipino, and Asian Indian. Asian immigration to the United
States consists of two periods. The first began in the mid-nineteenth century with
the immigration of Chinese manual laborers. Exclusionary measures beginning in
1882 halted further Chinese immigration and provided an opening for Japanese
workers to replace them in the early part of the twentieth century. Discriminatory
laws brought further Asian immigration to a virtual halt in the 1920s. The second
period extends from 1965, when immigration laws were liberalized, to the present.
The vast majority of Asian Americans today are first-generation immigrants who
stem from this second wave. Many of those of the second wave have come to the
United States with much higher occupational skills and more education than earlier
immigrants. Both immigrant waves settled primarily on the West Coast, especially
California, where Asian Americans remain heavily concentrated.
Asian Americans, as a whole, are at or near the top of the stratification system in
terms of income, education, and occupation. There are important differences be-
tween and within the various Asian groups, however. Whereas Filipino and Asian
Indians rank among the highest income earners and most highly skilled workers,
many among the Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian groups, most of whom
have come as political refugees, are severely impoverished.
High levels of prejudice and discrimination have marked the Asian American ex-
perience from the outset of immigration. Exclusionary measures designed to bar the
entry of Asians into the United States were enacted in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, and basic civil rights were denied Asians in Western states until well into
the twentieth century. In recent years, Asian Americans have been portrayed as a
model minority because of their exceptional economic and educational attainments.
Nonetheless, remnants of anti-Asian prejudice and discrimination remain evident.
It is still too early to gauge the extent of assimilation among Asian Americans
because most are first-generation immigrants. However, high levels of cultural
assimilation characterize those groups who have entered the third and fourth gen-
erations—specifically, the Japanese and Chinese—and there is also evidence of in-
creasing rates of both primary and secondary structural assimilation among them.
280 part ii ethnicity in the united states
Suggested Readings
Bonacich, Edna, and John Modell. 1980. The Economic Basis of Ethnic Solidarity: Small
Business in the Japanese American Community. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Describes how Japanese Americans carved out a place for themselves in the California
economy. Also contains a valuable explication of the role of small business among ethnic
minorities.
Caplan, Nathan, John K. Whitmore, and Marcella H. Choy. 1989. The Boat People and
Achievement in America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Along with its com-
panion work, Children of the Boat People: A Study of Educational Success (1991), ex-
plores why Southeast Asian refugees have excelled educationally and occupationally
despite their language and other handicaps on arrival in the United States.
Espiritu, Yen Le. 1992. Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Describes the process by which an inclusive Asian
American ethnic group may be forming, one that transcends its members’ specific na-
tional origins.
Horton, John, and Jose Calderon. 1995. The Politics of Diversity: Immigration, Resistance,
and Change in Monterey Park, California. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Traces
the social and political transformation of this Los Angeles suburb from a primarily white
to majority Asian American community.
Kwong, Peter, and Dušanka Mišcevic. 2005. Chinese America: The Untold Story of
America’s Oldest New Community. New York: New Press. A comprehensive history of
the Chinese experience in the United States, describing the external and internal changes
that have continued to reshape this ethnic group.
Rangaswamy, Padma. 2000. Nemasté America: Indian Immigrants in an American
Metropolis. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Using Chicago as her
research site, the author draws a picture of a burgeoning—and heterogeneous—Asian
Indian community, similar to those emerging in other major U.S. urban areas.
Root, Maria P. P. (ed.). 1997. Filipino Americans: Transformation and Identity. Thousand
Oaks, Calif: Sage. A collection of articles by Filipino/a American scholars that explore
various social, political, and economic issues of one of the largest Asian American ethnic
groups.
Takaki, Ronald. 1998. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans.
Rev. ed. Boston: Little, Brown. Traces the history of Asian Americans beginning with the
first immigration of workers in the nineteenth century up to the most recent wave of
immigrants.
Yu, Frank H. 2002. Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. New York: Basic
Books. Emphasizing the growing ethnic diversity of the United States, an analysis of key
issues of race and ethnicity from an Asian American perspective.
Zia, Helen. 2000. Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People. New
York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Interspersing personal anecdotes, the author presents a
lively and compelling social history of Asian Americans and their struggles of identity and
acceptance in American society.
10
±±
±±
±±
White Ethnic ±±
±±
±± C H A P T E R
±±
±±
Americans ±
In this chapter, we look closely at white (or Euro-American) ethnic groups, specifi-
cally those described in Chapter 5 as part of the second tier of the American ethnic
hierarchy, whose origins are chiefly part of the classic period of immigration that
occurred during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
1
This estimate is based on census reports of both single- and multiple-ancestry persons; that is, those
who have claimed either one specific ethnic ancestry or a combination.
281
282 part ii ethnicity in the united states
IRISH AMERICANS
The immigration of the Irish represents in several ways a watershed point in the
history of immigration to the United States.
• Irish immigration constitutes the first large-scale movement to America of non-
Protestants. Roughly half of the German immigrants of the Old Immigration
were also Catholic, but in numbers they were far overshadowed by the Irish.
• The immigration from Ireland beginning in the mid-nineteenth century repre-
sents the first great influx of low-skilled workers destined for the mills and
chapter 10 white ethnic americans 283
factories of growing American cities, rather than the farms and small towns
that had been the more usual destinations of previous immigrants.
• Irish immigration gave rise to a virulent nativist movement aimed at limiting
the entrance to America of non-Protestants. In the decades following the Irish
influx, efforts to restrict immigration would continue, culminating in the 1920s
in the cessation of large-scale immigration from Europe.
• Irish immigration prompted a redefinition of “race” in American society. Irish
Catholics at first were not considered fully part of either the white or black
population, and this indeterminate racial status was not resolved for several
decades. Other European groups that would follow the Irish, those of the New
Immigration, would present a similar dilemma of racial classification.
THE SCOTCH-IRISH At the end of the seventeenth century, James II, the last
Catholic English monarch, was defeated by William of Orange. What followed
284 part ii ethnicity in the united states
William’s victory was an even more sustained suppression of the Catholic popu-
lace. The Catholic clergy was also restricted, as was the Irish educational system.
A series of statutes called Penal Laws were enacted, intended to divest Catholics
of all political and economic power. Though brought to bear most severely against
the Catholic population, many of these oppressive laws were also applied against
the Scottish Presbyterians, who had settled mostly in Ulster. This gave rise to the
mass emigration of thousands of Ulster Presbyterians to the United States. These
settlers were to be known in America as the Scotch-Irish and would make up a ma-
jor element of the U.S. colonial population in the eighteenth century.
The immigration of Irish Protestants must be seen as distinct and fundamentally
different from the immigration of Irish Catholics. In America, Irish Protestants as-
similated early on and afterwards were in no essential way distinguishable from the
Anglo dominant group. Indeed, it was Irish Protestants themselves who appropri-
ated the term “Scotch Irish” as a way of differentiating themselves from the subse-
quent waves of Irish Catholics (Kenny, 2000).
THE FAMINE IRISH Although they were the earliest immigrants from Ireland, the
Scotch-Irish did not form the mold of Irish ethnicity in America. Rather it was the
much larger and later-emigrating Catholic population of the South of Ireland who
became the standard bearers of Irish ethnicity in America and who remain the
group of reference when speaking of Irish Americans.
The mass immigration of Irish Catholics to America beginning in the 1830s
was marked by almost classic push-pull factors. Potatoes had been the Irish staple
food and was, literally, the means of subsistence for the peasant population.
Although crop failures had been endured in the past, the blight that struck in the
late 1840s was nothing short of catastrophic. Famine and disease were rampant,
resulting in perhaps a million deaths (Miller, 1985). For most, the choice was sim-
ple: emigrate or perish. As historian Lawrence McCaffery has written, most Irish
Catholics arriving in the United States during this period “were running away
from destitution and oppression rather than rushing toward freedom and opportu-
nity” (1997:7). When combined with the push of a deteriorating rural economy, the
pull of North America with its seemingly unlimited labor opportunities was irresist-
ible. The response was overwhelming. Between 1845 and 1855, about one-fourth of
Ireland’s entire population emigrated overseas, almost 1.5 million sailing to the
United States and another 340,000 to Canada. Many of those who initially landed
in Canada later found their way to the United States.
The journey across the Atlantic was, for this generation of Irish immigrants, al-
most as harrowing as the passage of African slaves being transported to America.
Disease and starvation ensured that a large percentage would never make it to their
destination. In 1847, 30 percent of those bound for Canada and 9 percent of those
destined for the United States perished while on board ship or shortly after landing
(Kenny, 2000). So many died making the crossing—which could take as long as six
weeks—that the vessels carrying Irish immigrants became known as “coffin ships.”
In the decades following the Great Famine, push and pull factors stimulating
Irish emigration—enduring rural poverty in Ireland and the promise of jobs else-
where—did not essentially change. As a result, Irish immigration to North America
continued; more than 2.5 million Irish left for America between 1855 and 1900.
chapter 10 white ethnic americans 285
With the continued flow of immigration, large Irish American communities took
shape, which in turn financed the passage of future immigration from the island.
Hence, many leaving Ireland had their passage paid for by relatives or friends already
settled in North America (Meagher, 2001).
SETTLEMENT AND WORK The Irish were in many ways unprepared for life in an in-
dustrial, urban society. Most were poor peasants who lacked the skills and educa-
tion that could be converted into rapid occupational mobility and economic success
in the new society. As a result, most entered the labor force in unskilled jobs, where
they and their children remained. The Irish were, as Edward Levine describes them,
America’s “first truly proletarian labor force” (1966:59). They found work in rail-
road and canal construction, as stevedores on docks of major ports, and in the var-
ious building projects of the expanding cities. Wherever they settled, the Irish were
disproportionately concentrated in the lowest-paid, least-skilled, and most danger-
ous and insecure jobs (Glazer and Moynihan, 1970; Wittke, 1967).
The majority of Irish immigrants settled in cities of the Northeast, especially
New York and Boston, where work was plentiful in manual laboring occupations
that were compatible with their low skill levels. This was a settlement pattern un-
like that of other groups of the Old Immigration, like Germans and Irish
Protestants (the Scotch Irish), most of whom scattered to other regions. The over-
whelming settlement of Irish immigrants in urban areas seems a paradox in light of
the fact that most were rural or small-town peasants in origin. Their poverty, how-
ever, almost automatically ruled out establishing themselves as farmers. Their im-
mediate need was to secure work as unskilled laborers, which they found in the
cities. Moreover, their rural experience had been mostly as workers familiar only
with potato cultivation, not as owners or managers (Jones, 1992). Irish tenant
farmers in Ireland, moreover, lacked the skills needed for the style of farming prev-
alent in America. Most were field laborers who knew only how to work small bits
of land using simple tools, an agricultural skill set not suited to large independent
farms requiring knowledge of planting and harvesting (Levine, 1966; McCaffrey,
1997).
The squalor of living conditions endured by early Irish immigrants to America
was comparable to that found in European cities of the nascent industrial age.
These teeming urban slums produced Irish death rates that were actually higher
than they were in Ireland (Wittke, 1956). With the added burdens of blatant dis-
crimination by Anglo Protestants in almost every aspect of social and economic
life, many turned to drink and to crime. High crime and alcoholism rates, in turn,
further strengthened the popular image of the Irish as incorrigible, corrupt, violent,
drunken, and incapable of ever becoming acculturated to American—that is,
Protestant—ways. And, they gave added stimulus to what had already been a viru-
lent anti-Catholic nativism.
married late and many did not marry at all. This obviously reduced the chances of
marriage for Irish women. The lure of America for young Irish women, therefore,
was two-fold: the greater likelihood of finding a husband and readily available
employment.
Irish immigrant women found their occupational niche as domestic servants. In
fact, almost all Irish women who worked did so as domestics. Stephen Steinberg
(1989) has addressed the curious fact that working women of other immigrant
groups did not engage in this work, typically choosing instead the garment trades
or textile factories. Since so many Irish immigrant women, unlike those of other
immigrant groups, were unmarried and had no families in America, Steinberg ex-
plains, working as live-in domestic servants was a perfectly logical option: “it pro-
vided them with a roof over their head and a degree of personal security until they
were able to forge a more desirable set of circumstances” (1989:160). There was no
cultural proclivity for Irish women to opt for this occupation anymore than there
was a culturally based distaste for it among those of other ethnic groups. The con-
centration of Irish women in this occupation was simply a rational choice, necessi-
tated by economic need. Second generation Irish women, more economically secure,
were no more inclined to choose domestic service than women of any other ethnic
group.
URBAN POLITICS For Irish Americans nothing stands out more clearly in their adap-
tive patterns than their great success in the political realm, particularly at the local
level. It was in urban politics that the Irish made their initial and longest-lasting
mark on American society. No ethnic group ever more successfully exploited urban
politics as a means of establishing their place in the society and as a stepping stone
to upward mobility.
In New York and other cities, the Irish took command of the Democratic Party
and created an effective political machine. The Irish-led urban machines of the nine-
teenth century are often depicted as corrupt institutions that ruled cities through
voter fraud and by rewarding friends and coethnics with political spoils. This is
not an inaccurate picture. But party bosses and their organizations that relied on
patronage and graft had been prevalent in many large American cities long before
the Irish came upon the scene. Most important for Irish immigrants, the machines
served as key supports for individuals and families adapting to city life, seeking to
find their place in a trying and often hostile social environment. In return for loy-
alty at the polls, the machines helped Irish workers overcome the employment dis-
crimination they often faced by providing government jobs and by negotiating
contracts with Irish-owned enterprises. Police and fire departments in New York,
Chicago, and other cities, for example, became heavily Irish in makeup. The ma-
chines also provided money, housing, and food to destitute immigrants who had
no other means of support.
chapter 10 white ethnic americans 287
The urban political machines, then, were crafted to serve Irish interests and,
later, the interests of Poles, Italians, Jews, and other groups that followed them.
They were undeniably corrupt but the means by which they operated must be
placed into historical context. This was a time when governments did not pro-
vide aid to needy or sick families. A welfare state did not exist to give succor to
those who lacked the skills and financial resources to survive in a capitalist system.
Whether the means used by political bosses were corrupt, therefore, must be
weighed against their effectiveness in providing what struggling immigrants re-
quired. “The politician,” notes Marjorie Fallows, “was a pivotal figure in the com-
plex pattern of loyalties that marked the Irish neighborhoods—a realist who was
less concerned with abstract notions of public service and good government than
with the practical concerns of keeping himself in office by building up a patronage
system that would bind politician and constituent together in a web of mutual obli-
gation and loyalty” (1979:113).
How is it that largely uneducated peasants became so adept at capturing the
urban political system and utilizing it to their advantage? Some have attributed
Irish political success to their experience with English governmental institutions in
Ireland, making it logical that they would adroitly deal with the American system
based essentially on a similar legal structure (Levine, 1966). Moreover, the fact
that the Irish spoke the language of the dominant group upon arrival proved a
huge asset that other groups could not quickly utilize.2
Others explain the ability of the Irish to take command of urban machine poli-
tics as a natural outgrowth of a culture brought from Ireland. Glazer and
Moynihan (1970) point out that under the Irish Penal Laws, Catholics had almost
no legal rights. For redress, therefore, they had to look outside the legal system; that
is, to more personalized agents. This dependency was transferred to the urban set-
ting in America. One could not rely on the legitimate government but needed rather
to turn to informal authorities within the Irish American community. This is essen-
tially how city political machines, like the ill-famed Tammany Hall in New York,
functioned. Also, familiarity with the Roman Catholic Church provided the Irish
with a disciplined hierarchical order that could be used as an organizational model
(Dinnerstein et al., 2003).
The ability to relate to potential voters at a personal level served as another
valuable asset for Irish American political leaders. As the historian Carl Wittke has
written, “Irish wit and adaptability, a gift for oratory, a certain vivacity, and a
warm, human quality that made them the best of good fellows at all times—
especially in election campaigns—enabled the Irish to rise rapidly from ward heelers
to city bosses, and to municipal, state and federal officials of high distinction”
(1967:157). McCaffrey (1997) suggests that, in addition to such interpersonal skills
and knowledge of English, the Irish succeeded in American urban politics because
this was an institutional area not monopolized by the Anglo-Protestant elite, who
were more inclined to pursue business and the professions.
2
This point is disputed by Greeley (1981) who contends that many early Irish immigrants did not
speak English or didn’t speak it well. Moreover, Anglo Protestants also spoke English but obviously
this did not lead to their dominance of urban politics in the nineteenth century.
288 part ii ethnicity in the united states
By the 1960s, the power of most urban political machines led by Irish politi-
cians had faded. One notable exception was Chicago’s Democratic machine, led by
Richard J. Daley. Until his death in 1976, Daley, born and raised in a working class
Irish American neighborhood, governed the city as mayor in the style of an old-time
political boss, dispensing jobs, housing, and various urban projects in return for loy-
alty at the polls (Royko, 1971). As a consummate power broker, he cobbled to-
gether a diverse coalition of various ethnic groups and labor unions that enabled
him to hold the reins of political power for twenty-one years. His son, Richard
M. Daley, was elected Chicago’s mayor in 1989.
the highest political office. The 1960 campaign of the Democratic nominee, John F.
Kennedy, showed that anti-Catholic prejudice remained sufficiently widespread and
deep-seated to strongly influence a national election.
Kennedy was part of a wealthy Irish American family that had played a prominent
political role for several generations in Boston. Reminiscent of the Smith candidacy in
1928, Kennedy stated unequivocally his belief in the absolute separation of church
and state and offered his assurance to skeptical voters that on public matters he did
not speak for the Catholic Church, nor did the Church speak for him. Addressing a
meeting of Protestant ministers in Houston, Kennedy declared “I am not the Catholic
candidate for President, I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who hap-
pens also to be a Catholic” (quoted in Sorensen, 1965). But the issue persisted
throughout the campaign. As in 1928, bigots and extremists on the right continued
to issue warnings that the Pope would be governing America if Kennedy were elected.
Anti-Catholic tracts were distributed to millions of homes, along with radio and TV
attacks and countless mailings. Kennedy won by the barest of margins, despite the
fact that long-term Democrats who were Protestant abandoned the party in droves.3
Kennedy’s presidency seemed to put an end once and for all to any obstacles to
Catholics in their quest for the nation’s highest elective offices. Irish Catholics in
prominent political positions on the national political scene are now accepted as
commonplace and their ethnicity has virtually no bearing on their public images.
In recent years Irish Americans have served as Speaker of the House of
Representatives, as Senate Majority Leader, in numerous Cabinet positions, and as
justices of the Supreme Court.
THE CHURCH Aside from urban politics, the realm within which Irish Americans
make their strongest impression is the Catholic Church. As the first sizable Catholic
immigrant group and one that possessed that priceless asset, the English language, it
was perhaps only logical that the Irish would come to dominate the Church in
America. By the time other Catholic immigrant groups—Italians, Poles, Slavs—began
to arrive in America as part of the New Immigration, the Irish had already taken con-
trol of the Church hierarchy. This created discontent and resentment on the part of
other Catholic ethnics who often felt alienated from parishes and priests who did
not speak their language and had little understanding or sympathy for their unique
religious needs (Levine, 1966).
A vital component of Irish domination of the Catholic Church in America was
the establishment of a system of parochial schools at all educational levels. The de-
sire to educate Irish children in parochial schools was in large measure motivated
by the anti-Catholic discrimination that typified American public schools in the
mid-nineteenth century. For succeeding generations the Catholic school system
served not only as a bulwark against what were seen as dangerous Protestant influ-
ences, but as the key institution in building and sustaining an Irish American com-
munity amidst the surrounding Anglo majority.
3
In one of the closest presidential elections in American history, it was the efforts of Daley’s political
machine in Chicago that enabled Kennedy to win Illinois, thereby assuring him the necessary electoral
votes to win the presidency.
290 part ii ethnicity in the united states
As late as the 1970s, sociologist Andrew Greeley (1972) reported that 35 per-
cent of the clergy and 50 percent of the hierarchy were still Irish despite the fact
that Irish Americans were only 17 percent of all Catholics. In recent years the influ-
ence of the Irish in the American Catholic Church has begun to wane as Hispanics
have become its population base and parishes adapt to radically changed demo-
graphic conditions. Nonetheless, the residue of Irish dominance still permeates the
Church’s educational and administrative structures.
SOCIAL CLASS As already noted, most of the Irish who came during the great surge
of immigration in the mid-nineteenth century were poor and unskilled. Indeed, se-
vere impoverishment upon arrival in America is now one of the most noted char-
acteristics of this group’s immigrant legacy. The entrance of Irish Americans solidly
into the middle class, therefore, is a story of relative success. The movement from
deep poverty to middle-class status, however, took place over a period of several
generations.
In the latter decades of the nineteenth century, Irish Americans began to move
up the occupational ladder as they took advantage of the opportunities created by
expanding industrialization. Their social ascent was aided as well by the entrance of
new immigrant groups whose members began to replace them on the bottom rungs
of the class hierarchy. Still, Irish progress was largely incremental, moving within
the working class. If the immigrant generation worked in mainly unskilled jobs in
manufacturing and construction, their sons (the second generation) moved into oc-
cupations as artisans and craftsmen (Hershberg et al., 1979). The rise of labor un-
ions in many new industries, often working in collaboration with urban political
machines, was a major factor in facilitating Irish working-class upward mobility.
The Irish, along with other white ethnics, did not experience substantial move-
ment into the middle class until the post–World War II era with its booming econ-
omy. Like other working class white ethnics, hundreds of thousands of Irish
Americans took advantage of the GI Bill which enabled them to attend colleges
and universities largely at government expense and to purchase homes with govern-
ment guaranteed low-interest mortgages.
By the end of the twentieth century, Irish Americans as a collectivity ranked
somewhat lower than other white ethnic groups in median household income,
though the absolute differences among the groups were not great (Hacker, 1997).
Today, Irish Americans are a solid element of the American middle classes. As can
be seen in Table 10.1, on most dimensions of social class the Irish are at or above
the national average. It is of note that white ethnics generally have been upwardly
mobile in recent decades as indicated by their increasing net worth. Lisa Keister’s
research (2007) has shown that non-Hispanic whites raised in Catholic families
have accumulated relatively high wealth in their lifetimes, despite being raised in
comparatively disadvantaged families.
reception given them was, by present-day standards, based on racist beliefs and at-
titudes. To understand the virulence of these beliefs and behaviors, we again need
to consider the image of the Irish under their English masters in Ireland.
In the twentieth century, Irish stereotypes were modified to convey a less threat-
ening image. The Irish were seen as fun-loving, comic, and affable, but still as ex-
cessive drinkers and brawlers. The characterization of the hard drinking, fighting
Irish has survived even today as evidenced by media portrayals and in popular
culture.
THE IRISH AND WHITENESS It is important to consider how the Irish, the first among
many American immigrant groups who did not closely conform to the dominant
group, were viewed in terms of race and ethnicity. Their case demonstrates the
fluid nature of “race” and how the meaning of this concept can be altered. The
racial status of the Irish was indeterminate at the time of their entrance into
American society and for many decades afterward. In the labor hierarchy as well
as in all other realms of social and economic life they were not considered black,
but neither were they qualified to be members of the dominant white (that is,
Anglo-Protestant) group. Historian Noel Ignatiev writes that “Strong tendencies ex-
isted in antebellum America to consign the Irish, if not to the black race, then to an
intermediate race located socially between black and white” (1995:76).
David Roediger (2005) similarly describes the Irish of the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury as the first of those groups considered racially “in-between,” who only later
would be assigned to the “white race.” The Catholic and Jewish immigrants that
would follow them, as part of the New, or second wave of immigration were char-
acterized as “races” and would encounter the same question of classification: where
chapter 10 white ethnic americans 293
did they fit in the American racial configuration? The indeterminacy of the racial
status of members of those groups would remain an issue for several decades before
they acquired the full status of “whiteness.”
Roediger chronicles how the racial status of the Irish and other immigrant
groups was eventually decided as a result of government policies, Census designa-
tions, and employer preferences that ensured the distinction of white ethnics from
African Americans. But the Irish themselves—and later, other white ethnics—
shortly after entering the United States came to understand the need to distinguish
themselves from blacks. The new immigrants, Roediger explains, quickly became
attuned to the American racial system, and were made aware of white supremacy,
characteristically demonstrated by the Irish. They understood that as lowly as they
might be viewed and dealt with, they still might become naturalized citizens and
thus, at least symbolically, enter the white world. “Even at a low point of their ra-
cialization,” Roediger writes, “the new immigrants remained in-between, or ‘condi-
tionally white’” (2005:144).
Above all, it was in the world of work that the racial distinction between the
Irish and free blacks was ultimately determined. Ignatiev has written that in all
U.S. historical periods “the ‘white race’ has included only groups that did ‘white
man’s work’” (Ignatiev, 1995:112). Thus, in order to authenticate their “white”
status, Irish workers refused to work with blacks and monopolized occupations
that had previously been filled by free black laborers.
THE IRISH AND AFRICAN AMERICANS The historical relations between Irish
Americans and African Americans have commonly been characterized as harsh
and confrontational. This relationship stems from the fact that in the early decades
of immigration, blacks were frequently the chief competitors of the Irish for un-
skilled jobs and were often brought in by employers to depress the wage scale or
used as strikebreakers against striking Irish workers. More basically, only blacks
stood below them in the racial hierarchy. Labor violence, often pitting Irish against
black workers, was not uncommon.
In 1863, the tension between Irish and black workers erupted in one of the
most horrific riots in American history. The Draft Act of that year, intended to ex-
pand the Union Army in the ongoing Civil War, permitted men to evade military
service by buying the services of substitutes to take their place. The impoverished
Irish saw this as imposing an unfair burden on them. More important, they did
not support one of the key rationales of the war, an end to slavery, since this meant
the introduction of freed blacks into the labor market and, therefore, additional
competition for unskilled jobs. Anti-conscription riots broke out in many northern
cities, but the most violent and deadly occurred in New York, where for five days,
mobs roamed the streets, killing blacks and burning and pillaging. Although many
Irish fought for the Union in the Civil War, they did so, as Ignatiev (1995) explains,
primarily to establish their claim to citizenship and secure their place in the racial
hierarchy as “white.”
In recent decades, opposition to school busing for the purposes of racial inte-
gration has sometimes reflected an Irish American tinge. In Boston in the mid-
1970s, for example, vivid pictures were transmitted throughout the country of
white, largely Irish, rioters in South Boston screaming racial epithets at school buses
294 part ii ethnicity in the united states
carrying black children into what they saw as their territory. Opposition to affirma-
tive action has also been seen by some political observers as a major factor in ex-
plaining the movement of a large segment of the Irish American electorate in recent
decades to the Republican Party, abandoning what for more than 100 years had
been its traditional loyalty to the Democrats (McCaffrey, 1997).
Although the historical animosity of the Irish toward African Americans is well-
documented, the comparison of Irish Americans with other white ethnic groups on
racial issues in recent decades reveals little difference. In fact, Irish American atti-
tudes toward neighborhood and school integration in the early 1970s were more
favorable than among any other white ethnic group, with the exception of Jewish
Americans (Greeley, 1977).
Assimilation
“If one is convinced that the most appropriate goal for American culture is the ho-
mogenization of the various components of the total population into one relatively
WASP-like group, then the story of the American Irish is a great success.” That is
how Greeley (1972:256) has described the status of Irish Americans in the U.S. eth-
nic system. More than any white ethnic group, the Irish appear to have been most
thoroughly absorbed into the mainstream of American society.
found among the rosters of top corporate executives, in literature and the arts, and
on university faculties.
At the level of primary structural assimilation, only religion continues to serve
as an obstacle. Here, too, however, there is evidence to indicate a steady movement
in the direction of complete assimilation. Intermarriage for Irish Americans is higher
than for any other white ethnic group (Alba, 1976; Fallows, 1979). The resulting
ethnic mixture, Fallows writes, “has diluted the meaning of Irish American iden-
tity” (1979:149). This trend of increasing interethnic marriage is characteristic of
all white ethnic groups, including, as we will see in the next section, those of south-
ern and eastern European origin (Alba, 1990; Sherkat, 2004).
What should not be overlooked in the success of the Irish is the fact that they
made their initial entrance into American society early on, before the second great
wave of immigration, and that from the outset their English language skills and fa-
miliarity with an Anglo ruling class gave them an automatic head start, notwith-
standing the virulent prejudice and discrimination they encountered. As Greeley
has pointed out, “The American Irish had the shortest way to come of any of the
immigrant groups—for all the impoverishment of the Famine, the Atlantic crossing,
and the early years in the slums” (1972:258).
Another factor that accelerated the structural assimilation of Irish Catholics—
and of white ethnics in general—was the termination in the 1920s of large-scale im-
migration from traditionally Catholic countries in Europe. This gave white ethnic
groups time to absorb American ways without the need to attend to a constant
flow of new immigrants clinging to the old culture. In addition, the cessation of
large-scale European immigration squelched the concerns of Protestant Americans
who feared being overwhelmed by non-Anglo immigrants.
The important question regarding Irish assimilation is whether other white eth-
nic groups, specifically those of the second great immigration wave of the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries, are following in their path. As we will see in
the next section, all indications are that they are, though not necessarily in the
same form or at the same pace.
Because of its size and because it represents in many ways the archetypal white eth-
nic experience, we will focus much of the following discussion on the Italian
American population.
IMMIGRATION Beginning in the 1880s, both the origins and destinations of Italian
emigrants changed. With the depletion of coffee plantations in Brazil and political
turmoil in Argentina, most Italians now found the United States more attractive.
And whereas the northern Italian provinces had previously supplied most of the im-
migrants, southern Italy now became the major region of out-migration. This
change in regional origin fundamentally altered the class and cultural character of
the Italian population in the United States. By comparison with the more prosper-
ous and literate immigrants from the North, those from the South were poor and
uneducated. Further, whereas the northerners had been mostly artisans, shop-
keepers, and professionals, those from the South were mainly agricultural
peasants.
Southern Italy had historically been an impoverished, backward area, subjected
to constant economic and political exploitation by the region’s ruling groups; but
unusually severe conditions were created in the latter nineteenth century.
Depressed wages, little or no opportunity to improve a low agricultural output, lit-
tle industrialization, poor health conditions, neglect by the central Italian govern-
ment, and heavy indirect taxation all served to create a strong impetus for
emigration. These push factors, combined with the pull of a burgeoning American
industrialism calling for unskilled labor, resulted in a veritable exodus of southern
Italian peasants. Between 1880 and 1915, 4 million Italians went to the United
States, half of them in the single decade from 1900 to 1910. Between 80 and 90
percent were from the area of southern Italy known to Italians as the
Mezzogiorno, and about one-quarter of these were from Sicily (Foerster, 1919;
Gambino, 1975; Lopreato, 1970; U.S. Census Bureau, 1975).
One extremely important characteristic of Italian immigrants of this time was
that, unlike earlier Irish immigrants, most who went to the United States did not
expect to stay permanently. These were primarily men unaccompanied by their
families, intent on earning money to purchase land after returning to their native
villages. Many did go back. In fact no other sizable immigrant group displayed
such a high rate of return migration. Between 1908 and 1914, almost one-third of
those who arrived from Italy eventually returned or migrated to another society.
Between 1915 and 1920, 56.6 returned and between 1925 and 1937, 40 percent
(Learsi, 1954). Most Greek immigrants during this period also came with intentions
of returning after acquiring sufficient savings to establish themselves in a comfort-
able life in their home villages (Lopata, 1976).
chapter 10 white ethnic americans 297
SETTLEMENT Most Italians, like the majority of all immigrants of the New
Immigration, settled in cities. By 1920, three-quarters of America’s foreign-born
population were urban dwellers, including almost 90 percent of Russians, 85 per-
cent of Italians and Poles, and 80 percent of Hungarians (Ward, 1971). The attrac-
tion of the cities was two-fold. Most important, it was here that the great masses of
low-paid unskilled laborers were needed. Secondly, most of the immigrants entered
in a chain migration process, joining friends and relatives who had preceded them
to these areas.
Italian immigrants in the cities tended to settle in depressed areas, inhabiting
run-down tenements that had been vacated by earlier ethnic groups such as the
Irish. The cluster of Italians in these areas was partially the result of simple eco-
nomic necessity; such housing was available and affordable. However, as with
other groups of the New Immigration, the creation of ethnic concentrations in
New York and other cities was also the product of the natural attraction of immi-
grants to areas inhabited by those from their regions in Italy who had preceded
them to the United States. Italian immigration was network driven, in which those
from one village gravitated to locations where previous emigrants from the village
had settled. There was little identity with the Italian nation per se. Rather, immi-
grants identified with the province from which they came or simply their village.
As a result, Italian sections of American cities were internally subdivided into
“Little Calabrias,” “Little Sicilys,” and the like, and neighborhoods were often set-
tled by those from a common village or town in the province (Vecoli, 1964).
Settlement patterns were similar even outside the large cities (LaGumina, 1988).
URBAN ADJUSTMENT Because cities like New York were at this time establishing
their industrial infrastructures—roads, rail lines, subways, factories, housing—
opportunities abounded for unskilled labor. It was there that these immigrants,
like the Irish before them, found their occupational niches. Italians made up three-
quarters of the building laborers in New York City at the turn of the century and
almost the entire labor force constructing the city’s subway system (Glazer and
Moynihan, 1970).
Italian Americans remain more solidly working class than Jews, Irish, and sev-
eral other white ethnic groups. Moreover, some have argued that Italian American
mobility is a reflection not so much of the group’s progress per se as of a change in
the society’s occupational structure. As more white-collar and professional jobs
have been created, more Italian Americans (and other white ethnics as well) have
filled them (Alba, 1985; Gallo, 1974). But the extent of their mobility is nonetheless
quite extraordinary considering how relatively ill equipped they were at the time of
their arrival to succeed in the American economic system.
In sum, the class position of white ethnics is on most measures at or above the
national average. Moreover, for the third and later generations, parity with the so-
ciety’s core ethnic group, northwestern Europeans, has nearly been reached (Alba,
1985, 1995). Overall, then, the socioeconomic differentials between various Euro-
American groups seem to be shrinking.
±±
±
Table 10.3 ±±± Religious Makeup of the U.S. Congress, 2006
STATE AND LOCAL POLITICS Having arrived after the Irish had secured their place in
the urban power structure, groups of the New Immigration began their movement
into state and local politics only after World War II. Much of their success depended
on the size of the white ethnic population in any particular city or state. Italian
Americans, for example, attained substantial power in states and communities of
the Northeast, where they constituted a large proportion of the electorate
(Dinnerstein et al., 2003; LaGumina, 1988). Similarly, in cities and states of the
Midwest, with large eastern European communities, white ethnics in the 1950s and
1960s commonly occupied high political offices (Lopata, 1976; Marger, 1974).
THE CORPORATE WORLD In the past, the number of Italian Americans in the execu-
tive suites of America’s largest corporations had been well below their proportion
of the general population. A study of Chicago’s largest corporations, for instance,
revealed that although Italians in the 1970s made up almost 5 percent of the city’s
population, they made up less than 2 percent of these corporations’ directors and 3
percent of their officers (Barta, 1979). In New Haven, Connecticut, Wolfinger
(1966) found that although Italians in 1959 made up 31 percent of the registered
voters and held 34 percent of major political offices, they made up only 4 percent
of the city’s economic elite.
Similar patterns have been evident for other white ethnics. In the past, few en-
tered into the top ranks of economic power. For example, in the previously cited
study of Chicago’s top corporations, Poles, that city’s largest white ethnic group,
were shown to be even more severely underrepresented than Italians. Although they
made up almost 7 percent of the city’s population, they made up only 0.3 percent of
these corporations’ directors and 0.7 percent of their top officers. Numerous studies
have shown the historically consistent domination of the American business elite by
those of northwestern European and Protestant origins (Baltzell, 1991; Davidson et
al., 1995; Marger, 1974; Mills, 1956; Newcomer, 1955). Sociologist Suzanne Keller
(1953), for example, found that 89 percent of top business leaders in 1900 and 85
percent in 1950 were Protestants, most of British descent; 7 percent in each year
were Catholics; and 3 and 5 percent, respectively, were Jews. By the 1970s, little had
changed—Catholics made up 14 percent and Jews 6 percent of the corporate elite
chapter 10 white ethnic americans 301
(Burck, 1976). Alba and Moore in 1982 found a continuation of Anglo dominance of
economic power positions. However, Anglo overrepresentation in power elites (in-
cluding those of the corporate world) now seems in decline, and Catholics are steadily
moving toward parity (Christopher, 1989; Davidson et al., 1995).
ITALIAN AMERICANS: IMAGES AND ATTITUDES Italians suffered the usual antagonisms
directed at Catholics generally, but anti-Italian feelings ran especially high as part
of the newly inspired nativism and jingoism that arose in response to the new im-
migrants of the late nineteenth century. Indeed, with the arrival of hundreds of
thousands of southern Italian peasants, Italians now replaced the Irish as the chief
target group of the country’s well-worn anti-Catholicism.
Much of the prejudice and discrimination leveled at white ethnics was founded
on racist ideologies. The early years of the twentieth century were a time when
ideas of Social Darwinism prevailed among scholars and policy makers alike, and
new racial theories were widely espoused and endorsed. Those groups composing
the New Immigration—overwhelmingly Catholics and Jews—were therefore de-
scribed in racial terms; that is, as morally and even physiologically inferior to
Americans of northwestern European origin. The new immigrants were perceived
not simply as different from those who had preceded them but as threatening to
the very social and biological fabric of the society (Higham, 1963). Italians were
seen as the most degraded of all the entering groups.
The poor and illiterate peasants from southern Italy were received quite differ-
ently from the earlier northern Italian immigrants. Whereas the latter had been seen
as honest, thrifty, law abiding, and generally “molto simpatici to the American
character,” the southern Italians were viewed as degenerate, ignorant, lazy, dirty,
destitute, violent, superstitious, and criminally oriented (Train, 1912, cited in
Moquin and Van Doren, 1974). Northern Italians, too, seemed to share the preva-
lent American view of their southern counterparts as a generally repugnant people
(Gambino, 1975). One journalist of the time put the matter quite bluntly: “What
shall we do with the ‘dago’?” Note his description of the Italian as almost animal-
istic in nature:
302 part ii ethnicity in the united states
This “dago,” it seems, not only herds, but fights. The knife with which he cuts his
bread he also uses to lop off another “dago’s” finger or ear, or to slash another’s cheek.
He quarrels over his meals; and his game, whatever it is, which he plays with pennies
after his meal is over, is carried on knife at hand. More even than this, he sleeps in
herds; and if a “dago” in his sleep rolls up against another “dago,” the two whip out
their knives and settle it there and then; and except a grunt at being disturbed, perhaps,
no notice is taken by the twenty or fifty other “dagoes” in the apartment. He is quite as
familiar with the sight of human blood as with the sight of the food he eats. (Train,
1912, cited in Moquin and Van Doren, 1974:261)
The most serious elements in the negative image of Italians in America con-
cerned their “criminal nature” and the existence of a widespread Italian criminal
community, known as the Mafia, or the Black Hand. Few accounts of Italian immi-
grants during the late nineteenth century neglected the presumed criminal organiza-
tions among them. By the 1890s the image of the criminally prone Italians and their
association with the Mafia was well established (LaRuffa, 1982).
The strong anti-Catholic sentiments of a large segment of the American popu-
lace as well as government leaders aroused fear of Italian immigrants and not infre-
quently incited hostile actions against them. Anti-Italian antagonism was also
partially a response of established workers, who saw the immigrants as a cheap la-
bor force and thereby a threat to their jobs. Killings and lynchings of Italians,
mostly in the South but in other regions as well, were numerous between 1890
and 1915. The most serious of these incidents occurred in New Orleans in 1891.
Following the murder of the city’s police superintendent, it was assumed that
Sicilian immigrants were responsible, and hundreds of Italians were arrested. Nine
were subsequently brought to trial, but none was found guilty. Anti-Italian senti-
ment was so feverish, however, that eleven of the suspects were taken from their
jail cells by a mob and murdered; officials made no attempt to intervene.
Afterward, local newspapers and business leaders expressed approval of the action
(Gambino, 1977; Higham, 1963; Nelli, 1970).
Another especially notorious incident occurred in 1927. This was the infamous
trial of Sacco and Vanzetti. Two Italian immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti, were implicated in an armed robbery in Braintree, Massachusetts.
Numerous witnesses attested to their lack of involvement in the crime, but despite
the dubious evidence against them, they were found guilty. After numerous appeals,
they were executed in 1927. The case created a storm of protest among civil rights
groups throughout the country and remained a cause célèbre for many decades af-
terward. It emerged not only as an ethnic controversy, but also as an issue of sym-
bolic class warfare. Those defending the two men’s innocence saw their trial as a
conflict between the oppressed working classes and the wealthy WASP elite
(Baltzell, 1964).
The guilt or innocence of Sacco and Vanzetti is still debated, but historians gen-
erally agree that their trial was considerably biased and that the judicial process was
seriously abused. Indeed, the perversion of justice in the case was finally acknowl-
edged in 1977 when the state of Massachusetts officially proclaimed the trial unfair.
In addition to the strong anti-immigrant sentiments of the time, the fact that the
two defendants were avowed anarchists undoubtedly contributed heavily to their
conviction. This was the era of the Red Scare, when government officials fanatically
chapter 10 white ethnic americans 303
denounced and harassed union and socialist activities, in which Italians often took
part. To many, Sacco and Vanzetti represented an affirmation of the perceptions
held by much of the American public that Italian Americans were radical, conspira-
torial, and criminal. These perceptions seriously colored the two men’s arrest, trial,
conviction, and finally, execution (LaRuffa, 1982).
The Sacco and Vanzetti case had an enormous and lasting effect on Italian
Americans, and for many years it influenced their view of the state and the judicial
process. As Gambino has put it, “The outcome of the affair was simply another
confirmation of the ancient belief of the Italian immigrants that justice, a very im-
portant part of their value system, had little to do with the laws and institutions of
the state” (1975:122).
ENDURING ITALIAN AMERICAN STEREOTYPES Although they are rarely expressed to-
day as virulently and hostilely as they were during the period of immigration,
many of the early Italian American images remain dynamic elements of American
ethnic mythology (Alba and Abdel-Hady, 2005). Few would be hard put to de-
scribe the “typical” Italian American. Gambino observed the consistency of re-
sponses of non-Italians to his query about the Italian American image: “the
Mafia; pizza and other food; hard hats; blue collar; emotional, jealous people;
dusky, sexy girls; overweight mammas; frightening, rough, tough men; pop singers;
law and order; pastel-colored houses; racists; nice, quiet people” (1975:352). These
stereotypes are reinforced by media depictions, especially television and films, and
are frequently used in marketing products, despite the fact that they do not reflect
the reality of contemporary Italian American life (Gambino, 1998; Lichter and
Lichter, 1982; Mitrano and Mitrano, 1996).
The most enduring negative image Italian Americans have had to deal with
concerns the connection to organized crime. Because the Mafia is synonymous
with organized crime and Italian Americans are identified with the Mafia, the logic,
to many, becomes simple: “Italians = organized crime” (Iorizzo and Mondello,
1980). Although few deny the considerable involvement of some Italian Americans
with organized crime, Italians have held no monopoly on such activities. As many
have explained, crime has been a traditional avenue of upward mobility for mem-
bers of most ethnic groups in American society (Albini, 1971; Bell, 1962; Ianni,
1974). Italian domination of organized crime did not emerge until the late 1920s,
when Prohibition made trafficking in liquor profitable. Before that time, much of
organized crime was controlled by the Irish. As illicit drugs replaced liquor as the
major underworld-supplied item, Italian organized crime turned to more legitimate
business areas, leaving the drug traffic to newer urban ethnic groups like blacks,
Puerto Ricans, and Cubans (Cook, 1971; Ianni, 1974).
Even though Italians did not introduce organized crime to the United States and
never were more than a tiny percentage of Italian Americans ever engaged in such
activities, the connection of Italian Americans with crime families remains steadfast
in the public imagery. Movies and television have been important purveyors of this
stereotype (Carilli, 1998; Cortés, 1994). Dating from the 1930s, the association of
Italians and organized crime has remained a common Hollywood theme. Movies
such as The Godfather, Married to the Mob, and GoodFellas, and television pro-
grams such as The Sopranos are reflective of this genre. A survey in 2000
304 part ii ethnicity in the united states
PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION TODAY Surveys have regularly recorded the periodic
changes in prejudice toward blacks, Jews, Latinos, and Asians. By contrast, there
has been little study of shifting public attitudes toward Italian Americans. Beyond
the persistence of certain negative stereotypes, what little evidence exists indicates a
significant decline in prejudice and discrimination against Italian Americans and
other white ethnics in recent decades. Cases of rejection in occupation and neigh-
borhoods on the basis of ethnicity, however, were still evident well into the
1950s. In 1960, for instance, it was discovered that homeowners in the exclusive
Detroit suburb of Grosse Pointe had maintained a rigid point system for screening
potential home buyers, based on personal traits such as accent, name, swarthiness,
and especially ethnicity (Detroit News, 1990; Time, 1960). Out of 100 points, Jews
were required to score a minimum of 85, Italians 75, Greeks 65, and Poles 55.
Blacks and Asians did not count at all!
Antidiscriminatory legislation has made such cases today uncommon, but prej-
udice and discrimination in subtle forms fueled by unrelenting stereotypes is not en-
tirely something of the distant past for Italian Americans (Crispino, 1980;
LaGumina, 1996). For example, a recent study (Alba and Abdel-Hady, 2005)
looked at the degree to which Italian Americans have been afforded entry into the
American intellectual elite, as indicated by their election to the American Academy
of Arts and Sciences, composed of the most honored people in the academic, artis-
tic, and scientific worlds. It found that Italian Americans were noticeably underrep-
resented and tentatively concluded that a process of ethnic exclusion, driven by tra-
ditional demeaning Italian American stereotypes, might account for this.
at or above the average for the society as a whole. Most important, they have be-
gun to enter positions of power within most institutional realms, though slowly
and still in only small numbers at the top echelons.
Within the context of personal social settings (that is, at the primary group
level), the pace and degree of structural assimilation for Italian Americans is related
to social class and generation. With upward mobility, close friendships are founded
on common class interests and lifestyles, not ethnic or kinship ties (Alba, 1994;
Crispino, 1980; Gans, 1982; Roche, 1982).
A key indicator of primary structural assimilation is residential integration.
Historians and sociologists have often noted the long-lasting cohesiveness and
stability of Italian American neighborhoods (Glazer and Moynihan, 1970;
LaRuffa, 1988). But this too appears to be mostly a class-related phenomenon,
rather than something uniquely Italian American. Working-class people are gen-
erally more stable residentially primarily because their opportunities for spatial
mobility are more limited than those of middle-class people. Therefore, because
most first- and second-generation Italian Americans were working class, they
were inclined to remain in their original central-city neighborhoods. With mobil-
ity into the middle class, however, there appears to be as much propensity
among Italian Americans as among other ethnic groups to leave the ethnic neigh-
borhood for the more heterogeneous suburbs (Alba, 1995; Crispino, 1980; Gans,
1982).
Moreover, the residential solidarity of Italian Americans has often been exag-
gerated. Studies have shown that in Chicago and Philadelphia, for example,
Italians from the outset moved frequently from their original areas of settle-
ment, regardless of their social class. The “Little Italys” of various cities were in
any case apparently never as homogeneous as has commonly been assumed
(Hershberg et al., 1979; Lopreato, 1970; Nelli, 1970). At an early point of the
New Immigration, some groups, including Italians, were highly segregated in
northern cities, to be sure. But this pattern changed quickly and radically in the
early years of the twentieth century (Lieberson, 1980). Today, even where Italian
American ethnic communities are evident, their homogeneity is evaporating. In the
greater New York region, Alba found that “The Italians, some of whose ethnic
communities are still conspicuous, reside mostly in non-ethnic areas, and their
continuing suburbanization is eroding the most ethnic Italian neighborhoods”
(1995:12).
SYMBOLIC ETHNICITY In any case, the form of ethnicity for current and future gen-
erations of Italian Americans and other white ethnic groups in the United States
will not be the same as it was for their parents or grandparents. Although they
will probably continue to assert an ethnic identity and retain a few major elements
of the ethnic culture, their acknowledgment of ethnicity will be largely expressive
rather than instrumental. Gans (1979) has suggested the idea of symbolic ethnicity
to describe the continued and at times even accentuated expression of ethnicity
among those of the third and fourth generations. Ethnicity, he explains, becomes
a matter of voluntary personal identity, but it is largely devoid of vitality as a de-
terminant of social behavior. It is, as Richard Lambert (1981) has put it, vestigial,
something of the past that people can identify with but that has a very limited ef-
fect on their daily lives.5
Distinctive and substantial white ethnic communities that once made up much
of the urban landscape of cities like New York, Chicago, and Boston are fast disap-
pearing. For most white ethnics, upward mobility continues to impel residential
dispersion to heterogeneous suburbs which, in turn, seems to lead irreversibly to a
decline of ethnic awareness and identity. For these groups, ethnicity appears des-
tined to function largely in a symbolic fashion.
4
Gans, who first suggested the straight-line theory, has suggested that it be renamed “bumpy-line the-
ory” to account for the unexpected movements that the assimilation process may take, sometimes even
reverting to a more expressive ethnic identity. The direction of the movement—toward more thorough
assimilation—does not change, however (Gans, 1992).
5
For a rejoinder to Gans’s thesis, particularly as it applies to Italian Americans, see Vecoli, 1996.
308 part ii ethnicity in the united states
proclaiming “I’m Polish and proud” or “Kiss me, I’m Irish,” third- and fourth-
generation whites seemed to develop a newfound ethnic consciousness. This “new
ethnicity,” as it was called, convinced some social observers that continuing ethnic-
ity was more than symbolic.
