What is Multiculturalism?

Origins of the modern nation-state

• Kymlicka: Imitation of “homogenous” ancient Greek city-states

• Ernest Gellner: product of industrialization and urbanization

• Benedict Anderson: an “imagined community” produced when mass media and markets standardize language and worldviews

• No nation is really homogenous as these theories suggest, so diversity often appears to be a problem.

Nationalism 

• belief that cultural/ethnic boundaries should correspond to political boundaries (each nation should have a state)

• Modern differences are naturalized by imposing them onto a diverse and complicated past.

• Includes all members of a society in a national culture, but denies internal variety and emphasizes contrasts between cultures

Will Kymlicka 

• Canadian political philosopher

• Argues that sole focus on individual rights undermines minority communities.

  • Thus, ethnic groups should have varying degrees of group rights

  • His work attempts to reconcile this with liberal political theory that mostly focuses on individuals

Classical Liberalism 

• NOT the counterpart to conservatism as defined in modern American politics

• A political tradition associated with the Great Enlightenment and French, American, and other revolutions against absolute monarchy

• Supports individual rights and democratic secular government

• European emphasis on the individual makes it antagonistic to idea of collective identities

Universal Human Rights 

• If each individual has the same innate, human rights, then diversity should not be a problem.

• Ethnicity, like religion, could be considered a private matter which does not concern the state

• Affirmative action programs may be employed temporarily (if at all) to alleviate ethnic disparities and put individuals on even standing

• Supporters reject any form of permanent legal recognition of ethnic differences, but minorities are not always protected by majority rule…

Ethnic Conflicts 

• In spite of constitutional guarantees of human rights, minorities are often oppressed or unrepresented in democracies

• Multi-ethnic states have conflicts over laws establishing official languages, religions, educational curriculum, land rights, etc.

• Such conflicts cause states to experience unequal distribution of power, minority separatist movements, and even civil war

• Kymlicka argues that group rights are a sort of compromise that protects minorities and the integrity of diverse nation-states.

Types of Minorities 

• National minority: has distinct territory, language, and history of self- governance that predates the nation

• Often has historical or treaty-protected rights to self-governance

• Ethnic Group: distinct cultural community that arrives via immigration, voluntary or coerced

Why are group rights good for society? 

• Equality: can alleviate unequal distribution of resources and power

• History: ensures historic rights of national minorities to ancestral land and self-rule

• Diversity: protects cultural diversity as an asset that is intrinsically beneficial

Good vs Bad Multiculturalism 

• External protections - protect minority community from tyranny of majority

• Internal restrictions - restrict freedoms of individuals within the minority community by allowing oppressive traditional practices

• External protections fit within framework of liberal human rights, but restrictions do not

Types of Group Rights 

• Self-government - granting of limited sovereignty within the nation, like Native American tribes

• Poly-ethnic rights - financial support and legal protection of traditional practices

• Representation - designated seat or proportion of delegates in national government

Types of Poly-Ethnic rights 

• Recognition - holidays, heritage months, cultural districts

• Language rights - education, signage, documents in native language

• Religious exemptions - to military service, dress codes, etc.

• Affirmative Action - efforts to recruit minorities for employment and/or admission to higher education

West and the Rest 

Stuart Hall (1932-2014)

• Jamaican-born, British-educated sociologist and cultural theorist

  • “godfather of multiculturalism”

• Media, popular culture, and politicians produce social inequalities through discourse

What is Discourse?

• A concept developed by the French theorist Michel Foucault

• A set of statements that provide means for representing knowledge

• They allow knowledge to be constructed in a particular way, but limit the ability to construct it in other ways.

• “all social practices...have a discursive aspect,” so “discourse enters into and influences all social practices” (201-2)’

• To use a discourse is to put oneself inside it. Speaking of the West and the Rest positions oneself as dominant or subjugated.

Ferdinand de Saussure-structural linguist

• We understand language and the world through binary oppositions

• Day is the opposite of night, self is the opposite of other

• Therefore, the “West” and “whiteness” emerged as Europeans came into contact with other peoples and contrasted themselves with them.

• Defining others as the opposite of the civilized, modern, and Christian West justified their domination

Stereotypical Dualism 

• Differences are glossed over and reduced to a simplified imagined essence

• This stereotype is divided into its good and bad aspects (dualism) (215-216)

• Ex. noble savage and cannibal, Sambo and Brute, China doll and dragon lady, model minority and yellow peril

Orientalism 

• Way of depiction Eastern or Other cultures in an romanticizing, exoticizing, and condescending way that tends to replicate and justify power disparities.

• Edward Said first described the idea with regard the Middle East, but it has since been applied to Western depictions of all the “rest”

Stereotypes and Agency 

• Stereotypes reduce the “other” to cardboard cut-out and do not credit them with any sort of humanity or agency

• They project one’s own fantasies or fears

• Impose one’s own norms

• Portray the other as an ideal or its antithesis, never a complex human

• Stereotype threat: mentioning a stereotype can make people more likely to conform to it

Race and Racism 

What is Race?

• Race - “social mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to those populations brought together in colonial America: the English and other European settlers, the conquered Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide slave labor” (AAA).

• Racial differences are socially constructed and reproduced and have no clear basis in biology

• Differences in skin pigmentation do not correspond to distinct genetic groups.

• But the constructed connotations of differences in skin color affect socialization, expectations, and opportunity.

Race v Ethnicity 

• Both are based on ideas of one’s ancestry and can be the basis for discrimination.

• However, race is based on observable characteristics and ethnicity can be less visible.

• Race is imposed by the way others treat someone, while ethnicity is often based on self definition.

• Ethnicity is often a specific national or subnational origin, but race is more broad and less specific.

• In the US, race tends to have stronger implications of hierarchy and more damaging stereotypes.

One Drop-Rule 

• Since colonial times, there have been many different terms to describe multiracial children of Blacks and other races outside the US, but in the US, they are just considered Black

• This (once) legal and social rule is a type of hypo-descent (where children inherit the status of the lower status parent), which defines anyone with a single drop of Black blood as Black

• This is a theory of folk biology in that it is culturally particular and has no objective basis

Functions of Racism 

• Based on visibly observable differences, race is one way of differentiating self from the other

• Historically, race developed as an ideological construct that justified domination of one group over others.

• Racism justifies and reproduces global inequalities in economics and power.

• Instead of outright subjugation, racism today results in unequal access to social capital, de facto segregation, and downplaying the historical causes of inequality

How do Children View Race? 

• Infants prefer faces of their caregiver’s race and are better at recognizing faces of their own race

• By preschool, they learn to prefer the majority race, even though parents generally don’t discuss race with young children

• But studies show that children are more likely to recall verbal descriptions of race than visual representations

• Hirschfeld argues that this is a function of humans’ mental capacity to pay attention to “socially relevant information” (20), not an innate racial sensibility

Race and Evolution 

• Contact between peoples with noticeable inborn differences is too recent to affect evolution, but evolution may have selected for the ability to recognize group difference

• Children learn to distinguish race because it seems like a relevant aspect of group identity

• People attribute differences in appearance to those of different groups, whether based on reality or not

• We may have evolved to notice differences in clothing, language, body modification, and now this capacity causes even infants to notice race

Made in America: Inventing the White Race 

• Colonialism and conflict with the Ottomans produced the idea of Europeans, but the idea of a white race came about in colonial America

• The first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619 as indentured servants, the same as many poor Europeans

• As indentured servants became free, a peasantry developed that demanded land, higher wages, etc.

• In the last half of the 17th century, Virginia law began to acknowledging a class of permanent slaves, which became the norm for Africans and illegal for whites

• This not only created an enslaved race, but it comparatively elevated poor whites and gave them a stake in maintaining a racial hierarchy.

Who is to blame for racism? 

• In 1960s, racism was believed to be a problem of individual bigotry

  • This can be fixed by teaching tolerance and punishing discrimination

• Late 1960s, some came to see racism as affect of broader patterns of socialization

• Institutional racism-redlining, racial profiling, subconscious prejudice, systematic devaluation of minority cultures

  • requires difficult structural solutions

  • Opponents to structural attempts to combat racism favor the colorblind approach

The Great Migration and White Flight 

• Great Migration: 1910-1970 millions of Blacks left the south for manufacturing jobs in northern cities

• White Flight: In the mid-20th century, white immigrants leave diverse cities for the suburbs, but restrictive covenants and discriminatory lending prevented Blacks from doing so.

• Outsourcing: Manufacturing jobs move to rural areas and out of the country, increasing urban unemployment

• Gentrification: In the last few decades, upper class people have moved into urban areas, displacing poorer residents and concentrating poverty

Discrimination in Housing 

• Redlining: FHA guidelines declare diverse communities to be high risk and all-white suburbs to be low-risk

• Block-busting: encouraging whites to sell homes because a Black family is moving in, which will lower property values

• Steering: real estate agents show minority home buyers homes in lower income minority areas and whites homes in white areas

• All are banned in 1968, but segregation persists

• Recently, minorities were inordinately likely to receive subprime mortgages and suffer foreclosure

Cultural Capital: one reason why residential segregation matters

• Power is associated with symbols and the ruling class determines which symbols are valued, defines what is good taste

• Etiquette, proper speech and dress, education, and appreciation of fine art are all forms of symbolic capital

• These are more accessible to those with economic and political power and can be learned by interacting with them

• Thus, race is also a major factor in determining access to cultural capital in the US

Institutional Racism 

Racial Profiling 

• African Americans are overrepresented in prisons and tend to receive longer sentences for the same crimes as whites

• Nationally, Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be searched and arrested during traffic stops, and Whites are more likely to get off with a warning.

• Statewide studies show minorities are more likely to be stopped, and that searches of Whites are just as likely to find contraband.

