6.1 Ethnicity and Race

• Each Weekend in May, NYC celebrates its ethnic diversity by closing a street and a million or so people come to try foods from different cultures and dance to other music.

• The threads of diversity are known as ethnicity.

• No single trait or characteristic defines an ethnicity, one can be recognized from their language, religion or national origin.

• Race is an outdated categorization of humans based on outward physical characteristics such as skin colour, hair texture, or eye colour or shape.

• Natural selection favours the transmission of characteristics that allows humans to adapt to their environment such as climate.

• Genetic drifts are when a group is isolated from its members for too long they begin to develop other traits.

• Racial categorization is an outdated way of understanding human variation.

• Racial categorization is so widespread that people connect their intellectual ability or negative characteristics with their race.

• Race has nothing to do with human characteristics and it cannot be connected with nationality or ethnicity.

• Ethnocentrism is the tendency to evaluate other cultures from the standards of one’s own

  • To feel superior or look down on others.

• Territorial isolation strengthens ethnic separatism as they retain their identification

  • Ethnic minorities in many countries may have completely different traits than the majority.

• Ethnic cleansing is a polite word for genocide

  • The Holocaust, the Soviets killing Asians. These are all examples of ethnic cleansing as they try to eradicate the population.

• Very few homelands exist within America, Chinatown and Little Italy are places of spatial refuge and support systems in an alien culture realm.

• Xenophobia is the fear of foreigners on the part of the host society.

6.2 Immigration Streams

• The diversity found in America and Canada is due to the continuous flows of immigrants coming from all over the world.

  • The first wave started from the pioneer settlement to the 1870s made up of Northern and Western Europeans.

  • Then, the second group were the forced slaves from Africa

  • It all slowed down with the great recession and wars but started up again in the mid 20th century.

• The United States accepts the most immigrants of any country each year with 13% of its population being born outside the country.

6.3 Acculturation and Assimilation

• In America and Canada, there is no single minority because it is so diverse,

  • This is leading them to become a country with no racial or ethnic majority and by 2050 America will be multiracial as no group will consist of 50% or more.

  • Amalgamation theory is the formal term for the traditional “melting pot” concept of the merging of many immigrant ethnic heritages into a composite American mainstream.

• The process of acculturation is the adoption of attitudes, behavior, speech and other things that the immigrants pick up.

  • This leads them to lose much of their separate cultural identity.

  • It is common to see dominant groups also picking up things from the minorities.

• The language barrier made it difficult for others to get employment. This is why immigrant communities in different cities are creating their own sorts of economies which closes the language barrier as they provide a service to their community.

• When an ethnic group cannot be distinguished from society, this is called assimilation.

• It is when they follow the customs of the majority and are employed in similar positions as the majority.

• Spatial assimilation is measured by the degree of residential segregation that sets off the minority group from the larger general community.

• It is not expected that ethnic groups will undergo full assimilation, Canada established multiculturalism in the 70s as a national policy.

  • It was designed to reduce tensions between ethnic and language groups.

• Australia, Canada, and the United States seek to incorporate their immigrant minorities into composite national societies.

• The close association between territory and ethnicity is well recognized and sometimes politically disruptive

  • Indigenous ethnic groups have developed over time in specific locations and, through ties of kinship, language, culture, religion, and shared history, have established themselves in their own and others’ eyes as distinctive peoples with defined homeland areas.

• The dissolution of the Soviet Union freed 14 ethnically based unions that were dominated by Russia.

• The Indigenous community were never a single ethnic or cultural group

  • They came over thousands of years, settled in many different places, spoke different languages and had different customs.

  • They have completely rejected the goal of assimilation in the national mainstream culture.

• Many social and ethnic groups have made a regional concentration and impression in areas in America and Canada.

• The English became the charter group when they arrived and established cultural norms and standards against the other immigrant groups.

• Since the British already took over much of the East when they settled, other immigrant streams essentially leapfrogged over them towards the west.

• Areas of ethnic concentration are called ethnic islands.

  • They are characterized usually by a strong sense of community, ethnic islands frequently placed their distinctive imprint on the rural landscape by retaining home-country barn and house styles and farmstead layouts, while their inhabitants may have retained their language, manner of dress, and customs.