By the late 1970s, however, the resurgence of ethnic identity and the promi-
nence of ethnic-related issues among whites had waned considerably. Given the
movement toward assimilation of several generations, the ethnic revival was, as
Steinberg (1989) contends, “doomed from the outset.” Indeed, Alba suggests that
ethnicity could be celebrated during the 1970s “precisely because assimilation had
proceeded far enough that ethnicity no longer seemed so threatening and divisive”
(1990:96).
Its transitory nature also seemed to indicate that the new ethnicity was more a
political movement—specifically, a working-class political movement—than a re-
vival of ethnic cultures and communities. Because social class has rarely served in
the United States as an effective political mobilizing force, ethnicity has often func-
tioned in that role. This is in large measure what occurred in the late 1960s and
early 1970s in cities where white working-class people—mostly southern and east-
ern European ethnics—still resided in significant numbers (Gans, 1974, 1979). As
they perceived the economic and political concessions gained by African
Americans and other minorities from the federal government and other societal in-
stitutions, working-class white ethnics responded with a countermovement, seeking
to enhance and protect their interests—jobs, neighborhoods, schools, and so forth.
Hence, what were in actuality class issues and conflicts were manifested and inter-
preted as ethnic ones.
identity. Not only can they choose their ethnic affiliation, but they can choose
whether to emphasize ethnicity in their lives at all. “Ethnicity,” she writes, “is in-
creasingly a matter of personal preference” (1990:89). Given the strong rate of in-
termarriage among white ethnics, each generation’s ethnic background becomes
more complex and difficult to clearly define. Individuals—if they think of ethnicity
at all—therefore begin to identify themselves in ethnic terms that reflect only a part
of what may be their very elaborate ethnic heritage. People tend to stress only one
element of their complex ethnic ancestry for any number of reasons. They may
know more about one parent’s family history than another, or their surname or
physical characteristics may conform to stereotypical images of the chosen group,
or they may perceive certain of their ancestral lines as more socially desirable than
others (Waters, 1990). In any case, for white ethnics, ethnicity is increasingly
voluntary.
Yet the fact remains that most Euro-Americans do choose and continue to affil-
iate with some ethnic group. Thus ethnic identity, which may be in large part uncer-
tain or even fictive, continues to play a symbolic function for many whites however
little bearing it has on their social behavior or economic standing. They may care-
fully pick and choose their ethnic affiliation, but, as Waters explains, “It is clear
that for most of them ethnicity is not a very big part of their lives” (1990:89).
Ethnicity becomes mostly something that provides a feeling of community as well
as an identification that may set one off as unique and interesting. It has no impact
on vital life decisions like where to live, whom to associate with, or even whom to
marry.
The tendency for individuals to make choices about their ethnic identity dem-
onstrates that ethnicity is not fixed; it is fluid and can change in significance within
one’s lifetime or from one generation to the next.
In considering these “ethnic options,” as Waters refers to them, it is important
to understand that the kind of freedom to select the content and strength of one’s
ethnic identity is not the same for racial-ethnic groups. Whereas for Euro-
Americans the question, “What are you?” can be answered as the individual
chooses, for members of racial-ethnic groups the answer has already been given by
out-group members. African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and
many Latinos do not, therefore, enjoy the same kind of options in the realm of eth-
nicity. “The reality,” notes Waters, “is that white ethnics have a lot more choice and
room for maneuver than they themselves think they do. The situation is very differ-
ent for members of racial minorities, whose lives are strongly influenced by their
race or national origin regardless of how much they may choose not to identify
themselves in ethnic or racial terms” (1990:157). Failure on the part of Euro-
Americans to acknowledge that difference often leads to their belief that ethnicity
need play no greater role for African Americans or Hispanic Americans or Asian
Americans if they so choose. This creates misconceptions about the continuing
strength of ethnicity and its impact on the lives of members of racial-ethnic groups.
SUMMARY
Starting in the 1830s, Irish Americans were the first non-Protestant immigrants to
enter American society in large numbers. They were almost all poor and unskilled
310 part ii ethnicity in the united states
at the time of their entrance and experienced severe prejudice and discrimination,
primarily as a result of their Catholic faith. Nativism of the early and mid-
nineteenth century was mostly an anti-Catholic movement and the Irish, as a result,
became its primary targets.
The Irish used the urban political machine and the Catholic Church as the two
institutions to establish their place in America. No other group, before or after, so
effectively used the local political system to advance their cause as the Irish. The
Catholic Church in America was basically shaped and led overwhelmingly by Irish
Americans.
Irish Americans have assimilated more completely than any other white ethnic
group. Cultural assimilation occurred relatively quickly and structural assimilation
has occurred over several generations. Today, aside from religion, the Irish are
hardly distinguishable from the dominant Anglo group.
Italian Americans are representative generally of Euro-American ethnic groups
that derive from the classic (or new) immigration period from the late nineteenth
to the early twentieth centuries. Entering the society at the bottom of the class hier-
archy, Italian Americans by the third generation had displayed significant upward
mobility. Today they are at or above the national average in income, occupation,
and education, and they have begun to enter positions of political and economic
power.
Beginning with large-scale immigration in the late nineteenth century, Italians in
the United States were the objects of prejudice and discrimination, sometimes of a
particularly virulent nature. Perhaps the most persistent negative stereotype that
Italian Americans have had to deal with involves their identification with organized
crime.
Italian Americans today display a relatively high level of cultural assimilation, and
although it is less thorough and rapid, structural assimilation is also occurring
steadily. As this process continues, for Italian Americans as for other white ethnic
groups, ethnicity is increasingly reduced to a symbolic function and becomes less a
determinant of social behavior. As ethnic boundaries weaken, a new, Euro-American
ethnic group may be emerging.
Suggested Readings
Alba, Richard D. 1990. Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America. New
Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. Examines the waning strength of ethnic identity
among Euro-Americans, suggesting that assimilation has reduced ethnicity for these
groups to a largely symbolic form.
Baily, Samuel L. 1999. Immigrants in the Lands of Promise: Italians in Buenos Aires and
New York City, 1870–1914. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. An intriguing com-
parison of Italian immigrants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in their
two major destination cities.
Gambino, Richard. 1975. Blood of My Blood: The Dilemma of the Italian-Americans.
Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor. Describes the culture and social institutions of Italian
Americans.
Gans, Herbert J. 1982. The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian
Americans. Updated and expanded ed. New York: Free Press. A classic work that is re-
quired reading not only for its examination of the Italian American experience, but also
chapter 10 white ethnic americans 311
for its presentation of issues regarding the retention of ethnic identity and the intersec-
tions of ethnicity and social class.
Lopata, Helena Znaniecki. 1976. Polish Americans: Status Competition in an Ethnic
Community. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. A sociological analysis of a Euro-
American ethnic group that, like Italian Americans, immigrated mostly in the late nine-
teenth and early twentieth centuries.
McCaffrey, Lawrence J. 1997. The Irish Catholic Diaspora in America. Washington, D.C.:
Catholic University of America Press. A succinct history of Irish immigration, settlement,
and eventual assimilation in America.
Rieder, Jonathan. 1985. Canarsie: The Jews and Italians of Brooklyn against Liberalism.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. An ethnographic study of the response of a
white ethnic community, largely Italian and Jewish, to the political and economic inroads
of blacks.
Roediger, David R. 2005. Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became
White. New York: Basic Books. Describes the social, economic, and political processes
that brought the Irish and southern and eastern European immigrants, viewed as inferior
races at the time of their entrance, into the white majority.
Waters, Mary. 1993. Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley: University
of California Press. Using census data as well as in-depth interviews, the author reveals
how Euro-Americans choose their ethnic identities.
Yans-McLaughlin, Virginia. 1982. Family and Community: Italian Immigrants in Buffalo,
1880–1930. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press. Presents a vivid description of the
family as the key institution of Italian immigrants in their adaptation to American society.
11 Jewish Americans
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In many ways, Jewish Americans are a unique case among American ethnic groups.
As people who for centuries had suffered persecution and dislocation in almost all
European societies, Jews found the United States a haven that provided for the first
time a social atmosphere in which Jewish identity could be retained without fear of
official repression and from which there was no need to contemplate flight. Jews in
America also found their economic circumstances relatively unconstrained, in sharp
contrast to the situation they had faced in Europe. So well nurtured were the oppor-
tunities offered them that Jews today represent the prototypical American ethnic
success story. In only two generations, Jewish Americans collectively accomplished
a truly phenomenal upward mobility that makes theirs a compulsory case for the
study of ethnic relations.
Unlike other American ethnic groups, Jews do not identify with a common
homeland, having come from many nations. The broad geographical native region
of the majority of Jewish Americans, however, is the same—eastern Europe—and a
common language, Yiddish (a combination of mostly German and Hebrew ele-
ments), supersedes most national differences. Jews in the United States are best
seen as an ethnic group: they clearly display a unique cultural heritage, a conscious-
ness of community, and a group identity. Regardless of their degree of commitment
to Jewish religious practices and beliefs (many are nonbelievers), and regardless of
their national origins, Jews recognize themselves as a people with common roots.1
They are seen in that fashion, as well, by the larger society.
That Jewish Americans lack a common homeland does not in itself constitute a
significant difference from many white ethnic groups in the United States. In most
1
A national survey in 1990 found that most Jewish Americans define their Jewish identity in ethnic or
cultural, not religious, terms. In fact, the survey found a low level of positive support for the religious
group concept. Thus most Jewish Americans consider themselves Jews primarily as members of an eth-
nic group (Kosmin et al., 1991).
312
chapter 11 jewish americans 313
cases, immigrants from southern and eastern Europe arrived with little national
consciousness; regional or village boundaries generally defined their sense of peo-
plehood. Only in the United States, as a means of social adjustment and in response
to out-group recognition, did they adopt a national identity.
Immigration Patterns
Jewish immigration to America has a lengthy history. In fact, a few Jews supposedly
accompanied Columbus on his first voyage. Three fairly distinct periods of Jewish
immigration can be identified.
SEPHARDIC JEWS The earliest immigrants to the United States included Sephardic
Jews, whose ancestors were Spaniards and Portuguese. When the Jews were ex-
pelled from Spain and Portugal in the late fifteenth century, many migrated to
England, Holland, Brazil, and the Caribbean islands. The first American Jews
came from all these locations and even from the Iberian peninsula (Glazer, 1957).
The Sephardim are to be distinguished from the Ashkenazic Jews of central and
eastern Europe, who constituted almost all Jewish immigration into the United
States after the colonial period.
GERMAN JEWS A second and more sizable Jewish immigration to the United States
was made up of German Jews who came with the great wave of other German im-
migrants during the 1840s and 1850s. These Jews were socially and economically
several notches below the earlier Sephardic Jews, who by that time were relatively
prosperous and respected. Although most were merchants, their trade was at a level
considerably less significant than that of their Sephardic predecessors. Many, in
fact, were peddlers who moved westward with the country’s expansion. Indeed, at
the middle of the nineteenth century, most of America’s 20,000 itinerant traders
314 part ii ethnicity in the united states
were German Jews (Lipset and Raab, 1995). Dispersing widely to all parts of the
country, German Jews settled in both large cities and small towns. Where they set-
tled they commonly established clothing and dry goods or general stores, the ves-
tiges of which are seen today throughout the United States (Brockman, 2001;
Pressley, 1999). A few developed into large national chains. Many familiar depart-
ment store names, including Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, and
Neiman-Marcus, stem from German-Jewish founding families.
Collectively, the German Jews displayed rapid and substantial upward mobil-
ity; by the 1880s, most were middle-class entrepreneurs. Among the most successful
of them emerged a small, aristocratic upper class which intermingled socially with
the Gentile upper class and even intermarried among them (Baltzell, 1958, 1964).
By the turn of the century, German Jews were so thoroughly assimilated that they
had lost much sense of ethnic identity. Only their religious affiliation distinguished
them from other Americans (Herberg, 1960).
EAST EUROPEAN JEWS By 1880 Jews were still only a tiny fraction of the American
population, numbering no more than 250,000. In the next three-and-a-half decades,
however, 2 million Jews would come to the United States. It is primarily from this
wave of immigration that the contemporary Jewish American population derives.
Jews coming to the United States after 1880 differed markedly from those who
had settled earlier. To begin with, most were not from Germany but from eastern
Europe, particularly Russia and Russian-occupied Poland. One of the key motivat-
ing factors behind the mass emigration of Jews from Russia was the severe oppres-
sion they were subjected to under tsarist policies. Following the assassination of
Tsar Alexander II in 1881, bloody pogroms were sanctioned, and onerous restric-
tions were placed on Jews in all areas of social and economic life. America, there-
fore, was seen not only as a destination of economic opportunities, but also as a
political haven, a society that promised liberation and acceptance (Biale, 1998).
Unlike the Italian emigration, which at first comprised mainly single men expecting
to return, the Jewish emigration from Russia was a movement of family units who
harbored few thoughts of returning to their homeland.
The East European Jews also differed from earlier immigrant Jews in their class
origins: They were poorer and less educated. Jewish life in eastern Europe had been
confined to all-Jewish villages and towns; as a result, these immigrants were ex-
tremely provincial in contrast to the relatively urbane and worldly German Jews.
Striking differences between the two groups also lay in their attitudes toward reli-
gion. The East Europeans came with a version of Judaism far more traditional than
the modernized and Americanized Reform Judaism of the Germans. To the German
Jews, Judaism was simply a faith that was not to interfere with assimilation into the
core American culture and society. To the East Europeans, coming from the shtetl,
or Jewish village, where religion governed all aspects of life, Judaism was an entire
social world. As Glazer and Moynihan explain, “In practice, tone, and theology,
the Reform Judaism of the German Jews diverged from the Orthodoxy of the immi-
grants as much as the beliefs and practices of Southern Baptists differ from those of
New England Unitarians” (1970:130).
In addition to differences in class and religious practice, East European Jews
did not disperse geographically as had the earlier German Jewish immigrants.
chapter 11 jewish americans 315
Instead, they remained in a few large cities, especially New York, where they were
concentrated in lower-class ghettos. In this environment, the East European Jews,
like the Italian immigrants of that time, experienced severely harsh conditions of
work and residence. Many labored in garment factories, commonly called sweat-
shops, where they worked long hours for scant salaries. In 1911 one-third of
Jewish heads of household earned less than $400 a year; and in 1914 the average
hourly wage of male clothing workers was about 35 cents. Even by 1930 garment
workers were still earning an average of only $24.51 a week—less than the pay of
workers in stockyards and slaughterhouses (Howe, 1976). As a result, most families
became work units in which women and children as well as men labored fifteen or
eighteen hours a day, often taking piecework home with them.
Like the Italians who streamed into New York and other large eastern cities at
the same time, the East European Jews accepted housing conditions that were fre-
quently brutal and demeaning, crowding into rundown tenements abandoned by
previous ethnic groups. On the famous Lower East Side, 350,000 people per square
mile jammed into squalid rooms and apartments in which sanitation facilities were
meager at best. These degraded conditions of life only further confirmed the racist
views of those who saw immigrant Jews of that time, along with other southern and
eastern Europeans, as innately degenerate.
In sum, the urban environment into which immigrant Jews entered the United
States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries required struggle and
stamina, which could be sustained only by the expectation that life conditions
would improve—possibly for them but surely for their children. “The generation
that entered the immigrant ghetto,” writes Ben Halpern, “was confronted by one
overwhelming task: to get out or enable the next generation to get out” (1958:36).
This goal proved attainable for most. One important factor in accounting for the
determination of immigrant Jews to succeed in American society was their under-
standing that there was no return to the homeland; for most Jews, the commitment
to the United States was final.
Given their striking differences in class, religion, and culture, it is little wonder
that the German and East European Jews were initially antagonistic. The Germans
viewed the new immigrants as illiterate, uncouth, and provincial greenhorns, who
could only cause embarrassment to the American Jewish community and produce
a backlash of anti-Semitism. By the 1890s, however, the divisions between the two
groups were evaporating. Inspired partially by humanitarian motives and partially
by the concern that they might be lumped with these poor and religiously tradi-
tional Jews in the eyes of their Christian neighbors, German Jews now accepted re-
sponsibility for uplifting and assisting their East European cohorts (Wirth, 1956).
By the end of large-scale immigration in the early 1920s, the subdivision of the
American Jewish community into German and East European groups was no longer
apparent (Glazer and Moynihan, 1970; Yaffee, 1968).
2
Studies of Jews in small towns and rural areas include Rogoff (2001), Rose (1977), and Weissbach
(2005).
chapter 11 jewish americans 317
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Table 11.2 ±±± Socioeconomic Status of Jewish Americans, 2001
Income
Median household income $54,000 $42,000
Households with income below $25,000 22% 28%
Households with income above $75,000 34% 17%
Education
College graduates 55% 29%
Graduate degrees 25% 6%
Occupation
Employed in professional or technical jobs 41% 29%
Employed in management and executive 13% 12%
jobs
Employed in business and finance 7% 5%
Source: United Jewish Committee, 2003.
318 part ii ethnicity in the united states
GROUP CULTURE Some contend that differences in ethnic achievement are attribut-
able mainly to internal characteristics of the groups themselves (Fauman, 1958;
Hurvitz, 1958; Lipset and Raab, 1995; Rosen, 1959; Schooler, 1976; Sowell,
1981; Strodtbeck, 1958). The crux of this argument is that some groups are better
able to succeed occupationally by virtue of certain cultural values and behaviors.
Presumably, those groups that have come to the United States with values similar
to or compatible with those of the core group—individual achievement, competi-
tion, pragmatism, thrift—are likely to rise more rapidly.
The substance of this view is contained in what Rosen (1959) termed the
“achievement syndrome.” Groups differ, he explained, in their orientation toward
achievement. Some, like Jews, encouraged independence and stressed achievement
values and high educational aspirations in children, whereas others, like Italians,
did not. Italian Americans traditionally stressed accomplishment only as it benefited
the family in some concrete fashion. Individual achievement, however, was deem-
phasized because it destabilized the structure of the family unit and threatened its
authority. Glazer and Moynihan write that “that form of individuality and ambi-
tion which is identified with Protestant and Anglo-Saxon culture, and for which
chapter 11 jewish americans 319
the criteria of success are abstract and impersonal, is rare among American
Italians” (1970:194–95). Among Jews, however, it was preeminent. Thus, instead
of plying their father’s trade, as did most second-generation Italians, Jews aspired
to higher occupational positions. As Philip Gleason explained, “Unlike Catholic
peasant immigrants, the Jewish immigrants did not regard intensive education and
professional careers as something beyond their experience or capacity; they saw
them rather as their natural lines of aspiration” (1964:168).
Perhaps the most frequently cited cultural value in explaining Jewish mobility,
particularly as it contrasts with the more limited mobility of other ethnic groups of
the New Immigration, is the group’s attitude toward education. The value of learn-
ing has a rich tradition in Jewish culture extending as far back as biblical times, and
it permeates all aspects of Jewish life (Fauman, 1958; Gleason, 1964; Strodtbeck,
1958). Because of this key cultural trait, it is held, Jews have quite naturally
achieved proportionately greater success in business, academia, science, and the
arts than have other ethnic groups.
The Jewish penchant for education is contrasted sharply with the traditional
southern Italian apprehension about this institution. Rather than a means to social
and economic advancement, education was viewed by immigrant Italians as having
little practical value and in some ways being antithetical to family and group inter-
ests (Covello, 1967). Hence, they did not avail themselves of the educational oppor-
tunities in the United States as quickly and exhaustively as did the Jews. Some have
observed that even later generations of Italian American parents, including those of
the middle class, have not overly pressured their children for achievement. “By their
norms,” concludes one study, “motivation as well as ability should come from the
child, not the parent” (Johnson, 1985:189).
Intense family loyalty as part of the southern Italian culture was especially con-
sequential for immigrants and their children. With an allegiance to family above all
else, individual Italian Americans found it difficult to pursue occupations that did
not concretely improve the family’s welfare. The most important work objective
was to find a steady, secure job that would contribute to the family’s immediate
well-being and that would not take the individual outside the realm of the
family’s influence. Such values restrained upward job mobility (Gambino, 1975;
Gans, 1982).
Obviously, the choice of fulfilling short-range work goals instead of seeking the
long-range advantages of continuing education was not unique to Italian immi-
grants and their children. But the norm was perhaps more firmly rooted among
them. There is little doubt, then, that their skeptical view of formal education con-
tributed heavily to their slower and more limited upward mobility compared to
Jewish Americans.
Another culturally based argument holds that, in comparison with other ethnic
groups, Jews invest more heavily in their children. Because Jewish families are, on
average, smaller than those of most other ethnic groups, Jewish parents, it is ar-
gued, are able to devote more time and other resources to child rearing. In turn,
Jews are better able to translate their education into prestigious occupations and
high labor market earnings. Moreover, more stable family living arrangements
(lower rates of divorce, separation, out-of-wedlock births), in this view, additionally
improve child quality (Chiswick, 1984).
320 part ii ethnicity in the united states
THE POLITICAL REALM Jewish participation at the higher levels of government has
been relatively greater than that of Italians and most other southern and eastern
European groups In fact, Jewish representation in the federal government is far
out of proportion to their share of the general U.S. population (Alba and Moore,
1982; Zweigenhaft and Domhoff, 2006). Jewish entrance into the realm of
American political power is a relatively recent phenomenon, however.
A few Jews were elected to Congress as early as the nineteenth century, but
only in the past few decades have they been elected in meaningful numbers. Before
1945, only fifty-nine Jews had ever served in either house. The number of Jews in
the U.S. Congress increased significantly after 1974 (Goldberg, 1996; Zweigenhaft
and Domhoff, 1998; 2006). Today, in light of their minor proportion of the general
populace, Jews are overrepresented in the federal legislature (see Table 10.3). Jewish
Americans make up 13 percent of the Senate and 7 percent of the House. They are
also strongly represented as federal political appointees and civil servants (Alba and
Moore, 1982) and have occupied a number of cabinet positions, particularly in
Democratic administrations (Zweigenhaft and Domhoff, 1998; 2006). Moreover,
Jews play an important role in political campaign financing at the national level
(Goldberg, 1996).
Jews today experience few impediments to elective office at any level of govern-
ment. In fact, a 1987 Gallup poll revealed that 89 percent of Americans would vote
for a well-qualified Jewish presidential candidate; only 46 percent felt that way fifty
years earlier (Gallup, 1982, 1988; Quinley and Glock, 1979). The acceptance of
Jews in higher politics is demonstrated as well by the fact that Jewish candidates
are today commonly elected to offices by overwhelmingly non-Jewish constituencies
(Wyman, 2000). Both current U.S. senators from Wisconsin, for example, are
Jewish, despite the fact that the state’s Jewish population is one-half of 1 percent.
The selection of Joseph Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, as the vice presidential can-
didate on the Democratic ticket in 2000 symbolically shattered any remaining bar-
riers to Jewish American penetration of the very highest levels of government.
chapter 11 jewish americans 323
Jewish Americans have consistently shown a greater propensity than other ethnic
groups for political participation, and this may account in some measure for their
increasing prominence in elective offices.
THE ECONOMIC REALM With regard to economic power, Jews in the past were un-
derrepresented in the American corporate elite (Alba and Moore, 1982; Korman,
1988; Zweigenhaft and Domhoff, 1982; 2006). The strong Jewish participation in
the business world traditionally was in small or medium-sized firms (most of them
self-owned), not the larger, more powerful corporations that dominated the
American economy (Institute for Social Research, 1964; Kiester, 1968; Marger,
1974; Ward, 1965). Furthermore, where they had been successful in the corporate
world, Jews more commonly entered the elite through the growth of their own
companies rather than by climbing the organizational ladder of well-established
concerns.
The past underrepresentation of Jewish Americans in the top echelons of the
corporate world can be explained partly as discrimination and partly as a propen-
sity for Jews to prefer independence in business and the professions. The two are
related. Faced with discriminatory hiring practices, which did not decline signifi-
cantly until after World War II, Jews naturally turned to self-owned businesses or
independent professions such as law and medicine.
The historical dearth of Jews in the corporate elite is ironic in light of the com-
monly held assumption among most Americans that Jews wield inordinate
economic power. Studies beginning in the 1930s consistently showed this to be a
misconception (Burck, 1976; Fortune, 1936; Keller, 1953; Newcomer, 1955;
Warner and Abegglen, 1963). To the extent that the public illusion of excessive
Jewish economic power persisted, it may be explained to some degree by the con-
spicuous nature of certain industries in which Jews did exert a dominant influence,
most notably movies and television, retail sales, and real estate (Glazer and
Moynihan, 1970; McWilliams, 1948; Selznick and Steinberg, 1969).
Investigating evidence of corporate recruiting, Korman (1988) found that even
as late as the 1980s, firms in many of the most important segments of the corporate
economy continued to recruit more commonly at schools with few Jewish under-
graduates. He concluded that at the managerial/executive level, Jews remain “out-
siders” in the corporate world.
Stronger evidence, however, confirms that the traditional pattern of Jewish ab-
sence from the corporate elite has changed markedly, with Jews increasingly enter-
ing the top executive positions of major corporations (Christopher, 1989; Klausner,
1988; Silberman, 1985; Zweigenhaft, 1984, 1987; Zweigenhaft and Domhoff,
2006). In their study of the American power elite, Zweigenhaft and Domhoff
(2006) conclude that, despite underrepresentation in some business sectors, Jews
are actually overrepresented in the corporate elite. Whatever discrimination in large
corporations and law firms continues to exist may be simply the lingering effect of
past occupational barriers against Jews that, for the most part, have been formally
taken down. Indeed, a study of the late 1980s concluded plainly that by then the
disadvantage of Jews in the executive suites of major corporations had “all but dis-
appeared” (Klausner, 1988:33).
324 part ii ethnicity in the united states
3
On the development of European ghettos, see Wirth (1956).
4
Anti-Semitism is the term most commonly used to describe prejudice and hostility toward Jews.
5
For a description of the Jewish poor, most of whom are elderly, see Levine and Hochbaum (1974)
and United Jewish Committee (2003).
chapter 11 jewish americans 325
Closely akin to the beliefs regarding the connection of Jews with money are
those concerning Jews and business. “Of all the crimes and misdemeanors charged
to the Jews,” notes Stephen Whitfield, “the worst has been an uncanny or even su-
pernatural capacity to make money, perverted into avarice” (1995:90). The shrewd
and unscrupulous businessperson has been a tenacious negative stereotype of Jews
for ages. Derivative of this image is the pejorative American phrase, to “Jew
down,” which means, roughly, to bargain craftily or to buy something more
cheaply than the seller initially offers it. The beliefs regarding Jews and business
deal not only with ethics, however, but also with power and manipulation. Jews
have been commonly seen as maintaining excessive influence in the business world
and as controlling large segments of the economy of the United States and of other
societies. The fallaciousness of this image has been confirmed repeatedly; and as
noted earlier, in the past Jews have been underrepresented in the higher executive
positions of the most powerful American and multinational corporations.
The attributions of Jewish power are often blatantly contradictory. One of the
staples of crude anti-Semitism concerns the notion of world conspiracy. Curiously,
Jews have been portrayed on the one hand as leaders of a world capitalist conspir-
acy and on the other as leaders of a world communist conspiracy. This inconsis-
tency has never deterred anti-Semites from expressing both beliefs when the
situation calls for it. Indeed, as McWilliams so aptly suggested, there is a tone of
“demagogic genius” in this contradictory charge, “for it permits an appeal to the
dispossessed and a threat to the rich to be voiced in a single sentence” (1948:92).
THE EARLY PERIOD During the early decades of Jewish settlement, anti-Jewish prej-
udice and discrimination were minimal. Although there were anti-Semitic groups in
colonial America, they were not excessively vocal or influential (Blau and Baron,
1963). During the era of the Old Immigration, between 1820 and 1880, German
Jews were not essentially distinguished from their Christian counterparts except in
religion; and as noted earlier, they mostly assimilated into the mainstream society.
Like the early northern Italians, German Jews (and the earlier Sephardic Jews) were
too insignificant numerically to evoke intense hostility. Furthermore, they were geo-
graphically dispersed and established themselves in economically secure positions,
thereby avoiding the attention of nativist groups, which targeted the much larger,
city-concentrated, and destitute Irish Catholic population.
This relatively concordant relationship with the Anglo-Protestant majority be-
gan to change, however, with the entrance of the East European Jews in the
1880s. A harbinger of the changed attitude toward all Jews occurred in 1877
when Joseph Seligman, a prominent financier and political adviser, was denied en-
trance to the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, New York, a noted upper-class resort
(Baltzell, 1964; McWilliams, 1948). From that point on, Jews were commonly
barred from certain resorts, clubs, and college fraternities.
326 part ii ethnicity in the united states
6
McWilliams (1948) writes that the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and Ford’s anti-Semitic campaign were
not unrelated. The Klan began to attract a mass following in 1920 when Ford launched his attack.
chapter 11 jewish americans 327
against in the professions, especially medicine, law, and academia. Jewish doctors,
for example, were often refused appointments to hospital staffs and were denied
clinical privileges. Law firms and university faculties imposed similar restrictions.
The rising level of anti-Jewish prejudice and discrimination in the 1920s and
1930s can be seen as part of the popular anti-immigrant and isolationist sentiments
that characterized this period. But it can also be seen as a response to Jewish up-
ward mobility. Before the early years of the twentieth century, Jews were fairly
well removed from the general occupational structure, concentrating mainly in a
few industries, such as the garment trade, or operating their own small businesses.
By the second decade of the century, however, second-generation Jews were begin-
ning to break out of the insular Jewish community and challenge—most often, suc-
cessfully—members of the dominant group, particularly in the more prestigious
occupations and educational settings. Artificial barriers, in the form of quotas and
other discriminatory policies, were therefore thrown up. The anti-Jewish attitudes
that had emerged earlier in the 1870s among the well-to-do have been interpreted
in much the same manner: as social barriers that arose in response to competition
for privilege (Higham, 1963; McWilliams, 1948).
7
A study of Jewish life in Los Angeles (Sandberg, 1986) showed that Jews themselves perceive more
anti-Jewish discrimination in private clubs than in any other area of social life.
chapter 11 jewish americans 329
explained in Chapter 7, surveys such as this do not always reveal people’s true feel-
ings, given their reluctance to voice what they feel are socially or politically incor-
rect opinions of minority groups. So, the level of Jewish acceptance may not be as
high as indicated. In any case, it seems evident that positive views strongly outweigh
negative ones.
ACCOUNTING FOR THE DECLINE What can account for this noticeable decline in anti-
Semitic thought and action during the past few decades? Though such social trends
are never attributable to a single factor, the general rise in educational level among
the American populace does stand out as the single most important agent.
Research and public opinion polls indicate consistently that anti-Semitism is related
to educational level. To put the matter simply, the lower the educational attain-
ment, the greater the degree of anti-Semitism. For example, surveys of attitudes to-
ward Jews have repeatedly found college-educated people more tolerant than those
with less formal education (Anti-Defamation League, 1998, 2005; Chanes, 2004;
Gallup, 1982; Gilbert, 1988). Thus, as the level of education has increased for
Americans generally, anti-Jewish attitudes and actions have waned correspondingly
(Glock and Stark, 1966; Lipset, 1987; Quinley and Glock, 1979; Selznick and
Steinberg, 1969).
anti-Semitism. In his study of Jewish baby boomers, Waxman found that 90 percent
said they had not personally experienced discrimination. Nonetheless 80 percent
agreed somewhat or strongly that anti-Semitism “is a serious problem in the United
States” (2001:97). An even greater percentage of a national sample of Jewish
Americans in 2004 expressed similar concerns about anti-Semitism (American
Jewish Committee, 2004). Moreover, a national poll showed that a majority of all
Americans saw anti-Semitism as a problem in the United States (Jones, 2003).
Cultural Assimilation
Each successive generation of Jewish Americans has displayed cultural characteris-
tics less uniquely Jewish than the previous one. And as with other white ethnic
groups, much of this assimilation is related to upward class mobility. As they have
moved from the working-class occupations and urban ghettos of the first generation
to the middle-class occupations and suburbs of the second and third, Jews have
steadily adopted lifestyles and values that characterize middle-class Americans gen-
erally. Like Italians of the second generation, the children of Jewish immigrants to
some extent found themselves wavering between the confines of the ethnic commu-
nity and the larger society (Kramer and Leventman, 1961). Those beyond the sec-
ond generation, however, have clearly chosen the dominant culture.
Perhaps the most significant indicator of cultural assimilation among Jewish
Americans is the gradual movement, beginning with the second generation, away
from the Orthodox branch of Judaism, encompassing traditional and rigid forms
of worship and belief, to the Conservative and Reform branches, each reflecting
more Americanized practices and doctrines. Orthodox Judaism continues to sur-
vive, however, and in fact has attracted increasing numbers of younger Jews in re-
cent years (Goldberg, 1996; Heilman and Cohen, 1989; Niebuhr, 1997). It is of
note that the division of Jews into three denominational subgroups is, in the main,
an American phenomenon. In non-American Jewish communities, people generally
are either Orthodox or nonreligious.8
8
In this regard, Konvitz (1978) notes that although the Reform movement began in Germany, it was most
fully developed by German Jews in the United States. A fourth branch of American Judaism, Reconstruc-
tionism, is subscribed to by only 1 percent of adult Jews (Wertheimer, 1993). It is also important to note
that the Orthodox branch of American Judaism is itself split between those who believe that observance of
Jewish religious ritual is compatible with the modern world (the “modern Orthodox”) and those who sep-
arate themselves from the secular society (the “ultra-Orthodox,” or “haredim”).
chapter 11 jewish americans 331
Not only has there been a movement toward less rigorous forms of worship,
but religious observance in general has diminished with each generation (Gans,
1958, 1967a; Kleiman, 1983; Sklare, 1969; Wertheimer, 1989, 1993). Although
synagogue affiliation (not attendance) remains strong among even those of the third
and fourth generations, researchers have cautioned against interpreting this as a re-
surgence of Jewish religious observance (Gans, 1967a; Sharot, 1973; Sklare, 1969).
Rather, the synagogue today serves as the key institution by which Jews can express
their ethnic identity, acquaint their children with their Jewish heritage, and interact
with others of like ethnicity. Its purely religious aspects hold less importance. Thus
assimilation into the dominant culture, in a broad sense, continues, while Jews re-
tain their ethnic identity.
Structural Assimilation
Jewish Americans have exhibited steady and in some ways substantial progress
in the direction of secondary structural assimilation. We have seen that they
have begun to participate fully in almost all areas of American society and have
also begun to enter elites in most institutional realms, in some cases dispropor-
tionately so.
Structural assimilation at the primary level, however, is a more complicated
matter. Jewish Americans have traditionally exhibited strong in-group cohesion in
the realm of primary relations (Gans, 1958; Lenski, 1963; Ringer, 1967; Sklare
and Greenblum, 1967). This stems from attitudes and actions of the larger society
and from the in-group preferences of Jews themselves. Sklare (1978) explains the
ambiguity among out-groups regarding Jewish-Gentile social relations. Jews have
commonly been seen as “cliquish” when they retreat to their own communities
but as “pushy” when they make serious efforts to enter Gentile primary groups.
Fearing rejection or at best a marginal acceptance, Jews more often than not were
reluctant to leave the safety and psychological comfort of the ethnic group. As a
result, concentrated Jewish residential areas were unlike black ghettos—which de-
veloped primarily because of overt discriminatory actions and policies—in that
they evolved through a combination of out-group discrimination and in-group
choice. Also, Jews, like other ethnic groups, initially congregated in relatively homo-
geneous areas where ethnic institutions were close at hand.
Today, discrimination and the attraction of ethnic institutions no longer play
major roles in determining residential patterns, but Jewish concentrations are still
evident in cities with large Jewish populations. These seem to be a product mostly
of housing markets, age, and socioeconomic factors, however, rather than the de-
sire to live in Jewish areas (Goldscheider, 1986). Moreover, Jewish Americans
have generally followed the pattern of other white ethnics in removing to suburbs,
where ethnic homogeneity is much less apparent. Waxman (2001) reports that 65
percent of Jewish baby boomers described their neighborhoods as little or not at
all Jewish in character. This should not be interpreted as “straight-line assimila-
tion,” however. In his study of Boston, for example, Goldscheider found that
Jews living in neighborhoods of low Jewish density were not alienated from
other Jews and that such individuals were not “on the edge of ethnic survival”
(1986:40).
332 part ii ethnicity in the united states
from among Israel’s secular Jewish population, those not committed to religious or-
thodoxy. As to the Russians, most bring little if any Jewish background with them,
and as one researcher has observed, “the challenge of integrating them into a
Jewish American community has provided a degree of revitalization for American
Jewry” (Sorin, 1997:244). Immigrant Russian Jews, as well as some Israelis, have
established institutionally complete enclaves that have further enabled them to con-
found rapid assimilation (Gold, 1999, 2000; Orleck, 1987).
Two events of the modern era account in largest measure for the revived sense of
Jewish community and identity: the Nazi Holocaust and the founding of Israel as a
nation-state. Both events served to make Jews in the United States more conscious
of their heritage and instilled a sense of collective commitment to the preservation
of the Jewish people.
This reinvigorated Jewish identity, however, must be seen in much the same
way as the retention of ethnic identity among Italian Americans and other white
ethnic groups: It is mostly symbolic. Jews continue to identify as Jews and to
abide by some of the major Judaic rituals, such as attending synagogue during
high holy days and having their sons (and increasingly their daughters) bar (bas)
mitzvahed. But for most, the expression of their Jewishness does not extend much
beyond these few practices. Put simply, a majority of American Jews have drifted
away from religious participation (American Jewish Committee, 2004; Goldberg,
1996; Wertheimer, 1989, 1993).
Although the decline of religious orthodoxy among most Jewish Americans is
very evident, equally evident in recent years is a return to more traditional religious
practices by a small but growing minority. Ritterband, in fact, suggests a dichotomy
in which the American Jewish community is becoming bimodal: “The more com-
mitted Jews have increased their commitment while less committed Jews have
more and more opened themselves up to the forces of assimilation” (1995:378).
No one has better described the deep divisions that have arisen among Jewish
Americans regarding this divergence than Samuel Freedman (2000). The split
between those who desire a secularized Judaism and those who call for a reaffirma-
tion of traditional beliefs and practices is, in his estimation, irreconcilable. So pro-
found and abiding are the differences, writes Freedman, that Judaism may very well
fragment into divergent faiths sharing only “a common deity and a common ances-
try” (2000:354). Clearly, then, American Jewry is moving simultaneously in two di-
vergent directions. At the same time that Jewish identity is becoming more tenuous
as assimilation proceeds relentlessly, a resurgence in Jewish culture and a return to
more traditional practices by some are unmistakable trends (Leiter, 2000). The for-
mer, however, appears to constitute the stronger force.
Even with a decline of religiosity, however, there remains a strong impetus for
the continuation of Jewish identity. As observers have pointed out, the strength of
Jewish communalism more than compensates for the weakness of Jewish religious
associations (Lenski, 1963; Sandberg, 1986; Waxman, 1981). The commonality of
social class and high educational achievement creates common lifestyles and, there-
fore, social bonds. “The concentration of Jews in particular jobs and in college and
post-graduate educational categories,” notes Calvin Goldscheider, “links Jews to in-
stitutions, networks, families, neighbourhoods and political interests and therefore
has become a powerful basis of ethnic continuity” (1995:136). Moreover, despite
their peripheral commitment to Jewish religious ritual and even belief, very few
Jews convert to Christianity.
Contemporary Jewish identity is sustained as well by an awareness that, though
their place in American society is probably as secure as it has been in any society in
modern history, Jews remain the potential object of differential treatment. The his-
torical roots of anti-Semitism are deep and abiding. Ethnic identity, therefore, is a
product of eternal vigilance, instilled by centuries of persecution. Jewish identity is
chapter 11 jewish americans 335
SUMMARY
In many ways, Jews collectively represent the prototypical American ethnic success
story. Paralleling the immigration and settlement patterns of other groups of the
New Immigration, the East European Jews subsequently outpaced all others in up-
ward social mobility. Today, on various measures of socioeconomic status (income,
occupation, education), Jewish Americans rank at or near the top. The high skill
level of Jewish immigrants entering an industrializing economy provided broad op-
portunities for them, but certain aspects of the Jewish cultural heritage also helped
to propel them quickly upward in occupational standing.
Anti-Jewish attitudes and actions (anti-Semitism) in the United States have in-
cluded not only negative stereotyping, but also widespread exclusion from certain
educational institutions, business areas, and social organizations. These have waned
considerably in recent decades. Although some aspects of anti-Jewish prejudice and
discrimination remain apparent, these are not organized and popular efforts, as
they were in earlier periods.
As with Italian Americans, assimilation—both cultural and structural—for
Jewish Americans has proceeded with each successive generation. At the secondary
level, Jews have begun to participate fully in almost all major institutions of the so-
ciety; they have also begun to penetrate the leadership echelons of these institutions.
At the primary level, Jews continue to exhibit strong in-group cohesion, but sharply
increasing rates of intermarriage signify a fundamental change in this pattern.
Although Jews continue to assimilate into American society, their religious unique-
ness remains a source of ethnic identity and out-group recognition.
Suggested Readings
American Jewish Committee. (annual). American Jewish Year Book. A basic reference
work for understanding the contemporary status of Jews in American society. Each
edition contains up-to-date demographic statistics as well as research articles by social
scientists.
336 part ii ethnicity in the united states
Dinnerstein, Leonard. 1994. Antisemitism in America. New York: Oxford University Press.
A history of anti-Semitism in the United States from the founding of the society to the
present, concluding that it is a declining phenomenon, a trend not likely to reverse itself
in the future.
Freedman, Samuel G. 2000. Jew vs. Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry. New
York: Touchstone. In novel-like fashion, Freedman describes the vast divisions that have
arisen among the various branches of contemporary Judaism. He predicts that the Jewish
American community is heading toward an irreconcilable split into several separate faiths.
Goldscheider, Calvin. 1986. Jewish Continuity and Change: Emerging Patterns in America.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press. A sociological analysis of the contemporary
Jewish American ethnic group, showing demographic and behavioral trends.
Hertzberg, Arthur. 1997. The Jews in America: Four Centuries of an Uneasy Encounter: A
History. New York: Columbia University Press. A basic history of Jewish Americans,
concluding that they have assimilated thoroughly into all major institutional realms.
Howe, Irving. 1976. World of Our Fathers. New York: Simon & Schuster. Richly describes
the immigration, urban settlement, and emergence of ethnic institutions among East
European Jews of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing particularly
on New York City.
Liebman, Charles S., and Steven M. Cohen. 1990. Two Worlds of Judaism: The Israeli and
American Experiences. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. Compares the meaning
of Jewish life and identity in the United States and Israel.
Lipset, Seymour Martin, and Earl Raab. 1995. Jews and the New American Scene.
Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Describes the current status of Jews in
American society and the social, economic, and political forces that have brought them
there. The authors see strong indications of an eventual complete assimilation of Jewish
Americans.
Rosenbaum, Ron (ed.). 2004. Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism.
New York: Random House. A collection of essays by scholars, journalists, and novelists
that discuss the persistence of anti-Semitism, especially its newer, more recent
manifestations.
12
±±
±±
±±
The Changing ±±
±±
±± C H A P T E R
±±
±±
Context of ±
What will be the future course of race and ethnic relations in American society? As
we will see in Part III, in many other multiethnic societies, problems that derive
from ethnic divisions and stratification are far more severe. But understanding that
other societies may suffer even greater problems should not cause us to lose sight of
the profound and unresolved ethnic-related issues that the United States faces at the
outset of the twenty-first century, some relatively new, others long-standing.
Currently, three encompassing and interrelated issues seem to clearly stand out re-
garding American race and ethnic relations:
1. The changing ethnic configuration. How is the influx of large numbers of new
immigrants and the creation of a more pluralistic ethnic mix affecting the soci-
ety and how will it affect the future of interethnic relations?
2. Assimilation vs. pluralism. Should the end product of the society’s increasingly
diverse ethnic mix be some form of assimilation, in which groups become more
culturally alike and socially integrated, or some form of pluralism, in which
they maintain or perhaps increase their cultural differences and social
boundaries?
3. The continued gap between Euro-American and most Asian American groups
on the one hand, and African American, Hispanic American, and Native
American groups on the other. How will this gap be narrowed and what role
will public policies play in addressing this issue?
337
338 part ii ethnicity in the united states
Economic Issues
The economic impact of the Newest Immigration is widely debated. What effects
are these immigrants having on the American economy? Does immigration produce
net benefits for the labor force, or does it negatively affect native workers? Do im-
migrants become self-supporting members of the society, or do they become a drain
on public services such as schools and hospitals?
IMMIGRATION AND THE LABOR FORCE Whereas some argue that immigrants consti-
tute an added burden to an already swollen labor pool, others contend that the
jobs they typically hold are those that native workers shun—and furthermore,
that they create as many jobs as they take (Camarota, 2007; Kochar, 2006; Peri,
2007). Similarly, some maintain that immigrants overburden the social welfare sys-
tem, but others hold that they pay in taxes far more than they collect in benefits
(Borjas, 1994; Espenshade, 1998; Porter, 2005; Simon, 1991).
There is simply no consensus on either side of this debate. What we do know
for certain, however, is that the economic impact of the Newest Immigration is not
uniform. Instead, it appears to favor some sectors of the economy and harm others.
Most of the immigrants from Mexico (the largest single group) and the Caribbean
are unskilled and take their place at the lowest employment levels. They benefit em-
ployers in labor-intensive industries, such as clothing manufacturing or other work
areas calling for cheap labor; but they depress the job opportunities of native low-
status workers, especially African Americans (Borjas, 1998; Smith and Edmonston,
1997; Swain, 2007). Many industries—hotels, restaurants, poultry-processing
plants, garment factories—are heavily dependent on immigrant labor, including ille-
gal workers (Schmitt, 2001b).
As was noted in Chapter 5, not all the new immigrants are impoverished and
unskilled, however. A large segment of some new groups, particularly Asian
Indians, Chinese, and Filipinos, are highly trained professionals and managers
whose economic impact is far different from that of those who enter with few occu-
pational resources. Many immigrant doctors and nurses, for example, now staff
U.S. hospitals, which would find it difficult to operate without them. In fact, 15
percent of U.S. health care workers are foreign born, including fully one-quarter of
all doctors (Clearfield and Batalova, 2007). The United States has also lagged in
producing engineers and other highly trained scientific workers, especially in infor-
mation technology fields, and many of the newest immigrants are filling these needs
(Martin and Midgley, 2003; Muller, 1993; Schuck, 2007; Suro, 1989).
chapter 12 the changing context of american race and ethnic relations 339
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION In recent years, illegal immigration has come under espe-
cially sharp public attack, since it is popularly perceived that illegal, or undocu-
mented, immigrants put an undue burden on public services, like schools and
hospitals, at taxpayers’ expense (Kotlowitz, 2007).1 Following the 2000 U.S.
Census, estimates of the size of the illegal immigrant population rose considerably
and today is presumed to be around 12 million (Sachs, 2001; U.S. Department of
Homeland Security, 2007). Because such a large proportion of illegal immigrants
originate in Mexico, this is an issue with particular currency in border states,
especially Texas, California, and Arizona which have large Mexican American
populations. In a 1994 referendum, California voters approved Proposition 187—
subsequently declared unconstitutional—which would have denied undocumented
immigrants vital public services in education, welfare, and health care. Arizona en-
acted a similar measure in 2006.
As with legal immigration, the economic impact of illegal immigrants is hotly
debated, with both sides marshalling evidence to support their position. It is evident
that many industries dependent on low-skilled workers, especially in the agricul-
tural and service sectors, could not function as they do without a steady infusion
of illegal immigrants. According to some estimates, more than 70 percent of farm-
workers in the United States are illegal immigrants (Preston, 2007).
While a majority of Americans view illegal immigration as a serious problem, a
majority also believe that illegal immigrants are taking jobs that Americans do not
want (Pew Hispanic Center, 2006b). Some have proposed a guest worker system
which, it is felt, would obviate the need for immigrants, particularly from Mexico,
to seek undocumented entrance into the United States. To date, this and other legis-
lative reforms aimed at controlling the flow of illegal immigrants have failed. Illegal
immigration has also stirred much controversy in recent years for cultural reasons;
these will be discussed later.
IMMIGRATION AND THE FUTURE LABOR FORCE Regardless of the ongoing debate re-
garding immigrants and their impact on the economy, what is clear is that future
labor needs can be met only with a substantial inflow of immigrants. The
American workforce is aging; that is, fewer native-born workers are entering the
labor market. Therefore, satisfying future labor force needs will depend heavily on
immigration. Between 2000 and 2004, about 60 percent of the growth in the U.S.
1
It has been shown that, in fact, illegal immigrants in the U.S. workforce contribute billions of dollars
in Social Security taxes, yet will never collect any benefits (Porter, 2005).
340 part ii ethnicity in the united states
labor force was due to new immigrants, and that demographic pattern is not likely
to change in the foreseeable future (Migration Policy Institute, 2006).
The reliance on immigrants to fill jobs in both high-skilled and low-skilled sec-
tors has already become very apparent. Table 12.1 shows the percentage of immi-
grants in particular occupations, all of which are among those that will be the fast-
est growing fields in the next ten years. Notice that the demand is in jobs that
require either high levels of training (medical scientists or postsecondary teachers)
or that require little training (janitors or personal care aides).
THE DEBATE Some believe that currently high levels of immigration should be con-
tinued or made even higher to allow for additional immigrants. Their view is that
immigrants not only create economic activity, but are a fresh cultural influence on
the society. American society is in fact pluralistic, they hold, and should further de-
velop its multicultural character, creating a more equitable society in the process
(Isbister, 1996). Others, however, support highly restrictionist measures, maintain-
ing that the new immigrants are causing a radical and unprecedented change in the
social and cultural makeup of the society, which can only lead to more racial and
ethnic conflict. Some see this change as undesirable in itself, suggesting that the
United States remain a primarily European-origin country (Brimelow, 1995;
Huntington, 2004). The new groups are viewed as unassimilable and thus a contin-
ual drag on the society. These issues have a familiar ring, recalling those that raged
±±
±
Table 12.1 ±±± Immigrants in the U.S. Workforce
Occupation Percent
during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with regard to Irish and south-
ern and eastern European immigrants.