Race and Lethal Force 

• There is no systematic data collection of lethal police shootings and race

• But studies of media reported shootings by The Washington Post and ProPublica estimate that unarmed Blacks are 7-21 times more likely to be killed by police than unarmed Whites.

•  This can partially be explained by the militarization of policing and prevalence of poverty and crime in minority-dominated neighborhoods, but Whites are overrepresented in most police forces nationwide.

Racist Movements and White Nationalism 

Does Anti-Racism Provoke More Racism? 

• The alt-right and racists claim that immigration, multiculturalism, abortion, and homosexuality are part of a conspiracy to produce white genocide

Racist Ideologies 

• Fight social change and decline of White dominance thought to be caused by vast, and often Jewish-led, conspiracy

• Organizing in anticipation of inevitable race war

• Church of the Creator/ Identity Christians: Army of God needed to save Whites from extinction and combat abortion,homosexuality, and immigration

• KKK: founded in Reconstruction South by former Confederate soldiers to keep free Blacks down, revived in 1915 to combat immigrants and Catholics as well, then resurges in Civil Rights era

• Racist Skinheads: begin as blue collar hippie opponents, but many groups become racist in late 20th century

• White Nationalist Alt Right: organizes in support of white pride, anti-immigration and colorblind policies, portraying whites as victims of color conscious policies and anti-racists

Anti-Semitism 

• Some Christians blame Jewish people for killing Jesus

• For centuries, Christianity banned usury, but Judaism did not, so many Jewish people became wealthy through banking

• Insular communities, resistant to intermarriage and assimilation breeds distrust

• As a people without a nation, national majority is often suspicious of their loyalties

• Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 1903 Russian forgery cited as proof of Jewish plot for world domination

• Involvement of Jewish individuals in American media, finance, and politics inspires conspiracy theorists

Strain Theory and Anomie 

• Anomie: “rootlessness or normlessness” when individuals have no sense of place or purpose in society Sense of frustration when society presents goals without a realistic path to attain them

• Strain theory posits that this can result in individual cases of criminality

• Gangs, cults, and terrorist groups can provide a sense of purpose and identity that relieves anomie and seems like a productive alternative to self-destructive criminality (Blazak 987)

Anomie and Skinhead Recruitment 

• Shifts in the economy, demographics, gender roles, and a shift to multicultural curriculum facilitate racist groups’ recruitment because they

• Restore one’s sense of self-worth by reassuring one of heterosexual white male superiority

• Use minorities, homosexuals, immigrants, and feminists as scapegoats for one’s frustrations

• Advocate preparing for race war and committing hate crimes are a simple solution for one’s problems

Representation in Sports 

Why do Sports and its Symbols Matter 

• Artificial communities that cut across racial, ethnic, and economic bounds

• College and high school represent formative times in people's lives and sports’ allegiances are important parts of peoples’ identity

• But presence misappropriation of native symbols, erasure of actual Indians, and presence of Black athletes performing for Whites symbolizes American imperialism

Imperial Nostalgia and Neocolonial Fantasy 

• Indian identity is frozen and homogenized and Euro-Americans placed in role of conquerors (164)

• Indian dance was perceived as “wild dangerously spontaneous, hypersexual, and transgressive”

• Chief Illinewek’s dance is one way of rewriting this history and mourning for the loss of the conquered civilization

• It “serves to constrain the ability of the white imagination to know and engage contemporary and genuine historical Native Americans” (166-7)

• Positive representations intended to honor Indians still reify stereotypes and gloss over real modern struggles

Post-Racial Racism 

How to define racism? 

• Ideological: focuses on “processes of racial signification and processes of racialization”

• Skin color becomes associated with essentialized traits, provoking racist practices

• Structuralist: “racial privilege as a function of social location or economic organization”

• Economic and political division of labor allows one racial group to maintain power over another (Ansell 33)

• Ansell aims to combine and show the inadequacies of these

Howard Winant and Michael Omi’s Theory of Racial Formation

• Racial signification: associating race with a role, function, or lack thereof in society

• Racial structuration: how society creates certain expectations and opportunities for different racial groups and how individuals reinforce or challenge these roles

• Structuration: Social structure consists of the context and preconditions of action and the cumulative result of human actions and interactions (structure shapes agency and agency determines structure) (Anthony Giddens)

• Racial formation: how cultural significance of race and structural effects of race interact in racial projects

Amy Ansell 

• Dean of liberal arts and professor of sociology at Emerson College

• Specializes in political sociology and race, especially racial discourse of the “new right”

• Argues that racism persists in allegedly post-racial society through masquerading as anti-anti-racism

Ansell’s Criticisms of Colorblind Approach (34)

• Assumes racism results from individual prejudice and is mostly an artifact of the past

• Ignores larger systematic issues

• Pursues equality of opportunity, but not equal outcome

• Blames minorities for their own marginalization

• Assumes some degree of inequality is inevitable, and defends the status quo

• Can act as cover for racism disguised as anti-anti-racism

Characteristics of Anti-anti-racism (Ansell 30)

• Coded language (urban, thugs, gang members)

• Denials of racist intent

• Co-opting of antiracist discourse

• Focus on cultural differences and national identity instead of race

• Portrays misguided liberals and self-serving bureaucrats as the enemy instead of other races

Restrictive vs. dominance approaches

• Restrictive: racist projects “discriminate against or give advantage to an individual on the basis of the color of his or her skin” (Ansell 32) (anti-anti racism isn’t racist)

• Includes Winant and Omi’s conception of racism

• Dominance: discourse is racist if it “establishes, justifies, and/or sustains practices that maintain systematically asymmetrical relations of racial domination

• Does not necessarily use category of race (Ansell 33)

• Sees color blindness as racist if it allows racial domination to persist

West and East Asia  

Stereotypes 

• Oversimplify complex world through defining boundaries between empowered and disempowered peoples in ways that tend to reinforce dominant ideology and powers that be

• Not polyvalent (open to interpretation), but ambivalent

History of Asian Stereotypes 

• “Yellow peril” begins with threatened Mongol invasion of Europe in 13th cent.

• Reemerges in US with the growth of Asian immigration in late 19th cent and assertiveness of Japan’s government in early 20th century

• Model minority stereotype emerges in the ‘60s with more upper class immigrants, interest in rehabilitating Japan and to use racial triangulation to denounce Black activism

• Ascendance of Japan in the ‘80s leads both stereotypes to resurface, and they are now applied to China and Chinese Americans.

• Stereotypes emerge with regard to East Asians, but largely become applied to South Asians, too.

What’s wrong with being a model minority 

• Stereotype of Asian success renders more recent involuntary immigrant struggles invisible

• Many South Vietnamese had to flee the country and spend years living in Thailand refugee camps 

• Exile mentality and language barriers produce low voting rates and lack of political representation

• Low rate of English proficiency and high rate of incarceration among Cambodian and Hmong Americans

• Racial triangulation used to deride other minorities and denounce public assistance for them

History of Arabs in the U.S.

• 1880-1945: most immigrants are eastern sect Christians from Greater Syria, and are classified as Turks or Syrians

• Most anglicize their names, speak English, and identify as White (40)

• 1914 SC judge rules that Syrians are white, but not eligible for citizenship like Euro-Americans

• Post-1945 - new immigrants bring Arab nationalism and inspire growth of Arab identity More Muslims, women and refugees from warfare

• Post-1965: more professional and geographically diverse, and more politically and culturally tied to homeland

• Media turns against Arabs beginning with 1967 Arab-Israeli War

• Pan-Arab identity and organizations grow in response to marginalization (41)

Transnational LGBTQ Identity and Politics

From subject to citizen:South Asians in the US

• 1898 - There are about 2,000 South Asians in the US, mostly Sikhs from Punjab

• 1917 South Asians excluded from immigration as part of the “Asiatic barred zone”

• 1923 Thind case rules that South Asians are “Caucasian,” but not white and therefore ineligible for naturalization

• 1946 Luce-Cellar Act allows naturalization of Filipino and 100 Indian immigrants and establishes quota of 100 per year

• 1965 Quota system repealed and South Asian immigration increases

• 1970 census classifies those from the “Indian subcontinent” as white, but the Assoc.of Indians in America lobbies for recognition as Asian

• 2018 Supreme Court of India overturns former British colonial law banning gay sex

Monisha Das Gupta 

• Asst. Prof. of Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies at University of Hawaii

• PhD in sociology; feminist, immigrant rights and workers rights activist

• 1994-97 - influenced by experiences obtaining work visas as international student and participating in immigrant rights activism

• In Unruly Immigrants, she examines feminist, labor, and queer “South Asian”organizations and argues that they construct a “‘transnational complex of rights’ in which rights are mobile rather than rooted in national membership” (4)

Imperialist Discourses

• British empire imposed heteronormative Victorian sexual mores on subjects viewed as “hypersexual”

• Developmental narrative - non-Western LGBTQ people must be Westernized, modernized by removing cultural repression

• “Hypervisibility of South Asians as exotic partners rather than on invisibility” (177)

• Including non-South Asians runs the risk of being objectified and tasked with educating outsiders

Intersectional challenges

• LGBTQ people of color are often marginalized within ethnic communities and within LGBTQ organizations

• Visibility: “Coming out” is empowering for some, but invites unwanted scrutiny for immigrants of color

• Organizations that merely provide community have limited political effects

• White gays and lesbians can claim rights based on being consumer citizens, but POC face barriers to obtaining the necessary resources

Universal vs. culturally particular sexualities

• “gay” and “lesbian” refer to specific sexual orientations and social identities distinct to Euro-American culture

• Some organizations use indigenous terms, but some also have non-translatable orientations/identities

• Hijra/khusra - South Asian gender of biological males who dress as women, live in communal groups, perform blessings and rituals, and sometimes beg or do sex work

Other Genders 

• Two-spirit people - Sioux term used for Native Americans who sometimes dress or perform work of the opposite sex. This are often seen as spiritually gifted and serve as shamans or healers

• Hijra/Khusra - men in South Asia who dress as women and live in groups. They perform ritual dances and blessings at weddings and childbirths 

• Eunuchs- castrated males who serve in imperial women’s quarters in Chinese and some West Asian empires, also serve as opera singers in Europe

• The male/female dichotomy in our culture leads many to reject intersex or transgender individuals

Transnationalism vs national oppressions

• LGBTQ activists, feminists and labor organizers organize against heteronormative, patriarchal, capitalist nations

• “Not in the hope of becoming rights-bearing citizens of one nation or the other but to contest the interplay of U.S. and South Asian nationalisms that disenfranchise them through context-specific techniques” (163)

• Transnational activism challenges national citizenship as the sole basis of rights, but threatens to alienate them from ethnic and national communities

Should Immigrants Assimilate?