  • As generations pass by, their identities begin to diminish and dispersions occur.

• African Americans were confined to rural areas of the South and South-East before the civil war.

  • During the war, many new industries began to form so the African-American population began to disperse across the country

  • Between the 40s and 70s over 5 million left the South

  • The South is still home to half of the black population

• Hispanic Americans are a diverse group of those with a Spanish origin.

  • Over 50% of the population claimed they were white while ⅓ claimed another race in the census.

  • They are also the fastest-growing group in the country.

  • Many Mexican Americans are dispersed throughout the South and the South West.

  • Many Cubans and Puerto Ricans took refuge throughout Florida during and after the Castro revolution

  • Many settled in major cities like L.A, NYC, Chicago and New Jersey.

• After the Immigration Act was abolished the Asian population grew from 1.5 million to 17 million in 2016 and it continues to grow.

  • Korea, China, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam all send hundreds of thousands of immigrants each year.

  • Educated Asians are now coming into high paying jobs, others study in the states and then become a citizen in a couple of years.

  • 25% of the foreign-born population is Asian.

  • Asians took home in Hawaii, LA, NYC and other metropolitan areas.

• Even though immigrants seek residence in all parts of the United States, they are always concentrated and not dispersed.

• Six states, California, Texas, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Florida have the most immigrants.

• In Canada, immigrants are also concentrated in the largest gateway cities: Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver.

• The stamp of the Quebecois is overwhelming.

  • They are French-Canadians with distinct ethnic character, language, legal principles, religion, arts, and cuisine.

  • Quebec stands away from Canada.

  • There were only 65000 of them originally when they came in the 1700s but now there are millions.

  • Québec City is the cultural heart of French Canada.

6.4 Urban Ethnic Diversity and Segregation

• “Koreatown” and “Little Mogadishus” have joined the “Chinatowns,” “Little Italys,” and “Germantowns” of earlier eras as part of the American urban scene.

  • They are well-defined subcommunities.

  • Each newcomer came and tried to develop a community with those like them.

  • The increasing diversity made identifiable enclaves in large American cities.

  • Immigrant groups measure the social distance between the minority and the charter group

    • The greater the distance the harder it is to assimilate

• Segregation is when ethnic groups us bit divided between the rest of the population

• The residential dissimilarity index indicates the separation of the population in urban neighborhoods.

  • In Milwaukee, the area was rated an 82 which means 82% of black or white people would have to move to different neighborhoods for the population to be equally distributed.

  • Segregation is still high in America but it has declined over the last 50 years.

• When a culture finds an ethnic group as threatening they tend to spatially isolate themselves.

• The rejected minorities are forced to the poorest available housing.

  • They get forced into low-paying jobs that are labor intensive.

• Minorities group themselves because it provides defense, support, preservation and group assertion.

• Ethnic companies are not permanent; they become mixed over generations and lose their identity within 3-4 generations.

• When ethnic clusters appear they may be called colonies and newer immigrants may want to join them.

• When the cluster faces discriminatory actions it can be termed a ghetto.

  • Early ghettos were neighborhoods in Rome where the Jews lived, or New Orleans before the civil war where many black people lived.

• Transnationalism is when a country maintains strong ties with more than one country and often that is a result of the social and business connection with their homeland.

• Immigration in the later 20th century affected the broad regional ethnic makeup of the states.

6.5 Cultural Transfer

• Immigrants come to their destinations with skills they bring their appropriate dress, foods, building styles, religion.

• They may modify, abandon or even pass this onto the host culture.

• They generally do not get passed on but they do get modified

• Assimilation is also much quicker if the two cultures share similar traits.

6.6 The Ethnic Landscape

• Landscape evidence of ethnicity may be subtle but it can be obvious with the design of churches, barns or names of towns.

• Ethnic groups may be reflecting old ways that are no longer used but it shows and represents their culture.

• The distinctive landscape elements of ethnic communities come in different forms: farming practices, architecture, monuments, gardens, places of worship, specialty shops, ethnic institutions, and festivals that take over streets or city parks for a designated period of time.

• House colors can also reflect their culture.

• It can be difficult in the states to see as the accelerated assimilation has made people lose the visible features of their homeland.