Race and Ethnicity
Race and ethnicity refer to social categories used to classify people based on shared characteristics such as ancestry, culture, and physical traits. Race is often associated with biological differences, while ethnicity encompasses cultural practices and traditions. These concepts are important in understanding social dynamics, inequality, and identity formation within societies.
7 Key excerpts on "Race and Ethnicity"
eBook - ePub- Maykel Verkuyten(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Not contextualizing ‘race’ can lead to misunderstandings of European and other non-US contexts (Siebers, 2017). What makes sense in one national context does not have to make sense in another national context and does not make conceptual clarification unnecessary. To be able to tell whether, in a particular context, Race and Ethnicity are intermingled or whether race predominates ethnicity (or the other way around), we need conceptual differentiation. p.50 The term ‘race’ is typically used to refer to a group of people who share physical characteristics, such as skin colour and facial features, and who are believed to be different – not only in a descriptive sense, but also in an explanatory way: ‘This is why “brunettes” are not a “race” – there isn’t much in the way of content or expectations, implicitly or explicitly, associated with a member of the category’ (Gil-White, 2005, p. 248). Ethnicity and race are kindred concepts, but only by making analytical distinctions is it possible to examine how exactly they can become linked (Eriksen, 2010; Wade, 2002). For example, aspects of physical appearance and related racism can feature in processes of ethnic boundary drawing and serve as impermeable boundary markers (Wimmer, 2015). And ethnic groups who look different from majorities may find it more difficult to be accepted than groups who have a belief in a different ancestry. Ideas about ‘race’ can form part of ethnic ideologies, but ethnicity can also exist without accompanying notions of racial differences, such as among people of German, Norwegian or Irish descent in the United States. In Brazil, the colour continuum (black–brown–white) is a categorization that has a class element which does not imply ethnic classification, as is the case with Brazilian indigenous groups. Religion In Europe, there is, in relation to immigrant-origin groups, a clear tendency to lump people of different ethnic groups together under the religious label of Muslim...
eBook - ePubFractured Identities
Changing Patterns of Inequality
- Harriet Bradley(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Polity(Publisher)
...‘Race’ is a way of constructing differences ‘on the basis of an immutable biological or physiognomic difference which may or may not be seen to be expressed mainly in culture and lifestyle but is always grounded on the separation of human populations by some notion of stock or collective heredity of traits’ (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1993, p. 2). Anthias and Yuval-Davis also believe that ‘race’ should be seen as a special case of the broader category of ‘ethnic phenomena’. Ethnicity ‘Ethnos’ and ‘ethnicity’ are terms with a rather different history. Less common in popular usage (at least until recently), the terms were employed in social anthropology to describe social groups with a shared culture; they could refer to a whole society, but were more commonly used to describe a collectivity within a larger society, as reflected in our usage of the term ‘ethnic minority’. Ethnic groups may be defined (or define themselves) on the basis of language, religion or nationality, but the idea of shared culture is perhaps the crucial issue. Also very important (indeed Anthias and Yuval-Davis make this central to their definition) is the idea of a common origin. This origin may be mythical or real, based on a religious text, on historical events or the idea of a (sometimes lost) homeland, or a mix of all of these. The crucial point is that it binds the members of the group together in a sense of belonging and constructs boundaries between them and the rest of the world. The idea of ethnicity was formerly treated with suspicion by some radical theorists of race relations, on the grounds that it gave too much prominence to culture, rather than racism (Richardson and Lambert 1985), and so could be used to blame the victims of discrimination. ‘Ethnic ties’ and attachments to culture among immigrant groups could be seen as the reason for failure to achieve educational and occupational success...