Portes and Zhou: segmented assimilation

• 3 options/segments:

  • Traditional melting pot assimilation: integration into the mainstream (not always possible)

  • Assimilation into the underclass combining “rapid economic advancement with deliberate preservation of the immigrant community’s values and solidarity” (319) (selective assimilation)

Variables determining the type of assimilation

• Political relations between sending and receiving nations

• Economic state of receiving nation

• Intensity of discrimination in the receiving nation

• Presence of a phenotypically similar marginalized racial or ethnic group

Factors impacting immigrant success

• Negative factors: color, location, absence of “mobility ladders”

• Positive factors: government programs, aid from sympathetic elements of the host population, help from co-ethnic community networks

Case study :Field High School

• Majority of those with Spanish surnames drop out

• 40% of native-born white students drop out

• 35% of those with limited English ability (probable recent immigrants) drop out

• Segmented assimilation may explain this trend

Ethnic identification among Mexican students in California

• Recent Mexican immigrants: maintain Mexican identity

• Mexican-oriented students: speak Spanish at home but fluent in English, cultural ties with U.S. and Mexico, distinguish themselves from recent arrivals, highest achieving Hispanic students

• Chicano/as: 2nd and 3rd generation, conflict with above groups and white society

• Cholo/as: identifiable by dress and swagger, visibly indistinguishable from Chicano/as

Oppositional identity

• “Cholos” (not my term, but that used by students) feel a need to choose between ethnic solidarity and academics

• They see their parents and grandparents in menial jobs and suffering discrimination

• Participating in reactive subculture is means of protecting their self-worth

Cultural Hybridization: The Chicano alternative

• Instead of forming an oppositional identity, or selectively assimilating, some mix old and new cultures

• Chicano Movement expresses pride in hybrid Mexican-American-indigenous identity

• Includes political activism in addition to hybrid styles, cuisine, and music, like Metalachi

Punjabi Sikhs Selective assimilation

• Avoid assimilation and do better academically than white peers

• Don’t settle in inner city and don’t have a community of poor South Asians

• Economic success of immigrants gives 2nd and 3rd generation belief that education will result in economic rewards

Selective Assimilation and Oppositional Identity in Belgium

• Extremist recruits in Europe tend to be marginalized second generation immigrants

• Moroccans tend to speak French, have less organized community, and want to assimilate

• Turks are slower to learn French, live in more insular communities, and take pride in retaining Turkish culture.

• Suspects in recent attacks were Moroccan, but Morocco does not have substantial extremist community.

• Terrorism seems to be inspired by failure of assimilation (rather than lack of assimilation), which produces an oppositional identity.

Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and other West Indian immigrants to Miami

• Cubans receive more government and other support, do best economically, identify as Cuban more than American, and have fewest ties outside ethnic community

• Groups with darker skin suffer more discrimination and tend to assimilate to American underclass

• Most Cubans agree the US is the best country, but most of the mostly black groups disagree

Language and White Public Space 

Major milestones in U.S.immigration law

• 1882: Chinese Exclusion Act excludes an entire ethnic group from immigration for the first time

• 1924: Immigration Act sets quotas for immigrants from Europe based on proportions in 1890 census, bans immigration from Asia, and allows unlimited immigrants from the western hemisphere

• 1965: Quota system replaced by annual limit of 20k immigrants per country with preferences for refugees, relatives of citizens, and skilled workers

• 1990: Per country caps replaced with 700k/year total limit (now 675k), not including refugees, with preference for family or employer-sponsored immigrants and those from underrepresented countries

Natalia Molina and Racial Scripts

• Prof. Molina teaches in the UCSD history department and specializes race, citizenship, and Mexican immigration to southern California

• Racial Scripts: “practice of defining one racialized group with what is attributed to another”

• “shaped by power relations, time period, location, material conditions , and specific issues”

• History of Blacks, Native Americans, and other groups affects what it means to be Mexican, Chinese, or other ethnicities in the U.S.

Manifest Destiny: seizing the southwest

• In the Mexican-American War (1846-8), the US seizes the land we’re standing on and much more from Mexico.

• Mexicans, like Native Americans, were considered inferior and unfit for self-rule.

• Mexicans in conquered lands could become citizens, but those with indigenous blood could not vote

• Many lost land and suffered violence and discrimination, and they eventually became treated as non-whites (160)

1924 Immigration Act

• Sets quotas for immigrants from Europe and banned immigration from Asia, but exempted immigrants from the western hemisphere

• Enables Mexican immigration to grow in the wake of Mexican revolution that ended in 1920

• Public outrage that European immigration was more restricted than Mexican led to demonization of Mexicans in the U.S. as “illegal” (158)

• Molina examines references to other groups in public debate about immigration to see how previous groups were used to form a racial script

Race and labor

• Molina argues that the economics of managing labor took precedence over ideology of racial purity in debate

• “dynamics of capitalist expansion always worked at cross purposes to the goal of racial and cultural homogeneity”

• Low wage workers, like Mexicans, were useful, but potential competitors, like Japanese, were seen as threats (159).

• Mexicans (or other racialized groups) tacitly accept racial scripts in fighting to be considered white, and sometimes discriminating against others to do so (169)

• Linguistic anthropology: study of the use of language in social life

• Speech community: group of people that shares the same dialect/language, and to some extent, accompanying norms surrounding its use

  •  but there may be variation in the community and contention about how language should be used can be a means of policing boundaries

• Code-switching: the practice of switching between languages in the course of a conversation

A note on terminology

• Latinx: a gender neutral alternative to Latino/a, which means a “Latin person” in Spanish, referring to someone from Latin American

• Hispanic: includes all Spanish-speakers

• Chicanx/o/a: refers to Mexican-Americans, once considered derogatory, since the 1960s, it has been reclaimed by activists to express pride in mixed Spanish/indigenous heritage

• La Raza: “the race,” refers to the ‘race’ formed by mixing Spanish and indigenous peoples

Jane Hill 

• Linguistic anthropologist at the University of Arizona

• Specializes in Uto-Aztecan languages and language ideologies, especially how language and beliefs about language express and reproduce white racism

• Argues that white public space is constructed by monitoring language use by non-whites while whites normatively and invisibley manipulate Spanish (and non-standard English)

Ebonics vs. “Proper” English

• Beliefs about “proper language,” can be a vehicle for racism

• 1996: Oakland School District recognizes African American Vernacular English (Ebonics) as a legitimate dialect to be used to teach English and other subjects

• National outrage and federal hearings ensue with both sides being accused of racism

• Linguists and anthropologists generally argue or the legitimacy of the dialect, and Hill suggests opposition to Black language is opposition to Blackness in general

White Public Space 

• “a morally significant set of contexts

• that are the most important sites of the practices of a racializing hegemony,

• in which Whites are invisibly normal,

• and in which racialized populations are visibly marginal

• and the objects of monitoring range from individual judgement to Official English legislation” (682)

Puerto Rican Bilingualism

• In private, they fluidly mix English and Spanish

• In the “outer sphere,” languages must be kept separate for fear of being “disorderly”

• Unaccented public English receives Puerto Rican criticism for “acting white”

• But some Whites criticize use of Spanish in public (681), and Albertson’s is currently being sued for forbidding employees in San Diego from speaking Spanish

• Public linguistic failures are site of Puerto Rican racialization, but whites are freely disorderly at boundary between languages as shown by mock Spanish (682)

What is Mock Spanish? 

• Creating a “jocular or pejorative ‘key’” by using “positive or neutral Spanish words in humorous or negative senses”

• using obscene Spanish words for euphemisms

• Making fake Spanish words by adding -o

• Hyper-anglicizing or over-pronouncing Spanish words (682)

Functions of mock Spanish

• ‘elevation of whiteness’ and perjorative racialization of members of historically Spanish-speaking populations”

• Directly indexes speaker’s cosmopolitan-ness and congeniality

• Also works through “indirect indexicality,” has connotations that are never acknowledged by speakers Requires stereotypes of Spanish-speakers as “stupid, politically corrupt, sexually loose, lazy, dirty, and disorderly” to be funny or intelligible (683)

Health Disparities and Latinx Paradox

Latinx Paradox

• despite relative poverty, Hispanic immigrants are the healthiest U.S. demographic in mental and other illnesses

• But their health decreases among 2nd,3rd and later generationHispanic Americans

Possible Reasons Behind the Paradox

• 1. Healthy immigrants: Those who immigrate to the US are generally healthier than those who don’t

• 2. Salmon hypothesis (return migration effects): Sick and elderly immigrants return home, so their illness isn’t measured

• 3. Acculturation: 2nd and later generations adopt poor American lifestyle/diet

• 4. Strong social capital vs. social isolation: Strong Latino families provide support network, but isolation increases in USA

• 5. Marginalization: 1st generation is hopeful, later generations bear the weight of racism and economic inequality

• 6. Invisibility: Diseases of migrant and undocumented workers often go undiagnosed and untreated

Insulating immigrants from poor health

• “Foreign-born Latinos embedded in a neighborhood that had a high percentage of foreign-born residents experienced a significantly lower prevalence of asthma and other breathing problems;

• Those in communities that had a low percentage of foreign-born residents had the highest prevalence overall (even when compared with African Americans).

