Ethnicity

Although often assumed to be synonymous with race, ethnicity is a distinct concept from race within the social sciences. Ethnicity and ethnic relations have long been major topics of research among sociologists, anthropologists, and historians, and in the twenty-first century, courses in ethnic studies exist at many colleges and universities throughout the United States. Ethnicity also is a factor in some of the most pressing issues both in the United States and in many nations throughout the world, as various forms of ethnic conflict, ranging from relatively mild prejudice to more intense acts of discrimination to violent interethnic warfare, persist. However, ethnic diversity does not always produce tensions or conflicts, and there are many examples of ethnically diverse societies in which members of different ethnic groups live peacefully among one another.

Background

Sociologists and anthropologists distinguish between race and ethnicity, although these two concepts are similar in that each pertains to a socially defined manner of identifying and categorizing individuals into groups based on actual or perceived differences. Historically, there have been two different sets of criteria that human societies have used as a basis for defining similarities and differences, and subsequently establishing collective group identities: physical/biological traits and social/cultural traits. The former is the basis for defining race, while the latter serves as the basis for defining ethnicity. In the United States, for example, the notion of race has been predicated heavily on physical characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, and eye shape, as indicated by racial labels such as “White,” “Black,” and the outdated terms “Oriental,” “Asiatic,” and “Mongoloid.” It is important to remember, however, that according to physical anthropologists, studies have indicated that biologically distinct human races do not exist, as the global human species represents a large continuum of biological and genetic diversity that occurs in gradients across geographic regions. Because of this, racial categories are in fact arbitrarily defined categories that differ from society to society.

Ethnicity, on the other hand, is based on the idea of common cultural traits, such as language, religion, dietary traditions, manner of dress, holidays, and other customs. Specifically, ethnicity refers to the degree to which a person psychologically identifies with, and feels part of, a particular ethnic group. An ethnic group is a group of people within a larger society who claim a distinct identity and a shared sense of social unity based on a common ancestry and distinguishing sociocultural characteristics. In the United States, this shared sense of ancestry is often tied to a particular country or homeland from which one’s forebears migrated; some prominent examples of ethnic groups in the United States include Irish Americans, Italian Americans, and Mexican Americans. However, in nations that do not have as profound a history of global immigration as the United States, ethnicity may be based not on attachment to a particular ancestral country but rather on variables such as religion, language, or a variety of other factors. Some notable ethnic groups in other societies include Palestinians (in Israel and Jordan), Kurds (Iraq and Turkey), Basques (northern Spain), and Roma (dispersed across Europe and North America).

Overview

An individual’s sense of ethnic identification is highly variable from one person to another, with some people attaching a higher degree of personal importance to their ethnic identity than others. The variation in degree of ethnic identification derives from a multitude of social and psychological factors, not the least of which is whether an individual was raised with a strong degree of exposure to their ancestral heritage. This is particularly true in the United States, where assimilation to the dominant Anglo-Saxon cultural core seems to be especially powerful and often results in a heavy loss of native language proficiency and many other cultural traits or customs among immigrant groups by the third generation. As such, for many Americans who are grandchildren or great-grandchildren of immigrants, identification with their ethnicity may be limited to certain symbolic displays of ethnic pride, such as wearing green on Saint Patrick’s Day, sporting a shamrock or Celtic cross tattoo, hanging a Puerto Rican or Italian flag on the rearview mirror of one’s car, or drinking a margarita on Cinco de Mayo. Anthropologists refer to these limited or occasional displays of ethnic pride as symbolic ethnicity.

Neither racial nor ethnic groups are natural, biological divisions of humankind. Both are socially constructed, meaning that these categories have been created and defined by human societies over time. This is an ongoing process, as new ethnic identities emerge over time while old ethnic identities die out, a process known as ethnogenesis. Specific ethnic identities result from specific historic, political, and social developments. For example, during their early years of migration to the United States in the 1870s and 1880s, immigrants from the Italian peninsula did not typically identify as Italian but rather identified with their specific village or province. This was because Italy had not become a unified nation until the late nineteenth century, and a strong national identification had not yet developed among its population. It was primarily these immigrants’ children and grandchildren, who had been born and raised in the United States and lacked familiarity and nostalgia for the village or province from which their forebears migrated, who largely began to identify as Italian American.

Although ethnicity and ethnic identity are largely built on notions of distinct cultural traits, it is important to remember that members of ethnic groups are not necessarily culturally identical to one another. Factors such as social class, religion, age or generation, and geographic region, among others, all play a role in shaping a person’s overall cultural background. Thus, while the media may commonly portray certain ethnic groups as having certain “culture types” or “personality types,” internal variation exists within all groups, and failing to recognize this leads to stereotyping—which is often a major factor in ethnic conflict and prejudicial thinking.

Bibliography

Aguirre, Adalberto, Jr., and Jonathan H. Turner. American Ethnicity: The Dynamics and Consequences of Discrimination. 7th ed., McGraw-Hill, 2010.

Daniels, Roger. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life. 3rd ed., HarperCollins, 2019.

Ferraro, Thomas J. Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America. NYU Press, 2005.

Jiménez, Tomás R. Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration, and Identity. University of California Press, 2009.

Kottak, Conrad Phillip, and Kathryn A. Kozaitis. On Being Different: Diversity and Multiculturalism in the North American Mainstream. 4th ed., McGraw-Hill, 2011.

Rothenberg, Paula, and Kelly S. Mayhew. Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study. 11th ed., Worth Publishers, 2019.

Schaefer, Richard T. Race and Ethnicity in the United States. 9th ed., Pearson, 2019.

Scupin, Raymond, ed. Race and Ethnicity: The United States and the World. 2nd ed., Pearson, 2012.