Chapter 7

Ethnicity(Please read this chapter)

PPT adapted from Abe Goldman

An Introduction to Human GeographyJames M. Rubenstein

Ethnicity and Race• Ethnicity: identity with a group who share the same cultural

traditions.

• Ethnicity as being immutable (unchangeable … may be diluted, added to but is unlikely to be erased)

• Race: identity with a group of people who share the same biological ancestor (traits that characterize race can be genetically transmitted, eg lactose intolerance in Asians, sickle cell disease in African Americans )

• The term race is contentious: people have argued that race is a social construct

‘Black’ as a social construct

• Legally in America a "black" is any person with a dark skin, usually of African ancestry

• BUT black is a culture• From Wikipedia … "Blackness" 1: is the degree to

which an individual is sympathetic to or a part of the culture of African-Americans. Oftentimes, an African-American may be thought of by the African-American community as being "less black" (e.g. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas) whereas a non-African-American may be considered "more black" (e.g. former US President Bill Clinton).

Census: valuable source of information

• Every 10 years we have a Census• Major question is one of race• Arguably important because it allows people to

understand issues such as relationship between services and race.

Regional differences• 2010 census

• http://2010.census.gov/2010census/

Geographic aspects involving ethnicity

• Where ethnicities are distributed across space

• Relationship between ethnicity and place (how place builds who you are)

• Ethnicities and conflict

• Globalization and distinct regions of ethnic identity

Distribution of Ethnicities

• Ethnicities in the United States– Clustering of ethnicities by state

• African Americans in the SE• Asian Americans in the West, • Hispanics in the Southwest• American Indians in the Southwest and Plains

states

– Clustering of ethnicities within cities, eg LA

Blacks in America: Triangular Slave Trade and African Source Areas

Fig. 7-7: The British triangular slave trading system operated among Britain, Africa, and the Caribbean and North America in the 1700s acted as a start to the long-term practice of slavery in America

Blacks to America• Blacks as one of the most visible ethnicities• Unequal and different treatment is a major reason

why the use of the term ‘race’ has fallen into decline

• Genuine belief by whites prior to the last 50 years, that they were superior to blacks

• Why the assumption that one group of people is superior to another?– Cultural differences– Lack of ‘cargo’ (manufactured goods and inventions)

• Racism: belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities

African American Migration in the U.S.

Fig. 7-8: Twentieth-century African American migration within the U.S. consisted mainly of migration from the rural south to cities of the Northeast, Midwest, and West.

African Americans in the U.S.

Fig. 7-1: The highest percentages of African Americans are in the rural South and in northern cities.

Race in the United States

• 1863 Emancipation proclamation

• Sharecropping followed (working rented fields often little better than slavery)

• Separate but equal (travel, education, restaurants) until the 1950s and 60s

• Segregation laws struck down

• White flight … why the fear?

• Blockbusting … fear-mongering by real estate agents

“Given the hardship in simply finding accommodations, travel guides emerged that listed places where blacks could be assured they would not be turned away. The Green Book for Negro Travelers was for many years the sole travel guide for blacks and remained a no-frills alphabetical listing. A later publication called Travelguide appeared with the more racially assertive motto, “Vacation & Recreation without Humiliation.””

http://news.byu.edu/archive08-feb-blackvacations.aspx

Ethnicities in Los Angeles

Fig. 7-6: Hispanic, white, African American, and Asian areas in and around Los Angeles

Also see http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/72157624812674967/with/4982024006/

.

• 1992 Rodney King riots highlighted inequities• Race is a volatile issue because of discrimination based on color• Yet many areas function well• On a day to day basis people of many ethnicities interact with remarkably few problems…

A closer look at ethnicities through language

• A large number of ethnicities (not just Hispanic, Black, White, Asian)

• According to Professor Vyacheslav Ivanov of UCLA, there are at least 224 identified languages in Los Angeles County. (not include differing dialects).

• Professor Ivanov estimates that publications are locally produced in about 180 of these languages

• A new meaning to the term ‘Safety in numbers’?• Is an area with a large number of ethnicities going to be

more stable that an area with two or three ethnicities?

Racial harmony

• Possible?• Defusing tension:

– Familiarity – Economic well-being– Equality– Mutual trust …

• Possible given our (Western) legacy in eugenics?

Eugenics and racial discrimination

• Belief in ethnic superiority was strengthened by the ‘science of eugenics’ (a pseudoscience, term coined in 1883 by Sir Francis Galton)

• Galton believed that you could identify types by appearance (Galton’s other work: statistics, meteorology, fingerprint characteristics)

• Lead to proposed selective breeding of humans, popular movement across Europe in the 1920s

• Ethnicity, features, color, diseases• Worst excesses of this movement seen in Adolf Hitler’s ‘racial

hygiene’• Echoes today in ‘ethnic cleansing’ which involves anything from

forced migration to massacres based on seemingly trivial differences

Eugenics logo

Participants in the “fitter families” contest at the Georgia State Fair in 1924. Such contests were held all over the United States to educate the public about the importance of eugenics in decisions about reproduction and family-making. They originated in “better baby” contests during the 1910s.