• Foreign-born Latinos have a respiratory health advantage only in enclave-like settings.”

Explaining the Paradox

• 1. Healthy immigrants: Those who immigrate to the US are generally healthier than those who don’t

• 2. Salmon hypothesis (return migration effects): Sick and elderly immigrants return home, so their illness isn’t measured

• 3. Acculturation: 2nd and later generations adopt poor American lifestyle/diet

• 4. Social and cultural capital: Strong Latino families provide support network, but isolation increases in USA

• 5. Marginalization: 1st generation is hopeful, later generations bear the weight of racism and economic inequality

• 6. Invisibility: Diseases of migrant and undocumented worker often go undiagnosed and untreated

• A-D and 3-6 could be described as forms of structural violence

Structural Violence (Johan Galtung, 1969)

• Describes how the structure of society systematically harms or kills groups of people

• Is a function of the political economic organization of society in which all of its members are complicit, but no one is easily blamed

• Study of illness, excess death, and unequal access to care lets us see real physical effects of inequality

• Often discussed in the field of critical medical anthropology

Kuzawa and Gravlee’s Dilemma

• If race is not biological, why are there health disparities between black and white?

• Race may not be biological, but it affects opportunities, expectations, and resulting stress in ways that are reflected biologically

Problems with existing models for explaining health inequality

• Racial-genetic

  • No clear, genetic dividing lines between races

  • Most chronic illnesses do not have clear genetic cause

• Health behavior/lifestyle

  • controlling for behavioral traits does not alleviate racial disparities

  • tends to blame victims for their illnesses, like calling it a

  • Problem of X “culture”

• Socioeconomic status

  • Socioeconomic class correlates with environment which correlates with health

  • BUT controlling for income and class lowers but does not eliminate racial disparities

  • socioeconomic mobility is not the same for all races and is often shaped by race

Social Structural Model

• “perceived discrimination as a chronic psychosocial stressor that impacts health and health behaviors” (96)

• Developmental plasticity: “our experiences modify our biology and health by altering how our bodies develop” (97)

  • poor nutrition and stress in utero and early childhood impedes development and can cause epigenetic changes

  • thus effects of racially influenced stressors can be passed to the next generation

• Stress due to status incongruence, when lifestyle exceeds what is expected for one’s occupational or educational status, increases blood pressure and decreases health

• Thus, some dark-skinned Black people face stress due to living better than is socially expected of them (K&G 100; Dressler 337)

Structural impacts on health

• Successful members of marginalized minorities suffer higher blood pressure when their high achieved status is not recognized

• This is not just about stress of facing discrimination, but also a sense of powerlessness.

• Infant mortality rates decline in areas of higher political participation and representation, even if this does not increase health services

• These results are difficult to explain individually, but make more sense from a broad perspective of community structural empowerment

Medical Disempowerment

• Doctors are less likely to recommend expensive surgery for Blacks

• Doctors tend to accept a lower quality of life among Blacks

• Because of this, Blacks tend to have lower rates of trust for their doctors

• Social structural model helps us understand how these result from broader social processes (340)

Interethnic Conflict 

Racial context of 1992

• White flight from downtown LA results in concentrated poverty and racial isolation

• National conservative politicians engage in racially inflammatory attack 

• Black Mayor Bradley took his community for granted and catered to white liberals

• Tradition of racism in the LAPD and hardline “tough on crime” policies

Rodney King case

• Rodney King is pulled over and beaten by four white LAPD officers

• The beating is secretly taped by a bystander and leaked to media

• The officers are charged with excessive use of force, but acquitted, sparking riots

• Two officers are later found guilty of violating King’s civil rights in federal court

• King also sues the city of LA for $3.8 million

What was behind the ’92 riots?

• Social contagion: riot caused by too many young men without options, and others join in for “fun and profit” (88)

• Black Protest: ‘90s seemed like a rebellion of an oppressed people like the ‘60s, but it was not relegated to Black neighborhoods, many Latinos were involved, and whites were not targeted as much as Asians (89)

• Rainbow Coalition: disadvantaged united in a “bread riot” against whites, but neither whites or non-whites were really that unified (89-90) Sublime’s interpretation combines this with social contagion

• Bladerunner Scenario: wholesale breakdown of modern society; marginalized standing up to incompetent white

• Multiethnic Conflict: Ethnic enclaves had Balkanized Los Angeles with blacks being displaced by Latinos and alienated by Koreans (90)

E Pluribus Enum 

Robert Putnam 

• Political scientist and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard

• Wrote article in 1995 and book in 2000 called “Bowling Alone” about America’s decline in social capital

• More people are bowling, but leagues are declining

• Social capital: "social networks and the associated norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness" (137)

Three Points 

• Ethnic diversity is increasing everywhere, and this is “an important social asset”

• Even though in the short term, diversity decreases our sense of community and trust of our neighbors

• In the long term, a successful society will “create new forms of social solidarity” and “new, more encompassing identities” (138-9)

Two theories about diversity and social capital:

• Contact hypothesis:

  • Being exposed to other people makes you more familiar and trusting toward them

• Conflict theory:

  • Being exposed to others makes you fear them and trust people like you, particularly due to scarcity in resources

  • Most empirical studies tend to support this

Problems with contact and conflict theories

• Both contact hypothesis and conflict theory share idea that in-group trust (bonding social capital) and out-group trust (bridging social capital) are negatively correlated (143)

• Does a decrease in bridging social capital increase bonding social capital and vice versa?

• Virtually no study has examined in-group attitudes

• So we don’t know much about bonding social capital

Constrict Theory 

• Both forms of social capital are lower in diverse areas

• Rather than in-group solidarity like conflict theory suggests, diversity produces social isolation

• People in diverse neighborhoods tend to “hunker down” (149)

Why diversity leads to “hunkering down”

• Lack of social capital results from social distance

• Social distance is caused by social identity, “sense of who we are” (159)

• Since identity is constructed, we can reconstruct it to increase social capital and decrease social distance

Religion, Ethnicity, Identity

• Religion was once a primary determinant of one’s identity, until intermarriage and bridging capital increased

• So, ethnic identities must be reconstructed, blended, and privatized like religious identities were

• “Syncretic, ‘hyphenated’ identities... enable members of previously separate ethnic groups to see themselves..as members of a shared group” (161)

Solutions 

• We need “a reconstruction of diversity that does not bleach out ethnic specificities, but creates overarching identities” (164)

• More opportunities for interaction across ethnic lines

  • support for English learning

  • federal aid for localities with many immigrants

• Fostering ethnic sub-groups within larger organizations to use bonding social capital to create bridging social capital

Danielle Allen: Wholeness over unity

• The goal of unity is impossible, and tends to marginalize dissenters

• Thinking of our nation as a whole, admits difference and disagreement among the parts

• Instead of expecting unity, we should realize we must make small sacrifices for constituent parts.

Allen’s solutions

• Talking to strangers

• Democratic citizenship based on reciprocal self-interest, negotiation, and shared sacrifice

• Don’t need new or shared identities as Putnam says, but need give and take and interaction between communities

Redistribution vs. Recognition

What shapes human societies?

• C. Political Economy: 

  • Division of labor, modes of production, class structure, intertwined political and economic systems

• B. Social Structure

  • Mutually agreed-upon system of relationships, rules, rituals, expectations, laws, etc.

• A.Symbolic/cultural interactions:

  • Symbolic communications, representations, senses of self, interactions, and discourse

Social Theory applied to Multiculturalism

• Symbolic/cultural justice/oppression:

  • How are multicultural relations shaped through differential valuation of symbols, senses of self, representations, and discourse?

• Bivalent Justice/Oppression: 

  • How do both material and symbolic structures affect multicultural relations?

• Political Economic Justice/ Oppression: 

  • How does the division of labor and economic system affect the distribution of wealth and power in societies?

Types of Solutions 

• Redistribution - ‘political-economic restructuring” such as “redistributing income, reorganizing the division of labour, subjecting investment to democratic decision-making or transforming other basic economic structures”

  • But only class differences are purely material

• Recognition - “cultural or symbolic change” such as “upwardly revaluing respective identities and the cultural products of maligned groups... positively valorizing cultural diversity...wholesale transformation of societal patterns of representation, interpretation and communication in ways that would change everybody’s sense of self” (73)

  • And only sexual identities are (nearly) purely symbolic

• Affirmative - “aimed at correcting inequitable social arrangements without disturbing the underlying framework that generates them”

• Transformational - “aimed at correcting inequitable outcomes precisely by restructuring the underlying generative framework” (82)

Politics of Ethnic Identity 

Terminology 

• It is best to use the name of an individual’s tribe, but not always possible

• Native American - not very specific because anyone born in Western Hemisphere is native to it. Most tribes also have myths about migrating from elsewhere.

• American Indian - obviously inaccurate, but some like it because it is only ethnonym to put “American” first, has clear historical roots, and highlights incompetence of European conquerers.

  • Is most popular among Indians themselves, for convenience and as a form of co-optation like the N-word or “queer.”

  • In a 1995 census survey 49% preferred American Indian, 37% preferred Native American, 5% no preference, and 4% something else

Constructing Ethnicity 

• can be self-identified or ascribed by others

• But among Indians, one’s self-identification often needs to be recognized by a tribe to be legitimate

• Some contend only those who grow up on a reservation are real Indians

• Increase in those identifying as Indian and debate about authenticity underlines socially constructed and structurally contingent nature of ethnicity.