The mixed feelings of Americans regarding the social and cultural impact of im-
migrants are evident in national surveys. In 1993, 55 percent of Americans felt that
the increased diversity of immigrants was a threat to American culture. In 2006, 48
percent again said that the continued flow of immigrants was threatening to tradi-
tional American culture, but 45 percent also said that growing numbers of newcomers
from other countries strengthened American society (Pew Hispanic Center, 2006b).
These inconsistent and shifting views may also reflect changing economic conditions.
LANGUAGE DIVERSITY Questions and attitudes regarding the social impact of immi-
grants on American culture have come together most clearly around the issue of
language. In Canada, as we will see in Chapter 15, the nucleus of ethnic conflict
is the preservation of one group’s language. A somewhat similar situation has be-
gun to surface in certain regions of the United States, where large numbers of im-
migrants, specifically the Spanish-speaking, use their native tongue. Many view the
continued use of Spanish by immigrants as offensive and an indication that they do
not wish to assimilate. The introduction of Spanish-language signage in public
places and the use of bilingual forms by government bureaus have created addi-
tional resentment.
That these immigrants are able to maintain close links with their origin societies
through easy communication and travel and through a constant influx of fellow im-
migrants from the homeland means that there is no pressing need to quickly relin-
quish the native language. This makes their situation somewhat different from that
of past immigrants. Although the latter also came speaking languages other than
English, it was assumed that through the use of English in the school and other in-
stitutions, those languages would gradually be abandoned, if not by the first then
by the second generation. Today, however, the assumption of language assimilation
is being challenged. A greater tolerance of ethnic pluralism has led to efforts to pro-
vide public educational and other services in the language of the new groups, espe-
cially Spanish. This has created controversy among those who favor or oppose such
measures (Baron, 1990; Chavez, 1991; Crawford, 1992; Huntington, 2004; Porter,
1990).
The language issue is particularly acute in cities and states with large immi-
grant, especially Hispanic, populations where schools must accommodate students
whose first language is not English. In New York City, for example, classes are
taught not only in Spanish, but in Chinese, Haitian Creole, Russian, Korean,
Arabic, Vietnamese, Polish, Bengali, and French. More than 40 percent of the par-
ents of children in the New York school system are not native English speakers
(Bosman, 2007). In Miami-Dade County almost 60 percent of public school stu-
dents speak a language other than English at home (mostly Spanish), and many
schools at all levels are bilingual institutions (Nazareno, 2000). The issue is not lim-
ited to these high-profile immigrant-receiving cities, however. School districts
throughout the United States increasingly must deal to some degree with non-
English-speaking children.
Some who oppose greater language diversity have sought to have English le-
gally declared the “official” American language. By the mid-1990s, more than
342 part ii ethnicity in the united states
twenty states had passed legislation to that effect and in recent years a number of
municipalities have done the same. Those favoring such legislation argue that it will
help to reverse (what they see) as a decline in English language use and force immi-
grants to more quickly adopt the dominant culture. They advocate strict limits on
bilingual education, the elimination of voting ballots in languages other than
English, and increased language-proficiency standards for prospective citizens.
Supporters of the movement to make English the country’s official language main-
tain that without a common language, new immigrants will resist assimilation, and
the United States risks becoming linguistically divided, like Canada (Huntington,
2004). In response, critics of the English-only movement charge that efforts to de-
clare English the official language of the United States are a backlash against the
new immigrants and essentially a mask for ethnic antagonism. Moreover, they
claim that such legislation is useless because it does nothing to help promote the
learning of English (Braverman, 1988; Crawford, 1992).
The issue may be moot in any case because a raft of studies indicate that, as in
the past, the children of recent immigrants adopt English as their major language
and gradually drift away from using their native language outside the home (Alba,
2004; Portes, 2002; Portes and Rumbaut, 2006; Rumbaut et al., 2006; Veltman,
1983). Research among Latinos, as was noted in Chapter 8, shows that first- and
second-generation immigrants are usually bilingual, and by the third generation,
English has become the primary—and for most, the only—language spoken (Alba,
2005; de la Garza et al., 1992; Latino Coalition, 2003; Pew Hispanic Center, 2002;
Rumbaut et al., 2006). In their study of the children of Latino and other
immigrants, Portes and Hao (1998) found that knowledge of—and preference for
—English is nearly universal among them and they quickly lose fluency in their par-
ents’ language. This language shift is shown in Figure 12.1.
Overwhelming evidence indicates that language assimilation, especially among
Latinos, is proceeding apace, just as it did for every previous immigrant group in
American society. And as we saw in Chapter 8, the vast majority of Latinos believe
that citizens and residents of the United States should learn English. As Alan Wolfe
(1996:108) has described it, “The battle over bilingualism tends to take place over
the heads of the immigrants themselves, who in general only want to learn English
as fast as they can.” Evidence of this is the fact that states offering English lan-
guage classes to immigrants cannot keep up with the demand (Santos, 2007).
What keeps Spanish alive in the United States, therefore, is not a determination of
Latinos to retain their native language but the continuation of large-scale Hispanic
immigration.
80
70
60
50
Percent
40
30
20
10
0
0
First Generation Second Generation Third Generation and Higher
IMMIGRANT CONTEXTS: OLD AND NEW For several reasons, the typical patterns of
adaptation to American society displayed by past immigrants are not likely to be
followed in the same way for the newest immigrants. European immigrants of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries generally followed a path of eventual as-
similation into the mainstream society, leading to upward mobility, over two or
three generations. The newest immigrants may follow a more tortuous route and
a less certain outcome of social and economic adaptation. This was referred to in
Chapter 4 as segmented assimilation. Some may follow the traditional assimilation
pattern, but others may retain much of their ethnic cultures and social structures
for several generations. Still others may find themselves stuck in a low-income sta-
tus, with stifling job and educational opportunities that confine them to a condition
outside the mainstream society. Because most of the newest immigrants are non-
white, they automatically face a racial barrier that European immigrant waves
were able to overcome relatively quickly.
Further differentiating the newest immigrants from those of past generations
are the significantly different social and economic circumstances newcomers face to-
day. First, the labor market encountered by the newest immigrants is one in which
solid industrial working-class jobs, which in the past provided immigrants with op-
portunities for upward mobility, have disappeared. What has taken its place is a
labor market more clearly divided into two segments—high-status (highly skilled
professional and technical jobs) and low-status (unskilled, mostly service sector
jobs). The latter are poorly paid and essentially dead-end jobs that have been dis-
proportionately occupied by newly entering immigrants. The fear is that a
344 part ii ethnicity in the united states
FORCES OF ASSIMILATION At the same time that the newest immigrants present unique
issues of social and economic adaptation, there are strong indications that they are, in
a number of ways, following an assimilation path not radically different from past
immigrant groups. As we have seen, language assimilation for both Latinos and
Asians is proceeding apace, as are residential integration and interethnic marriage.
Richard Alba has pointed out that assimilation has been incorrectly interpreted
by some as a one-way process, in which immigrants surrender their culture and so-
cial structure to the dominant society and become carbon copies of the dominant
ethnic group (Alba, 1999). In fact assimilation, as noted in Chapter 4, is a recipro-
cal process involving a cultural exchange between dominant ethnic groups and
immigrant minorities. Immigrants themselves inject change into the receiving so-
chapter 12 the changing context of american race and ethnic relations 345
ciety’s sociocultural system. As Alba has put it, “immigrant ethnicity has affected
American society as much as American society has affected it”(1999:7). Moreover,
a distorted conception of assimilation assumes a homogeneity of American culture
that simply does not exist.
“Assimilation,” explains Alba, “most often occurs in the form of a series of
small shifts that takes place over generations; those undergoing assimilation still
carry ethnic markers in a number of ways” (1999:21). Assimilation, in other words,
entails a decline of ethnic distinctions, not their absolute disappearance. Thus the
remnants of their ethnic cultures and social structures will remain evident, but as-
similation will in most regards work for current immigrants as it did for those of
past eras, if not as quickly and directly.
A Revitalized Nativism?
Public opinion regarding immigration, as was pointed out earlier, is puzzlingly am-
bivalent: almost as many believe that immigrants strengthen the society as create
economic and cultural problems. Anti-immigrant sentiment today is by no means
as virulent as in the earlier part of the twentieth century when it eventually led to
a halt to the large-scale immigration of southern and eastern European groups. But
the racial and ethnic character of the newest immigrants, when combined with fluc-
tuations in the state of the domestic economy, continually threatens to create a re-
vitalized nativism. Moreover, although most Americans recognize the great histori-
cal role played by immigration in shaping their society they do not necessarily see
present-day immigration in the same light. This is revealed consistently in national
surveys (Business Week/Harris Poll, 1992; Gallup Organization, 2001d, 2002,
2005; Jones, 2001; Newsweek, 1993, 1995b; Pew Hispanic Center, 2006b).
SHIFTING PUBLIC VIEWS To some degree, tolerance for immigration seems to rise
and fall with economic conditions. That is, when the economy is robust and unem-
ployment levels are low, public opinion is less opposed to retaining the present level
of immigration. But even during economically stable and prosperous times, only a
small percentage favor increasing the level of immigration. Most Americans have
preferred either to decrease immigration or to maintain it at its current level
(Gallup Organization, 2005; Pew Hispanic Center, 2006b; Schuck, 2007). Even
though the newest immigrants are seen by most as hardworking, they are also
viewed as taking jobs away from American workers, driving down wages, and
using too many government services.
The flow of international events can also affect public attitudes toward immi-
gration. In the wake of the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, for exam-
ple, new thinking about immigration issues surfaced quickly. A national debate
ensued regarding whether adequate security measures were in place to sift out un-
desirable immigrants, how illegal immigration could be better controlled, and
whether U.S. policy was too lenient toward immigrants generally.
Most of the highly charged controversy that continues to swirl about immigra-
tion focuses on the flow of illegal immigration and what to do to better control the
country’s borders. A corollary issue concerns the status of undocumented immi-
grants who are already living in the United States. More specifically, however, the
346 part ii ethnicity in the united states
focus of the current immigration debate has fallen mainly on those coming from
Mexico, and even more specifically, those who are undocumented. Some feel that
the U.S.’s southern border has become extremely porous, permitting an almost un-
stoppable flow of illegal immigrants into the country. Seeing illegal immigrants as a
cultural and economic threat, some have proposed building a wall—literally—sep-
arating the southwestern states from Mexico, or rounding up and deporting the
millions of illegal immigrants—mostly Mexicans and other Latinos—from the
country. Vigilante groups have begun to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border, determined
to stop illegals from entering. To date, there have been no major reforms of U.S.
immigration laws despite the intense and often emotional nature of the political
debate.
Future changes that are enacted in immigration laws, however—whatever their
content—are unlikely to bring to an end the debate regarding the number and char-
acter of immigrants that should be permitted to enter the United States. Those seek-
ing more stringent limits will continue to argue that immigrants have a negative
economic and social influence, whereas those advocating more liberal immigra-
tion laws will maintain the opposite. These are hardly new points of debate, how-
ever. Historically, the absorption of immigrants has been a persistent theme of
American political argument. In one sense, the United States has always been re-
garded as a “golden door,” open to all seeking economic opportunity or political
refuge. But the acceptance of new groups has been countered with a tradition of
protectionism, which has manifested itself repeatedly in efforts to limit or exclude
newcomers. The current public controversy is, therefore, only the latest in a long
tradition. As historian Donna Gabaccia has pointed out, “Since the 1960s, celebra-
tions of the United States as a nation of immigrants have encouraged Americans
to forget the ferocity of . . . earlier debates about immigration” (2006:3). Those
debates, past and present, have been essentially about restriction; that is, how or
whether to limit immigration to the United States.
It is important to note that the current public debate in the United States on
immigrant issues and the generally skeptical public view of immigration are not
without parallel in other societies. An analysis of public opinion regarding immi-
grants and related issues in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain,
Japan, and the United States found that despite these countries’ different current
and historical immigration policies, a majority of the public in each expressed rela-
tively similar views: They want fewer immigrants admitted, especially immigrants of
color; they feel that priority should be given to immigrants with special skills rather
than to those seeking family unification; and they believe that their country has
done more than its share in accepting refugees (Simon and Lynch, 1999).
Arab Americans
Among the groups contributing to the expanding ethnic diversity of American soci-
ety is one that has not yet been clearly classified as part of any of the society’s
broad panethnic categories: Arab Americans. They serve as an excellent case to
demonstrate how the United States has accommodated new and, from the stand-
point of native-born Americans, culturally distant groups during the past four
chapter 12 the changing context of american race and ethnic relations 347
decades. They also illustrate well the issues related to adaptation and integration of
new groups, and to the new forms of nativism.
ETHNIC DIVERSITY At the outset, it is important to more clearly define this group.
Most Americans usually perceive all people from the Middle East simply as “Arabs”
and assume they are all Muslim. Neither view is correct. In fact, there are significant
ethnic and religious differences among the numerous groups now comprising the
Middle Eastern population in the United States. Although they are predominantly
Arab, Middle Easterners comprise a diverse ethnic population. Iranians, for example,
the largest component of the Newest Immigration from the Middle East, are not eth-
nically Arab, nor do they speak Arabic. As to religion, although most of the newest
immigrants from this region are Muslim, some are Christian, and a few are even
Jewish (Bozorgmehr et al., 1996). Even among the Muslim immigrants, however,
there are significant differences in belief and practice. For example, those from
Yemen are devoutly religious, whereas those from Iran are predominantly secular
(Walbridge, 1999). When considered in total—not simply the newest immigrants—
Middle Eastern Americans are overwhelmingly Christian, not Muslim.
Another serious misconception is to conflate “Arab” with “Muslim.” The reli-
gious connotation, Muslim, is entirely different from the ethnic notion of Arab.
Muslims are found in virtually all the world’s societies, among many ethnic groups.
Most Muslims, in fact, live not in the Middle East but in South and Southeast Asia,
including Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Malaysia. Even in the United States, a
large element of the Muslim population is not Arab or even from the Middle East.
Consider that fully one-quarter of U.S. Muslims are African American.
Understanding these cultural, religious, and political distinctions, in this section
we will focus specifically on the Arab element of the Middle Eastern population in
the United States, in particular the newest immigrants among them.
IMMIGRANT ORIGINS Small communities of people from Arab societies have actu-
ally been in the United States since the late nineteenth century, and most Arab
Americans today trace their origins to immigration waves that occurred prior to
World War II. But, like other small groups with a relatively long U.S. history, their
numbers swelled starting in the 1970s as part of the Newest Immigration. Although
the U.S. Census describes the Arab American population as 1.5 million, estimates
range as high as 3.5 million Americans with Arab origins (Kayyali, 2006a;
Telhami, 2002; U.S. Census Bureau, 2007f). Because not all Middle Eastern
Americans are Arab in origin, the total Middle Eastern population is also larger
than the official count. In any case, the Arab American population has grown enor-
mously since 1980. As is seen in Figure 12.2, the largest specific Arab American
groups today are Lebanese, Egyptian, and Syrian.
Before World War II, most immigrants from Arab societies were poor and un-
educated, and took jobs as unskilled workers. Most also were Christian, not
Muslim. Many came from Lebanon and blended almost imperceptibly into the
U.S. mainstream, moving rapidly into the middle class as entrepreneurs and profes-
sionals (Kayal and Kayal, 1975; Naff, 1983; Walbridge, 1999). The latest wave of
Arab immigrants, however, is far more diverse in geographical origin, ethnicity,
348 part ii ethnicity in the united states
Lebanese
Egyptian
Syrian
Moroccan
Palestinian
Jordanian
“Arab” or “Arabic”
Other Arab
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Percent
Figure 12.2
| Arab American Population by Ancestry, 2006
religion, and social class, and their absorption into American society has been far
more problematic.
The most recent Arab immigrants come from more than a dozen countries in
the Middle East and North Africa (Suleiman, 1999). The origin societies of the larg-
est numbers are Egypt, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories. Some have been moti-
vated to immigrate to the United States for reasons of economic betterment, but
many have been impelled to leave their home countries because of political unrest.
The Middle East has been plagued by regional conflicts and civil wars over the past
four decades, and many immigrants have sought refuge in America.
SOCIAL CLASS AND OCCUPATIONS Like other ethnic populations of the Newest
Immigration, Arabs are represented in a broad range of social classes. Some are
poor and unskilled, but many are highly educated professionals—doctors, lawyers,
engineers, and entrepreneurs—who are relatively well-off. Almost 65 percent of
Egyptians in the United States, for example, hold at least a bachelor’s degree (25
percent hold graduate degrees) and fully half are in professional or managerial oc-
cupations (U.S. Census Bureau, 2007f). Among Arabs in the United States, average
educational attainment, family income, and occupational status are all higher than
those of the general population (Table 12.2).
chapter 12 the changing context of american race and ethnic relations 349
±±
±
Table 12.2 ±±± Arab American Socioeconomic Status, 2006
PREJUDICE AND DISCRIMINATION Because Muslims predominate among the latest co-
hort of Arab Americans, they have, more than other immigrant groups, run head-
long into the dominant American culture. Islam is a religion that few Americans are
familiar with, and they commonly harbor misconceptions about its tenets and ri-
tuals. Many Muslim women, for example, feel an obligation to wear a head scarf
(hijab) in public. This practice has made them an easy target for harassment and
discrimination. Young Muslim girls may face ostracism at school, and dozens
of companies have refused to employ women who insist on wearing the
scarf (Goodstein, 1997). Perhaps more serious is the persistence of negative stereo-
typing that has plagued Arab Americans. The activities of Arab terrorists in the
Middle East and elsewhere have created a sinister image of Arab and other
Middle Eastern groups—an image that was greatly exacerbated by the attack on
the World Trade Center in 2001 and the U.S. war on Iraq beginning in 2003.
Since the events of September 11, 2001, Arabs and others from countries of the
Middle East have been targets of U.S. government harassment in its efforts at track-
ing terrorists. They have been subjected to excessive scrutiny and investigation by
federal law enforcement agencies and have lived under suspicion like no other eth-
nic group in recent years (Bebow, 2003; Krupa and Bebow, 2003). Federal cases
against Arab Americans tripled after September 11 though virtually no persons
were proved to have terrorist connections. Arab Americans report having encoun-
tered repeated acts of discrimination from bosses, neighbors, police, and other pub-
lic officials.
Particularly harsh scrutiny is given Arab Americans when traveling by air. In
addition to stringent pre-flight screening, more severe discriminatory incidents are
not uncommon. In 2006, for example, six Muslim religious leaders were taken off
a US Airways flight in handcuffs after some passengers and crew members com-
plained of what they deemed “suspicious” behavior. After being detained and ques-
tioned by federal agents for several hours, they were subsequently released. Such
occurrences have led to the humorous reference of “flying while Muslim.” Some
Arab Americans have found their treatment by airport security personnel so embar-
rassing and humiliating that they have simply discontinued air travel completely,
choosing instead to drive great distances. As one Jordanian in Michigan asked,
“What father wants their children to see them this way?” (Donnelly, 2003).
The negative image of Arab Americans reaches back much further than simply
the last few years, however. In fact, Arabs have been seen in the West as exotic,
mysterious, and villainous for centuries. One of the only references to the Arab
350 part ii ethnicity in the united states
world that people in western countries are familiar with concerns the Crusades, in
which invading Christian knights did battle with Muslims. In the 1980s, Jack
Shaheen studied the portrayal of Arabs in television programming and concluded
that negative stereotypes were virtually the only TV images of the group. The depic-
tion of Arabs, he found, perpetuated four basic myths: “they are all fabulously
wealthy; they are barbaric and uncultured; they are sex maniacs with a penchant
for white slavery; and they revel in acts of terrorism” (Shaheen, 1984:4). A later
study (Lind and Danowski, 1998) found little change in these images, except that
no longer did the media portray Arabs as fabulously wealthy. Shaheen also studied
virtually all Hollywood films displaying Arab characters and concluded that, like
television, the image of the Arab in movies had not changed in over 100 years:
“brute murderers, sleazy rapists, religious fanatics, oil-rich dimwits, and abusers of
women” (Shaheen, 2003:172).
Political events in the Middle East during the past four decades—as well as the
oil crisis of the 1970s, induced by the mainly Arab-led OPEC oil cartel—caused
many Americans to view all Arabs in the United States with suspicion and disdain
and strengthened already well-developed group stereotypes. After the events of
September 11, however, the level of suspicion was raised to much greater heights,
and media images were almost entirely negative, focusing on the radical actions of
Muslim terrorists (Nacos and Torres-Reyna, 2007).
Although, as we have seen, not all Arab Americans are Muslim, in the public
view, the differences between the two categories are dim. Adverse images of
Muslims have been created and sustained in large measure by media portrayals
and by a government-induced environment of fear, following the September 11 at-
tacks and the Iraq war. More than 40 percent of Americans openly admit feeling
prejudiced against Muslims and, while a minority believes that U.S Muslims are
sympathetic to the al-Qaeda terrorist organization, fewer than half of Americans
believe that Muslims are loyal to the United States. Fifty-nine percent of
Americans favor requiring Muslims to carry a special ID and nearly the same per-
centage feel that they should be more intensively searched at airports (Saad, 2006).
Moreover, a substantial portion of the American public views Islam as more likely
than other religions to encourage violence among its believers (Pew Forum, 2006).
Arab Americans have borne the effects of these negative and suspicious attitudes,
which today characterize no other American ethnic group.
ASSIMILATION Arab Americans whose families have been in the United States for
several generations have followed an assimilation path not unlike those of
European ethnic groups. Most of this population, it should be remembered, are
Christian and thus have not faced the more daunting difficulties of those who are
Muslim.
For Arab Americans who have immigrated in the past two decades and who
are Muslim, it is much too early to reach conclusions or even to make informed
predictions. There is no question, however, that there are huge obstacles to their
integration into the American mainstream. The current Middle Eastern population
is one of the most diverse and least understood among the newest ethnic elements
of U.S. society. Because the majority are Arabs, their racial-ethnic classification
remains uncertain and debated both within and outside the Arab American
chapter 12 the changing context of american race and ethnic relations 351
community (Naber, 2000; Samhan, 1999). One study of Lebanese and Palestinian
immigrant children, for example, demonstrated this ambivalent ethnic status.
Although technically they are labeled “white” by the current racial-ethnic classifica-
tion system used by the U.S. Census and other government agencies, these adoles-
cents distinguish themselves from the white majority. The study concluded that it is
not clear if they will “permanently adopt a nonwhite identity or instead opt for in-
clusion in the dominant culture as they reach adulthood and have more contacts
outside of the community” (Ajrouch, 2004:388).
In addition to questions of ethnic classification, the cultural confrontation of
devout Muslims with dominant American norms and values has led to a stronger
sense of isolation among Arab Americans and other Muslims than has been the
case with most immigrants to the United States. The determination of many Arab
Muslim immigrants to uphold their religious convictions in the face of an over-
whelming Judeo-Christian tradition and population has intensified that separate-
ness. As we will see in Chapter 16, the confrontation of Muslim and Western
cultures has been even more strikingly evident in some European societies where
large Muslim communities now reside.
Despite the unique problems of Arab Americans and, more generally, Muslim
Americans in the current social and political atmosphere, there are indications that
this is a population that, like others before them, is increasingly being integrated
into the larger society through the consumer market. In areas with large and grow-
ing Arab American communities, companies and advertisers have come to realize
this group’s market potential. In the Detroit area, for example, a McDonald’s now
serves halal (specially prepared to meet Islamic dietary laws) Chicken McNuggets,
Walgreens features Arabic-language signs in its aisles, and Ikea’s women employees
are given a company-branded head scarf to wear if they wish (Story, 2007). Such
compromises between traditional ethnic ways and those of the larger society are
also evident among Muslim women who have injected fashion into the customary
Muslim wardrobe (La Ferla, 2007).
A national survey of Muslim Americans, a large proportion of whom were
Arabs, gives further indication that Arab Americans are on an assimilation trajectory,
though they face daunting political and social obstacles (Pew Research Center,
2007c). The study concluded that Muslim Americans “are decidedly American in
their outlook, values and attitudes.” A majority, for example, subscribe to the
American work ethic, and most claim that many of their closest friends are non-
Muslims. However, most believe that being Muslim in the United States became
more difficult after the events of 9-11. Also, nearly half of Muslim Americans identify
themselves first as Muslim rather than as American.2
2
This is not radically different, however, from the responses of U.S. Christians, 42 percent of whom
say they think of themselves first as Christians, as opposed to 48 percent who say they are Americans
first. There is a clear link among both American Muslim and Christian populations between religiosity
and self-identification: Those who are more religiously observant and committed are more apt to claim
their religion as their primary identity.
352 part ii ethnicity in the united states
the traditional emphasis on “white” (that is, European) cultural and historical tra-
ditions (Goldberg, 1994; Ravitch, 2002; Schlesinger, 1998; Wood, 2003).
Language, as discussed earlier, has been another flash point of ethnic ideologi-
cal and policy conflict, pitting proponents of bilingualism in education and public
communication against those who view language concessions as not only contrary
to traditional American principles and practices, but as a dangerous opening to a
corporate pluralistic system. It is a vivid illustration of the clash of assimilationist
and pluralist perspectives.
A NEW “MELTING POT?” In a larger sense, this issue may be hollow. Despite the
accentuated cultural diversity of the United States, acculturative forces are at work
that seem to have homogenizing effects on all groups. In this new social environ-
ment, it becomes increasingly difficult to clearly identify the “dominant” ethnic cul-
ture.3 Mass communication and transportation increasingly break down cultural
singularities and compress them into common forms, spiced with only slight ethnic
variations. Billboards that in Des Moines picture white people and are written in
English may in Detroit feature blacks or in Miami be written in Spanish, but they
advertise the same products for all. Moreover, as the society becomes more ethni-
cally varied, cultural and social influences begin to cross in bewildering combina-
tions. Journalist David Rieff describes, for example, the ethnic fusion occurring in
contemporary Los Angeles:
Just as the Irish, Poles, Jews and Italians, who had rubbed shoulders and more in the
wake of the European immigration of 1900, had, by the 1950s and ’60s, begun to in-
termarry en masse, so the process is beginning to take place among the recent arrivals
in L.A. One can find every sort of nonwhite combination in the city now: Hmong and
Salvadoran, Ethiopian and Taiwanese, Mexican and Filipino. (1991:20)
In ethnic cauldrons like California, New York, and South Florida, the mix is so in-
tense that ethnicity itself begins to lose significance. As one Asian Indian entrepre-
neur put it, “California is so cosmopolitan, you don’t have to think about ethnicity
here. It just doesn’t matter—to anyone” (quoted in Jacoby, 2000:25). These centers
of ethnic heterogeneity, of course, do not typify the United States; and the likeli-
hood that such demographic conditions and their attendant attitudes will soon fol-
low in the American heartland is at best long-term. Nonetheless, the seed has been
planted.
It is in this sociocultural sense that, ironically, the “melting pot”—an inaccurate
metaphor of American ethnic relations in previous generations—may be closer than
ever to realization today. Steinberg (1989) suggests that although pluralist princi-
ples have become much stronger in recent years, the fact remains that ethnic differ-
ences have been diminishing. Thus, though many extol the need to retain an ethnic
culture and encounter declining resistance to its retention from the dominant group,
3
As was noted in Chapter 5, in this new multicultural environment even WASP Americans may be
evolving into simply one more ethnic group among many. William Greenbaum may have overstated
their declining influence only somewhat when he declared that “after having been the society, the
Protestants have been relegated to a place within the society, and increasingly they experience a bewil-
dering sense of themselves as a new minority” (1974:412).
354 part ii ethnicity in the united states
societal trends continue to erode those cultural differences. Moreover, the insistence
by ethnic leaders that ethnic cultures must be preserved does not seem to be shared
with the same intensity by immigrants themselves. Contrary to conventional
thought, immigrants seem most committed to assimilation, not retention of their
ethnic cultures. A national survey found that only 27 percent of immigrants favored
the so-called multiculturalism effort to preserve ethnic identity, whereas 59 percent
favored assimilation (Saad, 1995).
This homogenized culture is brought home strongly when Americans of any
ethnic origin travel to the society of their forebears. Most quickly realize how little
they have in common with the people of Ireland, if they are Irish Americans; of
Poland, if they are Polish Americans; or of African nations, if they are African
Americans. It is in such foreign contexts that a unique “Americanness” is most fully
revealed. Despite communication and transportation technologies that make it pos-
sible to maintain continual contact with their origin societies, the same acculturative
process will likely have a similar effect on the newest immigrants to the United
States.
Tier 1 Groups
Tier 2 Groups
Tier 3 Groups
Figure 12.3
| The American Ethnic Hierarchy
chapter 12 the changing context of american race and ethnic relations 355
Compensatory Policies
Out of the atmosphere of the civil rights movement and the new pluralism of the
1960s and 1970s, the federal government undertook sweeping measures to foster
political and economic equity among ethnic groups. Specifically, policies were
aimed at improving the social standing of African Americans, against whom official
discriminatory measures had been historically applied. Other long-term victims of
discrimination—Latinos, Asian Americans, and American Indians—were subse-
quently brought under the compensatory umbrella and, later, women were added
as a target group.
These new public policies, designed as they were to raise group positions,
marked a significant departure from the traditionally understood role of govern-
ment in the area of civil rights. In the past, government’s function had been to
ensure that everyone was afforded equal opportunities in work and education, re-
gardless of ethnicity. Because this guarantee had been violated for nonwhites, legis-
lation was enacted beginning in the 1960s that was designed to protect members of
minority groups from discrimination in schools, workplaces, and other societal in-
stitutions. But the question now raised was whether eliminating discriminatory
practices alone could counteract the effects of past discrimination. Given the gen-
erations of denied opportunities, was it fair to expect African Americans and other
racial-ethnic minorities to compete on an equal basis with the white majority? How
could these groups ever catch up if they entered the competition burdened by de-
cades of imposed disabilities? President Lyndon Johnson, in proclaiming the gov-
ernment’s intention to address this issue, put the matter squarely:
You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where
you want, do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a man,
who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line
of the race, saying ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe
you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough to open the gates of opportunity.
All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. This is the next and
more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. (Johnson, 1965:635)
In response to this dilemma, a series of compensatory measures and programs
evolved, grouped under the rubric of affirmative action, which were intended to ad-
vance the economic and educational achievement of the minorities that had been
356 part ii ethnicity in the united states
ANOTHER VIEW: “AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IS UNFAIR” Those who oppose affirmative ac-
tion or who strongly criticize the way it has been carried out argue that, in effect,
these programs have become a kind of reverse discrimination in which those previ-
ously discriminated against are given preference over others merely on the basis of
ethnicity (Glazer, 1975; Hook, 2002; Yates, 1994). Hence, they maintain, the very
objective intended—reducing ethnic discrimination—has been undermined, the vic-
tims now being Euro-Americans. Government is seen as re-creating racial and eth-
nic categories that had rightfully been abandoned. The effect of affirmative action
in many cases has been to create quotas favoring minorities, a particularly sensitive
issue for certain groups, such as Jews, who themselves were the past victims of
quotas limiting their entrance into prestigious colleges and professional schools.
Opponents of affirmative action have pointed out that preferential measures
shifting emphasis from equality of opportunity to equality of result create aspects
of corporate pluralism in which social benefits are distributed on the basis of group
membership, not individual merit. Hence, less qualified minority persons may be
promoted over better qualified majority persons. Moreover, the targeted groups of
affirmative action, they argue, are stigmatized because of their special treatment,
thus producing negative social and psychological effects on those who are suppos-
edly the beneficiaries of these programs (Sowell, 1990). Some have also suggested
that affirmative action programs create a kind of implied inferiority. Whites com-
monly view blacks as having acquired their positions on the basis of special prefer-
ence and thus as less than qualified or competent. This not only fuels negative
stereotypes by whites, they argue, but also creates self-doubt among blacks and
other minorities who are the intended beneficiaries of affirmative action (Heilman,
1996; McWhorter, 2000; Steele, 1991).
In addition to questions of reverse discrimination and effects on employment
and educational qualifications, affirmative action programs have been criticized as
too sweeping in application and therefore unable to distinguish from among the
various targeted minorities those who are truly the past or present victims of
discrimination. For instance, although Latinos are covered under the principles of
affirmative action, we have seen in Chapter 8 that this broad ethnic category com-
prises several disparate components, each with different American experiences.
Should Cubans, who have not encountered discrimination in work and education,
be entitled to the benefits of these programs in the same way as Mexicans in the
Southwest, who can invoke a history of discrimination in that region? Or should
any group whose ancestors came to America as voluntary immigrants be afforded
the benefits of affirmative action despite never having been the victims of systemic
legal discrimination? Such problems suggest that minority group membership is no
longer unambiguous. Moreover, many have pointed out that the major recipients of
the benefits of affirmative action have been middle-class racial and ethnic minori-
ties, not the “truly needy”; that is, those in disadvantaged class positions. Filtering
out those truly deserving of compensatory benefits has therefore become more com-
plicated not only between various groups, but within them as well.
The issue of affirmative action continues to generate heated debate, with advo-
cates of these programs countering their detractors on various points. As to the lack
358 part ii ethnicity in the united states
MAJOR COURT CASES As to the scope of affirmative action, an early case of great
significance was Griggs v. Duke Power, heard by the Supreme Court in 1971.
The specific question addressed in this case was whether tests given by companies
to potential employees could be required if it was believed that they had adverse
effects on minority applicants. This went beyond the Fifth and Fourteenth
Amendments stating that only intentional harmful actions against people on the ba-
sis of race or ethnicity violated their constitutional rights. The Court ruled that
company tests as a qualification for employment could be invalidated unless they
could be shown to be directly related to job performance or were a business neces-
sity. That is, the use of practices such as testing was now severely limited if their
effect—not simply their intent—was to eliminate minority applicants. If the number
of minorities in a company’s workforce, for example, did not reflect the proportion
of the minority population in the area where the company was located, that fact
might be sufficient to demonstrate the effect of such indirect discrimination or, as
the term came to be known, “disparate impact.” Thus in the Griggs case the Court
extended affirmative action to address instances not only of overt, intentional dis-
crimination but structural discrimination as well. In 1989 in another ruling, how-
ever, the Court weakened the business-necessity requirement and shifted the burden
of proof for demonstrating such indirect discrimination from the employer to the
applicant (Ezorsky, 1991).
As to whether affirmative action programs are themselves discriminatory, the
Bakke case is perhaps the most momentous, particularly as affirmative action re-
lates to higher education. Allan Bakke was denied admission to the medical school
of the University of California at Davis even though his entrance qualifications
chapter 12 the changing context of american race and ethnic relations 359
exceeded those of minority applicants who had been admitted under a special pro-
gram. As a means of increasing the number of minority students, 16 of 100 places
in each entering class had been reserved for minority applicants. Bakke, white,
maintained that he had been discriminated against on the basis of ethnicity and
sued the university for admission. The case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme
Court, and in 1978, by a 5-to-4 decision, the justices ruled in favor of Bakke.
Their decision was ambivalent, however, leaving the way open for schools to estab-
lish goals for meeting an ethnic balance. In effect, the Court ruled that quotas
(which in this case the university was found to have used) were illegal, but that
the use of race as a criterion of preference was legitimate as long as it was one
among many criteria and its purpose was to create a more ethnically balanced stu-
dent body.
In another case, Weber v. Kaiser Aluminum, affirmative action policies that
affected employment were tested in the Supreme Court one year after the Bakke
decision. Brian Weber, a white worker, contended that he had been passed over
in a company training program in favor of blacks with less seniority. As in
Bakke’s case, a fixed number of places had been reserved for underrepresented
blacks. Here the Court ruled with less ambiguity than in Bakke, declaring that
employers seeking to increase minority representation in certain occupational
areas not only could consider race as a criterion of hiring and promotion but
also could do so even if such efforts involved the use of quotas. In a 1984 case,
however, the Court seemed to move in the opposite direction, ruling that em-
ployer layoffs had to be made according to applicable seniority rules, even if in-
creases in minority employment from past affirmative action were wiped out in
the process.
Public officials in the 1990s voiced uncertainty about how, and whether, affir-
mative action could be sustained. A 1995 Supreme Court decision reflected a move-
ment toward reversing the scope and impact of these measures. In the case of
Adarand Constructors v. Peña, the Court placed tight limits on affirmative action.
Though not going so far as declaring them unconstitutional (two of the justices did,
in fact, support that position), it struck down federal contracting programs that fa-
vored firms owned by racial minorities (so-called set-asides), ruling that such pro-
grams had to be narrowly tailored to address identifiable past discrimination.
Legal rulings in 2000 and 2001 continued to reveal ambivalence on the part of
public officials and the courts toward affirmative action policies. Rulings in some
cases seemed to uphold the legality of affirmative action, while others augured the
very opposite trend. Some clarification came in 2003 when the Supreme Court
heard two cases regarding affirmative action in undergraduate and law school ad-
missions to the University of Michigan. Not since the Bakke case in 1978 had the
Court ruled on the use of affirmative action in university admissions, and many be-
lieved that the policy’s entire legal framework might now be struck down. For un-
dergraduate applicants, the University of Michigan had given an automatic point
boost to all minority applicants; the Court rejected this policy. But in the case of
the law school it upheld (by a 5-to-4 vote) the affirmative action policy, using essen-
tially the same rationale as had been used earlier in the landmark Bakke decision:
the school was justified in using race as one criterion among others as a means of
ensuring an ethnically diverse student body. This case seemed to ensure that
360 part ii ethnicity in the united states
THE POLITICAL CONTEXT Since the inception of affirmative action in the 1960s, the
Democratic and Republican parties have generally aligned themselves on opposite
sides of the issue (Edsall and Edsall, 1992; Hacker, 1994; Skrentny, 1996; Swain,
2001). Democrats have, for the most part, supported the idea and its implementa-
tion in public policy, while Republicans have either opposed the idea in principle
or, at best, given it lukewarm support and have sought to limit its application.
From its inception in the 1960s until 1980, all presidential administrations,
even the Republican Nixon’s, upheld and expanded affirmative action. The
Reagan administration, however, unlike its predecessors, declared its opposition to
the use of affirmative action measures and throughout the 1980s sought to subvert
them through actions (or inactions) of the Justice Department. “Opposition to race-
based affirmative action,” notes Thomas Edsall, “became for the Reagan regime a
matter not only of principle and of policy, but of partisan strategy” (Edsall and
Edsall, 1992:187).
During the early 1980s the Supreme Court, despite its inconsistent rulings, gen-
erally resisted these destructive efforts, upholding affirmative action programs in a
number of decisions. With the appointment of additional conservative justices by
Reagan, however, the Court by 1989 was philosophically poised to reduce the im-
pact of affirmative action and to weaken civil rights measures. In several decisions,
it clearly moved in that direction.
George H. W. Bush’s presidency sustained the efforts of Ronald Reagan to pull
back from the application of affirmative action. Although not driven by the ideolog-
ical fervor of the Reagan presidency, Bush’s administration, like Reagan’s, employed
opposition to affirmative action as part of a strategy through which Republicans
could galvanize white electoral support.
chapter 12 the changing context of american race and ethnic relations 361
PUBLIC OPINION Public sentiment regarding affirmative action measures has al-
ways been ambivalent. While a majority have generally supported the rationale of
such measures, there has not been a comparable level of support for specific pro-
grams designed to put the idea into action.
In the 1990s, antipathy to affirmative action among whites grew increasingly
popular and vocal. A 1995 national poll revealed that 79 percent of white
Americans opposed racial preferences in employment or college admissions
(Fineman, 1995).4 Quite simply, whites now saw such measures as “reverse dis-
crimination” and in violation of the American creed. So negatively had they come
to see affirmative action that, as political scientists Paul Sniderman and Thomas
Piazza concluded, it had “led some whites to dislike blacks—an ironic example of
a policy meant to put the divide of race behind us in fact further widening it”
(1993:109). Furthermore, a widespread public perception, particularly on the part
of whites, was that by the 1990s an equal opportunity structure had been created,
obviating the need for compensatory measures. Throughout the early 2000s, the
perception of affirmative action in the form of racial preferences as unfair, specifi-
cally as it affected college admissions, remained the view of a majority of Americans
(Fineman and Lipper, 2003; Gallup Organization, 2003; Pew Research Center,
2003, 2007).
It is important to consider that the public response to affirmative action is not
as clear-cut as one might expect. As with racial attitudes generally, whites today
seem to accept the appropriateness of compensatory policies for racial minorities
in principle, but their support wanes when specific measures are applied that are
interpreted as special preferences or as quotas. As Sniderman and Piazza found in
their surveys, substantial numbers of whites are prepared to support policies that
improve the status of blacks, but “The idea of quotas and preferential treatment is
the reef on which affirmative action founders” (1993:130).
This may be a case of whites supporting the principle but rejecting efforts to
apply it (recall the notion of aversive racism, discussed in Chapter 7), or it may be
simply giving lip service to what is understood as a politically correct view. But to
see the issue as a fundamental split between whites and racial minorities—whites
oppose affirmative action, racial minorities support it—is too simple. In a 2003
4
The poll revealed that although racial minorities were not as strongly opposed to such preferences
(46 percent disapproved), neither were they overwhelmingly supportive.
362 part ii ethnicity in the united states
national survey, when asked if college applicants should be admitted solely on the
basis of merit, even if the result would be few minority students being admitted, 75
percent of non-Hispanic whites answered yes; but 59 percent of Hispanics also an-
swered yes, and even a significant percentage of blacks (44 percent) agreed (Moore,
2003). Racial attitudes, then, are not necessarily the critical—much less the only—
factor comprising this issue. People may oppose or feel resentment toward affirma-
tive action policies not because they are antiblack or anti-Hispanic or wish to keep
things as they are (surely many do oppose them for these reasons), but because they
see them as fundamentally in violation of the value of fairness.
5
A national survey, for example, indicated that a majority of Americans recognize the value of diver-
sity in higher education and support efforts to ensure a diverse student body (Morin, 1998).
chapter 12 the changing context of american race and ethnic relations 363
minority workers (Cloud, 1998). And as already noted, most Americans seem to
support some form of affirmative action as long as it does not appear to involve
special treatment to particular groups. But if compensatory policies in some form
are likely to remain in place, continuing political and social pressures make it even
more likely that they will be recurrently subject to political debate and public scru-
tiny. Some states, for example, have put the issue to the ballot. By 2008, voters in
California, Washington, and Michigan had already passed a ban on the use of ra-
cial, gender, or national origin affirmative action in college admissions, hiring, and
contracting, and efforts were afoot in five other states to enact a similar measure.
Affirmative action, in sum, has proven itself one of the most vexing issues of
race and ethnicity in America. Yet it is important to consider the widespread use
of such measures in other multiethnic societies (Sowell, 2004). Preferential policies
designed to bring about more equity among diverse groups have been adopted in
countries as divergent as Australia, India, Nigeria, and Malaysia. Thus we should
not think that the problems revolving around this issue are unique to the United
States. As countries everywhere are transformed into multiethnic societies, mitigat-
ing the inequitable distribution of societal resources among various ethnic groups
has become an inescapable predicament.
LOOKING AHEAD
The United States, as we have now seen, has for the past two decades been in the
midst of a literal transformation of its ethnic system. Several trends have become
evident.
• The racial/ethnic configuration of the United States has become more diverse
and complex as new elements, primarily Latino and Asian, make up a sizable
and growing proportion of the population.
• The traditional binary, black-white, racial division no longer has relevance as
these new groups take their place in the society and in the process complicate
racial and ethnic divisions.
• Increasing diversity and continual ethnic intermixing makes traditional racial
and ethnic classification schemes less meaningful and employable.
• The cultural dominance of Euro-Americans continues to prevail but it is subject
to new influences that are moving it in a more multicultural direction.
• Ethnic inequality remains tenacious, specifically the division between Euro-
Americans and most Asian Americans on the one hand and African Americans,
Latinos, and Native Americans on the other.
Do these social and economic trends portend more contentious and conflictual eth-
nic relations in the future or might they impel social forces that lead to more equi-
table and harmonious relations?
A Negative View
Public opinion regarding racial and ethnic issues has vacillated during the past two
decades. In the 1990s and early 2000s, national surveys consistently revealed pessi-
mism regarding future ethnic relations (Gallup Organization, 2001a; Hugick, 1992;
364 part ii ethnicity in the united states
Newsweek, 1992a, 1992b, 1995a). Later in the decade of the 2000s, public views
seemed to shift somewhat, as a majority of Americans, including blacks, whites,
and Hispanics, rated relations between various groups good. Americans gave the
most positive evaluation to white-Asian relations (83 percent rated them good),
but a majority also thought that white-black (64 percent) and white-Hispanic (60
percent) relations were good (Jones, 2006).
A more detailed examination of opinion, however, revealed that long-term eth-
nic relations are not seen the same way by members of each group. When asked, for
example, if black-white relations “will always be a problem” in American society or
that “a solution will eventually be worked out,” a slight majority of blacks (55 per-
cent) answered “always,” while almost the same percentage of whites (56 percent)
answered that a “solution” would be found. These results were not significantly dif-
ferent from what they had been ten years earlier (Jones, 2006).
Equally important, surveys continue to indicate that whites’ perception of the
condition of social and economic life for racial and ethnic minorities is quite differ-
ent from the view of the minorities themselves. Blacks and Hispanics are generally
much less positive than whites about the way ethnic minorities are treated in
American society (Jones, 2006; New America Media, 2007). For example, while
53 percent of whites feel that racial minorities have equal job opportunities as
whites, only 34 percent of blacks feel that way (Carroll, 2006).
Also of concern is an increasingly apparent division among racial-ethnic minor-
ities themselves. A recent survey of blacks, Latinos, and Asians revealed the persis-
tence of negative stereotypes and a relatively low level of personal interaction
between the groups (New America Media, 2007). These schisms are particularly ev-
ident where groups are in competition for jobs and education. In parts of the South,
for example, where a growing Latino population has begun to challenge African
Americans for blue-collar jobs, strained relations between the two groups have in-
tensified (Swarns, 2006).
A Positive View
Given the divergent public views of ethnic relations in general and the even greater
split in views of how ethnic minorities fare, it is reasonable to assume that ethnic
discord at some level will continue to be a persistent feature of American society
well into the twenty-first century. Still, there is room for at least some cautious
optimism. This view is predicated on five points.
First, we should remember that there have been few times in American history
when ethnic issues have not been in the forefront of public consciousness and the
focus of public policy. We should therefore not think of ours as a unique era.
Moreover, Americans, when asked their view on the future of race and ethnic rela-
tions, generally respond with optimism. A 2008 national survey, for example, con-
cluded that “The overall portrait of race relations is one of moderation, stability
and modest progress.” Only minor differences were evident among the various eth-
nic groups questioned (Taylor, 2008).
Second, although the United States’ pluralistic tendency and the accommodative
responses to it by its major institutions are the source of continued public debate,
there is indisputable evidence of a growing ethnic tolerance in the society as a
chapter 12 the changing context of american race and ethnic relations 365
whole. A poll conducted in 1964 and again in 1989 asked a national sample of
Americans to rank different American ethnic groups. In both years, the rank order
of the groups corresponded closely to the social distance hierarchy that emerged
from the earlier Bogardus studies of social distance (described in Chapter 3),
indicating much continuity in the social standing of American ethnic groups—the
groups closest culturally and racially to the dominant group occupied the highest
positions. Perhaps equally significant, however, is that the score for almost all
groups rose during the intervening twenty-five years. Especially large increases
were noticeable for blacks and Asian American groups. Recall as well the demise
of crude racist ideas among whites vis-à-vis racial minorities, noted in Chapter 7.
Another indication of positive change in the trend of American ethnic relations
can be detected in the response to the attacks of September 11, 2001. In the weeks
following the catastrophe, anti-Arab sentiment ran very high and, as noted earlier,
Arab Americans were the targets of verbal and in some cases physical abuse. Public
opinion polls, moreover, confirmed the readiness of Americans to subject Arab
Americans to special security measures, much in the fashion of racial profiling. In
the wake of the society’s war atmosphere, Arab Americans’ fear of being targets for
severe discrimination, comparable to the way German Americans were dealt with
during World War I and Japanese Americans during World War II, was well
grounded. But unlike the tragic actions of those past cases, government officials as
well as media, education, and business leaders made direct and forceful appeals to
the American public for tolerance, specifically to disassociate the terrorist acts from
Arab Americans and Muslim communities in the United States.
These have not been overly successful, however, in reducing anti-Arab and anti-
Muslim sentiments among a significant part of the American population and pre-
venting the egregious violation of civil rights in numerous cases. This remains a
troubling aspect of current American ethnic relations. Nonetheless, there appears
to be a heightened awareness of this issue that to date has contained its potentially
explosive nature.
Third, despite what at times seems a hopelessly racially and ethnically divided
society, the United States may in fact be more socially and politically cohesive than
is often assumed. Closer analysis reveals that on basic values regarding issues such
as teaching a common American heritage and values, there is overwhelming ap-
proval by all groups; in fact, more minorities than whites endorse this position
(Etzioni, 1998). Moreover, ethnic leaders often convey the view that race or ethnic-
ity is the sole or major determining factor in setting people’s perspectives on social
and political issues. But this view ignores more fundamental class differences that,
as we discovered in the preceding few chapters, internally divide popularly con-
ceived panethnic categories.
Fourth, intermarriage across racial and ethnic lines, as we have seen, continues,
with few exceptions, to rise unabated. According to a 2006 survey, more than one-
fifth of all American adults say that they have a close relative who is married to
someone of a different race (Pew Research Center, 2006b). Thus the social walls
separating racial and ethnic groups continue to crumble, and as they do, the divi-
sion of the society into conveniently demarcated racial and ethnic categories con-
tinues to lose meaning. The United States may be entering a post-ethnic age in
which clearly perceived racial and ethnic groups blend into a “beige continuum”
366 part ii ethnicity in the united states
(Kington and Nickers, 2001). And, rather than being arbitrarily placed into ethnic
pigeonholes, individuals may have much greater latitude in choosing their ethnic af-
filiations (Hollinger, 1995).