eBook - ePub- John Chandler(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...5 Ethnicity and race Introduction To what extent are you conscious of your race or ethnicity? When are you conscious of it? Does it matter and if so, how? You might take your Race and Ethnicity for granted and it might rarely enter your consciousness. Even if you are conscious of it, however, you may feel it has little relevance to your working life. In this chapter I explore issues of Race and Ethnicity and argue that it is often highly relevant to work experience – and to inequality – even if we may sometimes, understandably, want to dodge the issue. I start by dealing with the meaning of ‘Race and Ethnicity’ as related and overlapping terms, before sketching some dimensions of inequality and considering possible origins, before I focus on how it is negotiated at work. Race and Ethnicity: what do the terms mean? What do you think of when asked about your race or ethnicity? In the United Kingdom, when applying for jobs it is common to be asked to complete an ‘ethnic monitoring’ section of an application form (see Box 5.1). This is intended to monitor selection decisions and is prompted by legislation that makes discrimination on the basis of race illegal in the United Kingdom. ‘Race’ is defined, in the glossary of terms provided on the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC, 2015) website, as follows: ‘Race… refers to a group of people defined by their race, colour, nationality (including citizenship), ethnic or national origins.’ In this definition Race and Ethnicity (as well as nationality) are conflated. We have to recognize, however, that this definition occurs in a particular historical, cultural, geographical, social and political context. Essed and Trienekens (2008) inform us that, in Holland, ‘race is a sensitive if not a taboo word’ – it is not used in political discourse or official forms – nor is ethnicity. Instead the emphasis is on culture or nationality or religion...
eBook - ePubCultural Anthropology
Global Forces, Local Lives
- Jack David Eller(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...More recently, observers proposed the concept of “ethnic group” to refer to the same, or sometimes quite different, human variables. Both terms, but especially race, have a troubled history, fraught with confusion and abuse. Both terms, like gender, are also ways to classify humans and, even more importantly, to assign value and tasks to humans. In other words, like gender, race, and ethnicity, are examples of a taxonomy or ontology, a classification and evaluation system. As anthropologists, we are indeed interested in human difference, but we are equally if not more interested in the systems by which those groups are conceived, the relations between those groups, and the social practices by which, and the social purposes for which, those groups and relations are created, perpetuated, contested, or changed. THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF RACE Every English speaker has a general sense of what race means: physical differences (usually and especially surface differences, like skin color) between humans, or more often between major “types” or divisions, even “breeds,” of the human species, generally geographically separated, and the groups identified by those differences. Although race thus relates to physical or biological factors, there is a wide (though not quite universal) consensus that races are not “real” or “objective” divisions but are rather social constructs. As Audrey Smedley asserted, the “reality of race” resides in “a set of beliefs and attitudes about human differences, not the differences themselves” (1999: xi). This is not to claim that there are no differences between human individuals or groups – there obviously are – but rather to draw attention to the fact that the differences that matter and precisely how and why they matter are cultural and not natural issues. Smedley explained that biological variations between human groups “have no social meanings except what we humans give them. This is what is meant when we claim that races are culturally constructed...
eBook - ePubSpeaking Spanish in the US
The Sociopolitics of Language
- Janet M. Fuller, Jennifer Leeman(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Multilingual Matters(Publisher)
...has often been used as a synonym for race and in 1930 the census had a ‘Mexican’ racial category. This addition, which followed an influx of Mexican immigrants to the US Southwest after the Mexican Revolution of 1910, reflected a growing anti-Mexican sentiment. The category was removed in response to protests by US activists as well as the Mexican government (Rodríguez, 2000). (As we will discuss in detail later in the chapter, the US government now considers ‘Hispanic or Latino’ to be an ethnic, rather than a racial, category.) In the next section we examine ethnicity and how it differs from race. Race versus Ethnicity Ethnicity is a social category having something to do with descent or heritage, although scholars have struggled to define just what it means, as well as how it differs from race. Ethnicity is often talked about as tied to cultural practices and traits, such as religion, language, foodways and music, while race is seen as rooted in biological characteristics. However, this distinction doesn’t really hold up in common usage. For example, the Merriam Webster dictionary lists ‘nation,’ ‘nationality’ and ‘race’ as synonyms of ethnicity (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ethnicity). Similarly, ethnicity and culture are constructed as having genetic roots in Ancestry.com’s promise to ‘connect you to the cultures, cuisines, and traditions of your heritage in a deeper way,’ and to let you ‘Discover your ethnicity’ based on their home DNA test (https://www.ancestry.com/dna/ethnicity, accessed 12 August 2018). And another DNA testing company, MyHeritage.com, links genetics, ethnicity and geography in its promise to let you discover ‘what makes you unique and learning where you really come from’ (https://www.myheritage.com/dna, accessed 2 November 2019). Like race and other social constructs, ethnicity does not have a stable meaning...