Ethnic Renewal 

• Individual ethnic renewal - when an individual (re)discovers or claims an ethnic identity

• Collective ethnic renewal - reconstructing an ethnic community

• Nagel (1995) argues that both of these are responsible for an increase in those claiming ASuch attempts to reclaim tradition can never exactly recreate the original.

• Individual tribal identities coalesce into American Indian identity.

Brief History of American Indian Sovereignty

• early 1800s- Supreme Court decisions specify that only federal government can deal with tribes, like sovereign nations

• 1830- Pres. Andrew Jackson uses Indian Removal Act to pressure tribes to relocate west of the Mississippi, resulting in Trail of Tears.

• Indian Appropriations Act of 1871 - ends recognition of tribes as nations and extends federal law to reservations

• 1883 Courts of Indian Offenses established with government- appointed Indians enforcing rules against traditional practices

• Dawes Act of 1887 - collective tribal lands distributed to individuals and remainder auctioned off

• 1924 - federal act makes Indians citizens, removing federal obstacles to voting rights and submitting them to federal and Indian law

• 1934 - Indian Reorganization Act - Tribal governments choose from laws and constitutions presented by the Bureau of Indian Affairs

1950s: Indian Termination

• Relocation - tens of thousands of Indians and Alaskan Natives are moved from reservations into cities

• Terminating Tribal Status - 1953 federal law sets goal of ending federal responsibilities to tribes and dissolving recognized tribes

• Public Law 280 - gives several states the power to enforce state law on reservations

• Loses steam in the mid ‘60s, but only in 1988 is it formally revoked.

• Urbanized Indians form intertribal associations in the cities.

• Indian ethnicity becomes more an option than a fact.

Tribal collectives vs American individuals?

• Termination sought to break up tribes and create individual citizens

• Sovereignty is collectively exercised by tribes, so it seems to conflict with American individuality

• Indian-controlled education emphasizes languages and subjects geared toward preserving tribal legacy, not just individual economic success

1960s: Ethnic Politics

• Hippie activists support ethnic and indigenous rights, environmentalism and Indian spirituality.

• Indian activists lobby the federal government to apply poverty alleviation programs to Indian communities.

• Indian identity suddenly has material and symbolic benefits.

Internal Indian Diversity and Conflict

• Urban Indians have more access to government agencies and the resources they grant, but tend to be less in touch with traditions and tribal leaders on reservations.

• Historically, assimilated Indians allied with the federal government to run tribal courts and councils

• Tribes have many differences and compete for resources, so they sometimes contest each other’s authenticity (116).

• Debate about individuals’ authentic Indian identity focuses on lineage and tribal enrollment, not self-identification.This differs from how other Americans acquire their ethnic identity (116-7)

Tribal Enrollment Rules 

• Acculturated tribes risk losing federal benefits, so some tribes have strict lineage requirements

• Others opt for inclusionary strategy to gain greater numbers and political representation

• Others, like Russell Means argue such rules just divide Indians, and are not “the Indian way” (119)

Ethnicity and Politics

• Nagel argues that ethnic renewal is largely a product of politics: federal programs providing benefits and activism providing a sense of agency.

• Elsewhere (1995) she describes individuals’ rediscovery of traditional sense of community and spirituality. Could these be equal or greater factors?

• Is organizing along ethnic lines necessarily have political connotations? Can we separate ethnicity and politics?

American Indian Sovereignty 

1960s: Ethnic Politics

• Hippie activists support ethnic and indigenous rights, environmentalism and Indian spirituality.

• Indian activists lobby the federal government to apply poverty alleviation programs to Indian communities.

• Indian identity suddenly has material and symbolic benefits.

Tribal enrollment rules

• Acculturated tribes risk losing federal benefits, so some tribes have strict lineage requirements

• Others opt for inclusionary strategy to gain greater numbers and political representation

• Others, like Russell Means argue such rules just divide Indians, and are not “the Indian way” (119)

Native American economic double bind

• Need economic resources to exercise sovereignty

• Economic power leads others to challenge the legitimacy of their sovereignty and citizenship (Cattelino 234)

• Sovereignty allows for Indian gaming, but gaming wealth threatens to negate it (237)

What is sovereignty?

• political definition: “authority and obligation of people within an indigenous polity to determine the extent and nature of their governing authority with regard to their territories and one another” (Cattelino 239)

• cultural def.:“right of a people to self-government, self- determination, and self-education...includes the right to linguistic and cultural expression according to local languages and norms- the right to write, speak and act from a position of agency”

  • “does not require complete independence” (Lomawaima and Mccarty 284)

• Seminoles view their sovereignty as originating in their precolonial self-government, military victory over US government, and living distinctive and independent lifestyles.

  • “the foundation for- and endpoint of- gaming” (Cattelino 239-40)

Indian Gaming

• 224 out of 560 recognized tribes engage in some type of gaming

• Many reservations are so remote that casinos would be impractical

• Tribe-owned businesses like casinos are not taxed, but individual

• Indians must pay income taxes on their share of profits.

• The 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act requires tribes to negotiate a compact with the state government before opening a casino

• Some have gotten rich off of casinos, but Indian poverty and unemployment rates are still among the highest in the U.S.

Seminoles 

• 1800s: One of most independent tribes and most successful at resisting US government

• 1953: Targeted for termination in order to prevent dependency, but resist with fundraising rodeos and travel to DC (Cattelino 240)

• Thus, “collective economic power undermined indigenous governance”

• Termination and 1924 Indian Citizenship Act made Indians citizens of state instead of members of sovereign polity (241)

• 1957: Reorganized into a recognized government and independents, but they were isolated from the mainstream and impoverished

• 1979: Opened first high-stakes bingo hall

Basis of Seminole claims to sovereignty

• 1. Precolonial tradition of governance

• 2. Military success against United States

• 3. Distinctive ways of life

  • territory, ranching, traditional/Baptist religious fusion, tribal activities

The Historic US Perspective: Need-Based Sovereignty

• Indians are treated as wards of the state

• During termination era, tribes with good economic status (not needing sovereignty) were targeted for dissolution (239)

• “welfare colonialism”- “aboriginal citizens are addressed as needing service provision and thereby occupy subordinate positions in settler states” (241-2

Seminole political identity

• 1957 constitution celebration: a refusal of termination, not a founding moment

• They see themselves as citizens of tribe, state, and nation, no need to choose one

• Individual and collective entrepreneurs

• The double bind is “refused by reorganizing the cultural expectations on which it rests and by attending to the lived practices by which indigenous people enact sovereignty”

• Double bind can enable creativity (Cattelino 251-2)

Affirmative Action 

What is affirmative action?

• “policies and programs that provide special consideration to historically excluded groups, such as racial and ethnic minorities and women in the spheres of education and employment…

•  “for the purpose of maintaining diverse campuses and workplaces” (Okechukwu 4)

• Critics refer to quotas designed to ensure a specific proportion of minority representation

• But it can also include outreach, recruitment, scholarship, and retention programs

• Specific quotas are never enforced, but it is not only concerned with equal opportunity

How did affirmative action emerge?

• Affirmative action is unpopular and benefits only a disadvantaged minority.

• It was demanded by campus protests in the ‘60s, but why would rich, white elites enact it?

• It became beneficial for male elites in government because of

• The crisis created by riots in the ‘60s, “administrative difficulties of federal civil rights agencies, the Nixon administration’s rather precarious political support, and the general reliance on appeals to tradition in the American political system” (Skentny 270)

Politics of Preemption

• Nixon supports affirmative action as a conservative in liberal times

• Affirmative action allowed him to claim to be pro-civil rights even though he slowed integration and weaken democratic labor unions

• Democrats were ambivalent about affirmative action, so he was able to steal it and black votes from them

Evolution of affirmative action

• 1961: The term first appears in JFK’s executive order, to "take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.”

• 1964 civil Rights Act

• 1965 LBJ executive order requires “affirmative action” to ensure nondiscrimination, creating OFCC (Office of Federal Contract Compliance)

  • late ‘60s EEOC begins holding public hearings for firms with low percentages of women and minorities

  • universities voluntarily begin affirmative action

• 1969 Philadelphia Plan requires federal contractors to attempt to hire percentages of Black workers, and requires goals and timetables in 1970

  • Still no hard quotas, just nonspecific goals

• 1972- EEOC gains power to sue employers

Benefits of Affirmative Action

• Brings more diverse perspectives to campus

• Even with lower test scores, Black graduates tend to do equally well

• Diversity is profitable and helps businesses connect with minority customers

Who opposes affirmative action?

• AA was successful in integrating minorities and women into industries from which they had been traditionally excluded

• It did not face opposition from industries to which it was applied, but from politics

• Scapegoating: When wages declined, pay disparities increased, and many companies lay off huge swaths of workers, AA allows politicians to blame minorities rather than solve problems (288)

Racial Hegemony

• “racial ‘common sense’ that reinforces dominance and subordination” (Okechukwu15)

• Has replaced outright force as the main tool of racial domination since the Civil Rights era

• Colorblindness no longer means removal of discrimination, but turning a blind eye toward racial inequality and preventing racial redress

• “Diversity and inclusion” has been reduced to tokenization and focus on benefits white students reap from all sorts of diversity

Alternatives to AA in university admissions

• Percent plans: state schools guarantee top graduates from all high schools admission

• Consider class: applications ask about family income, parents’ education, neighborhood demographics, etc.

• More financial aid

• Improved Recruiting

• No preferences for alumni’s children and donors

• Can these be as effective at addressing racial disparities?

Arguments against class-based AA

• Since AA was designed to address “caste, not class,” basing it on class would inevitably benefit mostly poor whites

  • whites are majority of the poor, and minorities are poorest of the poor

• Poor whites are not shut out of certain trades in the same way as minorities

• All blacks can be subject to discrimination, but it is easier to escape the stigma of poverty

• It would be a more indirect, less effective, but politically acceptable way of addressing the problem of racial inequality

Feminism and Multiculturalism

Feminism vs. Multiculturalism?