Finally, as we will see in the next three chapters, the United States is not alone
in its ethnic problems. Indeed, few societies of the contemporary world do not face
equally daunting problems stemming from an expanding ethnic diversity and its at-
tendant intergroup conflict. And, as will be revealed, the level of American conflict
is relatively mild compared to that of many other ethnically divided societies.
SUMMARY
Three interrelated issues of race and ethnic relations in the United States are today of
pressing importance. One concerns the large-scale immigration to the United States
that has occurred since the mid-1960s. During this period, more immigrants have en-
tered the society than at any time since the classic period of immigration in the early
years of the twentieth century. Most important, the vast majority of the current immi-
grants are non-European, coming mostly from Latin America and Asia. Their pres-
ence has prompted much social debate regarding their economic impact and their so-
cial integration. Proponents of liberal immigration policies argue that immigrants
bring many benefits to the society and have a generally positive economic and social
impact. Those who advocate more stringent policies contend that immigrants have a
negative economic impact and exert a potentially divisive social influence.
Immigration has become one of the most virulent issues of national politics.
Public opinion for the past decade has seemed to favor more restrictionist measures,
though the intensity of public reaction has vacillated. In response to periodic public
fervor, politicians at the national level and in states and locales where the impact of
large-scale immigration is most acute have exploited this issue repeatedly.
A second major issue concerns the question of whether the society is—or should
be—moving toward greater cultural assimilation or pluralism. Unquestionably, the
United States today is a more ethnically diverse society than at any time in its his-
tory. Moreover, there appears to be greater tolerance for that diversity, with vari-
ous societal institutions acknowledging and even sanctioning the expression of
ethnic differences. Whether in the long term these differences will dissipate or be
sustained is not yet clear.
The final issue of American race and ethnic relations concerns the continuing so-
cioeconomic gap between Euro-Americans and most Asian Americans, and African
Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. To address this problem, starting in the
late 1960s government and other institutions introduced preferential policies aimed
at creating greater ethnic equity. During the past four decades, these programs have
been the subject of much controversy among politicians, scholars, and the general
public. An intense debate concerns the fairness of these programs and whether
they do, in fact, accomplish their ostensible objectives.
Although ethnic conflict is an inherent feature of the United States as an ethni-
cally diverse society, there are clear indications that the level of conflict is lower
than in past times and that ethnic tolerance is at a high point. Moreover, among
the world’s ethnically divided societies, the level of American ethnic conflict is com-
paratively moderate.
chapter 12 the changing context of american race and ethnic relations 367
Suggested Readings
Cahn, Steven M. (ed.). 2002. The Affirmative Action Debate. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Essays by social scientists and philosophers that critique affirmative action from different
political and ideological perspectives.
Ezorsky, Gertrude. 1991. Racism and Justice: The Case for Affirmative Action. Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press. Presents moral and practical arguments for affirmative action
policies and assesses their impact, particularly on African Americans.
Glazer, Nathan. 1997. We Are All Multiculturalists Now. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press. A prominent sociologist offers his views on the decline of the assimila-
tion model and the increasing acceptance of ethnic pluralism as a central value of
American society.
Hollinger, David A. 1995. Post-Ethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. New York: Basic
Books. Proposes a “cosmopolitan” ethnic model of the United States in which individuals
are able to transcend traditional ethnic and racial boundaries and choose their ethnic
affiliations.
Kahlenberg, Richard D. 1997. The Remedy: Class, Race, and Affirmative Action. New
York: Basic Books. Argues for the use of class-based factors as the rationale for affirma-
tive action rather than racial and ethnic factors.
Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr. 1998. The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural
Society. Rev. ed. New York: Norton. A prominent historian analyzes the upsurge in eth-
nic consciousness and its impact on education, especially the teaching of history as part of
a multicultural curriculum.
Skrentny, John David. 1996. The Ironies of Affirmative Action: Politics, Culture, and Justice
in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Meticulously traces the origins and de-
velopment of affirmative action policies, stressing the political process, which involved
little public debate.
Steele, Shelby. 1991. The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America.
New York: Harper Perennial. A black scholar argues that affirmative action policies no
longer function beneficially for African Americans but in fact act as a group handicap
and accentuate perceived racial differences.
Swain, Carol M. (ed.). 2007. Debating Immigration. New York: Cambridge University
Press. A collection of essays by sociologists, demographers, and political scientists, repre-
senting a range of ideological and policy views, that deal with many of the major politi-
cal, economic, and social issues prompted by the current wave of immigration to
America.
Waters, Mary C. and Reed Ueda (eds.). 2007. The New Americans: A Guide to Immigration
since 1965. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. A basic reference on the various
groups that make up the Newest Immigration.
Wood, Peter. 2003. Diversity: The Invention of a Concept. San Francisco: Encounter Books.
Critiques the diversity movement, and describes how the need to recognize racial-ethnic
group differences, adopted by all the society’s major institutions, is fundamentally at odds
with traditional American values of individualism and equality.
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Ethnic Relations
III
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P A R T ±±
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in Comparative ±
Perspective
Having explored patterns of race and ethnic relations in the United States, we now
examine some non-American cases as a basis for comparison. People often assume
that what occurs in their own society is unique and that others’ societies are simply
not like theirs. Conversely, they sometimes assume that what happens in their own
society is characteristic of human societies in general. In part, both of these suppo-
sitions are valid. To ascertain in what ways U.S. society is similar to and in what
ways it is different from others requires that Americans transcend the limited per-
spective imposed by the social system with which they are most familiar and com-
fortable. That is, they need to adopt a broader, less parochial approach to human
affairs.
The societies examined in this part lend themselves readily to comparison with
the United States. It will not be difficult to detect similarities, nor will the differ-
ences be obscure. Each is part of a specific geographic region, is a product of a dis-
tinct historical tradition, and displays variant bases of ethnic stratification and
conflict.
The patterns of race and ethnic relations in each of these societies represent one
of the major types described in Chapter 4. South Africa, the focus of Chapter 13,
resembles in its recent history the colonial (or extreme inequalitarian pluralistic)
type; Brazil, examined in Chapter 14, is an example of the assimilationist type. In
Chapter 15, Canada will be seen as a society with many features of a corporate plu-
ralistic, or multicultural, system. These societies also seem to fall roughly on a scale,
or continuum, based on the severity of ethnic stratification and conflict.
In Chapter 16, we explore the rising significance of ethnicity across the globe as
nations everywhere, through immigration and political turmoil, become more ethni-
cally diverse. We look first at the impact of this new heterogeneity on western
369
370 part iii ETHNIC RELATIONS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
European countries. This will provide us with an opportunity to compare their rel-
atively fresh encounter with ethnic conflict and change to the American experience,
in which ethnic issues have been a wellspring of social friction and strife for many
generations. Focus then falls on four societies, each of which has experienced ex-
treme ethnic conflict in recent times. Although comparison of these cases with the
United States is dubious, they nonetheless force us to consider what can happen
when fear and distrust of ethnic out-groups become the preeminent characteristics
of intergroup relations in a multiethnic society.
13
±±
±±
±±
±±
±±
South Africa ±± C H A P T E R
±±
±±
±
Society in Transition
Little more than twenty years ago, South Africa, in its system of ethnic relations,
was unique in the modern world. As an inequalitarian pluralistic society, it had no
peer. Despite persistent intergroup conflict and hostility, almost all multiethnic soci-
eties in the post–World War II era adopted policies intended to strengthen ethnic
unification. South Africa, however, moved in the opposite direction, compelling
greater divisions among its ethnic populations. What made South Africa most sin-
gular among contemporary societies was that its racist system was fully legitimized
and enforced by the state. South Africa, as we will see, has been a congeries of soci-
etal inconsistencies and contradictions. Throughout most of its history, however,
one thing was clear and unambiguous—the dominance by whites, the numerical mi-
nority, over blacks, the numerical majority.1 No area of South African life was un-
touched by the racial policies and ideology of the dominant white group.
Today South Africa is moving on what appears to be an irreversible course to-
ward a more equalitarian system. Indeed, the scope and depth of change this society
has experienced in the past two decades would have been unimaginable just a few
years earlier. South Africa, therefore, provides an instructive case of the fluidity of
ethnic relations and how they can change dramatically in a relatively short period
of time, no matter how rigid and implacable they may seem. Despite the magnitude
of change, however, the ultimate shape of the new South Africa as a multiethnic
1
The ethnic terminology used in describing South Africa’s population has not been consistent, and as
in the United States, it has political connotations. Traditionally, black Africans were called Bantu, a
name corresponding to their languages. During the apartheid regime, they were officially called blacks
but referred to themselves as Africans, a term used by most scholars as well. Some use the term black
to describe the entire nonwhite population, including Coloureds and Asians, as well as Africans. Today
black African or African/black is used commonly to refer specifically to Africans, and that usage is
adopted in this chapter. As the new South Africa evolves, ethnic terms will likely take on new meanings
(see Adam, 1995; Horowitz, 1991; Lever, 1978; Thompson, 2001; and van den Berghe, 1967).
371
372 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
society remains uncertain. As a result, its racial and ethnic system will engage the
attention of the world for many years to come. Furthermore, although its system
of ethnic separatism has been dismantled officially, enough of it endures informally
to make this society still an extraordinary case in its extremes of ethnic division and
inequality.
As we look at South Africa, it is important to keep in mind that events of
change have moved so swiftly in recent years that any description of its prevailing
institutions risks almost immediate obsolescence. South Africa’s significance as a
case study of race and ethnic relations, however, lies as much in its history as in
its current affairs. Furthermore, its system of extreme ethnic separation and stratifi-
cation is not something of the distant past, but has only recently been successfully
challenged. It is fresh enough, therefore, to warrant a careful examination and to be
instructive to other contemporary multiethnic societies.
White Settlement
Historical evidence indicates that what is today South Africa was inhabited by
Bantu-speaking peoples, the society’s major African linguistic group, as early as
the sixteenth century and probably much earlier (Wilson and Thompson, 1969).
Modern South African history, however, involving the confrontation of European
and native African peoples, begins with Dutch settlement in 1652. At that time,
the Dutch East India Company established a colony in Cape Town as a refreshment
station for its ships traveling to and from India. The indigenous people of the area,
the Khoikhoi (Hottentots) and the San (Bushmen), were unable to satisfy the labor
needs of the colonists who therefore began to import slaves from other parts of
Africa and from the Dutch East Indies only a few years after their original settle-
ment. The colonists’ negative view of these slaves did not prevent widespread mis-
cegenation; hence, a mixed racial group was created whose descendants are today
called Coloureds.
THE TREKKING MOVEMENT As the colony grew, many of the Dutch, German, and
French Huguenot colonists chose permanent settlement. At the beginning of the
eighteenth century they began to leave Cape Town, establishing farms on land far-
ther into the interior. Thus began the penetration of the northern and eastern fron-
tiers, a movement called “trekking.” These settlers became known as Boers, a
chapter 13 south africa 373
Dutch word meaning “farmers.” The trekking movement lasted 150 years, with the
Boers continually pushing farther and farther inland. As they moved into the inte-
rior, the major patterns developed that would ultimately affect the shape of South
African society—conflict with the indigenous peoples and the emergence of a
unique white South African ethnic group.
The Boers came into conflict not only with native African peoples occupying
these lands, but also with migrating African tribes moving across the continent,
westward and southward. These were Bantu-speaking tribes who were well orga-
nized and who presented serious resistance, unlike the Khoikhoi and the San, who
had been more easily subdued. The clashes over land and cattle that developed be-
tween the Boers and the Bantu, called Kaffir wars, lasted for many decades before
the dominance of the Boers was finally established. The disdain for the natives
based on their racial features was exacerbated by the bitterness that resulted from
these encounters. Additionally, because they greatly outnumbered the Boers, the
Bantu were seen as a constant threat whose suppression had to be ensured. Many
of the racial attitudes of white South Africans in modern times can be traced to
these initial contacts with Africans in the interior.
function, as colonials representing and maintaining strong cultural and political ties
to a motherland.
This sense of isolation and permanence explains much about the determination
of Afrikaners in later years to defend their way of life, and what they came to see as
their territory, against the threat of black rule. “The clue to South African history,”
wrote Douglas Brown over forty years ago, “is that the Boer, though early forced
into an intimate local relationship with other races, brown, white, and black, has
since the first decade of the eighteenth century had no backing, no allies, no means
of reinforcement, no possibility of retreat. His nationalism soon became absolute,
and so it remains in the jet age, to the discomfiture of the rest of the world”
(1966:19). Not until the late 1980s were the Afrikaners compelled to alter that
view. As we will see, Afrikaner nationalism was tempered and finally gave way to
a recognition that only by sharing societal power with those groups it dominated so
completely for most of South Africa’s history could it survive in the modern world.
THE BRITISH ENTRANCE The British entered the South African scene at the start of
the nineteenth century when, in a move designed to protect their colonial interests
in the East, they took possession of the Cape colony. The next fifty years saw the
development of a competitive and often bitterly hostile relationship between the
British and the Afrikaners that, although moderated, would remain an essential el-
ement of South Africa’s ethnic dynamics. The British were not a large settler group
like the Boers, and they brought a strikingly different political and social tempera-
ment to South Africa, more liberal and cosmopolitan. Their values clashed with the
stern parochialism of the Afrikaners, and a wide gulf opened between them.
Not long after their arrival in South Africa, the British instituted liberalized pol-
icies regarding race relations, which exacerbated the already strained relations with
the Afrikaners. The British attitude toward the native Africans was no different
from the Afrikaners’ in its substance—white dominance. But the British saw black
Africans in a more paternalistic frame, whereas the Afrikaners saw them as a threat
to their ultimate survival as a people. “The abstract difference between British im-
perial and Afrikaner republican conceptions of how to rule Africans,” explains his-
torian George Fredrickson, “might be described as a conflict between the trustee-
ship ideal and what the Boers called baaskap—which in essence meant direct
domination in the interest of white settlers without any pretense that the subordi-
nate race was being shielded from exploitation or guided toward civilization”
(1981:193). The practice of white supremacy by the Afrikaners was thus consistent
with their fundamental belief that force and exploitation were perfectly legitimate
means to protect their group interests.
chapter 13 south africa 375
THE SECOND TREKKING MOVEMENT In 1834 slavery was abolished throughout the
British empire. This act was followed during the next two decades by the lifting of
other legal restrictions against nonwhites. These radically new racial policies acted
as a major incentive for the second and far more substantial migration of Boers
into the interior. In 1836 a sweeping movement was launched in which one-
quarter of the entire Afrikaans-speaking population would eventually set out on
their own into the interior (Robertson and Whitten, 1978). This was the com-
mencement of the Great Trek, comparable in many ways to the westward move-
ment of Americans in the nineteenth century. As the Western frontier had served
as a kind of social safety valve in the United States, the Boer trek northward and
eastward after 1836 provided a means of escape for those who found the British
presence a constant source of anguish.
These Voortrekkers, as they were called, were doggedly pursued by British co-
lonial advances, however. After fierce battles with the Zulu tribe in 1838, Boers
founded the republic of Natal, which was subsequently annexed by Britain in
1843. Pushing farther northward, the Voortrekkers founded the Orange Free State
and the Transvaal, which were eventually recognized as independent states by the
British. These states became the heart of the Afrikaner culture, and within them
the sense of autonomy and group solidarity was developed to its fullest. In both,
the notion of white supremacy was a fundamental principle.
THE BOER WARS The discovery of diamonds around Kimberley in 1867 and of
gold in the Transvaal in 1886 once again spurred British advances. Britain had ear-
lier attempted to extend its influence into the Transvaal, resulting in the first Boer
War. Although the Boers successfully resisted at that time, the influx of British rail-
roads, mining interests, and workers following the gold discovery led to a more se-
rious challenge to Boer autonomy. The British finally intervened with military
force, provoking the second Boer War in 1899, a conflict that would leave perma-
nent scars of bitterness between the two groups. The Boers used guerrilla tactics
against the larger and superior British forces; in response, the British interned the
Boers in concentration camps where 26,000, including women and children, died
of disease. This is an event of enormous significance in Afrikaner history, symbol-
izing the martyrdom of the Boer people and their determination to survive against
all odds. This second encounter with the British was a key factor in the subsequent
development of militant Afrikaner nationalism. As we will see, though they were
defeated in war, the Afrikaners eventually asserted political ascendancy and
emerged as South Africa’s dominant ethnic group.
Unlike the Afrikaners, the British never coalesced into a nationlike unit in South
Africa. Their loyalties were fragmented between South Africa and the British
Commonwealth (Thompson, 1964). As a result, Afrikaner dominance—though re-
peatedly diluted by British incursions in education, immigration, and especially the
economy throughout the nineteenth century and part of the twentieth—was eventu-
ally entrenched and solidified. Although they had been militarily successful in the
second Boer War, the British began to lose influence afterward and reached a tenu-
ous political compromise with the numerically superior Afrikaners.
In 1910 the four territories of South Africa—the Cape, Natal, the Orange Free
State, and the Transvaal—were merged into a union. This marked the beginning of
376 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
a period in which the British and moderate Afrikaner political forces were suffi-
ciently consolidated to frustrate the efforts of the more extreme Afrikaner-
dominated National Party to excise the British influence. Following the formal un-
ion of South Africa, the foundation of the society’s racial laws was also secured.
Although the subordination of blacks had always been informally understood and
enforced, during this period a succession of government policies institutionalized
many segregationist and inequalitarian practices, particularly those regarding par-
ticipation of Africans in government and the economy.
ETHNIC STRATIFICATION
In no other modern multiethnic society was ethnic stratification as clear-cut as in
South Africa, and in no other was it so inflexible. Until the official demise of apart-
heid in the early 1990s, the boundaries between ethnic strata were, by law, rela-
tively impermeable. South Africa’s racial system was castelike, sustained by endog-
amy and by the maintenance of separate institutional systems for each ethnic group.
Only in the larger economic system did the different ethnic groups come together,
and there, as in all other societal areas, the intergroup relations were grossly inequi-
table. Indeed, along with its rigidity, the other major feature of the South African
system of ethnic stratification was the enormous gap between the dominant white
group and the several subordinate black groups—a gap that, as we will see, remains
very much in evidence today. South Africa, then, was the prototypical inequalitar-
ian pluralistic society, in which only the economic system served as a kind of social
glue holding the various groups together.
Undergirding and enforcing the system of ethnic inequality was the South
African state—dominated by whites, specifically, the Afrikaners. So complete was
chapter 13 south africa 377
white control of the society’s political apparatus that blacks were allowed no mean-
ingful participation and were accorded few legal rights. Pierre van den Berghe
(1978) referred to the South African sociopolitical system as a Herrenvolk democ-
racy: a state that provides most democratic features of political rule to whites while
ruling blacks dictatorially. Others described the system as a “race-oligarchy”
(Adam, 1971b) or a “pigmentocracy” (Thompson and Prior, 1982). All these appel-
lations denote the fact that skin color was the single overriding criterion of societal
power in South Africa.
As was explained in Chapter 2, in almost all multiethnic societies, ethnic status
is a significant factor in the distribution of life chances. The allocation of justice,
health, occupation, education, living quarters, and so on depends, to some degree
or another, on one’s ethnic classification. But in no modern society has that classifi-
cation been so critical in determining people’s social place as it was in South Africa
under apartheid. To ensure white dominance in all areas of social life, this castelike
system required a formal division of the population into specific ethnic categories—
whites, Coloureds, Asians (mostly Indians), and Africans. Though no longer offi-
cially recognized, these categories, informally, continue to divide South Africa.
The Whites
Whites (or Europeans) constitute less than 10 percent of the population (Table
13.1) but, until 1994, completely dominated government. As the only group with
effective political rights, whites for decades filtered all social rewards, first siphon-
ing off their disproportionate share before distributing the remainder to the three
subordinate groups. Although they no longer dominate the political system, whites
continue to maintain key positions of power in the economy and own most of the
society’s wealth. In an economic sense, they remain the dominant group despite the
fact that they have been displaced as the political ruling group.
±±
±
Table 13.1 ±±± Ethnic Population of South Africa
Total
Population (in Black Indian/
Thousands) African Coloured Asian White
THE CONVERGENCE OF WHITE INTERESTS The class, status, attitudinal, political, and
linguistic divisions between the Afrikaners and the English should not be over-
stated. First, with the ascendancy of the Nationalists in 1948, a significant closing
of the gap in wealth and economic influence between the two groups gradually oc-
curred (van zyl Slabbert, 1975). Class differences, though real, were minimized by
the primary importance of one’s racial classification. Second, both groups benefited
from the castelike system and were united in their desire to preserve white rule.
This common interest was strong enough to override the political differences be-
tween them. Thus English opposition to apartheid stemmed mainly from the view
that it was economically impractical and inefficient, not that it was morally objec-
tionable (Banton, 1967; Lewin, 1963; van den Berghe, 1967). Although the social
gap between the English and Afrikaners remained evident, the political differences
between them diminished as white dominance was challenged (Horowitz, 1991).
AFRIKANERS AS A NEW MINORITY Today, with apartheid ended, the political and
cultural power of the Afrikaners is in decline. Afrikaners no longer play a major
role in government, and the Afrikaans language is under attack in the schools and
chapter 13 south africa 379
media, where English is now preferred (Vestergaard, 2001).2 The civil service, once
a stronghold of Afrikaners, now hires mostly blacks (Daley, 1998a). Obviously,
this formerly dominant group has been transformed into a minority. And that mi-
nority status has fundamentally affected the very self-identity of Afrikaners, many
of whom no longer even define themselves in this ethnic fashion. In his fieldwork in
South Africa, Mads Vestergaard found that “When asked, individuals who for-
merly might have called themselves ‘Afrikaner’ now increasingly define themselves
according to their profession, their geographical location, or simply as ‘South
African’” (2001:30). As one journalist describes them, many present-day Afrikaners
“seem to be searching for a comfortable place in a black-majority society and still
have not found it” (Wines, 2007a:A1).
The Coloureds
Out of the sexual and sometimes marital unions of whites and blacks during the
early settlement of the Cape was created an intermediate racial group called
Coloureds. During the nineteenth century, the Cape continued to evolve along dif-
ferent social and political lines from the frontier settled by the Voortrekkers. As a
result, for a long period following the abolition of slavery in 1834, the legal system
of the Cape was essentially color-blind, allowing for a great deal of racial intermix-
ing (Fredrickson, 1981; Mason, 1970). Today, almost all of South Africa’s 3.5 mil-
lion Coloureds live in the Western Cape province, the majority in or around Cape
Town.
The Coloureds are perhaps the most peculiar element within the South African
ethnic system because in all ways except their physical features, they are thoroughly
Europeanized. Most speak Afrikaans, are Christian (mostly Protestant), and are in
other cultural ways barely distinguishable from the Afrikaners. The sole, and obvi-
ously critical, distinction between the two groups is skin color. Many Coloureds, of
course, are even physically indistinguishable from the Afrikaners.
The position of the Coloureds has been marginal to both whites and Africans
not only physically, but also politically and economically. During the apartheid re-
gime, Coloureds maintained a few political privileges that—limited though they
were—placed them apart from the Africans. The economic position of the
Coloureds has also been somewhat privileged by comparison with that of
Africans, though well below the white standard. Most are part of the unskilled pro-
letariat, both in agriculture and industry, though there is a substantial middle class.
The facts that they are thoroughly Europeanized, and under apartheid held at
least a few token privileges, created feelings of marginality to both white and
African groups. Their attitudes toward apartheid, therefore, were somewhat ambiv-
alent. As Dickie-Clark (1972) has noted, through apartheid they lost their earlier
legal equality with whites but gained a somewhat more advantageous position
2
With the fall of Afrikaners as the dominant political group, Afrikaans is increasingly being displaced
by English and African languages in all areas of social and political life (Giliomee, 2004; McLarin,
1995; Swarns, 2002).
380 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
over Africans and Indians. This accounts in some measure for their reluctance
to identify or interact more closely with the Africans (Adhikari, 2005; Gevisser,
1994).
The Asians
The bulk of South Africa’s Asian population is made up of Indians, mostly descen-
dants of indentured workers brought from India in the late nineteenth century to
work in the sugar-cane fields of Natal. Following their term of service, many re-
mained and became traders, shopkeepers, and workers at various skill levels (Hart
and Padayachee, 2000). Most still live today in Natal, in and around Durban, the
province’s largest city. Within the South African system they are, like the
Coloureds, a marginal group—part of neither the white nor the African
populations.
Ethnic Indians in South Africa are a complex group in both culture and class.
They are of several linguistic origins and are further divided along religious lines.
Within the Indian population is an entire range of classes, from wealthy merchants
to unskilled agricultural and industrial workers. All, however, exist in the context
of an institutionally separate community. Indians generally occupy a more privi-
leged economic position than either Coloureds or Africans (in most occupational
sectors, they earn more than Coloureds and far more than Africans), but most
rank well below whites.
South Africa’s Indians have functioned as a classic middleman minority. In
Chapter 2, such minorities were described as occupying an intermediate economic
status between dominant and subordinate ethnic groups. Anthony Lemon has writ-
ten that “European attitudes to Indians have been characteristically ambivalent; em-
ployers found their labour useful, but traders and businessmen feared competition”
(1987:245). For a long time the permanence of Indians in South Africa was ques-
tioned by the white power structure. Moreover, prohibitions on their movement in
South Africa as well as against further immigration limited their size. At the same
time that Indians have been viewed suspiciously and with derision by the whites,
they have been seen by Africans as exploiters. One scholar, in fact, asserts that in
general “Indians are more resented by most Africans than are Whites” (Moodley,
1980:226). By the same token, many Indians expressed fear of black rule following
the demise of white rule (Noble, 1994). More than a decade after the end of apart-
heid, tensions between the two groups remained evident (McGillivray, 2006).
The Africans
As part of the South African ethnic composition, the African population is by far
the largest, almost 80 percent. Although all Africans historically shared a common
societal powerlessness, they are not a single culturally unified group. Rather, they
derive from several Bantu tribes, the largest among them the Zulu, Xhosa, and
Sotho. Even though almost all Africans still speak a native tongue and retain certain
other uniquely Bantu traits, the tribal culture for most is residual. Except for those
who remain in rural areas, they are assimilated culturally into Western ways. They
chapter 13 south africa 381
are at least nominally Christian and in urban areas speak either English or
Afrikaans in addition to their Bantu language. Within the urban environment, tribal
or subethnic boundaries become indistinct, and the common political and economic
oppression they suffered in the past has impelled the formation of an encompassing
African ethnic group.
A crude economic hierarchy is evident among Africans, just as it is among the
other three ethnic populations. Occupational differences are particularly acute be-
tween those living in urban areas—mostly industrial workers—and those living in
rural areas—mainly subsistence farmers or agricultural workers. In addition, a sub-
stantial number of migrant laborers from neighboring African nation-states work
in the gold and diamond mines.
Most Africans have occupied the lowest-ranking jobs in the labor structure,
those requiring little or no skill. With the end of the official policy of racial discrim-
ination, however, this traditional pattern is changing. Job opportunities for Africans
have opened in significant numbers, and they have been afforded increasing access
to higher education. As a result, the African middle class, growing even before the
end of apartheid, is expanding rapidly.
These marked improvements in the status of black Africans, however, should
not disguise the fact that the economic differences between blacks and whites re-
main vast. As one observer of South Africa has described it, “perhaps no country
on earth has cultivated such a wide gulf between the country-club, luxury-car, bou-
tique life style of white privilege and the wretchedness of black denial” (Keller,
1995:A6). The rate at which the socioeconomic differences between blacks and
whites can be reduced will determine whether South Africa will move through its
social transformation relatively peacefully or with renewed conflict.
RACIAL CLASSIFICATION Where physical distinctions among people are not clear-cut,
ethnic boundaries are difficult to define and enforce. To create a classification sys-
tem that could be used to distinguish the racially dominant and subordinate
groups, the Nationalist government soon after it came to power in 1948 installed
several formal measures.
The first cornerstone of apartheid was the Population Registration Act of 1950,
providing for the official racial categorization of all persons. Questionable cases
were decided by race classification boards, made up of whites, who ruled on the
identity of such persons. Although the registration system was technically applied
to everyone in South Africa, it was designed primarily to monitor the movement
of Africans and was enforced mainly against them. A “passbook” comprising de-
tailed identification papers was required of all Africans, and failure to produce it
on demand was an automatic assumption of criminal status. Over the years, 18 mil-
lion arrests were made for passbook violations (Lipton, 1987). The passbook sys-
tem was a particularly odious element of apartheid for Africans and was a constant
reminder of their almost total subordination (Klaaste, 1984). The pass laws were
abolished in 1986. Most important, the Population Registration Act was repealed
in 1991, removing one of the fundamental legal props of the apartheid system.
PETTY APARTHEID Physical contact between blacks and whites was minimized
through a system of petty apartheid, or what van den Berghe (1967, 1979a) called
“micro segregation,” consisting of dozens of laws and mandates designed to main-
tain ethnic separation in almost every conceivable area of social relations.
Restaurants, hotels, buses, trains, public toilets, waiting rooms, hospitals, schools,
parks, beaches, theaters, and the like were for the most part segregated. Moreover,
chapter 13 south africa 383
these separate facilities were invariably unequal in quality and quantity. Crowning
the rules of petty apartheid was a policy of strictly enforced endogamy, prohibiting
interracial marriage and even sexual intercourse between whites and blacks. In the
realms of social life where people come into physical contact with each other, the
South African apartheid system was strikingly similar to the Jim Crow system of
segregation enforced in the pre-1960s American South. Unlike the Jim Crow sys-
tem, however, there were no pretensions of “separate but equal.”
Most of the measures of petty apartheid were officially repealed beginning in
the 1980s. Neighborhoods, hospitals, public transportation, parks, beaches, and
other public facilities were desegregated. But these official changes have not been
implemented uniformly, nor have social attitudes, cast by decades of socialization
to apartheid, been easily reversed. As a result, petty apartheid continues to guide
many areas of social life. “To the casual visitor,” noted a study group to South
Africa in 1986, “apartheid may appear to be on the way out. In its essential ele-
ments, it remains very much intact” (Commonwealth Group, 1986:33). Almost a
decade later, the observation still seemed valid. A former Canadian member of par-
liament visiting South Africa in 1995 related an incident that poignantly illustrates
apartheid’s legacy. Riding on the airport bus, he struck up a conversation with a
black politician whom he recognized. Two other whites on the bus immediately
stopped speaking. Although he didn’t think much of it at the time, later the
black politician chatted with him about the shock that many South African whites
still feel about “normal conversations between a black man and a white man”
(Langdon, 1995).
serve as a convenient dumping ground for unemployed, aged, and infirm Africans
(Carter, 1980). None of these areas was economically capable of sustaining itself
independently of the South African economy. Moreover, Africans living in South
Africa’s cities had no cultural or even social ties to their official homeland. The
Nationalist government acknowledged these facts by encouraging and even subsi-
dizing industries to locate in adjacent border areas or in the homelands themselves
so that jobs could be created for Africans living there (Stultz, 1980). None was ever
recognized by any international body or nation outside South Africa. With the ad-
vent of a black-dominated government in 1994, the homelands as political entities
were officially abolished. These areas remain extremely poor, even by South African
standards (Daley, 1999).
3
With the end of apartheid, the protection afforded poor, unskilled whites no longer prevailed, and
many of these people became economically desperate (Arnold, 2000).
386 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
±±
±
Table 13.2 ±±± South African Socioeconomic Differences by Race, 2002
Socioeconomic Black
Indicator African Coloured Indian/Asian White
*In 2002, one Rand was the equivalent of approximately 10 cents U.S.
Source: SAIRR, 2003.
The results of the huge discrepancy in resources allocated to blacks and whites
during the apartheid era are most apparent in education. Under apartheid, white
schools were funded many times higher than black schools. Not surprisingly, the
illiteracy rate among blacks is significantly higher than among whites (Table 13.2).
Although in the post-apartheid era funding no longer favors white schools, black
schools continue to experience serious problems including poorly trained, under-
qualified teachers; lack of resources; and lack of student discipline (Asmal and
James, 2001; Nattrass and Seekings, 2001; SAIRR, 2003; Wines, 2007b).
Although schools are increasingly integrated, many whites have abandoned the
public educational system in favor of private schools (Daley, 1998b; Swarns,
2000). In brief, racial parity in education remains a distant goal.
At the university level, movement toward greater equality has progressed more
quickly. The composition of the student population has changed dramatically in the
years since the end of apartheid, with Africans now a majority of students in South
African universities (Cloete and Moja, 2005). More than 50 percent of all degrees
awarded by these institutions in 2000 went to Africans, double the percentage in
1991 (SAIRR, 2003). However, despite the increase in African educational attain-
ment, there remains a huge discrepancy with whites. In 2007, whereas less than 6
percent of Africans had attended college, 31 percent of whites had done so
(Statistics South Africa, 2007b).
domination, “the element of consent,” wrote South African legal expert Albie
Sachs, “must be extremely low and the element of coercion extremely high” (1975:
224).
The South African criminal justice and legal institutions traditionally provided
for suppression of any challenges to white rule. Indeed, the use of terror against the
African population was routine. Writer Mark Mathabane recalls his own experi-
ence: “I remembered the brutal midnight police raids launched into the ghetto to
enforce apartheid; the searing images of my father’s emasculation as he was repeat-
edly arrested for the crime of being unemployed; my parents constantly fleeing their
own home in the dead of night to escape arrest for living together as husband and
wife under the same roof” (1994:38). Police violence against Africans was so per-
vasive and routine, explains political scientist Gwendolyn Carter, as to be almost
unnoticeable except when a well-known person was affected or the circumstances
were “so unusual as to attract attention” (1980:12).
The preparedness of the Nationalist government to use force in averting change
in the distribution of power was demonstrated repeatedly. At Sharpeville in 1960,
the police fired on a crowd of Africans peacefully protesting the pass laws, killing
sixty-nine. Sachs has pointed out that the Sharpeville massacre, though the best-
reported incident of its kind, was “merely one in a series of characteristically
South African episodes in which police fired on crowds of blacks that were either
totally unarmed or armed only with sticks and stones” (1975:227). A second well-
reported incident occurred in Soweto in 1976. What began as a student protest
against inequalities in the educational system culminated in the slaughter of more
than 600 Africans. Thousands were injured in the disturbances that followed, and
schools and universities were closed and industries shut down by strikes. This event
represented a spontaneous protest against the entire apartheid system and afterward
took on great symbolic importance among the African populace.
A Truth and Reconciliation Commission, created in 1995, revealed the system-
atic nature of human rights violations that were committed by the Nationalist gov-
ernment in enforcing apartheid. Testimony given by perpetrators as well as victims
demonstrated that during the apartheid regime the police considered brutality, tor-
ture, and even murder as legitimate tools in stifling political opponents (Daley,
1997; Handley and Herbst, 1997).
THE RACIST BELIEF SYSTEM South African whites, particularly Afrikaners, believed
themselves to be natural overseers of primitive Africans, whose shortcomings were
388 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
not likely to change significantly. White rule, therefore, was seen as a kind of pa-
ternalistic relationship in which more intelligent and civilized peoples asserted their
domination over inferior peoples in the interests of both (Mulder, 1972). In this
view, notes Leonard Thompson, “It was the duty of the Whites, constituting the
civilized, Christian race, to use their control of the state to prevent racial friction
and racial bastardization by ensuring that the races would be separated from one
another” (1985:190).
This essentially racist ideology underwent alteration during the apartheid re-
gime. Although the crude belief in biological superiority had been by no means un-
voiced, the white resistance to changes in the system of racial inequality was based
mainly on the notion of cultural inferiority and ethnic incompatibility (Adam,
1971a, 1971b; Thompson, 1985; Welsh, 1975). The cultural gap between the races
was so vast, it was claimed, that blacks were simply incapable of operating the in-
stitutions of a modern industrial society. As Lawrence Schlemmer explained:
The perception, and to a very great extent the reality, of a conflict of interests is not
simply between classes and ethnic or racial interests, but between a first world and a
third world social order. In the collective fears of whites, the third world within the
country is associated with a lack of sophistication, disorder and lower standards. The
perverted vision of a future under majority rule most frequently conjured up among
rank-and-file whites is one of irregularities of administration, loiterers in parks, dirt in
the street, a lack of public discipline and power-hungry politicians with a fateful sway
over slavishly adoring masses. The fact that none of these images is confined to the
third world, and that all are gross over-simplifications, does not alter the power of the
perception. (1988:42)
Hence, the continued domination of the society by the white numerical minority
was, in this view, essential.
The view that it was necessary to maintain white rule, based on the understood
cultural superiority of whites, was thoroughly incorporated into all institutions, es-
pecially the school and the mass media. Through the Bantu Education Act of 1953,
complete control of black education was given to the central government, thereby
ensuring that the history and social science taught would reflect the Nationalist ide-
ology. Blacks, it was thought, would be trained to accept their subordinate position
in the society. Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd articulated this view:
The school must equip the Bantu to meet the demands which the economic life of South
Africa will impose on him. . . . There is no place for him in the European community
above the level of certain forms of labour. Within his own community, however, all
doors are open. . . . Until now he has been subject to a school system which drew him
away from his own community and misled him by showing him the green pastures of
European society in which he is not allowed to graze. . . . What is the use of teaching a
Bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? (quoted in Harrison,
1981:191)
The separation of white and black was deemed necessary to protect whites
from cultural pollution by an obviously inferior people. A schoolbook, for example,
described the differences between white and black: “The White stands on a much
higher plane of civilisation and is more developed. Whites must so live, learn and
chapter 13 south africa 389
work that we shall not sink to the cultural level of the non-White” (quoted in
Harrison, 1981:204).
In addition to the rationale based on economic and political efficiency, an ele-
ment of religious mission infused the determination of the Afrikaners, particularly
the zealously nationalistic element among them, to maintain white supremacy. As
already noted, the Afrikaners traditionally invoked a biblical analogue to portray
their place in South Africa, and their self-image of a chosen, superior people is
strongly expressed in various aspects of Afrikaner culture and social life. The
Dutch Reformed Church served as an integral part of Afrikaner nationalism. For
many, the church was the focal point of Afrikaner culture and the religious expres-
sion of its nationalism. Unlike most English-language churches, it maintained a
close link with the Nationalist state and abided apartheid.
To better comprehend the determination of Afrikaners to preserve their power
and, in so doing, their ethnic culture, one needs to keep in mind the unique status of
the Afrikaners on the African continent. Unlike traditional European colonial
groups in Africa, Afrikaners have no cultural or political ties to a European home-
land. Generations of Afrikaners have known nothing but South Africa, and there is
no thought of returning to a society of origin, for there no longer is one. The
Afrikaners are, in all ways, a group sui generis. The prevailing belief among them
was that their way of life would be submerged and ultimately dissolved if the nu-
merically dominant nonwhite populace were afforded equal access to social and po-
litical institutions.
THE PRACTICALITY OF RACISM Although these beliefs were the ideological bases of
the apartheid system for a large element of the Afrikaner populace, the practical
foundations of the system lay mostly in the resolve of the dominant whites, most
Afrikaners and English alike, to sustain their supremacy. Whites well understood
that a truly democratic political system would inevitably produce an African-
dominated government, given the numerical imbalance between the two groups.
This, in turn, would spell the end of white economic and social privilege.
Whatever their psychological and ideological commitment to white supremacy
may have been, for most whites social pressures ordinarily compelled conformity.
As noted in Chapter 3, prejudice and discrimination are most effective and self-
sustaining where such thought and behavior are socially expected and rewarded.
The economic benefits that flowed to whites from black exploitation were, as we
have seen, enormous. Even those who may have been bothered by feelings of moral
contradiction would therefore have been reluctant to call for the total dismantling
of a system from which they greatly profited.
Even nonresidents of South Africa, used to more fluid social relations, might
easily be caught up in the everyday workings of a system of extreme social inequal-
ity and separation that may at first have been repugnant. One American sociologist
studying in South Africa in the 1970s reflected with astonishment on his own be-
havior: “One falls in with the culture and those with whom one must cooperate in
assumptions and behavior. Even in my short stay I could observe the process occur-
ring in myself: by the time I left I was beginning to unconsciously accept conditions
that I found shocking when I first confronted them” (Mechanic, 1978:137).
390 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
Not only is it difficult to resist patterns of thought and behavior that reward
conformity so generously, but it is especially hard to question a system of exploita-
tion that, so far as it is recognized at all, is perceived from a distance. Because for
whites the standard of living has been so comparatively high and the political order
essentially democratic, there can arise among them only a limited understanding of
black economic and, until recently, political deprivation. Adding to the incompre-
hension has been the essentially separate societies in which whites and blacks have
lived. For the most part, whites have seen blacks only as workers and servants, not
as neighbors and schoolmates. Few whites speak any of the various African lan-
guages, and few ever venture into black townships. Put simply, blacks and whites
in South Africa have in the past lived in different worlds and, for the most part,
continue to do so.
Forces of Change
South Africa’s panoply of internal contradictions—social, economic, and political—
brought the society to a watershed beginning in the late 1980s. A sociopolitical sys-
tem enforced by coercion no longer seemed viable, and major reforms were now
proposed. Much of the impetus behind the reforms was provided by a newly elected
president, F. W. de Klerk, who acknowledged the failure of apartheid. As Mallaby
describes him, “de Klerk had finally abandoned whites’ hopes of extending their
privileges beyond the colonial age” (1992:78). In 1992, de Klerk basically declared
an official end to the apartheid system. Referring to his National Party, he stated
that “For too long we clung to a dream of separate nation states when it was al-
ready clear that it could not succeed. For that we are sorry. That is why we are
working for a new dispensation” (SAIRR, 1993:25).
The radical transformation of South Africa that began in the late 1980s, how-
ever, did not emerge suddenly. Its roots reached back at least a decade when it be-
came evident to the white power structure that changes in the apartheid system
would have to be made if the society were to avoid a bloody confrontation.
Former Prime Minister P. W. Botha had publicly declared in 1978 that South
Africa must “adapt or die,” and reforms in petty apartheid and in the labor system
instituted in the 1980s were manifestations of that view. As a desperate effort to
preserve white rule, a new constitution was adopted in 1983, creating a tripartite
chapter 13 south africa 391
parliamentary body, representing whites, Coloureds, and Asians. But the new con-
stitution was recognized as a sham, giving Coloureds and Indians a few privileges
but making no provision at all for the representation of Africans.
INTERNAL CONTRADICTIONS AND CIVIL UNREST The exclusion of Africans from the
constitution was one of the precipitating factors in the civil unrest that occurred
in the 1980s (Adam and Moodley, 1986; Dugard, 1992; Mallaby, 1992; van zyl
Slabbert, 1987). Widespread violent protests took place in black townships, the tar-
get of which was the system of black local authority. Black officials in the town-
ships were seen as collaborators in the oppressive system and were driven from
their communities, forced to resign, and in some cases even murdered. In addition
to the violence in the townships, nationwide marches, rent strikes, consumer boy-
cotts, student agitation, and labor protests became commonplace (Meredith, 1987;
Murray, 1987). In attempting to control the protests, the government responded
with force, using the South African Army as well as the police, who were given
broad discretionary powers. Hundreds of blacks were killed in government actions
to reassert control in the townships, and in 1985 a state of emergency was de-
clared, providing for arrest and detention without trial and searches without
warrant.
ECONOMIC FORCES More significant changes in the system of racial inequality were
impelled by the demands of economic interdependence. The South African econ-
omy required an increasingly skilled workforce that could not be supplied by the
white population alone. As noted earlier, this resulted in modifications in the job
reservation system, permitting more blacks to fill higher positions. In effect the sys-
tem of job reservation, for decades restricting black labor mobility, collapsed
(Adam and Moodley, 1986).
Labor needs also compelled relaxation of prohibitions against black trade
unions and the right to strike, creating a growing and increasingly significant black
labor movement (Thompson and Prior, 1982). Whereas 292,000 Africans were
392 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
INTERNAL POLITICAL FORCES After the Nationalist regime came to power in 1948,
opposition black political organizations and movements were declared illegal, forc-
ing them to operate underground or in neighboring African countries. The most
important of these were the African National Congress (ANC), the Pan-Africanist
Congress (PAC), and the Black Consciousness Movement. In 1990 the de Klerk
government restored the legality of these political organizations, providing a new
element in the chemistry of change in South Africa.
During apartheid the ANC, the most significant of the black political organiza-
tions, had assumed the status of “government in exile” for the African population.
Its official leader, Nelson Mandela, was released from prison in 1990 after serving a
sentence of twenty-eight years for antiregime political activity. Mandela’s release
was seen as a threshold. From that point forward, the end of white South African
rule and the emergence of a black majority government were only a matter of time.
Shortly thereafter, the South African regime entered into talks with the ANC and
other black groups to negotiate the entrance of blacks into the political system and
to dismantle the apartheid system.4 The historic elections held in 1994, in which all
South Africans—black and white—voted for the first time, were won by the ANC,
bringing Mandela to power as the country’s president. South Africa was now
poised to create a nonracial state.
Looking Ahead
The political and social upheaval that engulfed South Africa in the 1980s and early
1990s produced changes of a truly revolutionary nature. As changes continue to
unfold, the shape of the society that ultimately will be produced remains unsettled.
All of the key issues facing South Africa today, however, in one way or another
concern its movement toward greater ethnic equalitarianism.
BLACK POLITICAL DOMINANCE As we have now seen, the legal and structural roots
of the apartheid system have been removed, and significant policy changes have
muted the most blatant forms of racial discrimination. Most important, blacks
have been brought into the political process. Awarding full and equitable voting
rights to the black population was the major prerequisite to any peaceful solution
of South Africa’s ethnic conflict. The great fear of whites was precisely what was
enacted: a one-man, one-vote, majority-rule system that, as they realized, spelled
the end of white dominance. Astonishingly, this change was brought about peace-
fully. In light of the generations of racial hostility and the determination of the
4
An important stimulus to change was a 1992 referendum, in which white voters presented de Klerk
with a mandate to forge ahead with negotiations with black leaders to ultimately construct a new mul-
tiracial constitution.
chapter 13 south africa 393
white regime to retain power, few could have predicted that the resistance to a
black-majority political system would evaporate so relatively swiftly and
nonviolently.
Today the ANC’s political dominance is almost unchallenged, but a democratic
national government now seems solidly embedded in South Africa’s constitutional
system (Mattes, 2002). Mandela himself retired in 1999, and as the most widely
supported and admired figure in South Africa—among whites as well as blacks—
he remains a unifying symbol. As one journalist described him, he served as the na-
tion’s “moral guide” and, given his history of personal sacrifice, was ideally suited
to convince the country of the need for compromise, reconciliation, and change
(Duke, 1999b).
Paradoxically, changes effected in the political status of the black population
may inevitably provoke more, not less, social unrest. Now that blacks control the
political system, expectations are very high that change in their economic status
will follow rapidly. This places great pressure on the government to provide jobs,
housing, and increased public services, especially education and health care, to an
enormous part of the black population that remains impoverished. If expectations
exceed the government’s ability to meet them, however, blacks may become frus-
trated and place even greater pressure on leaders to produce economic betterment.
As many have observed, it is, ironically, only after conditions have begun to im-
prove that people may be drawn into political action (Hoffer, 1951; Runciman,
1966; Turner and Killian, 1972). Thus failure to rapidly alleviate black-white eco-
nomic disparities may foment social and political unrest and place increased stresses
and strains on the government. In fact, dissatisfaction with economic policies of the
ruling ANC has become increasingly evident within the party ranks, particularly
among labor unions, traditionally the party’s strongest allies (Swarns, 2001a).
RACE AND CLASS Securing political equality is only a first step toward the elimina-
tion of ethnically based inequalities in jobs, education, health, and other life
chances. As noted earlier, dramatically wide discrepancies remain in the socioeco-
nomic status of whites and blacks. In general, whites continue to live at a level far
above that of blacks and control most of South Africa’s wealth. However, viewing
the relationship between race and class in South Africa today as a simple dichot-
omy—black/poor, white/rich—is a serious distortion. More accurately, the society
is one in which there is declining interracial inequality but rising intraracial in-
equality. Specifically, South Africa is divided into three broad classes: an increas-
ingly multiracial class of well-off families, including corporate executives, profes-
sionals, and managers; a middle class of mostly urban, industrial, or white-collar
workers; and a marginalized class of black unemployed (Besada, 2007a; Nattrass
and Seekings, 2001).
Even before the end of apartheid, blacks had been experiencing upward occu-
pational mobility. In the post-apartheid period, despite the still gross economic dis-
parity between white and black populations, there has been a narrowing of the gap,
with blacks increasing their share of total income. At the same time, however, in-
equality within the black population has increased. The black middle class, able to
take advantage of new opportunities arising with the end of racial discrimination, is
rapidly growing, but in the process is leaving behind a depressed black underclass.
394 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
The gap between well-off and middle-class blacks on one hand and poor blacks on
the other thus continues to widen (Besada, 2007a; Mattes, 2002). Poverty, confined
primarily to nonwhites, has actually increased in the past decade and is becoming
more pronounced, with almost 1 in 10 living on less than $1 a day (SAIRR,
2005). This is not unlike the internal division within the African American popula-
tion, discussed in Chapter 7, in which a growing middle class stands in sharp con-
trast to a marginalized underclass.