- Harry Sanabria(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 5 Cultural politics of Race and Ethnicity The conquest and the colonial period drew together Europeans, indigenous peoples, and African slaves with quite different racial and cultural backgrounds. Unlike in North America, where many make rigid distinctions based on skin color and other overt physical traits – what is known as phenotype – these differences are less rigid in LAC, where phenotype alone is not the determining factor in racial or ethnic identities and classifications. This chapter explores the multiple meanings of, and overlap between, Race and Ethnicity. I begin by first reviewing how anthropologists and other social scientists have theorized race. After explaining the intrinsic ambiguity and elasticity of colonial racial taxonomies, I focus on how questions on race have become less meaningful in national censuses, and how those on ethnicity/ethnic background, increasingly more important. This background is important for understanding, in the subsequent section, the remarkable rise of indigenous movements, as in Chile, Bolivia, and Colombia. Using Mexico and Brazil as examples, I then explore how the “new genetics” has led to a revival of racialized thinking and analyses. I conclude this chapter by probing the construction of the “Hispanic/Latino” category by the US Census Bureau. Race: biological fallacy, socially constructed – or both? As an idea signifying innate biological attributes and a marker of social distinctions, race is a highly contentious concept that has spurred relentless academic, political, and policy controversies since it became firmly entrenched during the eighteenth century, first in the European scientific literature and, later, in popular culture and imagination. When thinking of race we usually have in mind seemingly “obvious” physical differences between people, such as skin color, body mass, or height – what is known as phenotype...
eBook - ePubRacialized Boundaries
Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and the Anti-Racist Struggle
- Floya Anthias, Nira Yuval-Davis(Authors)
- 2005(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...However, in practice individuals may belong to a number of ethnic groups. For example, British-born migrants may regard themselves, or be regarded, as both British and Asian, British and African-Caribbean, or British and Cypriot. Such cases, however, may produce conflict between different universes of meaning, and may involve identity shifts in different contexts. Therefore membership in ethnic collectivities provides individuals with a sense of roots, and is often a pivotal element in their understanding of ‘who I am’. In the modern era, Bhabha (1990) notes the growth of hybridity and ‘counter narratives’ pertaining to those who cross boundaries continually. Having argued for a commonality to ethnic phenomena, there are important differences in the discourses of ethnicity, nationalism and, as we pointed out earlier, racism. Ethnicity is a problematic notion and has been subjected to a number of definitions (Weber 1969, Barth 1969, Cohen 1974, Wallman 1979, Kahn 1981) as well as being found sorely wanting by more radical writers (CCCS 1982, Bourne 1985, Gilroy 1987). Hall (1988), on the other hand, has attempted to retrieve the concept of ethnicity from the conceptual baggage of the ethnic studies approach and deploy it in a more radical way. Ethnicity Ethnicity is a term that is often identified with the ethnic studies approach, just as race is identified with the race relations tradition (Miles 1982a, Anthias 1982 and 1992). The problematic of the ethnic studies approach is that of cultural interaction between ethnic groups and its effects. Race and racism are seen as complicating variables within the central focus on questions of cultural adaptation, maintenance, integration or assimilation of ethnic minorities. Within American sociology, this tendency finds expression in the enormously influential debate about assimilation (Glazer and Moynihan 1965 and 1975)...
