Sociology 4949: Outline--Week Fifteen
How do you suppose the particular college students we saw in the movie were recruited?
II. Trends in current race relations
A. Mary Waters: "Optional Ethnicities: For Whites Only?"
1. Symbolic ethnicity
a. "Individuals can choose those aspects of being Italian, for instance,
that appeal to them, and discard those that do not."
b. "Ironically, people celebrate and embrace their ethnic backgrounds
precisely because assimilation has proceeded to the point where such identification
does not have that much influence on their day-to-day life."
2. Race relations and symbolic ethnicity
a. The symbolic ethnic tends to think that all groups are equal; everyone
has a background that is their right to celebrate and pass on to their children.
"I'm Irish; you're African American."
b. "But note that this freedom to include or exclude ancestries in
your identification to yourself and others would not be the same for those
defined racially in our society."
c. Basis for fundamental misunderstandings between whites and minorities.
For whites, what's the big deal? Everybody came from somewhere; everybody
faced prejudice, but they overcame it and put it behind them. Why can't
you do the same?
II. Gans: A New Racial Hierarchy?
A. What might the new hierarchy look like? possible that the basic distinction
may still be the black/white dimension, with blacks still a stigmatized group
and other minorities increasingly incorporated into the white group... not
a prediction, nor a recommendation, but one way to think about current trends
in relation to the history of changing racial distinctions in the past.
B. Instructor: What is the evidence that this might be happening?
C. Why might the dominant white group promote such a changing reconstruction
of racial categories in the United States?
D. Why might current minorities promote/welcome incorporation into the white
group?
E. Trends that provide a basis for his speculations about a new dual racial
hierarchy in the United States:
1. Historic incorporation of Irish, Italians and Jews into the "white"
category a basis for predicting one possible future for American race relations...part
of the whole process of defining these groups as white was contrasting them
with the stigmatized black group... and the eventual culmination of the
whitening process involved high rates of intermarriage (assimilation)
2. Intermarriage: At present, high rates of intermarriage between whites
and "model" Asian minority(about one third of all Asian marriages)suggests
racial distinction there being attenuated; also much higher rates of intermarriage
between whites and Hispanics than between whites and African Americans
3. Economic trends toward greater inequality...who will get the college-type
jobs and who will be relegated to the low-wage, nonbenefit service jobs?
4. Racial tolerance: "increasing white tolerance for racial differences,
except with respect to blacks" Instructor: How much difference does a black president make? Will the Republicans be able to revive Nixon's southern strategy in the next elections, maybe this time with the addition of an anti-immigrant strategy?
5. Among college graduates, more class homogramy than race homogamy (again,
except with respect to African Americans)
E. General theory of the conditions under which a societal reconstruction
of racial categories seems likely
1. An influx of immigrants who do not fit existing racial categories and
class backgrounds (Instructor: African and Caribbean black immigrants also tending to be from higher educational and social class backgrounds... doesn't fit Gans as well)
2. A healthy economy with sufficient room for upward mobility even for
poorer immigrants (Instructor: Here's the biggest change Gans didn't expect; how long will the unemployment rate stay near 10% and the underemployment rate constitute another 7% or so?)
3. A lack of demand for new racial scapegoats (Instructor: what about the Mexican border and the new law about illegal immigrants in Arizona? Is there a racial element in the "tea parties?"
4. An at least temporary demand for model minorities (Instructor: see the above)
Instructor: How does the drastic decline in the power of the union movement play into this whole process of race-making and incorporation into the white majority? What does it mean that the working class competes with workers in countries all over the globe?
Remember Karen Brodkin's comment in How Jews Became White Folks: "As with most chicken-and-egg problems, it's hard to know which came first. Did Jews and other Euro-ethnics become white because they became middle-class? That is, did money whiten? Or did being incorporated into an expanded version of whiteness open up the economic doors to middle-class status. Clearly, both tendencies were at work."
Instructor: And yes, eventually the whole process also played out in terms of intermarriage. For Jews in late 19th century America, the intermarriage rate with nonJews was 5%; by 1990, it was over 50%.
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