WHITE ECONOMIC POWER Although whites have been displaced in the political
realm, they continue to control key elements of the economy and occupy most of
the best jobs in the private sector. They also hold most of the society’s wealth
(McGillivray, 2006). The ruling black regime desperately needs the capital and
managerial and technical skills that are possessed primarily by the white commu-
nity. Thus it cannot afford to alienate whites, who might threaten to leave and
take with them their economic and human resources. In fact, South Africa has suf-
fered a brain drain, particularly among medical professionals. The ANC has put
forth a reconstruction and development plan that outlines its goals in transforming
South Africa and bringing about a more equitable distribution of jobs, health care,
housing, and land. Here the government faces the delicate task of raising public
revenues—which must come primarily from white-controlled businesses and the
wealthier white community—to finance ambitious public projects designed to lift
the economic and social conditions of blacks.
5
Although popular perception would have it that violent crime in South Africa is mostly committed by
Africans against whites, in fact most victims are African and poor (Shaw and Gastrow, 2001).
chapter 13 south africa 395
social life” (2001:30). Racial stereotypes, which formed such a basic part of the
dominant ideology—that blacks simply were unable to maintain the institutions of
a modern society—have not disappeared. As Vestergaard explains, more than once
in his interviews of Afrikaners—after apartheid had been abolished and blacks
were in control of the government—did he hear the complaint that the country’s
ongoing economic problems were due to the fact that blacks “simply don’t have
what it takes” to run a modern economy. Although they are far more subtle than
in the past, expressions of racial thinking continue to color whites’ views of social
problems such as education and crime. Vestergaard cites the view of a fifty-
seven-year-old Afrikaner who worked for the Department of Education on prob-
lems in black schools:
“The teachers cramp three classes together in one room, about eighty to ninety kids, in
order for the two others to sit outside—they are like lizards, they like to sit in the sun.
That is why there always are chairs outside. Africans just have a much more lazy way
of doing things and they’re never in a hurry.” When he described the white schools, his
mood brightened: “There the kids WANT to be better and the teachers WANT to take
it to a higher level! The black kids have no ambitions.” (2001:30–31)
It would seem naïve to assume that attitudes and ideas so prevalent among
whites during apartheid would be subject to fundamental change in just a few
years. As one observer of South Africa has put it, “generations of whites were
brought up to be racists and they are unlikely to be able, even if theoretically will-
ing, to change” (Arnold, 2000:18). This applies to blacks’ views of whites as well,
of course. The distrust nurtured during generations of apartheid is not likely to be
overcome for many years. “Thus,” observes Vestergaard, “when a white person
makes a statement, it is perceived as a white person speaking—making a white
statement” (2001:30).
bearing on the distribution of power and wealth. As one observer has put it,
“South Africa today is a place where the white minority of 5 million owns the
economy, the 32 million-strong black majority runs the politics, and both races
have a living memory of three centuries of oppression” (P. Taylor, 1995:16). It is
the latter issue that has created another vexing problem for the new South Africa:
how to bring about a reconciliation of those who were the victims of apartheid
with those who created and perpetrated that system.
In 1995 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, under the supervision of
Bishop Desmond Tutu, was established to bring to light human rights violations
committed by the apartheid regime, to offer amnesty to those who admitted their
complicity in those abuses and whose motives had been political, and to make rep-
arations to the victims of apartheid’s most heinous crimes. A less concrete goal was
to change the thinking of white South Africans about the apartheid regime and to
bring them to a greater awareness of past injustices. Although the latter goal appar-
ently was not accomplished and its deliberations produced much bitterness and
pain, the Truth Commission was a vital part of the policy of reconciliation and of
the broader effort of the new regime to thrust South Africa beyond the apartheid
era (Besada, 2007b; Bratton, 1998; Duke, 1999b).
VIEWS OF THE FUTURE The post-apartheid healing process will remain a long-term
affair and will be much dependent on the success of efforts to bridge the socioeco-
nomic gap between whites and blacks. As one observer has put it, South Africa
since the end of apartheid has “largely achieved racial peace, but not social har-
mony” (Besada, 2007a). A 1999 public opinion poll seemed to offer both positive
and negative views on the future of South African ethnic relations: 63 percent of
blacks and whites agreed with the statement, “It will take a long time, but we will
eventually become a united nation”; but 44 percent also agreed that “blacks and
whites will never trust one another” (Washington Post, 1999). More generally
hopeful, however, is the fact that even though South Africans cite economic issues
like inequality and unemployment as critical, most do not attribute the persistence
of those problems to racial discrimination (Schlemmer, 2001). Moreover, a sense of
South African national identity seems increasingly to transcend specific racial or
ethnic identities (Mattes, 2002).
Few observers, even the most informed, were able to predict the scope and
speed of the changes that occurred in less than a decade. To forecast the specifics
of South Africa’s future, therefore, would surely be presumptuous. What is clear,
however, is that South Africa is in the midst of basic change in its ethnic structures
and relations. As that change unfolds, much of the world’s attention will be focused
on this society at the outset of the twenty-first century.
Despite its lengthy history of extreme ethnic division and conflict, South Africa
presents itself today as, ironically, a potential model for other multiethnic societies.
If the most oppressive system of ethnic relations in the contemporary world can be
fundamentally altered in a mostly peaceful fashion, and if those changes can be sus-
tained, there is strong reason to expect that comparable change can be achieved in
other societies with severe ethnic divisions.
chapter 13 south africa 397
SUMMARY
Among multiethnic societies of the modern period, South Africa has been one of the
most extreme cases of inequalitarian pluralism. Its ethnic structure is a racial di-
chotomy, black and white, but there are more specific group subdivisions. The
whites, roughly 9 percent of the total population, comprise two major subgroups,
Afrikaners and English. Nonwhites comprise three subgroups: Coloureds, a racially
mixed group; Asians, mostly Indians; and Africans of several different tribal origins.
Africans are by far the largest racial-ethnic category, making up almost 80 percent
of the population.
Ethnic stratification in South Africa was traditionally a castelike system in which
each ethnic group was institutionally separated by a customary and legal code. The
system of ethnic separation and inequality, called apartheid, was designed to main-
tain white supremacy in all areas of social, economic, and political life. Africans
were excluded from the political system and were protected by few civil rights.
Coloureds and Asians were only slightly better off. On economic measures, the in-
equality between whites and blacks remains extreme, though the gap is beginning to
narrow.
Starting in the late 1980s, the apartheid system began to be dismantled as black
protest and economic uncertainty created strong pressures for reform of the South
Points of Difference
• For most of its history, South Africa’s dominant ethnic group (whites) was a numer-
ical minority vis-à-vis subordinate Africans, along with Coloureds and Asians. In the
United States, by contrast, whites were always a numerical, as well as a sociological,
majority.
• The economic and social gap between whites and blacks is today much wider in
South Africa than in the United States.
• In multiethnic South Africa, blacks today are the dominant group, at least politically.
This is obviously not the case in the United States.
• The United States is an ethnically more varied society than South Africa.
398 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
African regime. The national election of 1994 was the first in which blacks partici-
pated as equals, and a black-dominated government, led by Nelson Mandela and
his ANC, came to power for the first time. This spelled the end of the apartheid
system.
Though the official system of racial inequality has been abolished and blacks
now dominate the political system, the major components of white economic domi-
nation remain in place. The key issues of South Africa’s immediate future, therefore,
concern the manner in which the tremendous economic gap separating whites and
blacks will be reduced. The end product of the radical changes that have occurred
during the past two decades, therefore, is still uncertain.
Suggested Readings
Beinart, William. 2001. Twentieth-Century South Africa. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford
University Press. A succinct history of modern South Africa through the end of apartheid
and an analysis of its attempts to create a new national identity.
Butler, Anthony. 2004. Contemporary South Africa. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave
Macmillan. A brief introduction to post-apartheid South Africa, including its government,
economy, and culture.
Desai, Ashwin. 2002. We Are the Poors: Community Struggles in Post-Apartheid South
Africa. New York: Monthly Review Press. Describes the daily lives of South Africa’s
poor, arguing that neoliberal economic policies of the governing ANC perpetuate their
plight.
de Villiers, Marq. 1987. White Tribe Dreaming: Apartheid’s Bitter Roots as Witnessed by
Eight Generations of an Afrikaner Family. New York: Penguin. The author describes the
development of ethnic identity among Afrikaners and their perspective on South Africa by
tracing his own family’s history.
Fredrickson, George M. 1981. White Supremacy: A Comparative Study in American and
South African History. New York: Oxford University Press. Examines the historical de-
velopment of South African race relations and American race relations, comparing their
ideologies, policies, and actions.
Mathabane, Mark. 1987. Kaffir Boy. A gripping autobiographical account of life in the
black townships under apartheid, told by one who ultimately escaped its brutality and
degradation.
Sampson, Anthony. 1999. Mandela: The Authorized Biography. New York: Knopf. Traces
the life and times of modern South Africa’s most important political figure, emphasizing
the years of political struggle to defeat apartheid.
Sparks, Allister. 2004. Beyond the Miracle: Inside the New South Africa. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. One of South Africa’s most prominent journalists assesses
the accomplishments and failures since the end of apartheid and reflects on the astonish-
ingly peaceful nature of the transformation.
Thompson, Leonard. 2001. A History of South Africa. 3rd ed. New Haven: Yale University
Press. A comprehensive history of this society, tracing the development of race relations
through various periods, written by one of the outstanding historians of South Africa.
van den Berghe, Pierre L. 1967. South Africa: A Study in Conflict. Berkeley: University of
California Press. Although now dated, this work remains one of the few thorough socio-
logical analyses of South Africa under apartheid.
14
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Brazil ±± C H A P T E R
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Shifting our focus from South Africa to Brazil, a more striking contrast in ethnic
relations could not be found in the modern world. Instead of an ethnic morass,
Brazil has often been praised, by Brazilians and outside observers alike, as a racial
and ethnic paradise where people of varied physical features and with diverse cul-
tural heritages live amicably together. Whereas the dominant ideology of South
Africa, until recently, was ethnic pluralism in a most extreme form, in Brazil the
predominant philosophy has been ethnic assimilation. Here the overriding belief is
that the more quickly the society’s various ethnic and racially defined groups can be
merged into one, the better the society will be.
Whether Brazil is in fact a genuine ethnic democracy is, as we will see, by no
means universally agreed on either by scholars or by Brazilians themselves.
Another, less laudatory, view of Brazil places it well within the bounds of other
multiethnic societies characterized by intergroup conflict and division. In any case,
it is clear that the direction of ethnic relations in Brazil is toward assimilation, in
which ethnic convergence and the breakdown of distinct physical and cultural
groups are the society’s long-range goals. More significant, Brazil has advanced fur-
ther in the realization of these objectives than almost any other major multiethnic
society. This fact alone distinguishes it not only from societies with inequalitarian
pluralistic systems, but also from the United States and other societies like it that
have traditionally proclaimed an assimilationist ideology but have often exhibited
contradictory patterns of action and policy. If ethnic relations are not as ideally har-
monious as Brazilian ideologists would have the world believe, they are nonetheless
far less combative than in most other multiethnic societies. In what ways and why
Brazil’s ethnic relations are more amicable are issues that deserve our careful
attention.
399
400 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
THE PORTUGUESE HERITAGE Brazil’s colonial heritage derives from Portugal rather
than Spain, like it neighbors on the South American continent. Its language and
other major cultural elements are therefore Portuguese. As we will see, some hold
that the Portuguese cultural legacy largely accounts for Brazil’s seemingly more pa-
cific patterns of ethnic relations.
REGIONAL VARIATIONS Brazil is a huge and regionally diverse nation. It covers al-
most half of the South American continent (about the size of the United States ex-
clusive of Alaska), and its population of nearly 190 million is almost as great as all
the remainder of Latin America, leaving aside Mexico. Given this vastness, social
and economic conditions are, predictably, not the same in all regions of the coun-
try. Brazil’s major ethnic groups are also regionally concentrated, and patterns of
ethnic relations therefore vary accordingly.
In the Northeast, most of the population is either black or mulatto (a combina-
tion of European and African), and the African cultural heritage is very apparent.
This is Brazil’s poorest region, an agrarian and largely underdeveloped area that
has never fully recovered from the decline of the slave-supported sugar economy
of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of which it was the center. The afteref-
chapter 14 brazil 401
fects of slavery are still felt, and paternalistic black-white relations are more evident
than in other regions of Brazil.
The Southeast, dominated by the metropolis of São Paulo, is the most industri-
alized and urbanized region of Brazil and is the core of its wealth and power.
Ethnically it is primarily European, especially Italian, though its industrial preemi-
nence has served as a magnet for out-migrants from other areas, especially the de-
pressed Northeast. This has contributed to an increasing ethnic heterogeneity in re-
cent decades though whites remain an overwhelming majority. The other region of
greatest European influence is the extreme South, where German, Polish, Russian,
Italian, and Portuguese farming communities are numerous alongside the tradi-
tional estancias, or cattle ranches.
The Indian influence in Brazil’s population is most significant in the extreme
North and in the interior, especially the Amazon basin. This is an enormous but
sparsely populated region where most of the remaining Indians (around 200,000)
live, most in isolated and primitive settings. Indian cultural and physical influences,
however, are strongly evident here, and most of the population derives from a com-
bination European-Indian ancestry.
THE INTRODUCTION OF AFRICANS In the late sixteenth century, sugar cane became
Brazil’s chief cash crop. As a labor-intensive industry, sugar required large planta-
tions; and as the Indian slave population diminished, the introduction of Africans
in their place proved vital. With the development of the world market for sugar,
the importation of African slaves—a costly enterprise—became economically feasi-
ble (Harris, 1964). Black slaves were many times more valuable than their Indian
predecessors, for they seemed better prepared for field labor and were more resis-
tant to European diseases. The African slave population in Brazil grew rapidly, and
by the end of the eighteenth century, it numbered around 1.5 million. Estimates of
the actual number of slaves imported into Brazil between 1550 and the 1850s,
402 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
when the slave traffic ended, vary widely from 3 million to 18 million (Knight,
1974; Pierson, 1967; Poppino, 1968; Ramos, 1939; van den Berghe, 1978).
Because all records of the slave trade were purposely destroyed following the aboli-
tion of slavery in 1888, there are no precise data concerning the number of slaves
actually imported into Brazil. That far more were brought to Brazil than to the
United States, however, is undisputed.
BRAZILIAN SLAVERY: A MILDER SYSTEM? Gilberto Freyre, one of Brazil’s most re-
nowned social historians, contended that slavery in Brazil was a milder, more hu-
mane form than its North American counterpart. This he attributed to several fac-
tors, the most important of which pertain to differences between Anglo-Saxon and
Portuguese culture and society. Different practices of slavery, in turn, produced di-
vergent patterns of relations between blacks and whites once slavery was ended in
each society.
Freyre held that the Portuguese came to Brazil with a more tolerant attitude to-
ward people of color. Portugal had experienced contact with African peoples in its
colonial ventures as early as the fifteenth century and had endured a long period of
rule by the Moors even earlier. The Portuguese sense of racial difference, therefore,
was not as acute and absolute as that of the Anglo-Saxons, who had had little con-
tact with nonwhites. A greater racial tolerance, according to Freyre’s thesis, ac-
counts for the more harmonious, less conflict-ridden nature of race relations in
Portuguese colonies and the greater tendency among the Portuguese to intermix
with native and slave populations. Freyre considered especially significant the ex-
tremely high rate of miscegenation between Portuguese slave masters and African
slaves in Brazil. This, he contended, is evidence of a more compassionate and essen-
tially altruistic master-slave relationship (1956, 1963a).
The thesis that the Portuguese slave system in Brazil was basically more hu-
mane than its North American counterpart was supported by an American histo-
rian, Frank Tannenbaum (1947). He explained that a milder form of slavery was
evident in Brazil and in the Spanish colonies of Latin America because of differences
between the Portuguese (and Spanish) and the Anglo-Saxons in their religious and
legal concepts of slavery. Like Freyre, Tannenbaum maintained that there was a
preconceived notion among the Portuguese regarding their treatment of slaves—de-
riving from principles established by both church and state—that fostered a less
harsh slave system. In Brazil, the African did not lack a “soul” but was perceived
simply as an unfortunate human being, a slave by accident of fate. In the United
chapter 14 brazil 403
States, however, the African was perceived as less than human and thus naturally
enslaved. Slavery in Brazil was understood as an economic necessity, hardly a rela-
tionship whose rationale derived from religious—or later, biological—principles, as
in the United States. In short, in Brazil the human character of slaves was never de-
nied. In the Portuguese view, slavery was a necessary evil. Thus it was not defended
so firmly on the notions of racial inferiority and superiority.
The Brazilian and U.S. legal codes dealing with slaves also differed significantly.
Portuguese (and Spanish) laws pertaining to slavery protected the slaves’ human
rights, at least technically. Thus slaves could not be dealt with by their masters
with total impunity. Whereas slaves in the United States were chattel, reduced to
mere property, in Brazil they were recognized as humans with certain legal rights.
They were entitled to own property, marry freely, seek out another master if they
were dealt with too harshly, and even buy their freedom, which many apparently
did. It is this last-mentioned feature of the slaves’ status—their greater opportunities
for manumission—that Tannenbaum contended was an especially critical differ-
ence. Compared with the United States, manumission in Brazil was both common
and expected. Its much higher incidence, Tannenbaum held, is in itself evidence of
a milder form of slavery. More important, however, the accomplishment of manu-
mission brought the freed slave automatic entry into Brazilian society with full and
equal rights. In the United States, by contrast, even if slaves were freed, they did not
acquire full citizenship but continued to suffer the economic, social, and legal han-
dicaps that attached to their racial status.
The ability of the crown or the church to enforce these protective slave laws, of
course, was quite another matter. These were, in effect, paper rights whose effec-
tiveness was not sufficient to materially alter the nature of life for Brazilian slaves.
“In Brazil, as everywhere in the colonial world,” notes Marvin Harris, “law and
reality bore an equally small resemblance to each other” (1964:77). As to the spe-
cific role of the church, its position on the issue of slavery was ambivalent and its
power to influence Brazilian slave codes, in any case, limited (Marx, 1998).
Neither Freyre nor Tannenbaum contended that slavery in Brazil was not harsh
and inherently cruel. The key difference between the Brazilian and American varie-
ties, however, was that “in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies the cruelties and
brutalities were against the law, that they were punishable, and that they were per-
haps not as frequent as in the British West Indies and the North American colonies”
(Tannenbaum, 1947:93). Most important, the openings for freedom were much
greater in the Brazilian system, as was the advancement to full citizenship following
manumission. Given the different legal and philosophical status of the slave and the
freed black in Brazil as compared with the United States, more benign and assimila-
tionist relations were engendered between whites and blacks following the formal
abolition of slavery.
Harris (1964) notes that although manumission was more common in Brazil, it was
not so much more common as to build a case on this fact alone for a presumably
milder form of slavery.
Degler (1986) has pointed out that the American and Brazilian slave systems
may not have differed so fundamentally even on the matter of slaves’ legal and
moral status. Though legal decisions were not consistent from time to time and
place to place, both church and state, at least technically, recognized slaves as hu-
mans in the United States as well as in Brazil. In neither society, however, was the
law, whether church or state, effective in protecting slaves.
The issue of whether the Brazilian system of slavery was more humane than the
American may, in the final analysis, be meaningless. How can such an argument be
verified in any case? Indeed, the very notion of a “humanized” or “mild” slave sys-
tem would be interpreted by most as an absurd contradiction. Whatever the circum-
stances, slavery was dehumanizing and was resisted by the slaves. Moreover, the
tremendously high mortality rate among the slave population would seem to render
the issue “inconsequential in light of the overriding fact that slavery in Brazil was
astonishingly deadly” (Marx, 1998:52).
ABOLITION AND ITS AFTEREFFECTS Whether the actual conditions of slavery under
the Portuguese can explain the seemingly more benign relations between blacks
and whites in Brazil than in the United States remains debatable. But the conditions
that led to the abolition of slavery in Brazil and the status of blacks following their
freedom were quite different from what occurred in the United States, and rendered
an obvious effect on subsequent race relations in the two societies.
Slavery endured in Brazil even longer than it did in the United States, ending
formally in 1888. Its demise had been assured for several decades, however, and
occurred in a gradual, evolutionary manner. This piecemeal abolition of slavery re-
sulted in less wrenching social aftereffects than occurred in the United States, where
slavery was ended abruptly following a cataclysmic civil war.
With the more common manumission of slaves in Brazil, blacks had already
been a part of free Brazilian society for many decades before the formal end of slav-
ery. In 1872, sixteen years before abolition, freed blacks were almost three times as
numerous as slaves. By comparison, in the United States at the start of the Civil
War, less than half a million out of a total black population of 4.5 million were
free (Skidmore, 1972). Hence blacks and whites in Brazil had experienced a long
period of social interaction exclusive of the master-servant relationship. As
Tannenbaum explained, in Brazil, “The Negro achieved complete legal equality
slowly, through manumission, over centuries, and after he had acquired a moral
personality. In the United States he was given his freedom suddenly, and before
the white community credited him with moral status” (1947:112). As a result, there
was no question of the social standing of free blacks in Brazil and their access to
full citizenship. In Brazil freed slaves were in fact free; in the United States they
were only technically free.
Furthermore, blacks in colonial Brazil had played a variety of occupational
roles—even as slaves—and their entrance into the competitive labor market was
therefore not so precipitous as it was in the United States (Karasch, 1975; Klein,
1969). Harris (1964) argues, in fact, that the continual shortage of skilled and
406 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
semiskilled labor in colonial Brazil created the need to fill numerous positions with
blacks, which, in turn, contributed more than anything else to the ease and fre-
quency of manumission.
Freed blacks in Brazil, then, were not seen as either a social or an economic
threat; therefore, resistance from whites did not strongly materialize. Brazil thus
avoided the development of a racial caste system designed to permanently handicap
blacks, as was the eventual outcome of abolition in the United States.
Although Brazilian society was not as fundamentally dislocated by the abolition
of slavery as the American South had been, the consequences faced by newly freed
slaves were in many ways similar. Freed slaves either wandered back to the rural
workforce, seeking out their former masters, or migrated to the cities with few ur-
ban labor skills. They were further handicapped because they were forced into com-
petition with more skilled European immigrants, especially in the industrializing
Southeast.
The release of former slaves into a competitive labor market for which they
were ill prepared produced a debilitating effect on black mobility that has remained
a basic feature of the Brazilian social structure to the present day. As the noted
Brazilian sociologist Florestan Fernandes explains, blacks emerged from slavery ma-
terially and psychologically ravaged and “lacked the means to assert themselves as
a separate social group or to integrate rapidly into those social groups that were
open to them” (1971:28). Further disabling the freed black was the whites’ eager
relinquishment of any legacy of the slave system and its consequences. The occupa-
tional benefits of an industrializing Brazil with its competitive social order was
reaped, therefore, primarily by European immigrants.
European Immigration
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the ethnic composition of Brazil was al-
tered fundamentally by the large-scale immigration of Europeans. Under the colo-
nial regime, immigration into Brazil had been severely restricted. As a result, the
bulk of the population was descended from three major ethnic lines: the
Portuguese colonials, the indigenous Indians, and the African slaves. Following
Brazilian independence in 1822, immigration remained sporadic until the mid-
nineteenth century. An upward trend begun at that time turned into a veritable
flood tide of immigrants in the century’s last two decades.
With the realization that slavery was doomed, coffee planters increasingly
turned to Europeans, especially Italians, as a labor force. The bulk of European im-
migration beginning in the late nineteenth century, therefore, was directed to the
state of São Paulo, where the major coffee-growing estates were located. Growers
saw Europeans as better and more reliable workers than native Brazilians, espe-
cially freed blacks from the declining Northeast. São Paulo also became the primary
destination for European immigrants because it represented the nucleus of burgeon-
ing Brazilian industry. Here were to be found the industrial jobs for which these
immigrants were better prepared than were Brazilian blacks.
immigrants were white and therefore contributed to the “whitening” of the society,
an ideal that was now prevalent among the Brazilian political leadership and intel-
ligentsia (Skidmore, 1990). Since abolition, the notion of an increasingly whiter
population had been a staple of Brazilian intellectual thought. Abetted by the wide-
spread influence of Social Darwinism at the turn of the century, whites felt that
Brazil should seek to dilute as quickly and completely as possible the black element
of its racial composition. Put simply, the idea was “the whiter Brazil, the better”
(Skidmore, 1972). Rather than encouraging a return of blacks to Africa, as was
the case in the United States, Brazil chose to import whites. The goal in each case
was the same—a dilution of the black population (Marx, 1998).
The mass immigration from Europe gave Brazil’s whitening process a giant in-
fusion. So limited had immigration been previously and so substantial had been the
importation of African slaves that by the end of the eighteenth century, Africans
were a majority of the Brazilian population. European immigration not only in-
creased racial mixing, but also reversed this ratio.
In the century between 1850 and 1950, 5 million immigrants came to Brazil. The
peak era of immigration, however, occurred between 1870 and 1920, when more
than 3 million Europeans entered the society (de Azevedo, 1950; Skidmore, 1974).
Almost 2 million entered in the little more than two decades between 1881 and
1903. Most were absorbed by the state of São Paulo, whose foreign population rose
from 3 percent in 1854 to 25 percent by 1886 (Dzidzienyo and Casal, 1979). By 1934
more than half the population were first- and second-generation immigrants
(Mörner, 1985). Italians were by far the largest immigrant group, but Portuguese,
Spanish, and Germans were also significant. By 1897 Italians outnumbered
Brazilians in the city of São Paulo two to one (Morse, 1958). Today about one-third
of São Paulo state’s population is of Italian descent (Freyre, 1963a).1 Europeans were
also attracted to Brazil’s extreme southern states, where large numbers of Germans
and Poles established cohesive ethnic communities (Luebke, 1987, 1990).
In addition to non-Portuguese Europeans, another distinct ethnic element was
added to the Brazilian mosaic beginning in 1908, when Japanese immigrants en-
tered the society in large numbers for the first time. By 1941 almost 190,000
Japanese had immigrated to Brazil, with another 50,000 arriving after World War
II. Today the Japanese ethnic community of Brazil numbers more than a million.
Most Japanese originally settled as agricultural workers in the states of São Paulo
and Paraná, and they still remain heavily concentrated in those areas (Makabe,
1999).
ETHNIC STRATIFICATION
Brazil’s system of ethnic stratification resembles that of the United States in one im-
portant regard, the rank order of ethnic categories: Whites disproportionately hold
the society’s power, privilege, and prestige. But several unique features of the
Brazilian system distinguish it from that of the United States, as well as other
1
As noted in Chapter 10, until the early 1900s, Brazil and Argentina—not the United States—were the
major destinations of Italian emigrants.
408 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
multiethnic societies, making it one of the most far-reaching attempts at racial and
ethnic democracy in the modern world.
DETERMINING “RACE” In the United States, one’s racial status is a product of one’s
descent; that is, individuals, regardless of physical appearance, are assigned to a ra-
cial status on the basis of ancestry. This tradition is founded on hypo-descent—a
person with any known or recognized ancestry of the subordinate group is auto-
matically classified as part of that group rather than the dominant group (Harris,
1964). This is the so-called one-drop rule referred to in Chapter 5 (Hollinger,
2005). There are no provisions for “intermediate” cases; hence the system of racial
classification is essentially a dichotomy—white and black. As a result, in the United
States one may exhibit generally white physical features yet still be classified as
black. For example, in 1983 a Louisiana judge declared a woman who had been
raised as a white legally black on the basis of a distant black ancestor. She and
her siblings were the great-great-great-great grandchildren of a black slave and a
white planter. The decision was based on a Louisiana law declaring anyone with
one-thirty-second “Negro blood” legally black. The woman was listed as three-
thirty-seconds black (Miami Herald, 1983).
In Brazil, however, this rule of descent is not operative. One is not automati-
cally placed into a racial category on the basis of family of origin. Instead, one’s
total physical appearance—skin color, hair texture, facial features—are the “obvi-
ous” determinants of one’s racial classification. But in addition to these strictly
physical aspects of racial identity, in Brazil certain social factors are used to classify
people racially. The most important of these is social class (Harris et al., 1993).
Thus, as one experiences class mobility, one’s racial identity may to some extent
also change. This changed racial status may be one’s own reclassification as well
as the perception of others (Carvalho et al., 2004). Popular Brazilian expressions
such as “money whitens” or “a rich Negro is a white man, and a poor white man
is a Negro” connote that as people improve their class status, they are perceived as
lighter racially. Ribeiro relates the story of a well-known Afro-Brazilian painter,
speaking with a young black man struggling to rise in a diplomatic career. After
hearing the young man’s complaints of the barriers he faces because of his color,
the painter responds, “I understand your case perfectly, my dear boy, I was black
once too” (2000:157). To a degree, then, racial status in Brazil is subject to redefi-
nition in different social circumstances.
The imprecise nature of racial classification in Brazil means that racial groups
are not castelike as in the United States, where “black” describes anyone with trace-
able African heritage, including those of mixed origins. Branco and prêto—literally,
white and black—merely denote people who are predominantly white or black in
appearance, regardless of actual racial origin (Nobles, 2002; Nogueira, 1959;
chapter 14 brazil 409
Pierson, 1967). Simply having some traces of black ancestry does not result in the
classification of someone as black. Indeed, most people classified as white in Brazil
exhibit some evidence of black descent. Many American blacks, then, would be
considered white in the Brazilian context.
RACIAL AND ETHNIC CATEGORIES This different perception of race has produced a
correspondingly different system of racial categorization. Whereas the United
States for most of its history has maintained an essentially biracial system in which
people are classified as either white or black,2 Brazil’s multiracial system provides
for more than two categories. Three major racial groupings are recognized in
Brazil, but the boundaries between them are neither rigid nor clear-cut. Branco
(white), prêto (black), and pardo (mulatto, or brown) are the most encompassing
terms, but Brazilians employ literally dozens of more precise terms to categorize
people of various mixed racial origins, depending on their physical features.
Racial terminology is strongly localized, and from region to region—and even com-
munity to community—standards of classification vary.
The most minute physical features are often used to sort out people racially.
The complexity and exactness of Brazilian racial typologies can baffle the
American familiar with only a two-part (or, increasingly, tripartite) racial scheme.
Consider the descriptive categories used by the people of Vila Recôncavo, a town
near Salvador in the state of Bahia, studied by anthropologist Harry Hutchinson:
The prêto or prêto retinto (black) has black shiny skin, kinky, woolly hair, thick lips
and a flat, broad nose.
The cabra (male) and cabrocha (female) are generally slightly lighter than the prêto,
with hair growing somewhat longer, but still kinky and unmanageable, facial features
somewhat less Negroid, although often with fairly thick lips and flat nose.
The cabo verde is slightly lighter than the prêto, but still very dark. The cabo verde,
however, has long straight hair, and his facial features are apt to be very fine, with thin
lips and a narrow straight nose. He is almost a “black white man.”
The escuro, or simply “dark man,” is darker than the usual run of mestiços, but the
term is generally applied to a person who does not fit into one of the three types men-
tioned above. The escuro is almost a Negro with Caucasoid features.
The mulato is a category always divided into two types, the mulato escuro and mulato
claro (dark and light mulattoes). The mulato has hair which grows perhaps to shoulder
length, but which has a decided curl and even kink . . . The mulato’s facial features
vary widely; thick lips with a narrow nose, or vice-versa.
The sarará . . . has a very light skin, and hair which is reddish or blondish but kinky or
curled . . . His facial features are extremely varied, even more so than the mulato’s.
The moreno . . . is light-skinned but not white. He has dark hair, which is long and
either wavy or curly . . . His features are much more Caucasoid than Negroid.
(1963:28–30)
2
The increasing Asian population in the United States has, of course, forced a third major category
into the racial classification scheme used by government and other institutions. The principal racial di-
vision, however, remains black and white.
410 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
These are only the primary categories, explains Hutchinson, each of which is fur-
ther broken down even more precisely. Even the whites are subclassified on the ba-
sis of skin, hair, and facial features. Anthropologist Livio Sansone (2003), in his re-
search on the construction of race and ethnicity in Brazil, demonstrated how the
dozens of different racial/ethnic terms are fluid and how one’s identity can therefore
change, depending on the context:
So, a person that in the United States or Canada is simply black, in Brazil can be negro
(black) during Carnival and when playing or dancing samba, escuro (dark) for his work
friends, moreno or negão (literally, big black man) with his drinking friends, neguinho
(literally, little black man) for his girlfriend, preto for the official statistics, and pardo in
his birth certificate. (2003:50)
These categories, then, even the major ones, do not denote discrete racial
groupings but blend into one another as on a scale (Figure 14.1). As earlier noted,
miscegenation has, from the time of the initial Portuguese settlement, been a con-
stant and widespread practice in Brazil among the society’s three major population
types—European, African, and Indian. As a result, the racial origins of people are
thoroughly interwoven in various combinations. Black, white, and mulatto, there-
fore, represent very broad categories, each with a wide range of physical types.
Brazilians, then, are very conscious of color distinctions among people; indeed,
they are far more conscious than North Americans or even South Africans, perceiv-
ing numerous physical types between black and white.3 Rather than ancestry, phys-
ical distinctions—phenotypes—in different combinations make for almost limitless
3
When asked to describe their color in the 1980 census, Brazilians responded with 136 different labels,
and in an earlier national household survey, with almost 200 different labels (Andrews, 1991).
chapter 14 brazil 411
THE “MULATTO ESCAPE HATCH” Although there is general agreement on the terms
branco and prêto, it is the mulatto, or pardo, category, between extreme white and
extreme black, that provides the almost endless variety of descriptive combinations
throughout Brazil. As shown in Table 14.1, pardos officially compose 38 percent of
the population, but unofficially the percentage is much higher.4 Again, it is impor-
tant to emphasize the indistinct lines between these categories. Because, as we will
see shortly, it is socially advantageous in Brazil to be considered white, the popula-
tion figure of 54 percent white in Table 14.1 is greatly exaggerated in terms of the
North American conceptualization of race (Harris et al., 1993). In any case, these
census figures indicate a progressive decline of the white percentage, signaling that
even when measured by people’s self-identification, Brazil is gradually emerging as
a racially mixed society.
Might the color continuum of Brazil, as opposed to the rigid black-white di-
chotomy of the United States, explain much of the difference in the tone of ethnic
relations in the two societies? Degler (1986) contends that the existence of the inter-
mediate—mulatto—category in Brazil, more than anything, accounts for the dimin-
ished hostility between blacks and whites. The presence of what he calls “the mu-
latto escape hatch” makes infeasible the development of segregated institutions,
which have so dominated most of the history of black-white relations in the
United States. Where there are so many recognized racial combinations and where
people’s racial status is so arbitrary and personalized, it is impossible to erect caste-
like structures based on racial definitions. “The presence of the mulatto,” explains
Degler, “not only spreads people of color through the society, but it literally blurs
±±
±
Table 14.1 ±±± Brazilian Population by Color
4
The pardo category consists not only of mulattoes (those of mixed European and African origins), but
also those who are mixed European and Indian, usually referred to as caboclos, and those of mixed
African and Indian origins, cafusos, who are numerically a small element of the Brazilian population.
412 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
and thereby softens the line between black and white” (1986:225). Furthermore,
where there is such a varied biological mixture of the population, racial ideologies
propounding the notion of superior and inferior races are difficult to sustain.
Skidmore (1993), however, casts doubt on the assumption that the presumed
multiracial classification system of Brazil is today basically different from the U.S.
biracial system. He contends that while there is an increasing awareness of the ra-
cial variability—and thus color gradations—of the U.S. population, at the same
time there is a growing tendency among Brazilian scholars and others to describe
Brazil in bipolar racial terms, that is, simply “white” and “nonwhite.” Moreover,
Marx (1998) points out that the Brazilian construction of a “triracial” system of
categorization, though more fluid than the biracial U.S. system, still provides for
the domination of whites over both blacks and browns. Later we will consider
how American and Brazilian racial systems may be converging.
however, and class patterns are beginning to resemble those of developed societies.
As this occurs, an expanding middle class of salaried professionals and white-collar
workers is emerging, though it is a much smaller proportion of the population com-
pared to the United States and other highly developed societies. Brazil remains a so-
ciety with an extraordinarily wide gap between rich and poor, and nonwhites are
disproportionately among the latter.
Figure 14.2 shows how the ethnic hierarchy in Brazil has customarily paralleled
the class system. At the pinnacle of the structure are whites, and “as one moves
down the social hierarchy, the number of racially mixed or otherwise nonwhite in-
dividuals gradually increases” (Wagley, 1971:121). Although mulattoes and blacks
are represented throughout the occupational structure, they are not found in pro-
portion to their share of the population in positions of authority or decision mak-
ing. Afro-Brazilians have made significant inroads into the political arena since the
1980s and they are beginning to appear more commonly in high political positions
(Davis, 2000). Still, the elite levels of government, the economy, the military, and
education are thoroughly dominated by whites. For example, until recently, the
only black cabinet minister of the federal government had been Pelé, the retired soc-
cer star. And it was not until 1996 that a black was elected mayor of São Paulo, the
country’s largest city. At the opposite end of the hierarchy, whether in rural or ur-
ban areas, the bulk of the poor and uneducated are black. Only in sports and enter-
tainment do Afro-Brazilians play a prominent role (Leite Lopes, 2000; Schneider,
1996). In short, although white skin does not guarantee social success, “it always
improves one’s position over that of a darker person” (Degler, 1986:191).
Numerous studies demonstrate this racial hierarchy, all showing the wide dis-
crepancy between Afro-Brazilians and whites in wages and income, occupations,
education, and in literacy rate. These differences are evident even after controlling
for race (Beato, 2004; Castro and Guimarães, 1999; Daniel, 2006; Fernandes,
2005; Lovell and Wood, 1998; Nascimento and Nascimento, 2001; Paixão, 2004;
Schneider, 1996; Silva, 1985, 1999; Silva and Hasenbalg, 1999; Skidmore, 1999;
Wood, 1998). Moreover, the opportunities for nonwhites to break the cycle of ra-
cial inequality through upward mobility are limited (Daniel, 2006; Telles, 2004).
historian Thomas Skidmore, “are still implicit believers in a whiter Brazil, even
though it may no longer be respectable to say so” (1990:28).
Such impressions extend back even to the period of slavery. Henry Koster, an
Englishman traveling in Brazil at the beginning of the nineteenth century, remarked
that “it is surprising, though extremely pleasing, to see how little difference is made
between a white man, a mulatto and a creole Negro if all are equally poor and if all
have been born free” (1966 [1816]:152).
Observant visitors have not been deceived. Relations between ethnic groups in
Brazil are clearly more benign than those in most multiethnic societies of the mod-
ern world. Overt interethnic conflict is rare, and in no institutional area of the soci-
ety have measures designed to discriminate against people on the basis of ethnicity
ever been common or officially sanctioned. But such manifestations of ethnic har-
mony do not tell the entire story.
Prejudice
Closer analysis reveals that prejudice toward nonwhites is a well-established aspect
of this society’s culture but is often disguised by the customary physical contact be-
tween ethnic groups in public places. Moreover, these attitudes are translated into
stereotyping of nonwhites, rules of social distance, and the general disapproval of
intermarriage between those of extremely divergent racial features.
416 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
STEREOTYPING For several decades, studies have verified the prevalence of negative
stereotypes of Brazilian people of color (Andrews, 1991; Bastide, 1965; Bastide and
van den Berghe, 1957; Fernandes, 1971; Harris, 1963; Hutchinson, 1963; Pierson,
1967; Sanders, 1981; Saunders, 1972; Telles, 2004). Bastide and van den Berghe
(1957) found, for example, that among white middle-class university students in
mainly white São Paulo, blacks were commonly viewed as dirty, physically unat-
tractive, superstitious, profligate, immoral, aggressive, lazy, lacking persistence at
work, and sexually “perverse.” Mulattoes were seen in much the same manner.
Almost half of their sample also felt that blacks were intellectually inferior to
whites. Today, fifty years after Bastide and van den Berghe’s observations, another
anthropologist finds that essentially the same stereotypes—“indolence, intellectual
backwardness, and criminal tendencies”—remain “alive and active, though re-
pressed and unstated” (Nascimento, 2007:70).
In Minas Velhas, a small town in the state of Bahia where most of the inhab-
itants were of mixed European-African origin, Marvin Harris reported that “the su-
periority of the white man over the Negro is considered to be a scientific fact as
well as the incontrovertible lesson of daily experience” (1963:51). Harris noted the
abundance of legends, folk stories, and pseudoscientific notions that supported the
negative beliefs about blacks. A school textbook used in Minas Velhas, for exam-
ple, stated that “of all races the white race is the most intelligent, persevering, and
the most enterprising,” whereas “the Negro race is much more retarded than the
others,” a view not disputed by any of the village’s six teachers (quoted in Harris,
1963:51–52).
Harris explained that although blacks in the town were commonly derided as
ignorant and ugly, such views were rarely expressed bitterly or hatefully.
In Minas Velhas, to the white and to a certain extent to the Negro himself, the Negro is
primarily a curious laughable anomaly. He is looked upon as a sport of nature, as a
being with certain substandard and grotesque characteristics which make him amusing
rather than disgusting. A white man will say: “Negro desgraçado. Que bicho feio!”
(Miserable negro! What an ugly creature!) and smile broadly as though he were speak-
ing of some rare amusing freak. (1963:53)
Moreover, Harris found that the black stereotypes here (as well as in other re-
gions) were often contradictory. Blacks could be seen at once as stupid and cun-
ning, honest and dishonest, naïve and shrewd, or lazy yet fit only for hard work.
Three white attitudes, however, were constant and basic: (1) the black is inferior
to the white; (2) the black does and should play a subservient role to the white;
and (3) blacks’ physical features are displeasing. “On the whole,” noted Harris,
“there is an ideal racial ranking gradient in which whites occupy the favorable ex-
treme, Negroes the unfavorable extreme and mulattoes the various intermediate po-
sitions” (1964:60).
In a more recent analysis, Telles (2004) reports that negative stereotypes of
both blacks and mulattoes remain widely held in Brazil, not simply by whites but
by blacks and mulattoes as well. The media are important purveyors of these persis-
tent views. Blacks are seen on Brazilian television in roles that support traditional
negative stereotypes, whereas whites, by contrast, are portrayed positively. Telles
explains, however, that these views have been modified in the past few decades.
chapter 14 brazil 417
SOCIAL DISTANCE Studies of social distance also reveal prejudicial attitudes toward
nonwhites (Bastide and van den Berghe, 1957; Garcia-Zamor, 1970; Zimmerman,
1963). In their study of white university students in São Paulo, Bastide and van den
Berghe (1957) found that almost all accepted the idea of equality of opportunity
for everyone, regardless of color. Better than half also accepted the desirability of
casual relations between members of different racial groups. But beyond this level,
social distance increased markedly. Sixty-two percent opposed intimacy with blacks
beyond simple comradeship, and 77 percent opposed miscegenation with blacks
(55 percent also opposed miscegenation with mulattoes). The most unwavering at-
titudes involved intermarriage; 95 percent indicated they would not marry a black,
and 87 percent would not marry a light-skinned mulatto.
Intermarriage among members of different racial or ethnic groups, as was ex-
plained in Chapters 3 and 4, represents the highest degree of social intimacy and
the ultimate stage in the assimilation process. In Chapter 7, we saw that black-
white intermarriage in the United States, although increasing, remains uncommon.
The same is true in South Africa, of course, given its only recently abolished apart-
heid system. We would expect a more substantial amount of intermarriage in
Brazil, with its historical legacy of miscegenation and its proclamation of racial de-
mocracy. Telles (2004) reports that in 1991 nearly a quarter of all Brazilian mar-
riages were interracial. Although this may be accounted for in some part by the am-
biguous way in which Brazilians classify people by race, the numbers are simply too
large to deny that racial intermarriage is a common occurrence. And, the racially
mixed character of most Brazilians, of course, testifies to the practice.
A less sanguine view of racial intermixing in Brazil is that in many ways it is
not essentially different from other multiracial societies, like the United States.
While undeniably common during the Portuguese colonial period, researchers have
pointed out that in modern times the degree of social tolerance for such unions
drops sharply when the contrast in color of the partners is great (Cardoso, 1965;
Degler, 1986; Fernandes, 1971; Hutchinson, 1963; Reeve, 1977; Vidal, 1978).
Most marriages are between persons of similar color, and most intermarriages are
between blacks and mulattoes rather than between whites and either blacks or mu-
lattoes. Moreover, most intermarriages occur at the lower end of the class hierarchy
(Telles, 2004). Hutchinson (1963), for example, noted that in the small Bahian
community he studied, the aristocratic white upper class was completely endoga-
mous. He went on to explain, however, that “no one in any class likes a marriage
in which the skin colours are too far apart. Any marriage of dark with light or
white will be referred to as mosca no leite, or fly in the milk, and a certain repug-
nance is felt by all” (1963:40). In marriages of black and white, the union is consid-
ered fortunate for the former and a case of lowering oneself for the latter
(Nogueira, 1959). Moreover, it is the whitening ideal that serves as the incentive for
darker-skinned persons to marry lighter-skinned partners (Sheriff, 2001). Also, ra-
cial intermarriage is more frequent in areas of Brazil where the nonwhite popula-
tion is great, particularly the Northeast, and where, as a result, whites are most
likely to interact with blacks and mulattoes.
418 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
Brazilians often cite the tradition of miscegenation as proof of their lack of prej-
udice toward people of different colors. Yet it has been pointed out that the com-
monness of this practice may simply reflect the accessibility of black and mulatto
women to white men throughout Brazilian history. The mulatto woman is tradi-
tionally seen in Brazil as epitomizing female beauty, but this has been interpreted
by some as simply a sexual attraction, indicative of an exploitative relationship.
Patterns of Discrimination
Early comparisons of ethnic relations in the United States and Brazil suggested that
in the latter, prejudicial attitudes did not fundamentally affect people’s behavior to-
ward members of particular groups (Freyre, 1963b; Harris, 1964). That discrimina-
tion against nonwhites in Brazil has been unlike past ethnic discrimination in the
United States is clear enough. The forms of blatant derogation, denial, and physical
violence historically so well rooted in American society have simply not been pres-
ent in the same manner or degree in Brazil, and the institutionalized forms of dis-
crimination that characterized the United States before the 1960s are not found at
all. Later researchers, however, have pointed out that, although it is rarely virulent
and is repeatedly denied, discrimination is very much a part of the Brazilian ethnic
system. In addition to the indisputable relationship between skin tone and social
class, racial discrimination in various forms has been revealed frequently by social
scientists and journalists.
a much faster pace for whites than blacks and mulattoes. While almost no non-
whites had graduated from college in 1960, 2.6 percent had done so by 1999; by
comparison, the percentage increase for whites during these years was from 1.4 to
11.0 (Telles, 2004).
Perhaps the most telling evidence of ethnic discrimination in Brazil came forth
in 1951, when the Brazilian legislature was prompted to enact an antidiscrimination
measure, the Afonso Arinos law. The measure was generally recognized as unen-
forceable, but its significance lay not so much in its subsequent effect as in the for-
mal recognition for the first time in Brazilian history that discriminatory practices
did in fact exist. Ironically, the measure was reportedly prompted by the refusal
of a Rio de Janeiro hotel to accommodate a visiting black American entertainer
(Andrews, 1991). The law was updated in 1989, with little effect (Nobles, 2005).
CLASS OR RACE? Although the lower place of blacks and mulattoes in the occupa-
tional structure of Brazil is undeniable, many observers—as well as Brazilians
themselves—have customarily attributed this situation not to discrimination but to
the effects of class disadvantage (Freyre, 1963a; Pierson, 1967). The argument is
essentially this: The lower place of blacks and mulattoes is the product of a heri-
tage of slavery. Whites have enjoyed the historic advantage of being at the top of
the social hierarchy and therefore continue to disproportionately occupy the so-
ciety’s better jobs and leadership positions. Differences in class, then, generally do
reflect differences in color, but this relationship is due to historical accident, not
institutional or customary forms of discrimination.
There is little question that class factors weigh heavily in the social placement
of Brazilians. But the argument that the lower place of Afro-Brazilians is simply an
expression of class has been challenged by many social scientists (Hasenbalg, 1985;
Lovell and Wood, 1998; Morse, 1953; Russell-Wood, 1968; Silva, 1985; Skidmore,
1974; Telles, 2004; Twine, 1998; van den Berghe, 1978). Their studies have shown
that one’s color is indisputably significant in the distribution of wealth and power,
independent of class or region. As Telles has concluded, “the socioeconomic posi-
tion of nonwhites in Brazilian society is due to both class and race” (2004:220).
In the past, color in Brazil did not seem as overwhelmingly decisive as in the
United States. Whereas in the latter one’s racial classification seemed to supersede
all other social characteristics, in Brazil social class seemed more significant, partic-
ularly as one approached the lighter pole of the color continuum. That may no lon-
ger be the case, however. Through an analysis of census and other data, Andrews
(1991) compared the degree of racial inequality in Brazil with that in the United
States over several decades and found that in some ways there is a lower degree of
inequality between black and white in the United States. Although in past decades
racial disparities in life expectancy and occupation were not as great in Brazil, by
1980 those indicators had reversed themselves. Although Brazil showed less resi-
dential segregation and proportionately fewer Afro-Brazilians in poverty, these
were counterbalanced by greater racial equality in the United States in school en-
rollment, median years of schooling, and earnings.
Andrews concluded that the United States has generally moved toward a reduc-
tion in racial inequality in the last several decades, while Brazil has moved in the
opposite direction. He attributed this to several factors. First, blacks in Brazil did
420 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
not move out of the country’s most economically backward region (the Northeast)
as quickly as African Americans moved from the rural South to the industrial
North, where economic and educational opportunities favored upward mobility.
Second, the benefits of economic growth in Brazil have tended to flow dispropor-
tionately to the upper and middle classes, overwhelmingly white; in the United
States, a more equitable distribution of wealth generated by the post–World War
II expansion created a more favorable climate for black mobility, at least until the
1980s. Finally, an active role by the U.S. federal government in reducing discrimi-
nation through civil rights laws and other antidiscrimination measures has, until re-
cently, had no Brazilian counterpart.