• Feminism: “belief that women should not be disadvantaged by their sex, that they should be recognized as having human dignity equal to that of men, and that they should have the opportunity to live as fulfilling and as freely chosen lives as men can”

• Multiculturalism: “claim, made in the context of liberal democracies, that minority cultures or ways of life are not sufficiently protected by the practices of ensuring the individual rights of their members, and as a consequence these should blso be protected through special group rights or privileges” (10-11)

• Cultural relativism: the belief that an individual’s beliefs and actions must be understood from in relation to his or her culture.

• This makes it difficult to establish universal standards.

Why do group rights endanger minority women?

• They tend to ignore

  • groups’ internal differences and power differentials that tend to favor men

  • the private sphere, in which cultural roles are learned and tend to be the most gendered

• But Okin asserts that such rights facilitate gender discrimination that happens subtly and in private

• Religious rules and “cultural practices” tend to focus on private sphere and inordinately affect females

• Do traditional gendered roles. socialization, and expectations infringe on individual rights?

Sex and Gender Differences

• Sex=Biological differences: men have more upper body strength; women can bear and nurse children

• Gender is socially constructed in several ways:

• Economic (Division of Labor): In most cultures, men tend to do more valued and public work, but women’s labor is equally (or even more) necessary to survival

• Social: Being tasked with caring for children relegates women to the private sphere and men to the public sphere.

• Ideological: Men’s valuations and myths tend to reinforce patriarchy and negative views of women

  • Most anthropologists are men, so they emphasize the roles men view as prestigious.

Sherry Ortner: Woman is to man as nature is to culture?

• Giving birth, nursing, and menstruating leads women to dedicate time to “species behavior” whereas men partake in “cultural projects”

• Women’s bodies engage them in less valued work

• Some feel that these functions make their mental structure closer to nature than men

• And women seem to occupy a dangerous position between nature and culture

• Therefore, like nature, many men feel that women must be domesticated

Does Multiculturalism Conflict with Feminism?

• “Most cultures have as one of their principal aims the control of women by men” (Okin 13) Do you agree?

• Okin argues that liberalism isn’t perfect,

  • BUT it gives women the same legal rights as men,

  • most don’t value sons more than daughters,

  • women aren’t predestined to serve men and children,

  • and their sexuality isn’t confined to marriage and helping men reproduce. (17)

• Are these aspects universally valued in the U.S. and abroad?

• Individual rights still apply to minority women, so what’s the problem?

How are women degraded by multiculturalism?

• Religion and ideology- legally protected justifications for sexism?

• Marriage- structure of gender inequality based on exchanging women between men

• Coming of age rituals- symbolically enculturate women into subordinate status

• Cultural Defense- sexist cultural traditions can be used to excuse crimes against women

• But many would argue that none of these are necessarily sexist

Traditional Marriage Practices

• polyandry - one wife with multiple husbands

• polygyny - one husband, multiple wives

  • Are these necessarily any worse for women than monogamy?

• dowry - bride’s family supplies gifts for the new household and/or groom’s famil

• bride wealth - groom’s family supplies gifts for the new household and/or bride’s famil

• levirate - widow marries deceased husband’s brother 

  • usually happens where bride wealth is high

• sororate - widower marries deceased wife’s sister 

  • usually happens when dowry is high

Coming of Age: Female Genital Mutilation

• This traditional African coming-of-age ritual can involve removal of clitoris, labia, and/or sewing the vagina shut.

• 507k women in the U.S. were living with or at risk for FGM, compared to 228k in 2000.

  • The increase is largely due to increased immigration

• The practice became illegal in 1996, but it is often performed in secret and/or in girls’ ancestral countries.

  • This law was just struck down

  • Some have advocated that instead of banning such practices altogether, they should be replaced with less destructive and more sanitary procedures

The cultural defense

• Defendants claim unawareness that they are committing a crime or lesser culpability because of their cultural background

• Can allow people to justify crimes by (mis)construing them as part of their culture

• Many cultural practices have women bear the shame of infidelity or other failures.

• But Honig argues that this results from brutal people, not brutal cultures

So what do we do?

• Okin: educate young girls about their options, b/c older women have already bought into their cultures.

• Hopefully they’ll help reinvent traditionally cultures.

  • Does this put too much faith in teenage girls and undermine parental rights?

  • Is Okin guilty of a type of colonial feminism?

• Kymlicka/Honig: need alliance between feminists and multiculturalists to challenge status quo 

  • Western feminists mustn’t apply Western standards of gender (in)equality to all culture

  • Group rights for women: affirmative action, women’s health programs, etc.

Implications

• Okin argues that sexual power disparities are culturally constructed, and liberal democracies are at the forefront of deconstructing them.

  • So liberalism and individual rights can help free individuals from cultural constraints.

• Kymlicka and Honig imply that Western liberalism is one of many patriarchal ideologies and that feminists should ally with minorities against its abuse.

  • Cultural identity is necessary to self-realization

Islamophobia and Muslim Women

Sources of Shariah

• Quran - sometimes ambiguous

• Hadith - sometimes contradictory

• Sunna - Tradition of the Muslim community, but which one?

• Analogy - but what is analogous to what?

  • This is a problematic process, so interpretations vary and there is no pope or other final authority, thus “shariah” is a loose set of principles, not an actual legal code.

Gender and Immigration 

Why have migrant women been ignored?

• Stereotypes portray immigrants as male risk-takers bringing women as dependents along for the ride

• But outsourcing, industrialization, and service economy can create jobs for women and leave men unemployed (Pessar 580)

• Employers sometimes favor women because they think they are suited for monotonous work, work for less, not expect promotion, and not complain as much as men

• Women, who work in “service, health care, microelectronics, and apparel manufacturing” now make up the majority of immigrants from most countries (Pessar 581)

Patricia Pessar (1949-2012)

• Wrote a survey of studies of immigration and women available in supplementary readings folder on TritonED

• Feminist scholar of Latin American immigration and advocate for immigrant rights

• Founder of program for study of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale

Does immigration empower women?

• Immigrant women contribute more wages to household than before migration

• Thus, they gain more decision making power, and men contribute more to domestic work

• sometimes women make gains in the household, but discrimination continues at work and in the community

• But some suffer shame because of separation from homes and culture, so they recommit themselves to patriarchal traditions (Pessar 585)

• Women may tell more socially acceptable story of patriarchy, when in fact gender norms are changing (586)

To settle in the US or plan to return?

• Women tend to settle into life in the US by buying large appliances, finding permanent employment, registering for public assistance, and investing in local ethnic communities.

• Men tend to be more frugal and seek only part time work in anticipation of returning to more patriarchal homeland (Pessar 587)

• Transnational identities seem to be male-focused, but most studies have focused on male- dominated public and political organizations (588)

Feminism and immigrants

• Immigrant women have made modest gains, but feminist theory leads us to think there would be more progress.

• Anti-immigrant legislation makes many men unable to support families, so women take low-paying jobs to hold traditional family together, not challenge it (591)

• With economic advancement, many women choose to retire to domestic sphere instead of pursuing individual careers as feminists would expect

• Not working can represent resistance to white norms (592)

• Women identify more with race, ethnicity, and class discrimination than the feminist struggle (593)

Filipino American background

• Primarily Catholic due to legacy of Spanish colonialism

• Greater percentage of English speakers due to American colonization after Spanish American War in 1899

• English language, Spanish surnames, and Christianity makes them less visible than other Asian immigrant groups

• Since 1901, could become US residents by joining navy, so still have very high rate of participation in armed forces

• Exempt from Asian exclusion as US nationals and able to become citizens after alliance with US in WWII

• Largest Asian group in SD with (6% of total population)

• Still not fully assimilated, but not as recognizably Asian

Gender, morality, power

• “gender is a key to immigrant identity and a vehicle for racialized immigrants to assert cultural superiority” (415)

• “immigrants claim through gender the power denied them by racism” (416) by portraying their own women as virtuous and white women as licentious

• But this tends to reinforce “patriarchal power in the name of a greater ideal of national/ethnic self-respect. Because the control of women is one of the principal means of asserting moral superiority” (416)

Female morality

• In many immigrant communities, it is “defined as dedication to their families and sexual restraint”

• Portraying selves as moral is a rare opportunity for marginalized communities to assert superiority

• Femininity is “idealized as the repository of tradition, the norms that regulate women’s behaviors become a means of determining and defining group status and boundaries” (421)

• Responsibility to maintain culture puts huge burden on immigrant women and their daughters

Stereotypes of white people

•  “Lacking in strong family ties and collective identity, less willing to do the work of family and cultural maintenance, and less willing to abide by patriarchal norms” (421-2)

• Individualistic, selfish, put parents in nursing homes, throw kids out at 18

• Ethnic minorities in general tend to contrast themselves as more collective and family-oriented (423)

Constructing Filipinas

• Constructed as opposite of Filipino stereotypes of white women

• Thus, Filipinas become stereotyped as hyper-feminine subservient wives in contrast to headstrong, independent white women

• “Ignores competing sexual practices in the Filipino communities and uncritically embraces the myth of ‘Oriental femininity’” (427)

• Thus Filipinas are partially conforming to an American stereotype of themselves

• Daughters (but not sons) must be strictly controlled to enforce these norms (428)

Parental Control and Resistance

• parental control rests on “authority to determine if their daughters are ‘authentic’ members of their racial-ethnic community” (434)

• Resisting this control has high stakes for one’s sense of identity

• Some women rebel by asserting freedom, marrying whites, and forming less traditional family relations, but often still feel emotional trauma from parental disappointment (434-5)

• And still value their ethnic identity

Multiracial Identity Formation

Multiracial Identity: a product of Anti-anti-miscegenation

• All but nine states had laws banning Whites from marrying Blacks and sometimes other non-Whites at some point in their history

• In 1967, Loving vs.Virginia legalizes interracial marriage in the 16 (mostly southern) states that still had anti-miscegenation laws

  • Last anti-miscegenation law repealed by referendum in 2000 (in Alabama, with 60% voting for repeal)

  • Interracial marriages increase 250% between 1967 and 1987

• In 2000, census forms begin including multiracial option

• In 2010, 2.9% of the US population identifies as multiracial, 32% more than in 2000 TV’s first interracial kiss Star Trek - 1967

Identity Formation: a Psychological Approach

• Focus on subjective structures of consciousnes

• as opposed to structural or collective identification, interviews individuals to assess how they form meaning of racial identity

• Since structures of society have not traditionally recognized racial identity, perhaps this is a good area to study individual agency

• Also provides good contrast with more social and political discussion of identity formation.

