Sociology 3410 Final: Ethnicity

Front 1

American Creed

Back 1

-Being American, is merely a question of belief, not because of racial or ethnic background
-Belief of democracy, free market, belief in equality of opportunity and general egalitarianism throughout society, populism, the people of America is a people of democracy.
-The American creed by itself does not explain American opportunity in this country

Front 2

Diagram of Citizenship

Back 2

Very Top: Native Born Whites-full citizenship=whiteness
-CSE Europeans
------------Racialized Minorities----------
African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, Asians

Front 3

Conflict between this American Creed and the racialized hierarchal view

Back 3

-Development of the idea that all Americans are the same
-The American Creed is really not about race
-The idea of the creed is that all people that can work hard and apply themselves, will become upwardly mobile.
-Only about you working as hard as you can to obtain that upward mobility.

Front 4

“Bootstraps” Argument

Back 4

•upward mobility is strictly a question of individual self effort
•it is not some sort of neutral argument, it has been put forth to exclude the argument of racial hierarchy
•there is a strong tendency of people to deny the significance of race.

Front 5

There tends to be a difference between Ethnic Groups & Racial Groups

Back 5

-Given economic opportunities that were denied to Racial Groups.
-G.I. Bill
•Provided college, vocational education to veterans of World War II
 It wasn’t equally distributed
•Provided them with one year unemployment compensation and loans for them to buy homes
 98% of these benefits went to Ethnic groups, very few went to Racial groups.

Wealth: Equity - Debts = Wealth
-the more wealth you have, the more things you can do.
-Most Americans own their wealth in the form of real estate.
 Post World War II wealth was directed towards racialized housing
•Across the Untied States, suburbs are generally whites, and urban communities are generally minorities.
 The federal government started subsidizing the wealth

Front 6

In subsidizing the development of suburbs, subsidized the development of wealth.

Back 6

-Races intermarried with each other
-Whites have double the wealth of Asians, 18x the wealth of Hispanics and 20x the wealth of blacks.

Front 7

Tendency in society to view Whites as being ethnics and non-whites as being racial groups

Back 7

•The dominant view in America
“Races”
•Asians, Blacks, Native Americans
“Ethnic Groups”
• Hispanics, Jews, Muslims, Scotts-Irish

-People talk about Hispanics as if they constitute a racial group

There is a tendency to try to Essentialize a group
-A person is essentially a Latino or Muslim

Front 8

Variability-Process of construction

Back 8

•Ethnic groups are ethnic groups because they have a sense of belonging together based on a common history where they believe that they have developed blood ties with each other
•People have to believe they exist

Front 9

Passing

Back 9

•A reality that individuals historically who were of mixed race, if they phenotypically looked Caucasian, they could essentially slipped into the white race.

Front 10

The Identity Construction Process

Back 10

-When we talk about identity we are talking about Agency (bottom-up process) and Labeling (the conceptualization of groups imposed on those individuals [top-down process])

-White Americans tend to have primary agency, labeling for African Americans is primary
-White Americans have more choice when defining their identity.