Gypsies (Romani people )

Somewhere between 220,000 and 500,000 thought to have been killed as part of the Holocaust

Various supremacist groups still active today

Ethnicities and Nationalities• Nationality

– identity with a group of people that share legal attachment and personal allegiance to a particular place usually as a result of being born there

• Rise of Nationalities– Nation-states: state (area of land/country) occupied by one nationality

(people who have allegiance to an area usually because they are born in that area)

– Nationalism: ‘loyalty and devotion to a nation’• Loyalty expressed through symbols: flags, anthems, oaths• Exalts one nation above all others• Emphasis on being a ‘special group’, perhaps favored by God• Usually Others outside the group are regarded as being less favored

• Multinational states: traditions of self-determination that agree to coexist peacefully– Belgium, Canada, Switzerland

• Revival of ethnic identity– Ethnicity and communism– Rebirth of nationalism in former members of the USSR, Basques in Spain

Republics of the Soviet Union

The former Soviet Union consisted of 15 republics that included the country’s largest ethnic groups. These all became independent countries in the early 1990s after the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

Continuing conflict over regions as in the case of Georgia

Ethnic Groups in Russia

Fig. 7-12: Russia officially recognizes 39 ethnic groups, or nationalities, which are concentrated in western and southern portions of the country.

Yakuts

1935 stamp

Horseman 2005

Ethnicities in the Caucasus

Fig. 7-13: The Caucasus region is extremely diverse ethnically. Ethnic groups are spread across several national boundaries.

The Caucasus Mountains are commonly understood to divide line Asia from Europe

Caucasus are between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and between Turkey & Iran and Russia.

Clashes of Ethnicities

• Late twentieth century identity and ethnicity became a source of conflict; not just a thing of the past

• Rebirth of nationalism in Eastern Europe

• Competition to determine national identity

• Reduced resources in African countries

Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka

The Sinhalese are mainly Buddhist and speak an Indo-European language, while the Tamils are mainly Hindu and speak a Dravidian language.

Dispute for over 2000 years

Tamils from S. India arrived 3rd C BC

Sinhalese from N. India in 5th C BC

Sinhalese majority attempted to remodel Sri Lanka as a Sinhalese nation-state following independence from Britian

Civil war officially ended in May 2009 after all-out warfare which killed the leader and many top officials of the separatist militant organization Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (Tamil Tigers)

Sri Lanka

Distrust and hatred as a way of life passed down through generations (situation in Ireland between two Christian denominations: Catholics and Protestants)

Northern Ireland part of the UK

South as the ‘Republic of Ireland”

Partition of Ireland in 1920 but protestant/catholic divisions go back to the 1100s

Sectarian violence from 1500s onwards when British became a majority

Progress: The agreement in 1998: Commitment by all parties to use "exclusively peaceful and democratic means"

IRELAND

Orange Day Parades (12 July) in Belfast, N. Ireland (Protestant fraternal organization)

Belfast 2004

IRA in action

IRA (Irish Republican Army) murals

Ethnic Cleansing• Ethnic cleansing: removal of a minority involving

human-rights abuses• Genocide: killing of people, in some cases transferring

children to homes of the dominant ethnicity/nationality• Human rights: refers to the Universal Declaration of

Human Rights established in 1948. – The right to life, liberty and security of person. – The right to an education. – The right to employment, paid holidays, protection against

unemployment, and social security. – The right to participate fully in cultural life. – Freedom from torture or cruel, inhumane treatment or

punishment. – Freedom of thought, conscience and religion. – Freedom of expression and opinion.

Ethnic Regions in Yugoslavia

Fig. 7-22: Yugoslavia’s six republics until 1992 included much ethnic diversity. Brutal ethnic cleansing occurred in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo during the civil wars of the 1990s.

Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo

Aerial photography helped document the stages of ethnic cleansing in western Kosovo in 1999.

Darfur region of Sudan

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-06/aaft-sis053007.php

“A pioneering AAAS program that provides technical expertise to human rights groups is helping Amnesty International USA with a new online effort to monitor threatened settlements in the war-torn Darfur region of Sudan and provide evidence of destroyed” villages.

Conflict

• What creates conflict between 2 groups of people?– Differences in ethnicity– Differences in culture and religion– Nationalism that results in concept of land

ownership that excludes others– Shortage of resources– Differing ideas of how land should be used– Two groups (an ‘us and a ‘them’)

Surmounting conflict• TWO VIEWS

– Conflict is considered by many as ‘natural’, part of human nature and not much can be done to prevent conflict. Hence inevitable and un-resolvable

– Conflict can be considered as a problem that can be solved with a suite of knowledge and skills just as we solve technological problems

• Center for International development and Conflict management (University of Maryland )

• Center for Peace Studies, University of TromsØ.

• School for International Training, Vermont.• Efforts within contemporary military forces