Common experiences in Miville study

• Racism- monoracial and multiracial

  • individuals and institutions want them to choose a category

• Reference group orientation - tend to identify with one group socially, but internally identify as multiracial

  • more similar to ethnic than racial identity formation

  • identity is “a process of emotional and cognitive engagement” not passive

• Chameleon effect - flexibly fitting in with multiple groups, assimilating and accepting

Limitations of method

• Small sample size (10 people)

• All recruited at midwestern university, so lack of geographic and socio-economic diversity

• Self-selected subjects who “might have a ‘story’ they wanted to tell about their unique racial background” (Miville et al 509)

• Might racial identity be less salient to others who did not self-select or were less educated?

Contextual identity development

• People- Family and parents greatly influence identity (and language spoken at home)

• Most identify with nonwhite parent (hypo-descent continues to be the norm)

• Places- diversity of people impacts qualitative experience of multi-racial identity

• Developmental periods - first realization of difference (cognitive), high school peer group (social), college-conscious integration (cognitive and social)

Assessment of Models

• Identity development tends to occur in stages including exposure to racism, monoracial peer groups, increased flexibility, and pressure to choose monoracial identity

• But many simultaneously adopt monoracial identity publicly and multiracial identity privately

• To what extent do monoracial people use situational identity?

• Multiracial identities differ from that of their parents and peers, so multiracial people would benefit from a stronger multiracial community (514)

Multiracial Organizing

• Began in the 1970s to form de-politicized safe spaces in contrast to other ethnic organizing

• Some advocate for ability to choose a racial identification, but others want recognition for multiracial identity

• Could be used to expose forms of intersectional discrimination or to support colorblind policies

Intersectionality 

• Shows how structures of power, including gender, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, economic class, etc. are interwoven

• Term first used by Black feminist theorist Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989

• The idea is often traced to the Combahee River Collective in 1978, a black feminist lesbian organization

Multicultural Identity or Cultural Appropriation?

Lene Jensen

• Professor of Psychology at Clark University

• Started “cultural-developmental” approach to psychology which posits a universal human morality that develops differently in different cultures

• Also seeks to understand generational differences in morality within the same culture

Jensen on Cultural Identity

• “worldview beliefs and...behavioral practices that unite people within a community”

• Often “pertain to conceptions of human nature, the relation of the individual to others in society and moral and religious ideals”

• Like race/ethnicity, it can be inherited but “forming a cultural identity becomes mainly a conscious process..when you have exposure to more than one culture”

  • Like multiracial identity?

• Whereas ethnic identity usually applies to minorities, cultural identity applies to majorities, too (190).

Cultural Identity

• Can be used in a collective sense to describe values, behaviors, etc. of a group

• Or can describe an individual’s identity in relation to his or her culture

• Individual identity usually “is meant to imply a coherent sense of self that depends on a stability of values and a sense of wholeness and integration” (Adler 3)

• This is how we understand our place in the world and relationship to other cultural systems (3-4)

• Each individual synthesizes a cultural identity for themselves, and multicultural synthesis never stops (5)

Bicultural Identity

• Global identity in addition to local identity

• “identity formation on the basis of media exposure is more subjectivized or individualized”

• Media allow for individual choice and interpretation

• Is this really comparable to firsthand interaction?

• Is personal interaction more important to (multi)racial identity and media more important to cultural identity?

The Multicultural Person

• “has psychologically and socially come to grips with a variety of realities”

• “embodies a core process of self-verification that is grounded in both the universality of the human condition and the diversity of cultural forms”

• “Seeks to preserve whatever is most valid, significant, and valuable in each culture as a way of enriching and helping to form the whole” (Walsh, qtd in Adler 2)

• This is a “fundamental change in the structure and process of identity” that is “more susceptible to change, more open to variation” (2)

Postulates of Multicultural People

• Each culture has its own internal logic

• Cultural relativism: no culture is better or worse than any other

• Everyone is tied to a culture that gives them a sense of identity, behavioral norms, and sense of belonging (5)

• Instead of forming identity as adolescents, multicultural people have a “homeless mind” constantly in the process of self reformation (6)

Dangers of Multicultural Identity

• Vulnerability: without boundaries, it is difficult to discern meaning of experiences

• Mutliphrenia: pulled in countless directions at once, over-saturated and indecisive

• Cultural Appropriation

  • Inauthenticity: Adopting so many different roles that one loses sense of real identity

  • Dilettantism : becoming an ethnic tourist and avoiding any real stances or experiences

• “Existential Absurdity:” profound detachment produces cynicism, nihilism, and mockery (9)

Implications of Multicultural Identity

• Strategy for individuals to deal with globalization, immigration, or rapid culture change (10)

• Well equipped to facilitate cultural contacts

• New “psychocultural pattern of identity” (11)

• “Bottom-up” form of transnational identity formation in contrast to “top down” approaches that see individuals as shaped by larger political and economic flows

• Will solutions to multicultural problems be found primarily in

  • (A) bottom-up changes in identities, social relations, and ideas or

  • (B) top-down public policy solutions?

Whiteness

Is whiteness a thing?

• Americans descended from Europeans have enjoyed certain privileges, but this varies greatly with class, gender, and ethnicity (9)

• Do poor whites have any privilege to atone for?

• Sometimes, gender is more important in determining one’s status and roles anyway

• However, we can trace the cultural construction of whiteness

Origins of the White Race

• Colonialism and conflict with the Ottomans produced the idea of Europeans, but the idea of a white race came about in colonial America

• The first Africans arrived in Virginia in 1619 as indentured servants, the same as many poor Europeans

• As indentured servants became free, a peasantry developed that demanded land, higher wages, etc.

• In the last half of the 17th century, Virginia law began to acknowledging a class of permanent slaves, which became the norm for Africans and illegal for white

•  This not only created an enslaved race, but it comparatively elevated poor whites and gave them a stake in maintaining a racial hierarchy.

How white privilege can work against whites

• Most southern whites were poor and could not vote as they did not own property, but they learned to see themselves as privileged compared to slaves

• Instead of having black allies against aristocrats, whites became poorly paid overseers of slaves.

• Even after slavery, racial divisions prevented whites, blacks and immigrants from unionizing and allowed employers to pay lower wages

• Even if individual whites benefit from their race, this privilege is damaging to society and an individual’s sense of self-worth and cultural heritage

White Identity

•  “Every individual...needs to feel a connection to community, to a history, and to a human project larger than his or her own life” (8)

• But how do we come to grips with horrific history?

• White privilege allows us to pretend we don’t have a racial identity or the benefits of it, so is recognizing this part of our responsibility?

• Alcoff argues that nihilism results from denying one’s ancestry and community, but is self-hatred the alternative?

• He identifies three possibilities: acknowledge white privilege and cultivate anti-racist identity, disavow and undermine whiteness, or revive anti-racist white identity

White awareness anti-racism training

• Psychological approach focuses on modifying behaviors more than economic or structural solutions

• blames whites for racism, but also criticizes self- indulgent guilt

• All-white reeducation groups are better than mixed race ones b/c they focus on whites’ own experiences rather than gaining forgiveness

• whites suffer from racism in that they lose “one’s sense of self-trust and even self-love” and stunts their psychological development

• Provides collective process for whites to work through emotions about racism and improve selves(12-13)

Flaws of antiracism training

• Does not offer a new or transformed white identity

•  Argues against replacing white racial identity with ethnic identity, but reduces white identity to unfair privilege

• Advocates discovering positive aspects of whiteness, but doesn’t reconstruct historical narratives or cultural content (13-14)

• Can lead to psychologically harmful wallowing in white guilt

White Guilt

• A psychological and social byproduct of racism that plagues white people

• Often condemned by conservatives as a political ploy to con whites into supporting affirmative action and other liberal policies

• Criticized for dwelling on historical inequities and reinforcing racial differences and conflicts instead of trying to get past and/or fix them

RaceTraitor. org

• Journal that advocates abolition of the white race and focus on the historical counter-narrative of anti-racist whites

• Argues that race is distraction from econ. Oppression

• need “spontaneous ‘in your face’ rebellion” against white racial norms and solidarity

• This will ultimately alter social practices and the racist structure of society

• But the prescribed actions can also have unintended negative effects

• But one can’t fully disown one’s whiteness and doing so is not always effective or sufficient (14-17)

Criticism of Race

Traitor Approach

• Poor whites do benefit from racism in addition to the rich

• crossover can amount to cultural appropriation in which whites are enriched and blacks are still left out (18-20)

• Focuses more on class and not much on “cultural process of identity formation” (21)

Transforming white self-understanding at Old Miss

• Subtle anti-racist education integrated into GE curriculum

• Present narrative of US history that emphasizes racism as well as slow growth of equality

• Acknowledges guilt and attempts to reinvent white identity (22-3)

• Since 1995, the Center for the Study of White American Culture has pursued a similar goal of “decentering white culture and centering an anti-racist multiracial culture free of white supremacy”

•  Other groups like White Students Confronting Racism give whites a space to candidly discuss racial issues and solutions

White double consciousness and combatting racism

• racism results from conscious interests and unconscious processes of identity formation, so reason is not enough to combat it

• losing white status can result in “anxiety, hysteria, and depression” and new reactive nativist identities

• Can’t eliminate race, so need to transform how we think about it

• Racial identity is built primarily around history

• Need double consciousness that simultaneously recognizes legacy of white privilege and antiracist progress associated with white ‘race traitors’ (24-5)

Post-Multiculturalism 

Criticisms of Multiculturalism

• Left 

  • detracts from sense of mutual obligations 

  • lack of willingness to contribute to welfare state

  • doesn’t address underlying sources of inequality

  • recognition can actually help isolate minorities

• Right

  • Threatens American way of life

  • Keeps ethnicities separate

  • Inhibits common values and culture

  • Contributes to separatism and terrorism

• Critics accuse immigrants’ desire to maintain cultural differences and multiculturalists’ supporting of this for causing conflict and breakdown of society

• And changing conditions may also make multiculturalist policies outdated outdated (Vertovec 86)

Language and Assimilation

• Americans view learning English as the second most important duty of an American citizen, behind reporting a crime one witnesses (457).