Sociologists now seem in agreement that, despite an ideology of racial democ-
racy, prejudice and discrimination are fundamental realities in Brazil. That Brazil is,
in this manner, not unlike other multiracial societies, however, should not discount
the comparative differences, particularly vis-à-vis the United States. The level of in-
termarriage, as we have seen, is higher in Brazil and the degree of residential segre-
gation is lower. These are two areas that, as explained in Chapter 7, seem most re-
sistant to change in American black-white relations.
in percentage over the past few decades. Correspondingly, the racially mixed cate-
gory (mulatto) has grown larger. This may simply be a result of the increasing ten-
dency for people to identify themselves as neither white nor black, but it may also
suggest a steady pattern of increasing intergroup marriage and thus a continuation
of racial amalgamation (Sanders, 1982; Telles, 2004).
CULTURAL ASSIMILATION The “official” view of assimilation in Brazil is that the so-
ciety is fusing not only into a single racial group, but also into a single Brazilian
culture, comprising Portuguese, Indian, and African elements. “The Brazilian ideol-
ogy of interracial and interethnic relations,” wrote Nogueira, “is proamalgamation
concerning physical traits and pro-assimilation as to cultural characteristics”
(1959:172). The assimilationist goals of Brazil have been expressed most artic-
ulately by Freyre, who asserted that the society “has not attempted to be or be-
come exclusively European or Christian in its styles” (1963a:156).
African and, to a lesser extent, Indian elements have been blended into the
Brazilian culture far more than have African or Native American traits in the
United States. African cultural elements are especially evident in religion, food, mu-
sic, and dance, particularly in those areas of Brazil where the population is heavily
of African origin. For example, West African religious rituals have been fused with
Catholicism in cults known as candomblé and macumba in Bahia and Rio de
Janeiro (Rohter, 2000).
As for the various European ethnic groups that have populated Brazil since the
late nineteenth century, problems of assimilation have seemed less acute than in
other multiethnic societies, although separatist elements have sometimes been evi-
dent. For example, the German communities of the southern Brazilian states in the
early twentieth century sought to perpetuate their language and to remain unassim-
ilated into what they saw as an “inferior” Luso-Brazilian culture (Luebke, 1983).
Even in more recent times they have remained relatively separated from other
Brazilian groups, as have the Japanese (Hastings, 1969; Rodrigues, 1967; Suzuki,
1969). Moreover, the first two generations of other European groups displayed
the resistance to assimilation generally characteristic of early generations of volun-
tary immigrant groups. By the third generation, however, they had become an inte-
gral element of the Brazilian economic and political elites, serving as a prime seg-
ment of the expanding Brazilian middle class (Horowitz, 1964; Willems, 1960).
Brazil has clearly achieved a level of physical and cultural assimilation surpass-
ing that of most other multiethnic societies. Although there remain in Brazil strong
regional patterns of culture and of ethnic composition, giving the society a pluralis-
tic flavor, the commitment to an assimilationist ideology has been constant and has
yielded an increasingly integrated society, physically and culturally. Brazil can pro-
claim success in creating a common national identity that transcends the racial and
ethnic components of its varied population. “One and the same culture takes in
all,” writes Ribeiro, “and a vigorous self-definition that is more and more
Brazilian animates everyone” (2000:169). In this sense, Brazil can be considered
an exemplar of an assimilationist society, having transformed its diverse ethnic ele-
ments into a culturally homogeneous social entity.
422 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
beliefs and practices have been frustrated, ironically, by the ideology of racial de-
mocracy and by the lack of clear lines of racial division.
Traditionally, Brazil’s nondiscriminatory ideology had been so preeminent that
revelations or accusations of discrimination were customarily met with denials or
disbelief. Smith (1963) noted the well-understood principle that any expression of
racial discrimination should be attacked as “un-Brazilian.” Even the suggestion of
a “racial problem” was met with disapproval. In the late 1970s, for example, cen-
sors banned a program dealing with racial issues from Brazil’s largest television net-
work (Vidal, 1978). Official denials of discrimination have perpetuated the mys-
tique of racial and ethnic democracy and have made any attack on discriminatory
practices more difficult (Hanchard, 1994). If officially “there is no racial discrimi-
nation,” public opinion cannot easily be galvanized to confront it. Only in the past
few years have Brazilian officials begun to acknowledge the reality of racial preju-
dice and discrimination.
A further impediment to the elimination of ethnic discrimination in Brazil has
been the fact that it is rarely blatant and aggressive. It might be called “prejudice
and discrimination light.” For example, although violations of the antidiscrimina-
tion law of 1951 were often prominently reported, most were dismissed by the au-
thorities for lack of evidence. Anthropologist Robin Sheriff (2001), in her study of a
Rio favela (a poor urban area), reports that her informants—poor and nonwhite—
were certain that they were commonly discriminated against in applying for jobs for
racist reasons, but they were also aware that in most situations they could not
prove it. The subtle and mild forms of prejudice and discrimination also may cause
blacks themselves to remain relatively unaware of them (Hanchard, 1994).5
Moreover, even when they do express awareness of discrimination, Afro-Brazilians
lack the economic and political resources to address such issues.6
THE EMPHASIS ON CLASS DISCRIMINATION That most Afro-Brazilians are at the low
end of the class structure makes the issue of discrimination more complex because
class and ethnic factors are closely intertwined and difficult to distinguish. Here it
is instructive to recall the debate among American sociologists regarding William J.
Wilson’s thesis of the “declining significance of race” (Chapter 7). As explained
earlier, Brazilian whites—and many blacks—prefer to account for prejudice and
discrimination against darker-skinned people as a product of their class, not their
racial status. Furthermore, the explanation that Afro-Brazilians disproportionately
occupy the lower social positions in the society because of class factors is more
readily acceptable because this places the blame on “natural” social and economic
forces, not those purposely designed to limit the placement of people. Also, failure
to improve one’s social position can be attributed, as in the popular American
5
Telles (2004) found a more moderate level of residential segregation among Brazil’s racial groups
compared to the United States and other countries with large populations of African and European ori-
gin. That blacks, mulattoes, and whites live in similar neighborhoods, he concluded, “may strengthen
the perception that race has little or no effect on life chances, at least for individuals of the same social
class” (Telles, 1992:195).
6
It is of note that the limited Brazilian black movement is led primarily by middle-class Afro-Brazilians
with comparatively light skin (Burdick, 1995).
424 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
7
As Toplin (1981) has pointed out, however, in the United States, too, lighter-skinned blacks have al-
ways fared better than darker-skinned blacks. This pattern began during slave days, when mulattoes
were often given house duty and more frequently granted manumission. The continuity of this pattern
is evident in the traditional predominance of lighter-skinned blacks as part of the black upper class
(Graham, 2000).
chapter 14 brazil 425
BRAZIL AND THE UNITED STATES: CONVERGENT PATHS? Are Brazil and the United
States becoming more similar on issues of race? Some observers of the two societies
maintain that in some ways they do seem to be on convergent paths (Daniel, 2000;
2006; Degler, 1986; Skidmore, 1993, 2003; Toplin, 1981).
First, in the United States, as we saw in Chapter 7, the lower socioeconomic
standing of African Americans is increasingly attributed to class factors as the
more blatant and legitimized forms of racial discrimination are eradicated. In
Brazil, however, the tendency seems to be just the reverse: racial discrimination is
becoming more obvious and acknowledged as a factor in black deprivation, and
traditional class explanations have been seriously questioned.
Second, at a time when affirmative action policies have come into serious ques-
tion, both legal and otherwise, in the United States, they are being advanced for the
first time in Brazil.
Third, and underlying the previous two points, the Brazilian traditional fuzzi-
ness in defining racial categories and the denial of race entirely is now under serious
question. As a result, official racial boundaries appear to be emerging with more
precision, resembling the American system. This is occurring at the same time that
racial definitions and boundaries are becoming less distinct in the United States.
426 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
G. Reginald Daniel (2000; 2006) maintains that as the United States has since the
1990s moved away from the traditional binary racial classification system to one in
which mixed racial, or “multiracial”, identities have become more commonplace,
Brazil has moved in the opposite direction, toward a more traditionally American
binary system.
THE DILEMMA OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION IN BRAZIL The use of affirmative action to ad-
dress issues of inequality has taken on many of the same controversial trappings as
it has in the United States—whether such compensatory policies should reward
people on the basis of group membership as opposed to individual merit; whether
they can effectively help those most in need; whether they solidify, rather than
weaken, racial and ethnic boundaries; and whether they lower standards.
chapter 14 brazil 427
Looking Ahead
Affirmative action has created a profound debate within Brazil (Guimarães, 1999;
Skidmore, 2003). There are those who favor the adoption of a more American-like
approach to racial inequality, using affirmative action to improve the position of
blacks. This, as noted, would necessitate the marking of explicit racial boundaries,
something never done before. On the other side are those who assert that the sys-
tem of racial classification in Brazil, along with its ambiguities and inconsistencies,
is uniquely Brazilian and should be retained. Racial democracy in this view is, cor-
rectly, the society’s goal—if not the reality—of race relations. The movement for
change in Brazil’s racial politics seems intent on finding a way to reconcile these
two positions—to promote greater racial equality without completely abandoning
the unique Brazilian racial mixture and the ideal of racial democracy (Fry, 2000).
Brazil is embarking on a new course in its racial-ethnic system and will surely
be the focus of attention of social scientists, policy makers, and others who continue
to wrestle with the complexities of racial and ethnic policies. The policy debate has
been entered and surely will intensify as further compensatory measures are insti-
tuted to deal with racial inequality. The very fact that the issue is now part of the
public discourse represents a fundamental change for Brazil. A black filmmaker, ob-
serving the change, puts it this way:
Whatever happens with quotas, Brazilians are talking about the issue of race and dis-
crimination and there’s no going back. My white friends will ask me what I think about
racism in Brazil or the quotas, and I always tell them: “The answer is in your question.
Three months ago, you would never even have asked.” (Jeter, 2003:A1)
Brazil presents a complex and often paradoxical case of ethnic relations. In its
commitment to racial amalgamation, it has few peers among current societies.
Similarly, its embracing of the theme of ethnic equality has been unwavering since
the abolition of slavery. Furthermore, the inconsistencies between ideology and re-
ality cannot repudiate the fact that interethnic relations in Brazil are more benign
than in other societies with diverse racial-ethnic groups.
428 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
If Brazil is not the racial and ethnic democracy its advocates have proclaimed, it
is nonetheless a society in which giant strides have been made toward ethnic assim-
ilation. At the same time, however, Brazil demonstrates the difficulties of mitigating
the intergroup conflict that, as noted in Chapter 4, seems endemic to multiethnic
societies.
SUMMARY
Brazil’s ethnic composition and the historical development of its ethnic diversity
closely parallel the American experience. As in the United States, the main focus of
ethnic relations is the confrontation of blacks and whites. Other ethnic elements are
present, however, including many European ethnic groups that entered as voluntary
immigrants, and indigenous Indians.
Brazil was an integral part of the African slave trade, and its system of slavery
endured even longer than its American counterpart. Debate among historians and
social scientists concerns differences in the practice and aftereffects of slavery in
the two societies. Some hold that the Portuguese brand of slavery in Brazil was
more humane than the Anglo-American version and consequently produced more
benign black-white relations following its abolition.
Ethnic stratification in Brazil features relatively fluid boundaries between groups.
Racial classification is not a dichotomy but a continuum in which groups blend into
one another. Racial categories are based not on ancestry but on physical appear-
ance and social class. Despite blurred lines of division between groups, there is an
ethnic hierarchy in which whites maintain a generally advantageous status over
blacks and mulattoes, the latter a large intermediate racial grouping.
Points of Difference
• Racial divisions are less fixed in Brazil. Numerous racial categories are used to des-
ignate people, based on observable physical traits, not on ancestry.
• Throughout its history, Brazil has encouraged amalgamation between whites and
blacks, mainly as a way of diluting the black element of its population.
• The African influence, derived from slavery, has remained a more vibrant and ex-
pressive part of Brazilian culture.
• Race relations historically have been more benign in Brazil.
chapter 14 brazil 429
Suggested Readings
Daniel, G. Reginald. 2006. Race and Multiraciality in Brazil and the United States:
Converging Paths? University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Compares inter-
group relations in the tripartite Brazilian racial-ethnic system with the traditional binary
system of the U.S., concluding that the two are on convergent paths.
Degler, Carl. 1986 [1971]. Neither Black nor White: Slavery and Race Relations in Brazil
and the United States. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Degler’s thesis is that the
emergence of a mulatto, or intermediate, racial category between black and white in
Brazil produced a set of race relations markedly different from that in the United States,
with its dichotomous system of racial classification.
Fernandes, Florestan. 1971. The Negro in Brazilian Society. New York: Atheneum. The ma-
jor work of one of Brazil’s leading sociologists, explaining the development of race rela-
tions following the abolition of slavery in 1888. Questions the notion of Brazil as a “ra-
cial democracy.”
Freyre, Gilberto. 1963. New World in the Tropics: The Culture of Modern Brazil. New
York: Vintage. A brief work by Brazil’s most celebrated historian, with a valuable dis-
cussion of slavery and the evolution of Brazil’s racial-ethnic system. Serves as an intro-
duction to Freyre’s lengthier and more detailed works, The Mansions and the Shanties
(1963) and The Masters and the Slaves (1956).
Hellwig, David J. (ed.). 1992. African-American Reflections on Brazil’s Racial Paradise.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press. A unique collection of observations of Brazil by
African American scholars from the early 1900s through the 1980s.
Marx, Anthony W. 1998. Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of South Africa, the
United States, and Brazil. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. A sociohis-
torical study exploring the question of why patterns of race relations and the develop-
ment of a racial system in Brazil evolved differently from those of the United States and
South Africa.
Minority Rights Group. 1995. No Longer Invisible: Afro-Latin Americans Today. London:
Minority Rights Publications. Examines other Latin American countries with African de-
scendant populations, where race relations take on many of the Brazilian characteristics.
430 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
Ribeiro, Darcy. 2000. The Brazilian People: The Formation and Meaning of Brazil. Trans.
Gregory Rabassa. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. The work of one of Brazil’s
best-known intellectuals, describes the building of a multiethnic, multiracial society and
the development of its assimilationist character.
Skidmore, Thomas E. 1999. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. New York: Oxford University
Press. A brief history of Brazilian society that considers the crucial issues of slavery and
its abolition.
Telles, Edward E. 2004. Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. The most up-to-date analysis of Brazilian eth-
nic relations. Incorporates comparisons with black-white relations in the United States.
15
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Canada ±± C H A P T E R
±±
±±
±
Ask Americans to name the capital of Russia, a society very distant from the United
States both geographically and culturally, and most will probably answer correctly.
Ask them to name the capital of Canada, a society bordering the United States for
the entire length of the continent and culturally almost as close, and most will be
hard pressed. One reason Americans pay so little attention to and know so little
about Canada is that its sociological features are assumed to be replicas of their
own. In the American mind, Canada might easily pass for the fifty-first state.
Undeniably, the economic and cultural hegemony of the United States on the
North American continent for two centuries has created great cross-border similari-
ties. But the fact that Americans can easily feel at home in Canada tends to disguise
some fundamental differences. Common cultural preferences, consumer patterns,
political alliances, and for two-thirds of Canada, language, do not make Canadian
society simply a northern microcosm of the United States. These differences are no-
where more apparent than in the realm of ethnic relations.
Ethnic Dimensions
Canada is a society whose ethnic structure is today extremely diverse. Moreover, it
displays some features of the corporate pluralistic model described in Chapter 4.
Essentially there are three ethnic dimensions in this society:
• the division between two founding groups, British and French, each of whose
language and culture have been legally protected since the eighteenth century;
• a large and growing non-English, non-French pastiche of ethnic groups, whose
national origins represent virtually every region of the world; and
• indigenous groups, referred to as Aboriginal people.
431
432 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
±±
±
Table 15.1 ±±± Mother Tongue of the Canadian Population*
*Single responses.
Source: Statistics Canada, 2007a.
chapter 15 canada 433
official status, their cultural systems, and the nature of their relations with other
groups, however, largely set them apart from the rest of the society. Hence, they
must be looked at as a unique component of the Canadian ethnic configuration.
These three dimensions create a complex ethnic picture in which the different
elements are interwoven in complicated and, to American eyes, often bewildering
combinations. Moreover, this ethnic diversity, particularly in recent decades, has
yielded public policies more pluralistic in nature than those of the United States.
Whereas the United States has, for most of its history, been committed to an assim-
ilationist approach (at least for those groups of European origin), the Canadian phi-
losophy has traditionally been more pluralistic, and thus more tolerant of the con-
tinued expression of cultural differences among diverse groups.
THE ENGLISH CONQUEST Both Britain and France established colonies in North
America beginning in the early seventeenth century and vied for continental domi-
nance for almost a century and a half. The victory in 1759 of the British forces led
by General Wolfe over the French on the Plains of Abraham marked the end of
French colonialism in North America, but it did not eliminate the presence of a
French cultural group. New France (Quebec) was now made politically part of the
British colonial empire, but its French inhabitants were granted the right to certain
cultural privileges, including the retention of French civil law, the use of the French
language, and the practice of Catholicism. The price of this cultural autonomy,
however, was that French Canada was placed in the position of a permanent mi-
nority within an English milieu. From the moment of British ascendancy in
Quebec, French Canadians were consumed with avoiding assimilation into the
English-speaking North America that surrounded them. And it is this objective of
cultural survival that remains at the heart of today’s English-French schism.
During and after the American Revolutionary War, thousands of English-
speaking emigrants from the thirteen American colonies who had remained loyal
to Britain entered Canada. Many of these United Empire Loyalists, as they were
434 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
called, settled in Quebec. This gave the province for the first time a substantial
English-speaking population, which quickly came into conflict with the French ma-
jority over economic and political issues. In an attempt to separate the two groups,
Britain established an Upper and a Lower Canada, the former composed mostly of
English-speaking people, the latter of French-speaking. These would later become
the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The national duality was thus firmly estab-
lished, with two peoples, differing essentially in language and culture, juxtaposed
geographically and socially.
Although the French in Quebec were not threatened in a numerical sense by the
influx of English-speaking people, this period of English-French relations marked
the establishment of English dominance of the Quebec economy. With the exit of
the French commercial elite following the British conquest, business and financial
activities became the domain of the English, and the French Canadians remained
mostly on the land as subsistence farmers. This ethnic division of labor became a
fixed arrangement that lasted into the modern era, making the French a numerical
majority but an economic minority in their own province.
The disparities in power, wealth, and social position between English and
French in Lower Canada led to the emergence of a French nationalist political ele-
ment that sought the colony’s independence. An open rebellion ensued in 1837, af-
ter which Britain consolidated Upper and Lower Canada into a single union. The
underlying objective of this move was the eventual assimilation of the French into
the English colonial society. To bring about this end, discriminatory measures were
enacted assuring Anglo dominance.
In addition, with the failure of the rebellion, the conservative forces of French
Canada were now ascendant. The clergy, in particular, reinforced its influence in
the life of the French-speaking people and extended the doctrine that the French-
Canadian culture could be sustained only through loyalty to the Catholic faith and
the French language. This traditional nationalism, combining a rural-oriented way
of life with a staunch Catholicism, held sway among the French-Canadian masses
until the mid-twentieth century. The clergy, then, assumed the dominant institu-
tional role in Quebec, promoting détente with the English colonialists as a means
of ensuring la survivance, the survival of the French culture.1
1
A classic description of this traditional Quebec culture is found in Miner (1939). Later essays are
contained in Rioux and Martin (1978).
chapter 15 canada 435
It was a situation described by the novelist Hugh MacLennan (1945) as “two soli-
tudes,” French and English living side by side but essentially in different social
worlds.
THE QUIET REVOLUTION The decade of the 1960s in Quebec is often referred to as
the “Quiet Revolution,” for it was then that the transformation of French-
Canadian society that had begun in the early part of the century culminated in the
emergence of a powerful nationalist ideology espoused by Quebec leaders deter-
mined to make Francophones maîtres chez nous—“masters in our own house.”
Though revolutionary only in a figurative sense, the changes brought about during
this period basically redefined both the role of government in Quebec and the iden-
tity and goals of French-Canadian society (Posgate, 1978).
In the past, the provincial government had been viewed as a force in sustaining
the status quo, but it now became the principal vehicle of change. Responsibility for
health, welfare, and especially education became its concerns, whereas in the past
these had been largely church-sponsored institutions. In the economic realm, the
provincial government pursued the objective of improving the position of
Francophones and ending Anglophone control of the important segments of the
economy (McRoberts, 1988). In short, with the development of a dynamic state
led by a new middle class, technologically skilled and ideologically committed to a
strong and self-sufficient society, Quebec by 1970 was well on the way toward a
social and political transformation.
THE RISE OF THE PARTI QUE´BE´COIS The new nationalism spawned strong sentiments
favoring the separation of Quebec from the rest of Canada and the formation of an
independent French-speaking nation. In the late 1960s, elements of the
Francophone leadership that had emerged from the Quiet Revolution began to pro-
mote the idea that there was no longer any middle ground between partnership
within the Canadian confederation and full sovereignty for Quebec; the latter was
the only realistic option if Quebecers were to fully control their destiny. To consol-
idate and advance the achievements of the Quiet Revolution, they felt that Quebec
had to fully sever its ties with Canada (Posgate, 1978). Led by René Lévesque, an
articulate and charismatic spokesperson, they left the ruling Liberal Party (which,
ironically, had initiated the radical changes of the Quiet Revolution) and formed
the Parti Québécois (PQ), declaring as its objective the political liberation of the
Francophone community.
In its view, the split with English Canada was absolute and irreversible. “First and
foremost I am a Québecois,” declared Lévesque, “and second—with a rather grow-
ing doubt—a Canadian” (Saywell, 1977:4).
By the early 1970s the growing support among Quebecers for the new, radi-
cally nationalist PQ was evident and alarming to English Canada. Even more
alarming were the activities of a small extremist separatist group, the Front de
libération du Québec (FLQ), whose violent tactics and revolutionary ideology pro-
voked a crisis in 1970 prompting the federal prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, to
briefly invoke the War Measures Act, giving the police sweeping powers to arrest
and detain suspected persons.
This was a wrenching experience for Quebec and all of Canada that forced the
separatists to moderate their proposals for change. In response, Lévesque stressed
the democratic processes by which Quebec’s independence was to be attained and
emphasized the “economic association” aspect of the envisioned sovereignty-
association relationship with Canada. The Parti Québécois declared that if it were
elected to power, it would put the issue of sovereignty-association before the people
of Quebec as a referendum, to accept or reject.
In 1976, only eight years after its formation, the PQ won election as the gov-
ernment of Quebec. Its stunning victory sent shock waves throughout English
Canada. For the first time, the contemporary Quebec nationalist movement drew
the serious attention of even the United States. What had been feared since 1970
had occurred—the election of a provincial government ideologically committed to
the separation of Quebec from Canada, led by the charismatic Lévesque. It now
seemed that the division of Canada into two separate nations, in a real rather than
symbolic sense, was possible.2
2
Much of the support for the Parti Québécois was based not on its advocacy of separatism but on its
promise to deliver “good government” and on public disaffection with the relationship between Quebec
and the federal government (McRoberts, 1988).
438 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
SEPARATION: THE RECURRENT ISSUE The fundamental issue of the relationship be-
tween Quebec and the rest of Canada, however, had not been resolved. In the late
1980s these issues surfaced again resoundingly. The catalyst was an effort to in-
duce Quebec to sign the new Canadian constitution, adopted in 1982. To this
end, an accord was reached in 1987 between Quebec and the federal government,
giving the province broader independent powers. Most important, under the agree-
ment, Quebec was to be given special recognition among Canadian provinces as a
“distinct society.” Some in English Canada, acknowledging Quebec’s cultural
uniqueness, believed that such exceptional political recognition was correct.
Others held that Quebec should be accorded no special status. This pact, called
the Meech Lake Accord, failed to be ratified by all the Canadian provinces in
1990 and thus was not adopted. This was widely interpreted in Quebec as a rebuff
by English Canada, again igniting strong support for the nationalist cause of sepa-
ration from Canada.
Two years later, another attempt was made at bringing Quebec into the
Canadian constitution. Much like the Meech Lake Accord, the 1992 proposal (the
Charlottetown Accord) would have given Quebec special status in Canada as a dis-
tinct society and certain numerical guarantees of political and judicial representa-
tion in the federal government. In a national referendum, Canadians rejected the
proposal by 60 to 40 percent. Temporarily, this seemed to put to rest the issue of
Quebec sovereignty, but the forces in Quebec working for independence were given
renewed strength and promised to put the issue before Quebecers again.
The opportunity to revisit the issue came in 1994 when the PQ was elected
once again as the Quebec provincial government. The party leaders had made the
sovereignty issue, as before, the core of their electoral program. As in the past, their
message was familiar: Quebec would never be afforded the kind of unique place in
the Canadian confederation that would allow it to protect and promote its language
and culture; thus political independence was the only logical alternative. To temper
the uncertainties of going it alone, however, Quebecers were promised that after
separation the province would continue to interact closely with the rest of Canada
in economic matters such as trade and use of a common currency. Canadian federal
leaders warned Quebecers against making such an assumption.
In October 1995—fifteen years after the 1980 proposal was defeated—a refer-
endum on sovereignty was once again held in the province. As in 1980, the measure
failed, but this time by the barest of margins—50.6 percent to 49.4 percent. A
closer analysis of the results revealed that Francophones in the province had sup-
ported the separatist proposal by 60 percent to 40 percent, whereas Anglophones
and Allophones (immigrants speaking neither French nor English) had roundly
voted against the measure by over 90 percent.
chapter 15 canada 439
LANGUAGE AND THE PRESERVATION OF QUEBEC CULTURE Language is the very founda-
tion of any people’s culture. Hence, it was long felt that assimilation into the dom-
inant English-Canadian society would be inevitable for French-speaking Canadians
if measures were not taken to assure the preservation of the French language.
Moreover, language for Quebecers, as for many ethnic collectivities in multiethnic
societies, is the key symbolic marker setting them off from other groups. Quite sim-
ply, it is what defines the French nation in Canada. As Lévesque put it, “Everything
else depends on this one essential element and follows from it or leads us infallibly
back to it” (1968:14).
In the 1970s aggressive pro-French language policies were enacted by successive
Quebec governments with the objective of bringing about the primary use of French
in all spheres of public life—including, most important, business and education.
More fundamentally these policies must be seen in the context of la survivance,
the survival of the French-Canadian culture. Francophone Quebecers in the 1970s
were faced with an overarching demographic problem: How could they remain a
numerical majority in their own province? This problem was created by two popu-
lation trends—a lowered birthrate and the influx of non-French-speaking immi-
grants. Quebec had historically maintained the highest birthrate in Canada. Thus,
even though few immigrants from France were attracted to Quebec after the colo-
nial period, the ratio of French to English in Canada had held relatively constant
for two centuries. This was derisively referred to as the “revenge of the cradle,”
the implication being that the complete English conquest was foiled by the high
French birthrate. Quebec’s extraordinarily high birthrate, however, dropped dra-
matically in the 1960s, becoming the lowest in all of Canada. In addition to this
precipitous fall, the arrival of large numbers of European immigrants, most adopt-
ing English as their new language, threatened to further dilute the Francophone
population.
In the late 1960s, the federal government under Trudeau began to promote the
notion of a truly bilingual Canada. Responding to the recommendations of the
Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, which had been charged
with studying how a more equitable balance could be established between the two
founding peoples, the government adopted and avidly supported a policy of official
bilingualism. But this effort was seen as essentially meaningless to Quebecers, who
in many cases were already bilingual—of necessity. Even today, it is only in Quebec
where bilingualism is characteristic of a large percentage (over one-third) of the
population. Although 18 percent of the total Canadian population is able to con-
verse in both English and French, more than half of these bilinguals live in Quebec
(Statistics Canada, 2005a).
QUEBEC LANGUAGE POLICIES The first move in the direction of French-language pre-
eminence in Quebec came in 1974, when the provincial government instituted a
new language law, declaring French the official language of the province and mak-
ing access to any but French-language schools difficult. This created strong opposi-
tion from Montreal’s English business community as well as the city’s large number
of European immigrants, who sought to maintain their right to choose the lan-
guage of instruction for their children. Neither was the measure acceptable to the
separatists, who felt that it did not go far enough in establishing the primacy of
chapter 15 canada 441
QUE´BE´COIS ETHNIC IDENTITY French-speaking Canadians are not simply one more
ethnic group within the Canadian mosaic. The French in Canada are a people
with a linguistic and cultural autonomy formally recognized from the very found-
ing of the society. Moreover, unlike other Canadian ethnic groups, Francophone
Canadians maintain a territorial base. For Canada’s French-speaking people who
live outside the province of Quebec, the tendencies toward assimilation into the
dominant English-speaking society have been evident for several decades (Joy,
442 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
1972). More important, the contemporary nationalist movement in Quebec has jet-
tisoned these French-speaking non-Quebecers. It is Quebec alone that has become,
in the eyes of the separatists, the only meaningful base for a sovereign French-
speaking society in North America.
Manifestations of ethnic identity among Quebecers also illustrate their unique-
ness within the Canadian ethnic system. Unlike English Canadians, French
Canadians—specifically, those in Quebec—are faced with a dual national identity.
Whereas people in the rest of Canada think of themselves simply as “Canadians,”
those in Quebec are both Canadiens and Québécois (Quebecers).3 In recent de-
cades, the latter identity has, for most, seemed to take precedence (Centre for
Research and Information on Canada [CRIC], 2002). This dual identity, however,
demonstrates well the idea of a unique French-Canadian nation in which people’s
allegiance and consciousness of kind do not focus necessarily on the same national
unit perceived by other Canadians (Brunet, 1969). One must keep in mind, of
course, that there are different degrees of nationalism among Quebecers. Some are
vehemently and radically nationalistic and are unrelenting advocates of separatism,
whereas others see themselves more as part of a unified Canada.
3
The inhabitants of the original French colony in Canada called themselves Canadiens. Only later was
the term Canadian adopted by the English. Hence, Canadien connotes, in the French-Canadian view,
the idea of the original or true Canadians (see Brunet, 1969).
chapter 15 canada 443
±±
±
Table 15.2 ±±± Canadian Population by Selected Ethnic Origins
THE CONTEMPORARY PERIOD OF IMMIGRATION After World War II, the next great
phase of immigration began, considerably changing the Canadian ethnic composi-
tion. Their societies of origin as well as their Canadian destinations distinguished
the new immigrant groups from those of previous eras.
Whereas British, northwestern European, and, selectively, central and eastern
European groups had been the major immigrants of the past, the first new arrivals
were mainly from southern and eastern European countries, in addition to the con-
tinued large-scale entry of the British. The largest among the non-British groups
were the Italians, almost a half million of whom had come by 1971 (Iacovetta,
1992).
The contemporary period of immigration also introduced an entirely new di-
mension to Canada’s ethnic mosaic because it included for the first time nonwhite
peoples in significant numbers. Although not officially stated, Canada’s immigra-
tion policy before 1962 had been, in effect, “white only” (Hawkins, 1989;
Richmond, 1976). Discriminatory measures favoring northwestern Europeans, par-
ticularly those from the British Isles, were now dropped, profoundly affecting the
ethnic makeup of immigration.
Immigrants from Asia in the contemporary period have come from almost ev-
ery country of that continent, with especially large numbers of Chinese (from Hong
Kong, Taiwan, and the Chinese mainland), Filipinos, and Vietnamese, as well as
large numbers of Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans, Lebanese, and Iranians. Blacks
chapter 15 canada 445
have come mostly from the Caribbean—especially Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago,
Guyana, and Haiti—and have settled mainly in Toronto and Montreal (Statistics
Canada, 2005a). Before this period, most of Canada’s tiny black population was
of American origin. Most Canadian blacks during the colonial period had come
with the American loyalists during the Revolutionary War or during the War of
1812, settling mainly in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (Clairmont and Magill,
1974; Winks, 1971). Many American slaves also sought refuge in Canada before
the Civil War via the Underground Railroad.
Nonwhite groups (excluding Aboriginal people) in Canada are referred to as
visible minorities, and it is these groups that have dominated immigration to
Canada during the past thirty years. Whereas blacks and Asians before 1967 had
constituted fewer than 4 percent of immigrants, by 1973 they were approximately
one-third, and by 1981, one-half. As shown in Table 15.3, whereas European coun-
tries were the major source of immigrants before 1961, today East and South Asian
countries are the leading sources. Visible minorities make up 13 percent of the total
Canadian population, but through continued immigration it is expected that by
2017 roughly one of every five people in Canada will be a member of a visible mi-
nority (Statistics Canada, 2005b).
In addition to their diversity, the immigrants of the current era differ from
those of previous eras in that their destinations have been almost entirely urban,
specifically, Canada’s three major metropolises: Toronto, Montreal, and Vancou-
ver. More than a third of all the new immigrants are destined for Toronto alone,
making that city the core of Canada’s new ethnic character (Reitz and Lum,
2006). What had been a staid, conservative, and relatively provincial British-
dominated city was transformed into a cultural and linguistic panorama not unlike
American cities of the East and Midwest at the turn of the century. Immigrants to-
day account for close to half of the city’s population, a percentage unsurpassed by
any city in North America.
±±
±
Table 15.3 ±±± Top Ten Source Countries of Canadian Immigrants
Along with the United States and Australia, Canada is today among the world’s
primary immigrant-receiving societies. Indeed, Canada’s per capita rate of immigra-
tion is the highest in the world. Moreover, the contemporary wave of immigration
has transformed Canada into a society rivaled in ethnic diversity only by the United
States. Today immigrants make up almost one in five persons in Canada, a propor-
tion exceeded only by Australia and significantly higher than the proportion of im-
migrants (12.5 percent) that make up the U.S. population.
As we will see, Canada’s groups that are neither British nor French in origin
have established themselves as an important political and social element, a so-
called Third Force. Their growing numbers and diversity more than anything else
have contributed to the current philosophy and government policy of multicultural-
ism, which is discussed later in this chapter.
Aboriginal Peoples
The third major element of the Canadian ethnic configuration is the native, or
Aboriginal, groups, who together make up about 4 percent of the total population.
Among these peoples are Native Indians (or First Nations), Inuit, and Métis, the
last of mixed racial origins (Table 15.4).
Culture and physical features no longer define Native Indians in Canada;
rather, “Indianness” is legally defined (Frideres, 1998). Canadian Indians are offi-
cially designated as “status” or “nonstatus.” Status (or “registered”) Indians have
been classified as Indians under the Canadian Indian Act and are the direct respon-
sibility of the federal government. About one-half live on reserves (the counterpart
of reservations in the United States) established by the government. Like American
Indians, Canadian First Nations are ethnically diverse and have long seen them-
selves as distinct peoples. It is their common relationship with the federal govern-
ment, however, that links them together (Gibbins, 1997).
The Métis are marginal to both white and Native Indian societies. During the
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, fur traders, mostly French, often lived
with or married Indian women. The offspring of these mixed unions developed a
unique culture, partly European and partly Indian. (Métis is a French word similar
in meaning to the Spanish mestizo.) In western Canada, where the intermixture oc-
curred in a geographically and socially isolated environment, the Métis grew in
number and developed a distinct ethnic identity, even declaring themselves a nation.
Following an abortive rebellion in 1885, however, they became a highly stigmatized
±±
±
Table 15.4 ±±± Canadian Aboriginal Population*
group. The Métis were recognized officially as a distinct people until 1940, when
the Canadian government reversed this position. Today most Métis live in the
Prairie provinces of Canada, and a majority live in urban areas (Normand, 1996).
Canada’s Inuit have remained relatively isolated geographically in the far North
and historically have not been subject to colonization to the extent that Native
Indians have. Thus, although they do qualify for special political status, technically
they are not Indians.
NATIVES AND WHITES: EARLY RELATIONS Except for being markedly less violent, the
historical relations between Canada’s native peoples and white settlers have been,
tragically, not essentially different from those that evolved in the United States.
The technological superiority of the whites and their desire for land spawned poli-
cies and practices that led to deculturation, dependency, and impoverishment
among the Aboriginal populace.
Accommodation characterized the white attitude toward native peoples from
the time of initial contact until 1867. The indigenous peoples were vital to the fur
trade, and as enterprises like the Hudson’s Bay Company expanded their opera-
tions, Indians and Inuit were engaged in trapping. As they were drawn into this
trade, they became increasingly dependent on the same companies for their subsis-
tence; in the process, their traditional cultures were basically overturned. During
this period, however, there was little direct intent by whites to impose their cultural
ways on the native peoples. Their prime concern was profit maximization. As
Breton, Reitz, and Valentine have put it, “The traders and whalers wanted produc-
tive trappers and hunters, not North American versions of themselves” (1980:73).
White domination, then, was real, although not necessarily deliberate.
With confederation and the western expansion, this general attitude of accom-
modation changed to one of domination. The federal government entered into trea-
ties with the native peoples for the acquisition of occupied lands, and Indians were
increasingly relegated to reserves, isolated from the mainstream society. The govern-
ment subsequently assumed the role of patron, regulating various aspects of Indian
life. Moreover, the reserves were increasingly incapable of supporting hunting and
fishing economies, forcing Indians into an even greater dependence on the state.
Concurrent with government jurisdiction of reserve lands were efforts to assim-
ilate natives into either the English or French culture, resulting in the denigration of
indigenous cultures. Aboriginal children were taken from their families and placed
into missionary-run residential schools whose intent was to purge them of native
ways. Thus, while they were increasingly isolated from white society, they were ex-
pected to assimilate into the white culture (Breton et al., 1980). Indeed, until the
1970s, the goal of assimilation, though largely unsuccessful, had been the founda-
tion of government policies toward native peoples since the nineteenth century
(Gibbins, 1997).
CHANGING RELATIONS In recent years, the native peoples of Canada have developed
a resurgent group consciousness and pride and have become more politically mobi-
lized in movements that seem to parallel those among Indians in the United States,
with whom they share generally common origins and cultures. Viewing themselves
as a colonized minority in Canada, they have sought the renegotiation of land
448 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
claims, and in recent years, policies have been instituted that have led to greater
native control over their reserves (Asch, 1984; Frideres, 1990; Ponting, 1997a). In
a sense, the political movement among Aboriginal peoples in Canada has displayed
many basic similarities to the Quebec nationalist movement. Each has sought
greater freedom from the control of the federal government, and each has espoused
an assertive and sometimes militant nationalism.
An important event in 1999 moved Canada toward greater autonomy for
Aboriginal groups. The federal government entered into an agreement with Inuit
leaders that provided for the creation of a new territory called Nunavut (“our
land” in the Inuit language), to be carved out of the Northwest Territories. Inuit
were given effective control of 135,000 square miles (one-fifth of Canada’s land-
mass) and the equivalent of about $1 billion over a fourteen-year period (Légaré,
1997; Stout, 1997). Although the creation of Nunavut had no bearing on the
movement for self-government among Native Indians of southern Canada, it none-
theless marked an important step in giving back control of land to indigenous
Canadians.
Two events occurred in the late 1990s that augur additional significant changes
in the relations between Aboriginal peoples and the rest of Canada. First, the
Canadian government in 1998 offered an historic apology to native peoples for
150 years of paternalistic and sometimes racist treatment. This represented an im-
portant symbolic gesture. More substantive, however, was an earlier Supreme
Court ruling that validated Indian claims to land in British Columbia. The decision
was based on oral histories presented by the Gitxsan tribe, not on written treaties.
This ruling will likely have a profound effect on future treaty negotiations between
First Nations and the federal and provincial governments and on decisions regard-
ing land use and rights to timber and mining resources (DePalma, 1998).
Despite these positive signs in the relations between Aboriginal peoples and the
rest of Canada, recent national surveys indicate that a growing proportion of
Canadians believe those relations are deteriorating. Moreover, in much of the coun-
try there is a declining view of the validity of Aboriginal land claims. For example,
outside of Quebec, only a third of Canadians feel that Aboriginal peoples should
enjoy special hunting and fishing privileges in their traditional living areas (CRIC,
2002).
ETHNIC STRATIFICATION
Because Canada is one of the most diverse multiethnic societies of the modern
world, it would be foolish to expect it not to exhibit a system of ethnic stratifica-
tion. One looking superficially at Canadian society, however, might be hard put to
perceive such a system. Looking at the ethnic composition of the political elite, for
example, it is obvious that Quebecers commonly serve in the highest-ranking posi-
tions of the federal government, including prime minister. Or, looking at ethnic pat-
terns of housing, it is clear that neighborhoods strongly segregated on the basis of
race and ethnicity, so common to American cities, are not part of the Canadian ur-
ban scene. But to see these cases as proof of the absence of dominant-minority rela-
tions is misguided, for there is indeed an ethnic hierarchy in Canada.
chapter 15 canada 449
THE ENGLISH-FRENCH DIFFERENCE Perhaps the most glaring difference in class posi-
tion, historically, was between the two charter groups—English and French.
Whereas the English were traditionally at the top of the hierarchy, the French
were no higher than most noncharter groups and actually lower than some.
As noted earlier, French Canadians traditionally occupied a lower collective
economic position even in Quebec, where they had always been a numerical major-
ity. Porter found that in Quebec, “by and large the British run the industrial life”
(1965:92). As occupational status rose, he noted, so did the proportion of English
personnel. The tendency for French Canadians to fill the lower-level working-class
positions in the Quebec economy had been vividly demonstrated over two decades
earlier by Everett Hughes in his study of a Quebec town. In the town’s major indus-
tries, Hughes found, the English held “all positions of great authority and perform[ed]
all functions requiring advanced technical training” (1943:46). The French, by con-
trast, predominated in the lower occupational ranks and eventually disappeared in
number as the degree of authority rose. “French Canadians as a group,” noted
Hughes, “do not enjoy that full confidence of industrial directors and executives
that would admit them easily to the inner and higher circles of the fraternity—
and fraternity it is—of men who run industry” (1943:53). Hughes concluded that
the same situation prevailed throughout the province generally. The English-French
variance shown by Hughes and Porter was later corroborated by the Royal
Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism (1969a), which showed that those
of French origin were disproportionately in lower-status occupations and earned
incomes considerably lower than those of English Canadians.
450 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
4
The class and ethnic origins of Canadian elites, however, remain a contested issue among social
scientists. See Ogmundson (1990) and Clement (1990).
chapter 15 canada 451
previously noted, in Quebec, too, as French has become the primary language of
business and commerce, a new Francophone economic elite has emerged, making
Anglophone dominance largely a phenomenon of the past (Forcese, 1997; Levine,
1990).
ABORIGINAL GROUPS IN THE CLASS SYSTEM Although their circumstances are much
improved from earlier generations, Aboriginal groups continue to occupy the low-
est rung on all dimensions of social class and consequently have the poorest life
chances of all Canadians. They exhibit the highest unemployment rates in the coun-
try, have the lowest levels of income and education, and disproportionately occupy
low-level jobs. Unemployment among Aboriginals, for example, is three times
higher than the national average. The standard of living on Indian reserves is char-
acterized by poor and overcrowded housing, extremely low incomes, and low par-
ticipation in the labor force (Frideres, 1998; Ponting, 1997b; Salée, 2006; Siggner
and Costa, 2005). For First Nations people who migrate to the cities, a social pat-
tern has developed that is similar to that of American urban Indians—high unem-
ployment, high criminality, and high alcoholism (Frideres, 1993; Statistics Canada,
1993).
The social consequences of these conditions are predictable. Life expectancy
rates are considerably lower, and infant mortality rates, though declining, remain
higher among Aboriginal groups than among the general Canadian populace
(Barsh, 1994; Frideres, 1998; Norris, 1990). Standards of housing, education, nutri-
tion, and general health remain below the national averages (Banting et al., 2007;
Barsh, 1994; Blue, 1985; Frideres, 1998; Kendall, 2001; Statistics Canada, 1993).
Moreover, Aboriginal people make up a highly disproportionate number of inmates
in Canadian prisons (Stackhouse, 2001).
Despite these dismal facts, the life chances of native peoples in Canada have
improved, particularly in income and education. Aboriginal people who have
moved to urban areas have exhibited especially noticeable improvements in socio-
economic status in the past two decades (Siggner and Costa, 2005). But
Aboriginal groups on reserves and in remote areas continue to represent a markedly
deprived segment of the society and, in many ways, are divorced from mainstream
institutions.
Despite its more subdued character, however, ethnic conflict in Canada has
been revealed in patterns that are in some ways parallel to those of the United
States. Like most other Western societies, Canada does not lack a racist tradition,
though it has been more muted in expression and less malignant in consequence.
Historically, Canadian racism has been evidenced in its immigration policies and
in its treatment, both official and unofficial, of nonwhites.
were rejected because they were presumably unable to adapt to Canada’s harsh
winters (Palmer, 1976).
Discriminatory immigration policies restricting Asians and other nonwhites
were not basically changed until the 1960s. Indeed, as recently as 1947, Prime
Minister Mackenzie King stated bluntly Canada’s intention to encourage popula-
tion growth through selective immigration. Large-scale Asian immigration, he
stated, “would change the fundamental composition of the Canadian population”;
therefore, no changes in immigration regulations were to be made (Corbett,
1957:36).
Seeking to enhance its international image and to more realistically meet its
need for human resources, Canada abolished its racially discriminatory immigra-
tion policy in legislative acts of 1962 and 1967. The selection of immigrants was
no longer to be based on nationality or race but on a system of points that objec-
tively evaluated each immigrant’s potential economic and social contribution to
Canadian society (Hawkins, 1989). As in the United States after it discarded restric-
tive immigration quotas in 1965, the ethnic origins of immigrants entering Canada
changed radically—most were now non-European.
Ethnic Attitudes
As we have seen, Canada in the last three decades has become a society far more
ethnically diverse than at any time in its history, with visible minorities making up
the majority of new immigrants. This has prompted attitudes and actions that,
though mild by American standards, indicate some degree of racism. Such patterns,
of course, are not of recent vintage. In addition to the virulent anti-Asian feelings of
an earlier period, whites’ generally abusive interrelations with native groups as well
as episodes of anti-Semitism have resembled American historical patterns (Henry
and Tator, 1985). Studies of social distance, however, indicate that Canadian racial
attitudes remain less intense than those of Americans.
In their national attitudinal study, Berry, Kalin, and Taylor (1977) found that
respondents in general reacted very favorably to English and French Canadians but
less favorably to non-British and non-French groups. Specifically, northwestern
Europeans were judged most favorably, central and southern European groups
next, and nonwhite groups least favorably, except for Japanese. This social distance
scale was later demonstrated by other studies as well (Mackie, 1980; Pineo, 1987).
It is interesting to observe its essential similarity to the ethnic scale that, as noted in
Chapter 3, has been consistently reaffirmed in the United States, though the differ-
ences among groups are declining in both societies (Reitz and Breton, 1994).
Even with this clear acknowledgment among Canadians of an ethnic hierarchy,
Berry and his colleagues found no evidence of extreme ethnic prejudice. Though the
rank order of groups was very apparent, the differences among them were not
great. Race (that is, physical differences among groups) was found to be an impor-
tant dimension of group perception among Canadians, but the researchers con-
cluded that “Canadians reject explicit racism” (1977:206). Later studies reaffirmed
this conclusion (Berry and Kalin, 2000; Kalin and Berry, 1994). Surveys indicate
increasing ethnic tolerance on several measures, including intermarriage and
454 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
Discriminatory Actions
Although the overt suppression of minority peoples is generally lacking in Canadian
history, there are nonetheless some parallels between Canada and the United States
in the treatment of ethnic minorities, particularly nonwhites. In Canada, these
racial-ethnic groups have suffered various forms of discrimination including, at
one time or another, restrictions in voting, employment, land ownership, housing,
and public accommodations (Davis and Krauter, 1971; Kallen, 2003).
Arrant anti-Asian immigration measures were noted earlier. In addition to this
official discrimination, violence against Chinese and Japanese workers in British
Columbia was common in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The
most blatant discriminatory action against Asians, however, occurred during
World War II. As in the United States, those of Japanese origin were forcibly re-
moved from their homes and businesses and placed in internment camps for the du-
ration of the war (Adachi, 1976).
Serious racist actions have also been directed at people of East Indian origin.
Along with the Chinese and Japanese, East Indians were barred from entry into
Canada earlier in the century, and those remaining were subjected to discrimination
in almost all areas of social life. East Indians in the past were seen as intrinsically
dirty, sinister, immoral, prone to overcrowding, and generally inferior to whites.
Buchignani suggests that East Indians in Canada before World War II were “an al-
most ideal type subordinate racial caste” (1980:129). They were denied entry into
various occupational fields and could not vote or hold citizenship. Today there are
almost 1 million East Indians and other South Asians in Canada, and, although se-
rious discrimination against them rarely surfaces, well-worn negative stereotypes do
at times come to light (Berry et al., 1977; Henry, 1978; Henry et al., 1995;
Ramcharan, 1982; Statistics Canada, 1999).5
5
A number of physical attacks against East Indians occurred in the 1970s in some of Canada’s largest
cities (Ferrante, 1977; Hill, 1977; Pitman, 1977).
chapter 15 canada 455
THE MELTING POT In the United States, as we saw in Chapter 5, the idea of the
melting pot—the fusing of many immigrant groups into an American hybrid cul-
ture—became popular beginning in the early 1900s. Never, however, was it trans-
lated into public policy to any serious extent. In reality, the Anglo-conformity
model predominated; that is, the expectation was always that immigrants would
conform to the dominant Anglo-Protestant culture. Even in recent years, the as-
sumption that new groups will quickly learn English and generally adopt dominant
norms and values has continued to guide social thinking despite increased pluralis-
tic rhetoric.
THE MOSAIC The Canadian ideology, in contrast, has historically favored a more
pluralistic outcome of the massing of various ethnic groups. There have been and
remain greater awareness and tolerance of ethnic separateness. A simplified view is
“unity in diversity.” Canada, in this ideal model, is a mosaic, the various pieces
fitting together within a common political and economic framework.
