APHUGE: Ethnicities and Distributions

Vocabulary flashcards covering the distribution of ethnicities, historical segregation, political forces, and ethnic conflicts based on human geography lecture notes.

Ethnicity

Identity with a group of people who share cultural traditions from a particular homeland or hearth, including language, religion, customs, and ancestry.

Race

Identity with a group perceived to share a biological ancestor; often based on physical traits such as skin color and tied to historical social constructions of power.

Nationality

Identity with a group of people who share legal attachment and allegiance to a country, characterized by citizenship, legal status, and national symbols.

U.S. African American Distribution

Predominantly concentrated in the Southeast in states like Mississippi and Georgia due to the legacy of plantation agriculture and later the Great Migration to the urban North.

U.S. Hispanic American Distribution

Concentrated in the Southwest in states like Texas and California due to proximity to Latin America and migration from Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.

U.S. Asian American Distribution

Most concentrated on the West Coast, specifically in California and Hawaii, following immigration waves from East and Southeast Asia after $1965$.

U.S. Native American Distribution

Prominent in the Southwest, Great Plains, and Alaska due to historical removal, reservations, and preserved tribal lands like the Navajo Nation.

Chain Migration

The social process by which immigrants from a particular town follow others from that town to a particular city or neighborhood, often leading to ethnic enclaves.

Ethnic Enclave

A neighborhood or local area within a city where an ethnic group clusters for cultural cohesion and economic support, such as Chinatown or Little Havana.

Redlining

The practice where government and banks denied loans to non-white neighborhoods, resulting in long-term ethnic clustering, disinvestment, and modern wealth gaps.

Apartheid

A legal system in South Africa from $1948$ to $1994$ that enforced racial separation by forcing Black South Africans into homelands and controlling their movement and jobs.

Great Migration

The historical movement of African Americans between $1916$ and $1970$ from the rural South to industrial jobs in Northern cities like Chicago, Detroit, and New York.

De Jure Segregation

Separation of groups that is enforced by law, exemplified by the U.S. Jim Crow Laws and South African Apartheid.

De Facto Segregation

Separation that occurs without legal requirement, often driven by economic factors, housing discrimination, and social patterns like white flight.

Restrictive Covenants

Historical housing policies that barred home sales to non-whites, contributing to the ethnic clustering seen in urban areas.

Multinational State

A state that contains more than one nation or ethnic identity, such as the United Kingdom, which includes England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Stateless Nation

A distinct ethnic group with a shared language and culture that lacks a sovereign country of its own, such as the Kurds in the Middle East.

Centripetal Force

An attitude or force that tends to unify people and enhance support for a state, such as national symbols, a shared language, or national holidays.

Centrifugal Force

An attitude or force that tends to divide a state, such as ethnic divisions, separatist movements, or religious tensions.

Ethnic Conflict

A struggle between ethnic groups over power, land, or identity within a country, often exacerbated when political borders do not match ethnic divisions.

Ethnic Cleansing

The forced removal of an ethnic group from a territory to make a region ethnically pure, such as the actions in Bosnia during the $1990s$.

Genocide

The deliberate and systematic extermination of an entire ethnic, racial, or national group, such as the killing of over $800,000$ Tutsis in Rwanda in $1994$.

Balkanization

The process by which a state breaks down through conflicts among its ethnicities into smaller, often hostile regions.

Failed State

A country whose government has lost authority and can no longer provide basic order or services, often leading to ethnic competition for power.