• However, they also view immigrants maintaining languages and traditions as a “good thing”

• People hostile to bilingualism were not necessarily against multiculturalism

• Most Americans are fine with groups maintaining a distinct identity, “but only so long as they do so within an official culture that insists on the priority of the national community” (459)

Multicultural Education

•  Most people are enthusiastic supporters of learning to understand and respect other cultures

  • This is especially true of Black respondents

• Whites tend to think it is good, but shouldn’t be politicized or forced on people (460)

  • Is this attitude the product of anti-anti racism?

• It is seen not as a way of learning about particular differences, but as a way of understanding the universal human content in other cultural forms (461)

  • It should be humanizing and uniting, not exoticizing and dividing

What is Benign Multiculturalism?

• “tailored to be compatible with the more universal values of America... informal rather than official, soft in its particularism rather than hard, and assimilationist in its objectives” (461)

  • What universal values does non-benign multiculturalism threaten?

  • Is assimilation a worthy objective?

• Allows Americans to avoid choosing between parochialism and particularism, loyalty to the nation and an ethnic group (462)

  • His survey asks if loyalty to an ethnic group should ever be valued over loyalty to the country as a whole, but how often are these in conflict?

  • Can campaigning for rights and recognition for an ethnic group be seen as a patriotic struggle to improve the nation?

Feel good’ 3S multiculturalism

• Most apparent characteristics like cuisine, music, clothing should be preserved by members and “consumed as cultural spectacles by others” in school curricula, media, festivals, etc. (Kymlicka 98)

• Critics say such practices

  • ignore sociopolitical inequality,

  • can trivialize cultural differences,

  • represent groups as “hermetically sealed and static” and ignore emerging commonalities

  • support intragroup power differentials by relying on traditional elites

•  But Kymlicka argues that such consumption practices misrepresent actual public policies (98-9)

Superdiversity

• 20th century immigrants were large groups of unskilled laborers coming from one place

• Now, smaller and more diverse groups from various places move globally more unpredictably

• One-size-fits-all multicultural policies can’t deal with variations in language, religion and sect, class, legal status, and reasons for

Transnationalism

• “cross-border and homeland links maintained by migrants” associated with globalization and enabled by cheap communications and transport

• enables maintenance of common identities

• types of transnational practices and solidarities formed are highly variable (89)

• More transnationalism doesn’t necessarily mean less integration, and it often aids integration

• But many are wary of connections to a foreign homeland (90)

Post-multiculturalism

• consists of policies designed to combat the disintegrative separate ethnic communities allegedly promoted by multiculturalism (90)

• “foster community cohesion, a stronger national identity and mandatory immigrant integration”

• Include citizenship classes and tests, language requirements, and other strategies of making immigrants responsible to learn culture and values of the host country (91)

• But cultural differences are still celebrated as an asset and discrimination is punished

Vertovec’s Recommendations

• Pay more attention to diversity of immigrants and transnational practices

• Do not discourage transnational ties as threats to integration

• Try not to encourage interethnic economic competition

• Encourage interethnic connections through expression of multiple identities, not just ethnic one

• Be flexible in dealing with superdiversity instead of focusing on existing community organizations or fixed ethnic identities (92-4)

Kymlicka’s challenge to the rise and fall narrative

• Many see the modern era as rejecting 1970s-mid ‘90s application of multiculturalist policies (97)

• Kymlicka argues that critics mischaracterize multiculturalist policies,

• exaggerate their abandonment,

• and “misidentifies the genuine difficulties and limitations they have encountered” (98)

• Rather than seeing multiculturalism as celebrating diverse cultures, we should see it as protecting human rights by allowing diverse groups to form diverse relationships to the state and society

Multiculturalism as Citizen-ization

• Multiculturalism is an offspring of the human rights revolution against ethnic and racial hierarchies

• Human rights movements contribute “to a process of democratic ‘citizenization’”-turning hierarchical relations into citizenship relations that vary according to groups’ various histories

• Thus, there are three different patterns for indigenous peoples, “sub-state nations,” and immigrant groups

• Multiculturalism is about forms of citizenship that combat inequalities, not cultural practices (100-101)

• This is a process of cultural change and formation of new relationships for minorities and majorities (103)

Multiculturalism and immigrants

• Multiculturalism is widely supported with regard to indigenous and national minorities, but is in retreat with regard to immigrants (104)

• Largely because immigrants are perceived as “illegal,” “carriers of illiberal practices,” or “burdens on the welfare state” (108)

• But these factors also threaten to create an underclass opposed to mainstream society (oppositional identity), a danger multiculturalism can alleviate (108-9)

Preconditions of multicultural citizenship

• Desecuritisation of state-minority relations- majority and gov’t is suspicious of minority loyalties to Islamic nations, China, etc.

• Human rights consensus - minority institutions or self-governance must respect same individual rights as the majority (107-8)

• Thus, multiculturalism won’t work in the most extreme cases of oppression

• And concerns about security and lack of respect for human rights cause backlash against multiculturalism (109)

Implications for International Organizations

• There is no one-size-fits-all approach to multiculturalism, so one has to consider the preconditions in each nation

• Models that work in Western nations are not always applicable elsewhere

• Need to think in terms of a progressive application of multicultural group rights to be gradually applied as preconditions are met

• As usual, there is no quick fix or easy answer

Multicultural Education and American Culture

Ronald Takaki (1939-2009)

• Hawaiian-born historian who specializing in race in the US and Asian American history

• Greatly influenced by his White wife’s family dismissing him as a “Jap”

• Taught the first Black history course at UCLA

• Helped develop the Ethnic Studies dept. at UC-Berkeley

• Social justice activist and pioneer in ethnic studies

Allan Bloom and The Closing of the American Mind

• Black university students have proven to be “indigestible” and remain “ethnic,” culturally particular

• This separateness has been exacerbated with “academic permissiveness” of multiculturalism, ethnic studies, and affirmative action, which emphasize cultural differences

• The solution is the “Great Books” approach, which he sees as landmarks of a universal civilization (482)

Schlesinger’s defense of traditional history

• It was written by and about white men because they had the biggest impact on our history

• Britain and Europe have had the greatest historical impact on American culture

• Multiculturalists engage in “‘exaggeration’ of ethnic differences” in a way that divides races, leads to “self-pity and ghettoization,” and distorts history

• He advocates individualism over divisive group identities

• But Takaki points out that his Eurocentrism and whitewashing also distorts history and wonders if diversity must be divisive (485)

Gerald Graff’s relativistic approach

• This conflict is a teachable moment to present both sides to students and let them “search for truth”

• Timely debate about these topics can “revitalize the social sciences and humanities”

• Universities are dedicated to “openness and inquiry,” so they should be ideal zone to discuss and work out these issues

• However, budget cuts hit the departments discussing these issues the hardest, and hard economic times provoke racist opposition to multicultural requirements (486)

How should human cultures and history be taught?

• A. Great books approach - teach history’s most influential works and traditional top-down historical narrative regardless of concerns about diversity

• B. Inclusive/Revisionist approach - teach influential works from as many cultures as possible and history from multiple perspectives by resurrecting repressed viewpoints

• C. Relativistic approach - include both traditional and revisionist perspectives without taking sides

How can we develop a more diverse curriculum?

• A. Classes on particular groups - teach “how communities fit into American history and society”

• B. Comparative/integrative classes - diverse views on American society like this class

• C. Add on to existing classes - add minority contributions and history of racism into existing history classes

• D. Comparative multiculturalism - offer perspectives on how diverse peoples have integrated around the world

• E. Laissez faire - et students take whatever classes they want and let teachers address subjects as they see fit

Looking Back:Multicultural Problems

• How should we cope with

• legacies of legal inequality, slavery, and white privilege

• Individual and structural racism

• Stereotypical and orientalist representations

•  Structural vulnerability and/or violence

• Inequality in health and unequal access to care

• How to identify one’s background and what identities are recognized

• Increasing diversity, immigration, and changing American culture

What is the ideal Multicultural policy? 

• A. Universalism: Assimilate minorities and give them all universal human rights (Okin)

• B. Particularism: Promote strong ethnic communities (Portes and Zhou)

• C. Group rights of sovereignty, guaranteed representation, cultural recognition (Kymlicka), and/or affirmative action (Steinberg)

• D. Pluralism or Postmulticulturalism: Benign Multiculturalism (Wolfe) or tolerance of ethnic differences that are secondary to national unity (Vertovec)

• E. Transnationalism: Encouraging identities and citizenship practices that cross national lines (Patterson)

Fostering debate among all of these (Takaki)