TWO NATIONS IN ONE The dual national character of Canada has made the appli-
cation of assimilationist ideas problematic. Given the historical fact of two found-
ing groups, neither the melting pot nor the Anglo-conformity model could have the
same meaning in the Canadian context as in the American. The question is, how
can ethnic groups assimilate into the dominant culture and society when there are,
in effect, two dominant groups? The idea of “Canadianizing” people becomes an
empty notion when there is no uniform “Canadian way of life” to serve as a soci-
etal reference point.
Although it is also true that one would be hard put to clearly define an
“American way of life,” there is nonetheless no essential ambiguity with regard to
language and other major elements of American culture. In Canada, however, the
presence of two founding peoples with distinctly different cultural systems has al-
lowed ethnic groups that entered the society after the British and French to parlay
this basic schism into significant freedom to retain their culture and group structure.
As Hiller writes, “If one group had dominated, there would have been more accord
about the specific nature of the dominant culture; but since the British and French
were in conflict themselves, the society had a greater built-in tolerance for the per-
petuation of ethnic identities” (1976:107–8).
PARTICULARISM Some have suggested that one explanation for Canada’s greater tol-
erance of ethnic pluralism lies in the fact that historically Canada retained a British
Tory tradition that made for a more particularistic social system, in contrast to the
chapter 15 canada 457
equalitarian and universalistic system of the United States (Clark, 1950; Lipset,
1968, 1990). A traditionally greater emphasis on hierarchy and status restrained
pressures to melt down group differences. The necessity for ethnic groups in the
United States to “become like others” therefore did not find a strong counterpart
in Canada. Moreover, Canada developed as a nation firmly tied to Britain and
did not emerge from revolution, like the United States. Thus a unique “Canadian”
national identity to which all could relate never materialized. As James Laxer
writes, “[T]he consequence . . . has been a nation of multiple identities and two
main languages” (2003:36).
MYTH VS. REALITY In comparing the ethnic ideologies of Canada and the United
States, it is important to recognize that just as the American melting pot has been
more myth than reality, so, too, the Canadian ethnic mosaic is not a true reflection
of public attitude and policy toward ethnic differences. For both societies, the real-
ity of ethnic relations lies somewhere between these two ideals. As Porter points
out, “In practice neither [ideal] has been practicable and neither has been particu-
larly valued by the respective societies despite the rhetoric in prose and poetry that
has been devoted to it” (1979:144). Just as Anglo-conformity was the dominant
public policy with respect to ethnic groups in the United States after its emergence
as a heterogeneous society in the late nineteenth century, so, too, in Canada the
first period of heavy immigration at the turn of the century produced an ethnic pol-
icy that encouraged assimilation into the dominant Anglo-Canadian group. This
basic policy did not change for the next three decades (Burnet, 1976, 1981;
Palmer, 1976). Although immigrants entered a society in which assimilation could
not be enforced as strongly as it was in the United States, there was never any ques-
tion that Anglo-conformity was, except in Quebec, the guiding force of government
policy toward the newcomers.
In a comparison of ethnicity in the two societies, Reitz and Breton (1994) sug-
gest that the differences between Canada and the United States regarding assimila-
tion, at least as it pertains to European-origin groups, are not as great as has been
commonly assumed. “The fact is,” they note, “in both Canada and the United
States, the public discourse on immigration reflects both a tolerance for diversity
and a bias toward assimilation” (1994:10). Moreover, their analysis suggests there
is no evidence to support the notion that ethnic minorities in Canada retain their
ethnic identity and culture longer or more strongly than American ethnic minorities.
458 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
In Canada, as in the United States, ethnicity declines in significance with each pass-
ing generation, taking on a largely symbolic function.
Many have seen it as merely part of a political strategy designed to gain the sup-
port of ethnic minorities. There also is concern that it is moving Canada away from
its traditional open, individualistic political system toward one in which, as one ob-
server has described it, “the cake has to be sliced very carefully among powerful
and competing groups” (Hawkins, 1989:216). Moreover, the notion of multicultur-
alism within a bilingual framework has seemed to satisfy neither the non-English,
non-French ethnic minorities nor the Quebec nationalists. The former argue that
without protection and support of language rights (that is, multilingualism), multi-
culturalism is rendered meaningless because group culture cannot be sustained
without the ethnic language (as the Quebecers have so effectively argued). The
French in Quebec, on the other hand, argue that multiculturalism at the national
level reduces them from charter-group status to simply one more ethnic group in
Canada, a status they find unacceptable (Rocher, 1976).6
Some view multiculturalism as divisive in effect and stultifying as well for mi-
nority ethnic groups (Porter, 1975, 1979). Sustaining and enhancing ethnic plural-
ism, they maintain, can only hinder the movement of these groups into mainstream
institutions, thus perpetuating the system of ethnic stratification. Moreover, as
writer Neil Bissoondath (2002) has pointed out, rather than instilling cultural un-
derstanding among ethnic groups, the policy of multiculturalism may actually have
the opposite effect by reinforcing and perpetuating stereotypes.
6
In recent years, however, Quebec, in light of its growing minority ethnic population, has adopted its
own policy of multiculturalism, recognizing the unique needs of these ethnic subcultures while trying to
integrate them into Quebec institutions (Levine, 1990).
460 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
this view was no less evident among those who had come to Canada since the
1960s, that is, immigrants themselves (Bibby, 1995). The 2006 poll referred to
above again confirmed Canadians’ acceptance of multiculturalism but also reported
the general view that immigrants should abide by mainstream values (Keung,
2006).
Public acceptance of multiculturalism, of course, does not necessarily speak to
the more significant issues of ethnic inequality (the vertical mosaic) and of prejudice
and discrimination toward the visible minorities. Moreover, whether succeeding
generations of minority ethnic groups in Canada can or will want to resist the
forces of assimilation into the dominant Anglo (or in Quebec, French) culture seems
doubtful. It is most commonly the case that immigrants and their children are deter-
mined to take advantage of the opportunities of their new society rather than
preserve the same kind of life they left in their societies of origin. For them, as
Freda Hawkins has claimed, “the preservation of cultural heritage is a lesser con-
cern and . . . the whole concept of multiculturalism can be confusing” (1989:217).
Here the experience of most ethnic groups in the United States may serve as a valid
comparison. Although at times tortuous, a high level of assimilation, both cultural
and structural, has been the fate of most groups by the third generation. This seems
to be the pattern followed as well by Canadian groups (Reitz and Breton, 1994).
Looking Ahead
Canada is a North American experiment in ethnic pluralism. But the experiment is
still very much in the testing stage, and its outcome is uncertain. In considering the
future course of ethnic relations in Canada, we might return to the theme of the
three ethnic dimensions denoted at this chapter’s outset.
The overriding ethnic issue of Canadian society remains, of course, the French-
English schism. This is the most encompassing dimension of ethnicity in Canada
and continues to present the most vexing problems of intergroup relations.
Whether Quebec will retain its place in the Canadian union or eventually go the
way of independence is a question that in the first decade of the twenty-first century
remains unresolved. More than any other, this ethnic conflict will dominate internal
politics in Canada in the coming years and, in a real sense, will define the future of
Canada as a nation-state. Whether a politically and economically centralized society
can sustain what are in essence two nations is a question that has been addressed in
other corporate pluralistic societies of territorially based ethnic groups divided
along the lines of language and culture. Judging from those cases, a continuing sep-
aratist movement of some scope can be expected as long as Francophone Quebec
remains part of Canada. Whatever the nature of its resolution, however, it is not
likely to degenerate into warfare or to erupt periodically in violence. The demo-
cratic context of Canada makes ethnic conflict amenable to political solution.
A second ethnic issue that will absorb the attention of Canadians in the next
decade involves the racial and ethnic characteristics of its new immigrants—mostly
non-European and nonwhite. Current studies have indicated that members of these
groups have not kept pace in recent years with the rest of the workforce in income
and jobs. Moreover, a significant percentage of these groups perceive that they have
been victims of discrimination (Banting et al., 2007).
chapter 15 canada 461
Although the economic, political, and social issues regarding its newest groups
will continue to be of major concern, it is now clear that these groups have funda-
mentally altered the ethnic composition and flavor of Canada. As journalist Peter
Newman has written, the members of Canada’s two founding groups are no longer
in the ascendancy, which means that “a new and radically different country has
been created” (1995:34). Nothing could better illustrate this than the fact that the
two most recent occupants of the office of Governor General—the highest symbolic
political position of the federal government—have been visible minority women,
both born outside Canada.
Finally, the place of Aboriginal peoples has yet to be clearly determined.
Whether they will participate with other Canadians as equals in all aspects of citi-
zenship or whether they will be granted greater autonomy is still an unfolding is-
sue. Also, the continuing socioeconomic gap between Aboriginal peoples and the
rest of Canadian society remains a troubling reality.
Factors irrespective of ethnicity have hindered the development of a definitive
Canadian national identity. Great regional differences as well as the constant spec-
ter of the United States, with its enormous economic and cultural influences, con-
tinue to divide Canadian society and lead to divergent visions of the country’s fu-
ture. But above all, it is issues of ethnic diversity that today Canada must address in
defining its place among the world’s great nations and assuring its national sur-
vival. To this point it has accommodated ethnic diversity more successfully than al-
most any other contemporary multiethnic society. Should it continue to succeed, it
may serve as an exemplar for others.7 Canada will hold the attention of students of
ethnic relations in the coming decades, for it may provide an answer to the question
of how much diversity can be tolerated by a society that remains a centralized
nation-state.
SUMMARY
Canada is geographically and culturally close to the United States, but its ethnic
structure is decidedly different in several respects. In its ethnic makeup, Canada is a
dual-nation society, French and English, within which additional ethnic groups
have taken their place. There are three dimensions of ethnicity in Canada: the
French-English bifurcation; other ethnic groups, neither French nor English in ori-
gin; and Aboriginal peoples.
The overriding issue of ethnic relations is the relentless conflict between French
and English Canadians. The division between the two derives from the French colo-
nial defeat by the British in the eighteenth century. Conflict has revolved around the
efforts of French Canadians to retain their language and culture within the context
of a surrounding English majority. The rupture intensified in the 1970s with the
7
Michael Ignatieff has explained that “Spaniards avidly follow Canadian politics, because it is full of
lessons for meeting the challenge of Basque and Catalan nationalism. Canada matters to Spain and ev-
ery society in the world seeking to share a political community among peoples of different languages,
religion, traditions and cultures” (2005:A19).
462 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
Points of Difference
• Canada is a two-nation society, with two distinct cultural groups having charter
group status. In effect, there are two dominant ethnic groups in Canada.
• Canada has adopted a more pluralist approach to the absorption of various ethnic
groups into its population, though in fact progressive assimilation of ethnic groups
has generally paralleled U.S. patterns.
• Canada did not abide institutionalized slavery and thus did not experience the tra-
vails of integrating a former slave population into its mainstream.
• Race and ethnic relations in Canada have historically been more benign and ethnic
tolerance higher than in the United States.
chapter 15 canada 463
Suggested Readings
Adams, Michael. 2007. Unlikely Utopia: The Surprising Triumph of Canadian Pluralism.
Toronto: Viking Canada. Argues that multiculturalism is now a fundamental component
of the Canadian national identity, and that as a policy it has been enormously successful
in creating social harmony in what has become the world’s leading immigrant—and most
ethnically diverse—society.
Bissoondath, Neil. 2002. Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada. Rev. ed.
Toronto: Penguin. The author, himself a first-generation immigrant, argues that the
Canadian policy of multiculturalism is fundamentally flawed, leading only to greater so-
cietal divisiveness and the perpetuation of ethnic stereotypes.
Fournier, Marcel, Michael Rosenberg, and Deena White (eds.). 1997. Quebec Society:
Critical Issues. Scarborough, Ontario: Prentice Hall Canada. An anthology that explores
various aspects of contemporary Quebec, including issues of language and sovereignty.
Gwyn, Richard. 1995. Nationalism without Walls: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Canadian. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. One of its most noted political commentators
addresses Canada’s ability to forge a national identity from its increasingly diverse popu-
lation and its future as a multiethnic society.
Li, Peter S. 2003. Destination Canada: Immigration Debates and Issues. Don Mills, Ontario:
Oxford University Press. Critically examines the historical role of immigration to Canada
and the current demographic, economic, and social issues of immigration. Concludes that
immigration has had a salutary effect on Canadian society.
Knowles, Valerie. 2007. Strangers at Our Gates: Canadian Immigration and Immigration
Policy, 1540–2006. Toronto: Dundurn Press. A concise, up-to-date history of immigra-
tion to Canada, tracing changing policies and policymakers that led to the entrance of
different groups in different eras.
McRoberts, Kenneth. 1999. Quebec: Social Change and Political Crisis. 3rd ed. Toronto:
Oxford University Press. A comprehensive analysis of the economic and political trans-
formation of Quebec society, addressing the overriding issue of political sovereignty.
Reitz, Jeffrey G., and Raymond Breton. 1994. The Illusion of Difference: Realities of
Ethnicity in Canada and the United States. Toronto: C. D. Howe Institute. Based on sur-
vey data, the authors suggest that the ethnic systems of the two societies, on such issues
as ethnic tolerance, acceptance of assimilation, and the economic incorporation of immi-
grants, are not as different as social scientists have assumed.
Resnick, Philip. 1994. Thinking English Canada. Toronto: Stoddart. Argues that English
Canada (that is, Canada exclusive of Quebecers and Aboriginal peoples) constitutes a co-
herent sociological nation, the distinguishable features of which are described.
Warry, Wayne. 2007. Ending Denial: Understanding Aboriginal Issues. Peterborough,
Ontario: Broadview. Analyzes the historical and contemporary place of Aboriginals in
Canada and discusses issues including group identity, land claims and resource rights,
and the urban context.
16
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±
±
±
CHAPTER
±
±
±
±
±
±
Global Issues of
±
±
±
±
± Ethnic Conflict and
Change
During the past half century, societies in all regions of the world have become more
ethnically diverse. Those with a history of absorbing a variety of ethnic groups—
like the United States and Canada—emerged as even more heterogeneous. Many
others that had been relatively homogeneous—such as those in Western Europe—
evolved into truly multiethnic societies. This trend has continued unabated.
In addition to increasing diversity, societies that have had a multiethnic struc-
ture and tradition for many decades have experienced a rise in ethnic nationalism,
sometimes at a ferocious level.
In this chapter we look at these two most evident trends of ethnicity in the con-
temporary world—the proliferation of ethnic diversity and the resurgence of ethnic
nationalism. Both, as we will see, have contributed to a marked rise in ethnic
conflict.
464
chapter 16 global issues of ethnic conflict and change 465
Middle East, and southern Europe primarily to northwestern Europe, and second-
arily to the United States and Canada. Basically the new prevailing pattern of inter-
national migration has been one involving the movement of people from the
developing societies, or Third World, primarily to the developed, industrialized so-
cieties (Figure 16.1). As part of this global system, few countries today are not ei-
ther sources or recipients of immigrants.
Not only did the direction of world migration change, but its scope expanded
greatly and its pace accelerated. Whereas international migration had been sharply
reduced during the 1930s due to a worldwide economic depression and then by the
outbreak of World War II, in the 1950s immigration began anew with great impe-
tus. Nothing comparable had occurred since the great migrations to North America
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By 2005 almost 191 million people
were living in a country other than their country of origin, representing almost 3
percent of the world’s population (United Nations, 2006). The flow of international
migration is not likely to abate in the near future.
The expansion of immigration and the resultant ethnic diversity throughout the
world in recent decades are attributable primarily to two developments—uneven
economic and social development among nations, and inter- and intrasocietal polit-
ical conflicts.
POLITICAL CONFLICT Wars and internal political strife in many societies have cre-
ated additional push factors, stimulating global migration and the resulting growth
of ethnic diversity. From the late 1950s to the present, civil wars, internal uprisings,
revolutions, and political violence in various forms created a worldwide flow of ref-
ugees unprecedented in modern history. Virtually all parts of the developing
world, as well as some countries in the developed world, were affected. Uprisings
in the 1950s and 1960s against Soviet occupation in Eastern Europe, revolution in
466
part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
EUROPE
CANADA ASIA
CHINA
USA
INDIA
Atlantic
Ocean AFRICA
Pacific
Ocean SOUTH
AMERICA Indian
Ocean
AUSTRALIA
Figure 16.1
| Major Contemporary Immigration Flows
chapter 16 global issues of ethnic conflict and change 467
Cuba in 1959, civil wars in the 1970s and 1980s throughout Central America, po-
litical violence in parts of the Caribbean and the South American continent,
the war in Vietnam, civil wars in many parts of Africa, ongoing wars in the
Middle East, the Persian Gulf War in 1992, the collapse of the Soviet Empire in
the late 1980s, wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the U.S. invasion
and occupation of Iraq beginning in 2003 all contributed to the swell of refugees
alongside the more conventional economic migrants.
IMMIGRATION TRENDS IN EUROPE After World War II, workers from southern
European countries—Italy, Portugal, Greece, Spain, Turkey, and Yugoslavia—or
from newly independent former colonies such as Algeria and Indonesia migrated
to Germany, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and the Scandinavian
countries as these nations experienced their postwar industrial expansion. A similar
immigration occurred in Britain with the entry of thousands of people from the
newly independent countries of the British Commonwealth—India, Pakistan,
Jamaica, and others (Castles, 1992; Castles et al., 1984; Castles and Kosack,
1973; Castles and Miller, 2003; Garson, 1992; Paine, 1974). Labor was in short
supply, and immigrants were therefore recruited to work in the economic recon-
struction of these countries. This population movement accelerated in the 1960s,
leaving previously homogeneous western European societies with substantial ethnic
communities made up of immigrants of vastly different cultures and physical
characteristics.
Although by the late 1970s immigration had been severely curtailed by restric-
tive measures, many of those who had come as temporary workers stayed on, es-
tablishing themselves and their families as permanent residents. In the late 1980s
another surge in migration to western Europe occurred, stimulated in large measure
by the disintegration of the Soviet Union, but also by the influx of labor migrants
and refugees from developing nations of North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.
By the mid-1990s immigration to western European countries once again tapered
off, as governments introduced tighter entry procedures and controls (Organiza-
tion for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2001; Castles and
Miller, 2003). But the infusion of immigrants had rendered a powerful demo-
graphic effect.
Today western and central Europe are home to between 36 and 39 million in-
ternational migrants, one-fifth of the world’s migrant population. This is almost
equal in size to the foreign-born population of the United States (International
Organization for Migration [IOM], 2005). Germany alone has more than 10 mil-
lion foreigners and France about 6.5 million. In Switzerland, the foreign element
468 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
constitutes almost one-quarter of the society’s labor force (OECD, 2004). Italy and
Ireland, traditionally major immigrant-sending societies, are now attractive destina-
tions for immigrants, as are Spain, Portugal, and Greece (Castles and Miller, 2003;
Marrero, 2004; Muenz, 2006; Quinn, 2007). Table 16.1 shows the growth in the
foreign population of some European countries in recent years. These figures are
understatements of the foreign component of the population because they do not
include those international migrants who have been naturalized in their destination
countries (more than a million in France, for example), or those who are illegal
residents.
PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL INTEGRATION When they began to arrive in the 1960s, immi-
grant workers were seen by the native populations as temporary residents who
would return to their home countries once their labor was no longer needed. This
was made especially poignant in Germany (then West Germany), where immigrants
were labeled Gastarbeiter, literally “guest workers.” Although the workers were a
vital component of the economic system, little effort was made to integrate them
socially or culturally into the host society. They were marginal people, and their
social conditions were reminiscent of those experienced by successive waves of
European immigrants and southern black migrants to northern U.S. industrial cities
in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their housing was substandard;
±±
±
Table 16.1 ±±± Foreign-Born Population of Selected European Countries
1988 2005
Number (in % of Total Number (in % of Total
Thousands) Population Thousands) Population
their jobs were the lowest paying and least prestigious; and, except for work, they
did not participate in the society’s mainstream institutions. Moreover, in Germany,
with the largest number of foreign workers, the eventual assimilation or even inte-
gration of the immigrant population was not seen as an appropriate societal goal.
Today the socioeconomic conditions of Germany’s minority ethnic groups are
improving, but their absorption into German society has failed to advance very far
(Seifert, 1998). Few of Germany’s nearly 3 million Turks, for example, have been
afforded citizenship, even those who are German-born and know nothing of any
other society. Until 2000, German citizenship was based on ancestry; that is, only
those born into the German community could qualify as a German national. This
meant that ethnic Germans, having lived, for example, in Russia for many genera-
tions and speaking no German, could obtain German citizenship merely by moving
to Germany (which in fact many did in the 1990s). By contrast, very few second- or
third-generation Turks, having lived nowhere but Germany and speaking only
German, were able to qualify for citizenship.1
In France, by contrast, an assimilationist model has traditionally shaped the so-
ciety’s response to immigrants, awarding citizenship on the basis of birth in France,
not ancestry. Technically, one qualifies as “French” so long as he or she speaks
French and adopts French cultural norms and values. Although this would seem to
have made the absorption of immigrants a less troublesome process, the results
have not been dramatically different from Germany’s.
Most immigrant groups in all Western European societies—especially those
from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East—continue to experience a high level of eco-
nomic and social marginalization. Their unemployment rates are high, and they are
overrepresented in unskilled, low-paying jobs (OECD, 2004). Further, they live
mostly in concentrated areas and participate only minimally in public life. In
Britain, for example, following severe race riots during the summer of 2001, a gov-
ernment report linked the outbreaks to the social and physical segregation of white
and nonwhite—mostly South Asian—communities (Hoge, 2001).
1
In 2000 German laws were changed, making it easier for the foreign-born to obtain citizenship, but
this did not result in a significant percentage of foreigners naturalizing (Leise, 2007; Oezcan, 2004).
470 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
The fact that these new ethnic populations contain large Muslim communities
has given added strength to anti-immigrant movements in these countries. In the
Netherlands, for example, there are about 1.5 million first-generation immigrants,
who make up 10 percent of the population. Most are from the Middle East or
North Africa and are Muslim. The presence of people radically different culturally
has created a situation in which Muslim immigrants generally have been viewed as
a social and political problem; this, in turn, has spurred anti–immigrant, often rac-
ist, views and actions (Duffy, 2004; Sniderman and Hagendoorn, 2007). These
reached a climax in 2004 when a Dutch filmmaker was brutally murdered by a rad-
ical Islamist after he had produced a film critical of the Muslim treatment of women
(Buruma, 2005; Saunders, 2004).
The presence of millions of Muslims in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and
other western European countries has set off virulent social debates regarding the
compatibility of Islamic cultures with mainstream cultures and the social integration
of these immigrants (Roy, 2005). While most governments of these countries have
committed to some form of multiculturalism as a way of expanding social and eco-
nomic opportunities for immigrants, sharp debate has arisen over how—or whether
—the new immigrants should be integrated. Many believe that they are simply too
different culturally and are not prepared to blend into the mainstream. Hence, fears
have arisen that European cultures are being threatened, and sentiment is strong for
a halt to further immigration. Ironically, in the Netherlands, the perception that the
society is undergoing a radical change as a result of immigration has led to an un-
precedented number of Dutch emigrants, most going to Canada and Australia
(Saunders, 2005).
further immigration; extreme right-wing parties have called for immigrants to be re-
patriated to their countries of origin. In sum, it is quite reasonable to expect that for
many years increasing ethnic diversity will continue to be a critical internal issue
facing most western European countries.
CIVIC NATIONALISM Civic nationalism, Michael Ignatieff writes, “maintains that the
nation should be composed of all those—regardless of race, color, creed, gender,
language, or ethnicity—who subscribe to the nation’s political creed” (1995:6). In
societies that have chosen this form of nationalism, people possess equal political
and social rights and choose to be members of the nation, along with others—
regardless of ethnicity—who share broadly similar beliefs and values. Citizens may
be members of various ethnic groups, but what binds them together is not their
472 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
ethnicity but a common belief in and loyalty to the idea of the nation as a political
entity, encompassing everyone who pledges allegiance to it. American patterns of
nationalism, as well as those of most other immigrant societies, have historically
been expressed along these lines.
ETHNIC NATIONALISM Ethnic nationalism (or as some have referred to it, “ethnona-
tionalism”), by contrast, holds that people’s allegiance is to an ethnic group or na-
tionality into which they have been born or assigned, not to a larger political entity
encompassing many ethnic groups or nationalities. Here, “an individual’s deepest
attachments are inherited, not chosen” (Ignatieff, 1995:7–8). Basic to ethnic nation-
alism is the notion that people cannot join the nation simply by living within it or
even by accepting its cultural system. One is a member of the nation only through
heritage, and those who cannot claim that ethnic heritage do not qualify for mem-
bership. Those who are part of the ethnic nation, notes Aviel Roshwald, “are
bound to one another by putative ties of blood, not just by juridical categories or
ideological affinities” (2006:254). In the past several decades, every continent on
the globe has witnessed cases of intense ethnic conflict in one or more countries,
provoked by ideologies of ethnic nationalism.
A common form of ethnic nationalism in the contemporary world involves the
assertion of national identity by minority ethnic groups and their challenges to
majority-group dominance. Within multiethnic societies, a group or groups see
themselves as fundamentally different culturally from the dominant group and
from the rest of the society. They may view themselves not only as different, but
as culturally and politically oppressed. Hence, they may seek greater autonomy
within or independence from the nation-state of which they are a part. Political
and cultural movements by Basques and Catalans in Spain; Bretons in France;
Flemings in Belgium; Tamils in Sri Lanka; Ibo in Nigeria; Kurds in Iraq, Iran, and
Turkey; Chechens in Russia; Scots and Welsh in Britain; and, as we have seen,
Quebecers in Canada all illustrate this form of ethnic nationalism.
By the same token, a dominant ethnic group may try to reduce the economic,
political, or cultural influence of another ethnic group which it defines as inimical
to its interests or dangerous to the nation. In such cases, the dominant group seeks
to entrench its power by further subordinating, expelling, or perhaps even extermi-
nating rival ethnic groups. This version of ethnic nationalism gave rise to horrific
genocides in the twentieth century, including the Nazi extermination of the
European Jewish population and, more recently, the mass killings in Bosnia and
Rwanda. Let us look at these latter two cases.
colonialism, Rwanda and Burundi were exploited for their natural resources, spe-
cifically coffee and tea production.
When Americans or other Westerners try to make sense of mass killings among
rival ethnic groups, the usual explanation is that these are “ancient” rivalries that
“naturally” or “inevitably” result in periodic hostilities. That is rarely the case,
however, and the Rwandan genocide illustrates this quite well. Its two major ethnic
groups, Tutsi and Hutu, both had drifted into the region over several centuries so
neither could claim to be the society’s original people.2 Cultural differences between
the two were not sharply evident. In fact, they shared a common language and reli-
gion. Physical differences—Tutsi taller, Hutu shorter—while originally serving as a
rough ethnic marker, had also begun to fade as intermarriage occurred increas-
ingly. In brief, prior to European colonization neither group saw the other in ethnic
terms. As sociologist Michael Mann has described them, “Hutus and Tutsis have
not been fighting each other since time immemorial” (2005:432).
As the Rwandan state developed, however, an ethnic stratification system
evolved, with Tutsis, though only 15 percent of the population, emerging as a rul-
ing elite. As a means of controlling the population, the Belgians during their colo-
nial reign encouraged and solidified this ethnic division in a kind of “divide and
rule” strategy. Tutsis were placed in strategic positions in the colonial administra-
tion and Hutus became an ethnic minority despite their numerical dominance
(Eltringham, 2004; Human Rights Watch, 2006; Orth, 2006; Semujanga, 2003).
Through a distorted and racialized reading of the history and anthropology of
the region, the Belgian colonialists had come to see the Tutsi as a “superior race” to
the Hutu. This was a view that, not surprisingly, the Tutsis adopted readily. On the
other hand, the Hutu came to be seen as an inferior people who deserved their
second-class treatment. As the historian Gérard Prunier writes,
As a consequence they [Hutu] began to hate all Tutsi, even those who were just as poor
as they, since all Tutsi were members of the ‘superior race’, something which was to
translate itself in the post-Second World War vocabulary as ‘feudal exploiters’.
(1995:39)
In 1926, the Belgian colonial regime issued ethnic identity cards, thereby estab-
lishing an official basis of the ethnic division.
Social and cultural differences between Tutsis and Hutus were, in a real sense,
political creations of the colonial Belgians who used these putative group character-
istics to solidify their control over the population. A racial ideology had been
crafted from the myths of the white colonialists, and it would come to shape the
relations between the two peoples. The time-bomb had been set, as Prunier de-
scribes it, and it was only a matter of when it would go off.
Intertribal clashes erupted periodically, many of which resulted in widespread
killing and destruction. In 1959, when the Belgians began to leave, Hutus over-
threw the Tutsi elite and established a Hutu-led republic. Twenty thousand Tutsis
were killed and 300,000 driven into exile mostly into the neighboring countries of
2
A third indigenous tribe in Rwanda, the Twa, was very small (less than 1 percent) and played essen-
tially no political role.
474 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
Burundi, Tanzania, and Uganda. This was a seminal event for both sides: Hutus
saw it as a glorious triumph over past injustices, while Tutsis saw it as a criminal
action. In the several years afterwards, Tutsi attempts to regain control of Rwanda
were repelled, but Tutsi leadership in exile never relinquished hope of eventually re-
storing their power. Meanwhile, waves of interethnic killings in both Rwanda and
Burundi continued ceaselessly.
The opportunity for Tutsis to reclaim power in Rwanda came in 1990 when
the Tutsi political organization in Uganda, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)
launched an invasion across the border. After a long period of fighting and under
pressure from domestic opposition groups, President Juvenal Habyarimana agreed
to negotiate a settlement with the RPF and create a power-sharing government
that would replace the one-party system from which Tutsis had been excluded.
Hutu extremists saw this new political arrangement as a dire threat to their well-
being, however, and feared a return of Tutsi dominance. To deal with the perceived
threat, they decided to literally exterminate the Tutsi in Rwanda.
THE GENOCIDE In 1994, the plane carrying the Hutu president of Rwanda was
shot down, killing him and others on board. This was a catalytic moment, setting
in motion the genocide that would follow for the next six weeks.
What ensued was a virtual orgy of killing. Tutsis were killed simply because
they were Tutsi, no matter what their political leanings. But murdered as well
were thousands of Hutus who were seen as political enemies or sympathizers to
opposition parties. Others were simply caught up in the murderous frenzy. The in-
tensity of the killings reached a level unseen in the modern world since the Nazi
holocaust in the 1940s. Journalist David Rieff recounts the killing as it began and
gained momentum:
Over the radio, the call kept going out for the extermination of every Tutsi man, woman
and child in Rwanda, and of the Hutus who opposed this final solution. In the villages,
people were hunted down. They died by the tens of thousands in their homes, in their
fields and in the churches . . . in which they had sought refuge. And no matter how many
died, the radios kept blaring out the calls for all good Hutus to kill the imyenzi, the
“cockroaches,” who were polluting the Rwandan nation and preventing it from living in
peace. (1996:31)
The popular view of the physical differences between Hutu and Tutsi—that the
former were generally shorter and stockier and the latter taller and slimmer—led to
killing merely on the basis of one’s appearance. But because of the frequent inter-
marriage between the two groups, there were many Hutu-looking Tutsi and Tutsi-
looking Hutu. The ethnic identity cards were used by Hutu gangs to determine who
was Tutsi and thus to be killed, but merely the appearance of Tutsi ethnic identity
could be sufficient cause. “In towns or along the highways,” Prunier explains,
“Hutu who looked like Tutsi were very often killed, their denials and proffered
cards with the ‘right’ ethnic mention being seen as a typical Tutsi deception”
(1995:249).
No one was safe and no one, if identified as Tutsi, was spared. Neighbors killed
neighbors; relatives killed relatives; teachers turned over their own students to the
militia or even did the killing themselves; hospitals, schools, or churches proved no
chapter 16 global issues of ethnic conflict and change 475
safe havens for those trying to escape death. Philip Gourevitch describes how militia
men, often drunk or fortified with drugs looted from pharmacies, were bused from
massacre to massacre. As an added incentive to the killers, “Tutsis’ belongings were
parceled out in advance—the radio, the couch, the goat, the opportunity to rape a
young girl” (1998:115). And the horrors of the actual killings demonstrated the ut-
ter depravity of which humans are capable: chopping off body parts and other mu-
tilations; sexual abuse of women before their murder; throwing live babies into pit
latrines or smashing their heads against a rock; forcing family members to kill other
family members; burning people alive as their relatives were forced to watch; all of
these horrific acts were documented by the survivors (Gourevitch, 1998; Prunier,
1995).
Not all Hutu, of course, succumbed to their ideological passions or obediently
carried out orders to kill. Numerous cases of heroism on the part of Hutus and at-
tempts to protect potential Tutsi victims were also recorded. But the magnitude and
level of brutality of the Rwandan genocide could, in modern history, be compared
only to the Nazi holocaust. Unlike the highly systematic and technologically sophis-
ticated killing machine created by the Nazis, however, much of the actual killing in
Rwanda was done with crude weapons, mostly machetes. But its objective was met:
the elimination of three-quarters of Rwanda’s Tutsi population in less than three
months. No one will ever know the number actually killed, though most estimates
are in the range of 800,000 to a million.
THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY The Rwandan tragedy illustrates the crucial role of ideol-
ogy in kindling ethnic conflict. Hutu leaders certainly saw themselves benefiting in
terms of power and wealth from elimination of the Tutsi and instilled those visions
to other Hutus who had hopes of obtaining land and belongings of the victims.
Fear, as well, played a strong role in the genocide as the Hutu population had
been subjected to a constant barrage of propaganda warning that Tutsis were de-
termined to kill or subjugate all Hutus. Others were coerced into killing, fearing the
consequences of refusing to do so (Mironko, 2006). But in the final analysis, Tutsi
and Hutu killed each other, as Prunier writes, “more to upbraid a certain vision
they ha[d] of themselves, of the others and of their place in the world than because
of material interests” (1995:40). Hutu propaganda stressed the inherent evil of the
Tutsis. Furthermore, Hutus, in this view, were the “natural” people of Rwanda
who had been continually exploited and impoverished by the Tutsi (Mamdani,
2002; Verwimp, 2006). These ideas were continually disseminated through news-
papers and, especially, radio starting in 1990.
The strength of the racial ideology that had taken hold of the Hutu majority
became horrendously evident. Killing, in this view, was an act of self-defense, and
killing women and children was perfectly logical if, as they had been taught to be-
lieve, the future was at stake. The power of the racist ideology in this case is further
evidenced by the fact that much of the killing was carried out by ordinary peasants
in addition to militia and other military units. The latter could not have accom-
plished the enormity of the slaughter in such a relatively brief time had they not
had the cooperation of the civilian population. At the genocide’s peak, 8,000 were
killed per day, a rate faster than the Nazi Holocaust (Lovgren, 2004).
476 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
A TENUOUS PEACE How does a society recover from such a powerfully destructive
event as the Rwandan genocide? More than a decade after the genocide, ethnic
conflict in Rwanda has been reduced to occasional forays of Hutu partisans across
the border. A Tutsi-led government is in power, but there is no effective opposition
party. An ambitious program of national unity has been promoted and many
Hutus who had taken part in the killings have returned to Rwanda, where efforts
have been made to reintegrate them into the society (Lovgren, 2004). For several
years, village courts have been hearing testimony from participants and victims.
However, the enormity of the crime created so many victims and perpetrators that
it is unlikely that more than a relative handful of cases will ever be resolved.
Tito (usually referred to simply as Tito), a World War II hero who led the victori-
ous Partisan guerrilla army against the Nazis. After the war Tito emerged as a uni-
fying authoritarian figure, acting as prime minister and later as president. Though
an avowed communist, Tito moved Yugoslavia toward nonalignment and away
from the Soviet hegemony in eastern Europe.
Tito’s strong rule and ability to bring the various ethnic factions together had
created a multiethnic society that fulfilled the major features of corporate pluralism.
Political and social institutions were carefully crafted to preserve a sense of ethnic
balance and fairness among the various groups. None of those measures, however,
created more than superficial ethnic harmony. With Tito’s death in 1980, the ran-
cor that had been simmering beneath the surface gradually intensified, erupting into
full-blown warfare in 1991.
THE DISSOLUTION OF THE YUGOSLAV FEDERATION With the end of the Tito regime,
ethnic rivalries previously held in check reemerged, stirred by political leaders in
each republic.
The major ethnic split was between the republics of Croatia and Slovenia on
the one hand, and Serbia on the other. The former are both Roman Catholic and
strongly oriented culturally toward Western Europe; Serbia, in contrast, is
Orthodox Christian in religion and more culturally attuned to Eastern Europe.
With the collapse of the Yugoslav Communist party in 1990, Croatia and Slovenia
each moved toward independence and seceded from the federation a year later. This
left Yugoslavia composed mainly of Serbia. The smaller and less economically
viable republics took sides or became pawns in the ensuing confrontations that de-
veloped as the three major ethnic states sought to establish boundaries that each
interpreted as corresponding to their historical ethnic dominance.
The Serbs and Croats emerged as the major ethnic rivals. The enmity that
erupted in the early 1990s was in some ways an extension of animosities that
had run deep for many decades. During World War II, fighting in Yugoslavia
occurred not only with the German invaders but also among the various ethnic
factions themselves, notably between Serbs and Croats, who took opposing sides
during the Nazi occupation. More than 1.5 million Yugoslavs died during the
war, most as a result of interethnic fighting. Hitler established a puppet fascist re-
gime in Croatia, run by the Ustasha party, that sought to purge the country of
Serbs (and, of course, Jews, though they were a relatively small population).
Hundreds of thousands of Serbs were executed by the Ustasha regime (Bennett,
1995). Following the war, these savage killings were bitterly remembered by the
Serbs; in their minds all Croats, whether they had been Ustashas or not, were as-
sociated with the killings.
Similar actions took place during World War II in Serbia, but against resident
Croatians. Serbian guerrilla bands called Chetniks fought against the Nazis (and
thus the Ustashas) but also oppressed and slaughtered many Croatians. Because of
the atrocities on both sides, Serbs and Croats found themselves in a perpetual state
of mutual distrust (Schöpflin, 1993). Indeed, so bloody had been the conflict inside
Yugoslavia during World War II and so venomous were the emotions it created on
all sides that, as the journalist Misha Glenny accurately forecast, “were it ever to
revive, it was always likely to be merciless” (1993:171).
478 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
THE ROLE OF PROPAGANDA AND IDEOLOGY Some contend that Yugoslavia’s attempt
at corporate pluralism was always precarious and, without Tito, was doomed.
Others, however, maintain that it did not fall apart of its own volition but rather
was destroyed by a few people acting in their political interests, especially Serb
President Slobodan Milosevic (Bennett, 1995; Rieff, 1995).
Tito’s death was accompanied by an economic crisis, which stirred a new wave
of ethnic nationalism in Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia. Intergroup rivalries were pro-
moted through propaganda campaigns in the media. Serbian television, for exam-
ple, frequently showed films of the atrocities committed by the Croatian Ustashas
during World War II (Human Rights Watch, 1995). In Bosnia, ethnic passions
were stirred by accusations against the Muslim population which was portrayed as
threatening to the very survival of Christian Serbs and Croats.
At the outbreak of the conflict, the Serbs were not only the largest of
Yugoslavia’s ethnic groups, but the most dispersed, living in all areas. Serbia alleged
that Serbs living outside the Serbian nation—that is, in other parts of Yugoslavia—
were victims of oppression, especially in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Serb lead-
ers and the media engendered fear among Croatian and Bosnian Serbs that, if the
territories in which they were living were to become independent states, they would
be divested of their rights and property (Bennett, 1995). Hence, the first wave of war,
starting in 1991, essentially became one in which these minority populations were
“liberated” by Serbs.
ETHNIC CLEANSING IN BOSNIA A second and more severe ethnic war occurred in
Bosnia-Herzegovina (usually referred to simply as Bosnia). When Bosnia declared
its independence from Yugoslavia in 1992, Bosnian Serbs refused to accept this ar-
rangement, preferring instead to remain part of Yugoslavia (which by that time was
essentially only Serbia). Thus began the efforts of the Bosnian Serbs, aided by
Serbia itself, to drive Muslims from the territory. Although they lived in all of
Yugoslavia’s republics, Muslims were heavily concentrated in Bosnia. Sarajevo,
the republic’s capital and largest city, was not only heavily Muslim in numbers,
but culturally as well. The Bosnian Muslims should not be seen as comparable to
Muslims in other parts of the world. They are secular, having only a distant link
with other more traditional Islamic populations. Most are Slavs (that is, Serbs or
Croats) who were converted to Islam during the five centuries of Ottoman rule in
Bosnia (Glenny, 1993). Most, moreover, are Sunni Muslims, not in sympathy with
fundamentalist groups in the Middle East and North Africa. Like the Serbs and
Croats, Bosnian Muslims speak a variant of Serbo-Croatian.
The campaign waged by the Serbs in Bosnia was referred to as “ethnic
cleansing.” This meant killing Bosnian Muslims and Croatians, or driving them
from their homes, in order to prepare their areas for a future “Greater Serbia.” In
addition to the Serb attack, the Croats also launched an attack on western Bosnia,
driving out Serbs and Bosnians.
THE END OF ETHNIC HARMONY An irony of the Yugoslav conflict is that Bosnia,
the area affected most severely in the early 1990s, had for decades been an example
of ethnic harmony, a society of “pluralism and tolerance” (Rieff, 1995). Its three
major groups—Serbs, Croats, and Muslims—had coexisted peacefully and had
chapter 16 global issues of ethnic conflict and change 479
created a relatively integrated society. In Sarajevo, the major Bosnian city, Croatian
Roman Catholic and Serbian Orthodox churches stood side by side with Muslim
mosques, ethnically integrated neighborhoods were commonplace, and intermar-
riage among the three populations was not at all unusual.
Neighbors and family members, who had been comfortably integrated just
weeks before, voiced puzzlement at how quickly their social harmony had dissi-
pated and had been reduced to vicious and bloody hatred. “Growing up before
the war here, my boys played with all the neighborhood kids,” said a Serbian
woman living in Bosnia. “We never knew who was Georgy and who was
Muhammed. And I baked cakes for them all. Now neighbors we’ve known for
years don’t greet us anymore” (Sudetic, 1994:8A). So intense and bitter were the
feelings that surfaced among those of the different ethnic groups that people were
driven to exchange their homes with each other to create more ethnically homoge-
neous areas. Later, as Serbs took control of parts of Bosnia, Croats and Muslims
were driven from their homes, which were given to Serb refugees who had fled sim-
ilar incursions in other areas by Croats or Muslims. Often, as Serbs or Croats ad-
vanced on each other, houses of those fleeing were summarily destroyed. Ignatieff
describes what he saw as he drove through ravaged villages:
Toward Novska, you pass Serb house after Serb house, neatly dynamited, beside un-
disturbed Croat houses and gardens. When you turn toward Lipik, it is the turn of all
the Croat houses to be dynamited or firebombed, next to their untouched Serb neigh-
bors. Mile upon mile, the deadly logic of ethnic cleansing unfolds. (1995:35)
Much more dreadful actions were to occur, however, as the fighting intensi-
fied. Indeed, quickly the hostilities between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims degener-
ated into the most ferocious conflict in recent European history. Each side accused
the other of atrocities, and in many cases these were confirmed by the United
Nations and other nonparticipating observers. The most horrific actions, however,
were committed by Serbs in Bosnia as part of their campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Mass executions, rape camps, savage mutilations and torture, and wanton destruc-
tion of homes, churches, and mosques filled news reports as the Bosnian war
intensified starting in 1993. Consider this account of a Serb concentration camp
(corroborated by both Serbs and Muslims), given by a Serbian guard who later
deserted:
Men were loaded into the back of a truck, taken up to the edge of the ravine, about
five miles away, and then shot as they got out of the vehicle. Groups of young soldiers
were brought in to perform the executions. The bodies fell into the ravine and bulldoz-
ers were later used to cover them over. (Cohen, 1994:A6)
Just months before, many of the camp guards and victims had been neighbors. In
1994, the United Nations documented 187 mass graves, each containing the bodies
of between 3,000 and 5,000 Muslims murdered by Serbs.
The horrors of the Yugoslav war were eerily reminiscent of the genocide com-
mitted by the Nazis fifty years earlier. The massacre in the city of Srebrenica was
one of the more thoroughly documented of incidents that seemed so monstrous as
to border on the surreal. Srebrenica had served as a United Nations refuge where
more than 40,000 people had taken shelter from the war. After it was overrun by
480 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
the Bosnian Serb army, the aftermath was described as the worst war crime in
Europe since World War II. Although no one can be sure how many were slaugh-
tered, American intelligence analysts estimated between 5,000 and 8,000. A few
survivors as well as Serbian civilians living in surrounding villages recounted the
mass killings. Hundreds were herded into trucks, taken to a field, and shot; others
were jammed into a warehouse where they were killed with automatic rifles and
shoulder-held grenade launchers. Mass graves of the victims were uncovered later
(Engelberg and Weiner, 1995). This incident more than any other prompted the
military and diplomatic efforts of the United States and NATO (North Atlantic
Treaty Organization) to stop the war. But it was only one of many such massacres
of entire villages.
Muslims were victimized as well by Croats seeking to secure what they claimed
was their territory. As with the Serbs, a policy of ethnic cleansing produced grue-
some incidents of terror and brutality. One such affair, documented by United
Nations investigators, occurred in late 1993. A so-called death platoon of a few
dozen Croatian paramilitaries entered the village of Stupni Do, shouting “Let’s kill
the Muslims” and “Where are all the pretty girls for us to rape? Bring them out.” A
journalist describes what ensued:
With avenging fury, the Croatian death squad crushed the skulls of Muslim children,
slit the throats of women and machine-gunned whole families at close range. The next
morning Croatian reinforcements finished up the job, torching all 52 houses and dy-
namiting the community’s one small mosque. In less than 48 hours Stupni Do simply
ceased to exist. (Nordland, 1993:48–49)
Although Bosnia suffered the most appalling conditions and was the site of the
most intense fighting, other regions were affected to a lesser degree in much the
same way. Following the Croatian invasion of the Krajina, an area of Croatia pop-
ulated mostly by Serbs, 100,000 Serbs fled what they feared was the Croatian ver-
sion of ethnic cleansing. Like the Bosnian Muslims, the Krajina Serbs expressed the
same disbelief that former Croat friends and neighbors with whom they had lived
together and even intermarried for decades could so viciously turn on them without
provocation. “I had a very good friend, a Catholic Croat,” said a refugee Serb. “I
would have given blood for him. But three years ago, he said: ‘I like you a lot. But
please don’t come and see me anymore. My neighbors object to a Serb visiting.’”
Another put it: “I’m sorry I didn’t burn down my house. I’m sorry I left it to the
Croats to burn” (Perlez, 1995a, 1995b).
RESOLUTION AND LEGACY In late 1995, after three and a half years of war, a fragile
peace was established—largely through the efforts of the United States—that di-
vided Bosnia into semiautonomous regions along ethnic lines. Under the terms of
the agreement, Bosnia was split into two parts—a Muslim-Croat federation made
up of 51 percent of the territory, and a Bosnian Serb republic, with 49 percent.
NATO forces were deployed to enforce the treaty. Although this temporarily
stopped the killing, few seemed to feel that anything short of a more complete par-
tition of Bosnia would secure a long-term resolution to the conflict (Mearsheimer
and Van Evera, 1995). Ten years after the conflict, Mostar, one of Bosnia’s
major cities, operated two sets of nearly everything—schools, hospitals, public
chapter 16 global issues of ethnic conflict and change 481
transportation—in accordance with the almost total ethnic segregation that had
been created (Wood, 2004a).
The legacy of the war was that the ethnic mosaic of Yugoslavia’s population
had been radically—probably irreversibly—altered and interethnic relations reduced
to mutual fear and antipathy. In Bosnia, the most severely affected region, at least
200,000 people had been killed or had disappeared; almost half of its prewar pop-
ulation of 4.2 million had been displaced. This, it should be remembered, had been
Yugoslavia’s most ethnically diverse region. Wholesale population transfers oc-
curred in parts of Croatia and Serbia as well. Most Croats living in Serbia were
forced to leave, as were Serbs living in Croatia. Refugees fleeing regions as they re-
peatedly changed hands reached epic proportions, unseen in Europe since World
War II. As many as 3 million people were driven from their homes. Those brave
enough to try to return to their homes in areas now dominated by the opposing
ethnic group found them occupied by members of that group, who themselves had
been expelled from their homes in other areas.
For those who endured the war, a residue of distrust, resentment, and terror on
all sides made the reemergence of interethnic tolerance and accommodation im-
probable for many decades in the future. Sarajevo, previously the showpiece of eth-
nic harmony, symbolized this legacy of ethnic hatred. There, Serbs refused to accept
Muslim governance of the city, as the peace agreement provided, and thousands left
their homes in protest, some burning them in a final act of defiance. Some even ex-
humed the remains of dead family members to carry with them, fearing that their
graves would be desecrated. In effect, Bosnia was left a country partitioned into
tightly enclosed ethnic enclaves, reflecting a system of cultural and educational
apartheid (Cohen, 2005; Hedges, 1996, 1997). The ethnic diversity that had char-
acterized Bosnia before the war was replaced by ethnic homogeneity—Serbs living
in Serb areas, Croats in Croat areas, and Muslims in Muslim areas; coexistence had
essentially been obliterated.
KOSOVO: EXPANSION OF THE YUGOSLAV CONFLICT In the late 1990s the Yugoslav con-
flict, which had centered mainly in Bosnia, took a new turn. Kosovo, a province of
Serbia, became the focus of severe ethnic fighting. For Serbs, Kosovo represented
the birthplace of Serbian culture; thus it was of great symbolic importance, even
though Serbs living there were only a small numerical minority. It is an area where,
in the country’s mythology, Serbs held off the Ottoman Turks from invading
Europe in the late fourteenth century. The most important monasteries of the
Serbian Orthodox Church are also located there.
Two factors made the Kosovo situation different from Bosnia. The Bosnian
population before the 1990s had been relatively intermixed ethnically. Most of
Kosovo, however, had been made up of ethnic Albanians—about 90 percent of its
population of 2.2 million—with the minority Serb population segregated from
neighboring Albanians. Very little social interaction occurred between the two pop-
ulations, and hostile stereotypes thrived among both (Calic, 2000). Second, Bosnia
had attained independence before the outbreak of the civil war there, whereas inde-
pendence was the key issue for Albanians—mostly Muslim—in Kosovo: Most desired
that the province become either fully independent or become part of a greater
Albania.
482 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
Under Tito, Kosovo had enjoyed much autonomy even though it remained a
Yugoslav province. In 1989 the Milosevic government revoked much of Kosovo’s
autonomy, making it an integral part of Serbia and imposing repressive rule.
Ethnic Albanians lost their jobs to minority Serbs, Albanian-language schools were
closed, and the police and Serb army became an occupying force (IOM, 1999;
Kinzer, 1992). In the early 1990s, Kosovar Albanian guerrillas—the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA)—launched a movement for the province’s independence
from Serbia. Starting in 1998 the Serbs began an offensive intended to crush the
insurgents, comparable in many ways to earlier Serb actions in Bosnia referred to
as “ethnic cleansing.”
In early 1999 the fighting in Kosovo entered a new dimension. NATO coun-
tries, which had acted to stop the Bosnian conflict only after its horrors had become
hideously apparent, seemed determined to avoid a similar outcome in Kosovo.
Peace talks were initiated and an agreement was offered to the Milosevic regime in
Serbia and the rebel forces in Kosovo to end the fighting. The agreement was re-
jected by the Serbs, and NATO subsequently began a 78-day bombing campaign
against Serb forces in Kosovo.
The pattern of atrocities that had so grotesquely characterized Serb actions in
Bosnia was replicated in Kosovo—mass murders, destruction of entire villages,
raping and looting on a massive scale. As a UN war crimes tribunal later ex-
plained in its indictment of Yugloslav President Milosevic, the campaign of terror
and destruction against Albanian civilians was designed to change the ethnic bal-
ance in Kosovo by purging the province of as much of its Albanian population as
possible. Within weeks, 90 percent of Kosovo’s Albanians were driven from their
homes and towns. Most fled to surrounding countries, creating a refugee crisis
comparable to that brought about by the Bosnian war. Although by comparison
with Bosnia the death and destruction were less expansive, the savagery was no
less gruesome and shocking: Serb attackers intent on destroying and looting
went from village to village in killing sprees, sparing no one—women, children,
infants, the elderly—and torching every house and building in sight (Finn et al.,
1999; Kifner, 1999).
At the cessation of fighting in July 1999, war crimes investigators estimated
that at least 10,000 people had been slaughtered by Serbian forces during the
three-month war, and newly discovered mass graves were being reported daily.
The true death toll will probably never be known because many bodies were
burned or hidden in an effort by Serbs to destroy evidence or were simply buried
by relatives without informing Western officials.
Following removal of the Serbian army and paramilitaries, ethnic Albanians be-
gan to return, under the protection of NATO forces that now occupied the prov-
ince. Not unexpectedly, violent recriminations, including killings and the burning
of entire neighborhoods, were carried out by Albanians against Kosovo’s Serb pop-
ulation. As the municipal administrator for one ethnically divided town—an
American who had served in Bosnia—explained, “There is a degree of hate here
that is far greater than anything I found in Bosnia; and also a degree of fear. I am
searching for a word that means vitriolic squared” (quoted in Smith, 2000:15).
Within a few months, three-quarters of the province’s 200,000 Serbs had been
forced from their homes and villages, most fleeing to Serbia proper. Thus, as in
chapter 16 global issues of ethnic conflict and change 483
Bosnia, the war had produced an “ethnically cleansed” region. There was little like-
lihood that Serbs would ever return to Kosovo in significant numbers.3
Those who did return were subjected to continual threats and attacks despite
the presence of UN peacekeepers. In 2004, five years after Serbian forces were re-
moved, in one episode over two days, dozens of Serbian communities across
Kosovo were attacked by ethnic Albanians. More than 400 homes were ruined
and thirty churches were destroyed (Wood, 2004b). In 2008, ethnic antipathies
flared again when Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. Although this
move was quickly approved by many countries (including the United States), uncer-
tainty of how Serbia, with its claim of sovereignty, would respond stoked fears of
another bloody chapter in the Yugoslav tragedy.
In sum, the breakup of Yugoslavia and the ethnic animosities and savageries it
inflamed, like the Rwandan genocide, demonstrated horrifically the end result of
ethnic nationalism carried to its extreme. What remained afterward was a region
more intensely divided by ethnic loyalties than before, with little expectation of fu-
ture reconciliation among the various groups.
3
Another piece in the ethnic puzzle of the disintegrated Yugoslavia—Macedonia—became a focus of
global attention in 2001. As in Bosnia and Kosovo, ethnic conflict, in this case between Macedonians
and ethnic Albanians, flared into armed conflict as a rebel ethnic Albanian group, intent on uniting the
heavily Albanian area of Macedonia with neighboring Albania, initiated the hostilities. The Macedonian
government managed to quell the uprising, but only after dozens died in clashes.
484 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
that had occurred in what had been a mixed neighborhood: “It is now relatively
safe for Shiites as most Sunnis have been driven out.” In another area, mostly
Sunni, dead bodies cannot be picked up because “The police are Shiite and afraid
of the area” (Tavernise, 2007). Another journalist (Cave, 2007) described how for-
merly mixed neighborhoods of Baghdad had been transformed into homogeneous
enclaves, where those in the minority sect had been issued death threats and had
their houses burned. Even those who had intermarried or had maintained cross-
sectarian friendships were threatened.
Just as partition of Bosnia into ethnically homogeneous areas was the end result
of the peace agreement that ended that conflict, so too many have suggested that
inevitably that will be the final outcome of the Iraq conflict: ethnically coherent ter-
ritories within a loose federation. Creating such a tripartite state, however, would
be a daunting challenge in light of the fact that there are no “natural” areas that
could be said to be the home territories of Sunni and Shia Iraqis. Baghdad and
other cities are thoroughly intermixed. Past examples of massive population trans-
fers, which is what would be required to create such coherent regions, have re-
sulted, at least temporarily, in much bloodletting. The British partition of India in
1947, for example, creating the two states of India and Pakistan, produced 15 mil-
lion refugees and the deaths of hundreds of thousands in riots and ethnic fighting.
mean the same as they do in the United States or other Western nations. In those
societies, Protestant and Catholic denote denominational affiliations that no longer
carry with them significant social consequences. In Northern Ireland, these are eth-
nic identifications that determine in a fundamental manner one’s place in the society
and the nature of one’s relations with others. Religious affiliation is quite simply
one’s most important social characteristic, taking precedence over one’s social class
and even one’s gender (Harris, 1972). In some measure, it is not unlike the signifi-
cance of racial identity for persons in the United States or South Africa. Northern
Ireland is a highly polarized society in which ethnicity plays a predominant role in
all realms of social life—work, education, politics, residence, leisure activity. Not
only do separate institutional structures exist for each group, but aspects of ethnic
nationalism infuse each group’s perspective on Northern Ireland’s history, its cur-
rent political circumstances, and its future social order.
EVOLUTION OF THE CONFLICT The essence of the ethnic conflict in Northern Ireland
is this: In 1920 six counties of the Irish province of Ulster, which today make up
Northern Ireland, were adamant in retaining their tie to Britain following Ireland’s
successful movement for independence. Protestants outnumbered Catholics in this
area, unlike the remainder of Ireland, and were resolved to remain apart from a
sovereign, Catholic-dominated society. As a result, Ireland was partitioned into
two states, the Irish Free State (later the Republic of Ireland), with a Catholic ma-
jority, and Northern Ireland, with a Protestant majority. Unfortunately, this left a
substantial Catholic minority in the six counties.4 The dispute since that time has
concerned this artificially created boundary. Most Protestants seek to maintain the
boundary as it is drawn and to remain linked with Britain, whereas most Catholics
do not recognize the permanence of the dividing line and visualize an eventually
united Ireland.
Today Protestants are a slight numerical majority of Northern Ireland’s 1.5 mil-
lion, but in a united Ireland they would be outnumbered by about three and a half
to one. Hence, the root of the Protestants’ resistance to political change is the fear
that they will be absorbed into a unified Ireland and thus become the minority
within a Catholic-majority state. The nub of the matter, then, is that Protestants
wish to remain the dominant group in Ulster.
Although these conditions are the immediate sources of the contemporary con-
flict, the Protestant-Catholic division has much deeper roots reaching back many
centuries. The conflicting ethnic identities and loyalties of Protestants and
Catholics in Northern Ireland emerge out of what both groups see as very different
and opposing national heritages: British for Protestants, Irish for Catholics. Each,
therefore, maintains a distinctly different view of history and national identity.
The beginnings of conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland
are traceable to the early seventeenth century, when England embarked on its coloni-
zation of Ireland. Over the next two centuries the suppression of Ireland’s Catholics,
particularly in Ulster, produced antipathies and episodic armed hostilities.
4
The province of Ulster originally comprised nine counties, but with partition it was reduced to six to
ensure a more comfortable Protestant majority.
486 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
Late in the nineteenth century, sentiment grew in England for the establishment
of home rule for Ireland, a measure strongly resisted by the Protestants of Ulster,
who saw themselves at the brink of absorption into a Catholic majority. In 1916
Irish nationalists sparked an armed rebellion against British rule in what has be-
come known as the Easter Rising. The rebellion eventually led to the partition of
Ireland into North and South, with the latter granted full sovereignty from Britain
a year later.
The partition was a compromise measure that fully satisfied neither the North
nor the South. The Ulster Protestants wanted no form of autonomy for Ireland, pre-
ferring retention of the British union, and the South desired a fully unified Irish na-
tion, including Ulster. Northern Ireland, then, was essentially created by the British,
ironically, to avoid bloodshed between Protestants and Catholics (Beckett, 1972).
Not until 1925 did all parties—Britain, Ireland, and Northern Ireland—finally ac-
cept the arrangement as permanent. Nonetheless, Irish Catholics, in both the
North and South, never fully relinquished their belief that Ireland would eventually
be unified.
CONFIRMING ETHNIC IDENTITIES One of the curious aspects of the ethnic division in
Northern Ireland concerns the manner in which ethnic identities are established and
applied by members of the two communities. In the United States, although there
are no “official” ethnic groups, ethnic or racial status is clearly defined in a cus-
tomary and rigid fashion; rarely are there questions about who, for example, is
chapter 16 global issues of ethnic conflict and change 487
white and who is black. In Northern Ireland, however, there are no apparent phys-
ical distinctions between the two ethnic groups, and except for religion, even cul-
tural differences are not readily evident. How, then, do interacting persons perceive
ethnicity in a society in which it is such a critical social identity?
With obvious physical marks such as skin color not available, cultural cues
and symbols, to which the people of Northern Ireland are finely attuned, serve ef-
fectively in their place. Names, for example, often suffice as indications of ethnic
identity. Certain surnames indicate an English or Scottish (and thus Protestant) or
Irish (and thus Catholic) ancestry, and even Christian names are commonly asso-
ciated with one side or the other. Other cues are accent, dress, demeanor, and—
some would insist—even facial features (Fraser, 1977; Lanclos, 2003). Because
residence and education are so rigidly segregated, however, the surest indicators
of religious affiliation are one’s address or school attended. Knowing either of
these social facts is ordinarily sufficient to identify a person ethnically (Buckley
and Kenny, 1995). Northern Ireland demonstrates dramatically that visible physi-
cal differences or even vast cultural differences are not necessary to create and sus-
tain fierce ethnic hostility. Groups need only perceive their differences as
unbridgeable.
when confronted with the imminent arrival in their family circle of a Protestant cannot
be explained as anything other than prejudice. (1993:169–70)
Because the two groups are so segregated in their own communities, it is diffi-
cult to ascertain the actual degree of discrimination applied by Protestants against
Catholics, or vice versa. Observers of Northern Ireland are generally agreed, how-
ever, that ethnic discrimination has been direct as well as institutional, particularly
in employment and politics, and in both areas Catholics have been the chief victims
(Barritt and Carter, 1972; Bell, 1976; Hoare, 1982). During the past twenty years,
steps have been taken to promote ethnic equality, and as a result Catholics have
gradually closed the gap with Protestants on various measures of socioeconomic
status (Boyle and Hadden, 1994; Darby, 1995; Edwards, 1995; Smith and
Chambers, 1991). For example, Catholics have increasingly moved into higher-
status jobs once closed to them.
Although past anti-Catholic discrimination is unquestioned, many Catholics in
Northern Ireland may now be in much the same situation occupationally as the
black underclass in the United States—the victims no longer of a system of blatant
ethnic discrimination but of an institutional system of discrimination that has left
them with inadequate skills to compete successfully in the modern labor market.
Whatever its extent and whatever its source, Catholics perceive discrimination by
Protestants. Thus it may matter little that the socioeconomic conditions of
Protestants are only marginally better than those of Catholics, or that the most fla-
grant devices used to deny Catholics job opportunities have increasingly been
checked. Because one’s religious affiliation is not easily camouflaged, Catholics
will simply not be convinced that “failure to get a job or a home is not governed
by that fact” (Jackson and McHardy, 1984:4).
The rigorous ethnic segregation of neighborhoods and schools assures that di-
vergent views are promulgated from generation to generation. The dynamics of
Northern Ireland’s residential patterns, in fact, seem strikingly similar to those of
blacks and whites in American cities (Marger, 1989; Poole, 1982). Some working-
class areas of Belfast are divided literally by a twenty-foot-high reinforced wall
(ironically referred to as a “peace line”). Although there has been some residential
mixing, particularly within the middle class, this is limited in scope (Cormack and
Osborne, 1994; O Connor, 1993).
Ethnic segregation in education is even more complete than in housing. Almost
all Catholic children attend Catholic schools, and Protestants attend state (de facto
Protestant) schools. Only about 5 percent of students are schooled in an integrated
setting (Lloyd et al., 2004) and only at the university level do students of the two
groups mix to any significant degree. Noticeably different histories are taught
Protestant and Catholic students, one emphasizing the British connection, the other
the Irish. Events, personalities, and political institutions are interpreted differently,
thus perpetuating the discordant societal views and distinct national identities of
the two groups (Murray, 1995).
The high level of residential and educational segregation in Northern Ireland
has far-reaching effects on all other aspects of group interrelations, just as it does
in the United States. Social contacts are minimized, and the cycle of misunderstand-
ing, suspicion, and at times violence between the two groups is preserved (Murray,
1995).
STABILITY AND CHANGE Over the years, numerous political schemes had been pro-
posed periodically, aimed at resolving the conflict. But the depth of ethnic division
precluded the implementation of any of these scenarios. Thus direct British rule of
Northern Ireland—the least unacceptable political option—remained in place
(Arthur and Jeffery, 1996). In the 1990s, however, a peace process was begun
that seemed, finally, to create a political atmosphere conducive to resolving the
Troubles.
In 1994 paramilitaries on both sides declared a cease-fire. This was followed by
a coming together of representatives of the Irish and British governments and all the
political parties in Northern Ireland to begin talks that, it was hoped, would culmi-
nate in a permanent political settlement. Additional impetus for the peace process
was provided by the United States, particularly the personal efforts of President
Bill Clinton. A proposed peace agreement called for the resumption of most govern-
ment responsibilities by a Northern Ireland government, rather than direct rule by
Britain. A set of complex checks and balances provided for a kind of power-sharing
system in which one side would be unable to dominate the government, as it had in
the past.
A referendum in both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic was held in
1998, asking whether the political institutions specified by the agreement should
be adopted. By a resounding majority, the people of both Northern Ireland and
the Republic voted their approval of the measure, though in Northern Ireland a
much greater percentage of Catholics than Protestants supported it (Valandro,
2004). This peace accord became known as the “Good Friday Agreement.”
490 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
For several years after the introduction of the peace accord, efforts at creating a
functioning, power-sharing system were repeatedly frustrated by distrust on both
sides. In 2007, however, a stable and lasting agreement appeared to have been
reached. The most hard-core Protestant leader, Ian Paisley, who for years had
vowed never to participate in a government with leaders of Sinn Fein, the IRA-
affiliated, mainly Catholic party, committed to a power-sharing arrangement. A
government, made up of representatives of Northern Ireland’s two major political
factions—the Democratic Unionist Party (virtually a Protestant party) and Sinn
Fein—was formally agreed to. This marked the end of direct rule by London and
the assertion of local power by Northern Ireland leaders. Similar agreements had
been attempted in the past, all of which ultimately failed, but observers were opti-
mistic that this may have finally signaled an end to the Troubles.
LOOKING BEYOND Over the years, both Protestants and Catholics had, in a sense,
learned to live with their society’s deep ethnic division and the often violent epi-
sodes that had become part of the social environment. Implementation of the peace
accord will test the resolve of both communities to move beyond the acceptance of
“tolerable conflict.”
Public opinion polls have for the last decade indicated, among both
Protestants and Catholics, increasingly conciliatory attitudes and an inclination to
accept and even encourage the development of integrated institutions, like schools
and neighborhoods (Gallagher and Dunn, 1991; Lloyd et al., 2004; Moxon-
Browne, 1983; Ruane and Todd, 1996). Also, the focus of scholars and the world
media almost exclusively on the violence that had so characterized the conflict de-
flected attention from the significant changes that occurred during the past two
decades, especially the narrowing of the socioeconomic gap between Protestants
and Catholics.
The depth of ethnic division in Northern Ireland, however, is undeniably
greater than it is in most other multiethnic societies. Hence, it is difficult to envi-
sion the eventual eradication of mutually well-entrenched suspicions. Most impor-
tant, between the two groups there is no sense of shared community. Institutional
segregation is the norm and gives little indication of diminishing to a significant
degree.
Thus, despite the apparent political resolution, so deep-seated are the major dif-
ferences—real or putative—between this society’s two ethnic communities that one
cannot realistically see, even in the long run, their full integration. “Communal ten-
sions, territorial segregation, and endogamous social and sexual relations,” notes
Brendan O’Leary, “will remain dominant features of social and political life in
Northern Ireland, with or without a definitive constitutional settlement”
(1995:713). Even if the power-sharing arrangement proves to be long-lasting, it is
unlikely that the distrust between the two communities spawned by the Troubles
will be significantly reduced for many years, perhaps even generations (Brown,
2002). The most viable objective, therefore, may be the establishment of a social
order in which maximum material and psychological security and optimum politi-
cal power are provided to people of both groups, divided though they remain.
Keeping in mind the deep social divisions of this society, at the end of the first de-
cade of the twenty-first century, there is cause for cautious optimism.
chapter 16 global issues of ethnic conflict and change 491
5
It should also be remembered that ethnicity is never the only basis of societal conflict, even in highly
diverse multiethnic societies. Political, religious, and class divisions are often the source of major
conflicts.
492 part iii ethnic relations in comparative perspective
Inequalities
in power
and wealth
Cultural
differences
Status
inequality
Political
imbalance
Figure 16.2
| Factors of Ethnic Conflict
6
Susan Olzak (1992) has also postulated that as ethnic stratification breaks down and inequality de-
clines among a society’s ethnic groups, more powerful groups may seek to prevent weaker, minority
groups from getting their share of the society’s resources, thereby instigating greater conflict.
chapter 16 global issues of ethnic conflict and change 493
Amy Chua (2004) describes another form of economic inequality that produces
ethnic conflict in the modern world. In many contemporary societies there are
market-dominant minorities; that is, ethnic minorities who own a widely dispropor-
tionate amount of the society’s wealth and control much of its commerce. Free mar-
kets enable these minorities to accumulate and concentrate great wealth as the
impoverished majority looks on. As the majority experience democracy, however,
an explosive situation ensues: “the pursuit of free market democracy becomes an
engine of potentially catastrophic ethnonationalism, pitting a frustrated ‘indigenous’
majority, easily aroused by opportunistic vote-seeking politicians, against a re-
sented, wealthy ethnic minority” (2004:6–7).
It is most likely, then, that cooperation and stability will characterize ethnic re-
lations for long periods where groups coexist with relatively minor differences in
power, wealth, and prestige among them. In the contemporary world, of course,
such cases are uncommon. Instead, salient economic and political inequalities char-
acterize most multiethnic societies.
PHYSICAL DISTINCTIONS Where there are physical distinctions among groups an ad-
ditional basis of division is in place. But racial differences among groups are not an
essential ingredient in the emergence of ethnic divisions and conflict. In Canada,
Northern Ireland, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia, we saw that ethnic bound-
aries between racially similar groups can be shaped in a number of ways—and
once established, adamantly sustained, often for many generations.
example, despite real collective political and economic mobility in recent decades,
continue in general to be held in lower social esteem by white Americans.
RACIAL/ETHNIC IDEOLOGIES Any of the above factors can be sufficient to set off and
to sustain ethnic conflict in a diverse society. What gives them added weight and
what mobilizes people to take actions against an out-group is a coherent and
well-founded racial or ethnic ideology. As explained in Chapter 1, ideology is a
set of beliefs subscribed to by all or most of the society that rationalizes and legit-
imizes patterns of dominance and subordination. The Rwandan genocide in 1994
and the equally horrifying mass killings in Bosnia were driven by beliefs in the in-
herent inferiority, evil, and threat of the ethnic other. Similarly, the division in
Northern Ireland is sustained by stereotypes and beliefs on both sides that crystal-
lize into obdurate ethnic ideologies.
In a sense, ideology functions as a filter through which various social circum-
stances are interpreted and subsequently acted upon. It thus becomes a necessary
component of ethnic conflict, justifying prejudice and discrimination against ethnic
out-groups. As we have seen in previous chapters, racial/ethnic ideologies have
played a key role in creating and sustaining a system of ethnic stratification in the
United States and in all other multiethnic societies. Usually behaviors that might re-
flect the beliefs of in-groups about out-groups are held in moderate form and only
occasionally manifest themselves in serious acts of violence. But there is never a
guarantee that ideologies propounding the inferiority and threat of ethnic out-
groups will not degenerate into riots (as have occurred at various times in U.S. his-
tory), mass killings, or even genocide, as in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. As
Daniel Chirot and Clark McCauley have written:
Humans are predisposed to think of competing groups other than their own in
essentializing, that is to say, stereotypical ways, and this obviously leads easily to
demonization of entire communities of perceived enemies. Our emotions—anger,
shame, fear, resentment—predispose us to violence when we feel threatened, and to
mass murder against those who most stand in our way or endanger us (2006:7).
chapter 16 global issues of ethnic conflict and change 495
the twentieth century interethnic conflict became “more intense and endemic . . .
than at any time in history” (1981:10). Today there is little indication of the devel-
opment of a countercurrent. Rather than diminishing, ethnicity as a global phenom-
enon persists as an exceptionally powerful and tenacious force motivating human
behavior. And it will likely follow us throughout the twenty-first century.
SUMMARY
Shifting patterns of global immigration have emerged in the past fifty years. Today
the movement of people is from the developing societies to the developed, industri-
alized societies. Changing labor markets and political strife in many societies are
major factors that have stimulated global immigration. Immigration has molded
many societies into increasingly diverse ethnic configurations.
Western European societies have undergone great social changes in the past few
decades as a result of immigration and the subsequent creation of ethnic heteroge-
neity. In societies where there had been relative homogeneity, the introduction of
large numbers of culturally and racially diverse people has created ethnic minority
communities that have not been assimilated into the mainstream. These ethnic mi-
norities have been the targets of severe prejudice and discrimination.
Throughout much of the world, ethnic nationalism has been a stimulant of iden-
tity and political action in the past two decades. Nowhere has conflict based on eth-
nic nationalism been more virulent or bloody than in Rwanda, where a genocide of
epic proportions occurred in 1994, and in the former Yugoslavia, where Serbs,
Croats, and Muslims engaged in the most ferocious warfare in Europe since
World War II. Yugoslavia seems to be a case of a failed attempt at the formation
of a corporate pluralistic system. Once the glue of a strong central government
was removed, underlying ethnic hostilities reemerged with overwhelming force. A
similar situation appears to have emerged in Iraq, where the U.S. invasion and oc-
cupation starting in 2003 ignited a deadly conflict among that society’s major
religio-ethnic groups.
Northern Ireland offers a case in which a historically well-rooted and seem-
ingly endless ethnic conflict may be reaching its end. Although it remains a thor-
oughly segregated and divided society, Northern Ireland in recent years has
tortuously moved toward a power-sharing system in which its two major ethnic
groups may have set itself on a course toward a relatively peaceful and function-
ing pluralistic system.
Conflict and change are inherent features of multiethnic societies. Where there
are significant economic, political, and social inequalities among groups, challenges
to the dominant social order arise periodically. Also, cultural and physical differ-
ences among groups may be contributing factors to ethnic conflict. The conditions
of the contemporary world—increasing diversity and ethnic nationalism—make the
continuation and even intensification of ethnic conflict very likely.
Suggested Readings
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso. Examines the evolution of nationalism and the
chapter 16 global issues of ethnic conflict and change 497
factors that create a preparedness of people to defend their society or perceived commu-
nity against others.
Bennett, Christopher. 1995. Yugoslavia’s Bloody Collapse: Causes, Course and
Consequences. New York: New York University Press. Deftly sorts out the complex
political and social issues that led to the breakup of Yugoslavia and offers insight into the
cultural similarities and differences of the groups involved.
Castles, Stephen, and Mark J. Miller. 2003. The Age of Migration: International Population
Movements in the Modern World. 3rd ed. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Describes today’s global immigration routes and analyzes the economic, political, and so-
cial impact of large-scale immigration on receiving societies.
Chua, Amy. 2004. World On Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic
Hatred and Global Instability. New York: Anchor Books. Posits that ethnic conflict in
various world areas is primarily a product of the efforts of ethnic majorities—empowered
by democratic forces—to punish or assert power over market-dominant minorities.
Destexhe, Alain. 1995. Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. New York: New
York University Press. A succinct analysis of the slaughter of Tutsis by Hutus in 1994 in
Rwanda and the historic relations between these groups that preceded it. Discusses the
Rwandan case in the context of other genocides of the twentieth century.
Esman, Milton J. 2004. An Introduction to Ethnic Conflict. Cambridge, England: Polity
Press. A primer on the forms and sources of ethnic conflict in contemporary multiethnic
nation-states.
Ignatieff, Michael. 1995. Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism. New
York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The author travels to six locations of contemporary eth-
nic conflict, relating his observations and his conversations with those involved.
Mann, Michael. 2005. The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. An attempt to explain the most ex-
treme form of ethnic conflict, extermination of an entire population, analyzing genocides
of the twentieth century.
Rieff, David. 1995. Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West. New York:
Touchstone. A journalist describes his odyssey through war-plagued Croatia, Serbia, and
Bosnia, probing the thoughts of citizens as he tries to understand the ethnic conflict
among them.
Ruane, Joseph, and Jennifer Todd. 1996. The Dynamics of Conflict in Northern Ireland:
Power, Conflict and Emancipation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. A
carefully researched analysis of the historical, political, economic, and cultural dimensions
of Northern Ireland’s ethnic chasm. Demonstrates the complexities of and differences
within, as well as between, Protestant and Catholic communities.
Glossary
498
glossary 499
dominant ethnic group That group at the top of the ethnic hierarchy, which receives a dis-
proportionate share of wealth, exercises predominant political authority, and has the great-
est influence on shaping the society’s cultural system.
dominant-subordinate relations See ethnic stratification.
dominative racism Actions taken to oppress racial and ethnic minorities and to keep them in
a subservient position.
endogamy Marriage within one’s social group, regulated on the basis of ethnicity, race, so-
cial class, educational level, religion, or other social characteristics.
equalitarian pluralism Ethnic relations in which groups retain their cultural and much of
their structural distinctness but participate on an equal basis in a common political and eco-
nomic system.
ethnic categories Groupings of people with one or a number of similar cultural or physical
characteristics, but with little sense of membership or interaction among them.
ethnic cleansing Expulsion and possibly annihilation of an ethnic group; applied in the
1990s by Serbs against Muslims in Bosnia and against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
ethnic collectivities Groupings of people who have a recognizable culture, are aware of
themselves as a unit, are recognized as a unit by outsiders, interact with each other, and
feel a sense of obligation to support and defend the group.
ethnic group A group within a larger society that displays a unique set of cultural traits and
a sense of community among members.
ethnic hierarchy The structural arrangement of diverse groups of a multiethnic society in a
rank order, from those at the top, with most of the society’s wealth and power, to those at
the bottom, with correspondingly little.
ethnic nationalism An ideology holding that people’s strongest allegiance is to an ethnic
group or nationality into which they have been born or assigned, not to a larger political en-
tity encompassing many ethnic groups or nationalities.
ethnic stereotype An oversimplistic and exaggerated belief about members of an ethnic
group, generally acquired secondhand and resistant to change despite contrary evidence.
ethnic stratification A rank order of groups, each made up of people with presumed com-
mon cultural or physical characteristics, interacting in patterns of dominance and subordina-
tion. Also referred to as majority-minority or dominant-subordinate relations.
ethnocentrism The belief by members of a group that their culture is superior to others.
expulsion Removal of a group from the society through deportation or internment.
frustration-aggression theory An early theory of prejudice and discrimination explaining
these as a means by which people express hostility arising from frustration. Also referred to
as scapegoating.
genocide An attempt to systematically exterminate an ethnic or racial group.
Gordon’s stages of assimilation A theoretical model suggesting that assimilation is not a
straightforward movement but rather comprises different degrees of increasingly more pro-
found social and cultural integration.
host society The society of entrance of international migrants. Also referred to as the receiv-
ing society.
hypo-descent A social policy in which a person with any known or recognized ancestry of
the subordinate group is automatically classified as part of that group rather than the domi-
nant group. Also referred to as the one-drop rule.
glossary 501
ideology A set of beliefs and values that explain, rationalize, and justify inequalities in
wealth, power, and privilege.
indigenous superordination The subordination of a migrant population by an indigenous ra-
cial or ethnic group.
individual discrimination See micro discrimination.
inequalitarian pluralism Ethnic relations in which groups are separated structurally and co-
exist in a state of highly unequal access to power and privilege.
institutional discrimination Actions taken against members of particular groups that are the
result of the policies and structures of organizations and institutions. May be direct, in
which discrimination is based on law or custom, or indirect, in which it is obscure and often
unintended. The latter is referred to as structural discrimination.
integration A form of assimilation in which people of diverse ethnic groups participate
freely and fully in the institutions of the larger society unconstrained by ethnicity.
intermarriage Marriage of partners of different racial or ethnic origins.
internal colonialism A type of inequalitarian pluralism in which minority ethnic groups are
treated in a colonial fashion by the dominant group.
involuntary immigration The forced transfer of people from one society to another to be
exploited as captive workers.
Jim Crow The system of black-white segregation maintained in the U.S. southern states
from the end of Reconstruction until the 1960s that constituted a castelike form of
stratification.
macro discrimination Discrimination against minority groups not limited to specific cases but
firmly incorporated in the society’s normative system. See also institutional discrimination.
majority-minority relations See ethnic stratification.
manumission The freeing of slaves.
Marxian theory As applied to ethnic relations, the notion that in capitalist societies ethnic
antagonism serves the interests of the capitalist class by keeping the working class divided
along racial and ethnic lines and thus easier to control.
melting pot An ethnic ideology in the United States suggesting that various ethnic groups
contribute to the creation of a hybrid “American.”
Merton’s paradigm A theoretical model explaining that prejudice and discrimination are
variable, depending on a number of situational factors; hence, attitudes and actions toward
members of minority groups may fluctuate within different social contexts.
micro discrimination Actions taken by individuals or small groups to injure or deny access
to societal resources (jobs, housing, education) to members of a minority ethnic group.
middleman minorities Certain ethnic groups in multiethnic societies that occupy a middle
economic and political status between the dominant group and subordinate groups, often
serving as intermediaries between them.
migrant superordination The subordination of an indigenous population by a migrant
group.
migration chain A continuous movement of new immigrants to locations that have already
been settled by other family members, friends, or coethnics.
militant minority A minority group that seeks to establish itself as the society’s dominant
group.
502 glossary
minority groups Groups that, on the basis of their physical or cultural traits, are given dif-
ferential and unequal treatment and receive fewer of the society’s rewards.
miscegenation See intermarriage.
model minority A popular characterization of Asian Americans, recognizing their compara-
tively successful adaptation to American society.
multiculturalism In the United States, the encouragement of the expression of different eth-
nic cultures. In Canada and Australia, an official policy recognizing and encouraging the re-
tention of ethnic cultures.
multiethnic society A society composed of numerous cultural, racial, and religious groups.
nativism Anti-immigrant views and actions based on the perceived threat of immigrants to
undermine the economic, social, and cultural interests of native-born people.
network factors Links between immigrants in the host society and friends, family, and col-
leagues in the origin society that contribute to further immigration, creating a migration
“chain” or “stream.”
New Immigration The second great wave of immigration to the United States, occurring
during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, consisting primarily of peoples
from southern and eastern European societies.
Newest Immigration The latest and current wave of immigration to the United States, begin-
ning in the 1960s, consisting mostly of peoples from Asian and Latin American societies.
normative theories Theories that explain prejudice and discrimination as conforming re-
sponses to social situations in which people find themselves.
Old Immigration The first great wave of immigration to the United States in the early and
mid-nineteenth century, consisting mostly of peoples from northwestern Europe, especially
Germany and Ireland.
one-drop rule See hypo-descent.
order theories Theories postulating that a society is a relatively balanced system made up of
differently functioning but interrelated parts, held together by a consensus of values among
groups and individuals.
panethnic group An inclusive ethnic category made up of several distinct ethnic groups
lumped together, usually on the basis of the groups’ world region of origin (for example,
Asian Americans).
Park’s race relations cycle A model of ethnic relations suggesting that groups pass through a
sequence of stages—contact, competition, accommodation, and, ultimately, full assimilation.
paternalistic race relations A system such as slavery in which there is maximum social dis-
tance and extreme inequality between dominant and subordinate groups.
pluralism The retention of ethnic cultures and boundaries within the larger society. See also
cultural pluralism; structural pluralism; equalitarian pluralism; inequalitarian pluralism; cor-
porate pluralism.
pluralistic minority A minority group that seeks to maintain its cultural ways at the same
time it participates in the society’s major political and economic institutions.
power-conflict theories Theories that view prejudice and discrimination as emerging from
dominant group interests and used to protect and enhance those interests.
prejudice A generalized belief, usually inflexible and unfavorable, applied to members of a
particular group.
glossary 503
structural discrimination Discrimination that results from the normal functioning of a so-
ciety’s institutions, rather than the direct and intended actions or policies of individuals and
organizations.
structural pluralism The continued social separation of minority ethnic groups from the
dominant group and perhaps from each other.
subordinate groups See minority groups.
symbolic ethnicity As suggested by Gans, the expression of ethnic identity by third and
fourth generation people, though ethnicity no longer guides their social behavior.
visible minorities In Canada, ethnic groups that are non-European and non-Aboriginal in
origin.
voluntary immigration The movement of people from one society to another by their own
choice, most commonly in hope of economic betterment, but in some cases to escape politi-
cal or religious oppression.
yellow peril An anti-Chinese characterization, referring to the perceived economic and cul-
tural threat of Chinese immigration to the United States in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries.
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Index
564
index 565
Alianza de las Mercedes, 217 immigrants in, 35n, 44, 87, 108, 111, 121
All in the Family, 57 Italians in, 296, 407n
Allport, Gordon, 51, 55, 65, 66 Jews in, 322
Amalgamation, 99 as multicultural society, 6
in Brazil, 86, 400 Argentines, in U.S., 222, 225
defined, 86, 498 Arizona
in Mexico, 86 African American population, 181
American Federation of Labor (AFL), 174 Latino population, 224
American Indian Movement (AIM), 146 Mexicans in, 339
American Indians. See Native Americans Native American population, 151
Amish, 46–47 Arlington, Virginia, 253
Anderson, Benedict, 471 Armenians, 60, 60n
Andrews, George Reid, 419 Asian Americans. See also Asian Indians; Chinese
Anglo-Americans Americans; Filipino Americans; Japanese
assimilation, 117 Americans; Korean Americans; Vietnamese
core culture, 92, 114–116, 119, 498 Americans
as dominant group, 114–116, 353n, 498 assimilation, 117, 275–278, 279
ethnic identity, 353n in California, 256, 257, 260, 266, 279
Anglo-conformity in corporate world, 260–261
in Canada, 456, 457, 463 demographics, 255–257
in U.S., 116, 344, 498 economic mobility, 262–265, 318
Angola, 5 education, 261–262, 279
annexation, as form of contact, 44 as entrepreneurs, 261
annihilation, 97–98, 99, 498 immigration and settlement, 247–255
Anthony, Marc, 242 income, 258–259, 279
anti-Catholicism in U.S., 285, 288–289, intermarriage, 275–276
292, 294, 301 in metropolitan areas, 256–258
anticipatory acculturation, 344 as middleman minorities, 272–273
anti-Semitism, 77, 498. See also Jewish Americans as “model minority,” 274, 502
among blacks, 328 occupations, 259–261, 279
declining, 327–329 as panethnic category, 247, 278–279, 278n
defined, 324n, 498 political power, 265–266
and education, 329 population, 255–256, 255n, 279, 409n
elements of, 324–325 poverty, 258, 259
and social class, 327 prejudice and discrimination against,
tenaciousness of, 329–330 267–274, 279
in U.S., 325–330, 335 regional concentration, 256
in western Europe, 329 residential patterns, 196, 273–274
Antonovsky, Aaron, 59 in Silicon Valley, 260
Apache tribe, 158 social mobility, 262–264
apartheid. See South Africa socioeconomic status, 257–262, 279
Appalachians, 37 suburbanization, 256–257
Arab Americans. See also Middle Eastern white attitudes toward, 270–271
Americans, Muslim Americans “yellow peril,” 267–268, 504
assimilation, 350–351 Asian Indians
class range, 348 in California, 254, 255
cultural confrontation in U.S., 350–351 class origins, 254
demographic patterns, 348 cultural diversity, 255
in Detroit, 273, 348, 351 education, 254, 262, 318
discrimination against, 4, 349, 350 as entrepreneurs, 255, 261
education, 348–349 immigration, 254
ethnic diversity, 347 income, 258–259
immigration, 347–348 national diversity, 255
occupations, 348–349 occupations, 254–255, 257, 263, 338
population, 347 in politics, 266
socioeconomic status, 349 population, 256
stereotypes, 349, 350, 365 poverty, 259
Arapaho tribe, 156 assimilation. See also specific U.S. ethnic groups
Argentina biological, 86, 499
assimilation in, 87 cultural, 83, 88, 89, 103, 499
566 index
black political activity, 424, 424n Breton, Raymond, 241, 447, 455, 457
candomblé, 421 Bretons, 472
class-ethnic relationship in, 412–414, Bridgeport, Conn., 305
419–420, 422, 423–424, 425 Bridgewater, N.J., 129
color consciousness, 409–410 Briggs, John, 321
color continuum, 424 Britain, 5
comparison with U.S., 400, 419–420, 422, as colonial power, 21, 44, 140, 141, 485–486
425–426 East Indians in, 255n
compensatory policies, 425, 426–427 immigrants from, 120
cultural assimilation, 421 immigrants in, 130, 346, 467, 468
discrimination in, 415, 418–420, 422–423, as multiethnic society, 6
425, 429 Northern Ireland, role in, 486, 494
ethnic and racial composition, 400, 420–421 public attitudes toward immigration, 346, 469
ethnic hierarchy, 38, 412–415, 428, 429 Scots in, 11, 472
ethnic relations Welsh in, 11, 472
changing patterns of, 425–427 Brody, Richard A., 228
compared to U.S., 425–426, 427, 428 Brown, Douglas, 374
ethnic stratification, 407–408, 428 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka,
European immigration to, 108, 111, 121, 400, 175, 360
401, 406–407, 420 Brubaker, Rogers, 89
as whitening strategy, 406–407, 420 Buchanan, William, 54, 55
Frente Negra Brasileira, 424 Buchignani, Norman, 454
Germans in, 401, 407, 421 Buenos Aires, 321
hybrid culture of, 92, 421 Buffalo, N.Y., 122
Indian cultural influence, 400, 401, 421 Bulgarians, in U.S., 121
Indian population, 400, 401, 406 Burakumin, 39
Indian racial strain, 400, 401 Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), 144, 145, 146,
Italians in, 296, 401, 407, 407n 153, 159
Japanese in, 75, 407, 421 Burkey, Richard, 18, 44
macumba, 421 Burundi, 5, 473, 474
miscegenation, 404, 417, 420, 422 Bush, George H. W., 76, 360
mulatto escape hatch, 411–412 Bush, George W., 191, 361
multiracial system, 408–412 Button, James W., 178
National Human Rights Program, 426
Poles in, 401, 407 California
population, 400, 411 affirmative action in, 363
Portuguese in, 400, 401, 402, 407, 420 anti-Chinese movement in, 267
Portuguese cultural influence, 400 anti-Japanese movement in, 268–269
prejudice in, 415–418, 422–423, 425, 429 Asian American population, 256, 257, 260,
quilombos, 404 266, 279
racial classification in, 17, 408–411, 425, Asian Indians in, 254, 255
426, 428 ballot initiatives in, 363
compared to U.S., 408–411, 425–426 Chinese Americans in, 248
racial consciousness in, 424 ethnic diversity, 353
racial democracy, ideology of, 422–425, Filipinos in, 252
427, 429 illegal immigrants in, 339
racial terminology in, 409–411, 410n, 411n immigration to, 129
regionalism, 400–401 Japanese in, 249
residential segregation, 420, 422, 423n Koreans in, 250
Russians in, 401 Latinos in, 217, 223, 224
slavery, 400, 402–406, 428 Mexicans in, 339
abolition of, 405–406 Native American population, 151
compared to U.S., 402–406 Proposition 187, 339
manumission, 403, 405 Vietnamese in, 253
social distance in, 417–418 Cambodians, in U.S., 253–254, 259, 261
Spanish in, 407 Canada. See also Quebec
stereotyping, 416–417 Aboriginal peoples, 432–433, 446–448, 451,
structural assimilation, 422 461, 462
white ideal, 406–407, 414, 415, 422 Anglo-conformity in, 457, 463
Brazilians, in U.S., 222 anti-Semitism in, 453
568 index
occupational patterns, 317, 335 Korean Americans. See also Asian Americans
political and economic power, 322–323 and blacks, 42, 273
population, 315–316 in California, 250, 266
prejudice and discrimination against, 271, class origins, 251
324–330 education, 262, 265
religious division, 330, 330n, 334 as entrepreneurs, 251, 261, 263–264, 266, 273
religious practices, 320–321 as ethnic minority, 42–43
Sephardic, 313, 325 immigration, 248, 250–251
social mobility, 316, 318–322, 335 income, 258, 259
socioeconomic status, 315–318, 335 and Los Angeles riots of 1992, 251, 273
from (former) Soviet Union, 316, 332–333 as middleman minority, 36
stereotypes, 54, 55, 329 in New York, 250, 263–264
structural assimilation, 117, 277, 331–333, 335 occupations, 260
symbolic ethnicity, 333 population, 250, 256
ultra-Orthodox, 332 poverty, 259, 260
urban concentration, 316 religion, 251, 276
in U.S. Congress, 299, 322 return migration, 251
working-class, 317 Korman, Abraham, 323
Jews. See also anti-Semitism; Jewish Americans; Kosovo. See also Yugoslavia
Judaism ethnic Albanians in, 98, 481–483
in Argentina, 322 ethnic cleansing in, 98, 482–483
Ashkenazic, 313 ethnic conflict in, 481–483
in Canada, 322 ethnic nationalism in, 483
in Germany, 98 independence, 483
Hasidic, 46 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), 482
as middleman minority, 36 Serbs in, 481, 482, 483
and Nazi Holocaust, 61, 61n, 98, 334, 472, Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), 482
475, 479 Koster, Henry, 415
Sephardic, 313 Ku Klux Klan, 66, 71, 74, 171, 178, 326, 326n
in South Africa, 322 Kuper, Leo, 61n, 96
stereotypes, 324–325, 328 Kurds, 472
Jim Crow system, 383, 397, 501 Kwan, Kian, 8, 52, 86n
Jindal, Bobby, 266
Johnson, Lyndon B., 355 Lac du Flambeau Chippewa tribe, 155
Jones, Maldwyn, 117 Lake, David, 492
Jordan, Winthrop, 165n, 166 Lambert, Richard, 307
Josephy, Alvin, 140, 160 language assimilation, 341–343, 344
Judaism, branches of, 314 Laotians, in U.S., 253–254, 261
Juilliard School of Music, 262 LaPiere, Richard, 59, 71
La Raza, 218, 218n
Kalin, Rudolf, 453 Latino National Political Survey, 242
Kallen, Evelyn, 452, 455 Latinos. See Hispanic Americans
Katz, Daniel, 53, 54 Latvia, 48
Keister, Lisa, 290 Laxer, James, 457
Keller, Suzanne, 300 Lebanese, in U.S., 347
Kennedy, John F., 126, 288, 289, 289n, 294, 300 Lebanon, 5
Kenya, 5, 255 Lee, Spike, 273
Kerner Commission, 197 Lee, Wen Ho, 272
Keshena, Rita, 158 Lévesque, René, 436, 437, 440, 441
Key West, Fla., 219 Levine, Edward, 285
Khoikhoi, 372, 373 Levine, Naomi, 324n
Kickapoo tribe, 152 Lewiston, Me., 129
Kikumura, Akemi, 277 liberal pluralism, 98
Killian, Lewis, 71, 114, 175, 177 Lieberman, Joseph, 322
Kim, Illsoo, 264, 265 Lieberson, Stanley, 45, 308
King, James, 14, 15 Lijphart, Arend, 94n
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 175 Lincoln, Abraham, 55, 168
King, William Lyon Mackenzie, 453 Lippmann, Walter, 52
Kitano, Harry, 277 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 333
Konvitz, Milton B., 330n Locke, Gary, 266
576 index
Lopez, Jennifer, 242 McWilliams, Carey, 234, 237, 240, 325, 326n
Los Alamos National Laboratory, 272 Means, Russell, 146
Los Angeles Meech Lake Accord, 438
African American population, 181 Meier, August, 172n
Arab Americans in, 348 melting pot, ideology, 92, 115, 353–354, 456, 501
Asian American population, 256, 258 Memphis, Tenn., 223
Central American population, 225 Menendez, Robert, 231
Chinese Americans in, 265 Mennonites, 444
East Los Angeles riot, 1970, 238 Merton, Robert, 70–71, 72, 73
Guatemalans in, 223 Merton’s paradigm, 70–71, 501
Hispanic population, 211, 224 Métis. See Canada
Jewish Americans in, 316 Mexican Americans. See also California;
Korean Americans in, 261, 265, 266 Hispanic Americans; Los Angeles
Mexican Americans in, 230, 238 annexation, as form of entrance, 107, 108
Native Americans in, 151 and assimilation model, 244
newest immigration to, 129 Chicanismo, 216–218
pachuco riots, 238 cultural assimilation, 240
riots in 1992, 251, 266 discrimination against, 234–235
Salvadorans in, 223 education, 227–228
South Americans in, 225 geographic trends, 95, 223
Louisiana Purchase, 44 illegal immigration, 339, 346
Louisville, Kentucky, school districts, 360 immigrant networks, 240
Lula da Silva, Luiz Inácio, 426 immigration, 118, 212, 215–216, 338, 344
Lyman, Stanford, 75, 248 income, 226–227
lynching, 171 as labor force, 215–216
La Raza, 218, 218n
Macedonia, 483n. See also Yugoslavia occupations, 226
MacLennan, Hugh, 436 Operation Wetback, 216
macumba, 421 police relations, 238
Mafia, 302, 303 political power, 230–231
majority group. See dominant group population, 212
Makabe, Tomoko, 75 poverty, 225–226
Malaysia, 5, 94, 101, 347, 363 and race, 213–214, 234, 243
Malcolm X, 176 regional concentration, 223
Mallaby, Sebastian, 384, 390 residential patterns, 238
Mandela, Nelson, 392, 393, 398 socioeconomic status, 225–228
Mann, Michael, 473 stereotypes, 234–235
manumission, 501 structural assimilation, 243
March on Washington Movement, 176 in U.S. Congress, 230–231
Marger, Martin N., 93n Mexican Revolution, 216
marginal men, 86 Mexican War, with U.S., 214, 215, 216
Marrow, Helen, 222 Mexico, 50
Marston, Wilfred G., 197n ethnic mobility in, 38
Martí, José, 219 illegal immigration from, 126
Martin, Ricky, 242 race in, 213, 214
Martin, Yves, 434n Mezzogiorno, 296
Martinez, Mel, 231 Miami, Fla. See also Cuban Americans
Marx, Anthony W., 404, 412 African American population, 181
Marx, Karl, 74, 82, 501 bilingualism in, 241
Mashantucket Pequot tribe, 155 Central Americans in, 225
Mason, Philip, 491 Cuban Americans in, 211, 219, 223, 231, 233,
Massey, Douglas, 112, 198 236, 237
Mathabane, Mark, 387 González, Elián, affair, 236–237
Matson, Floyd, 267 Hispanic population, 223, 224
McCaffery, Lawrence, 284, 287, 291, 294 Jewish American population, 316
McCauley, Clark, 494 language diversity, 341
McClatchy, V. S., 268 newest immigrants in, 129, 130
McGarry, John, 491 Nicaraguans in, 223
McKee, James B., 25 referendum on bilingualism, 236
McVeigh, Timothy, 43 South Americans in, 225
index 577