7.1 Where Are Ethnicities Distributed?

Ethnicity
The affiliation or identity within a group of people who share the
cultural traditions of a particular homeland or hearth
Race
A culturally constructed label that crudely and imprecisely describes
variation
Many definitions will include a biological component
Interesting exercise in sorting people
http://www.pbs.org/race/002_SortingPeople/002_01-sort.htm
Race and Ethnicity
Lots of common area in how people understand and treat the two
concepts
Ethnicity includes culture
Language, food, history, etc
Race Is Not Biological
No biological basis for race
No manner of universal measurement
What is “black” in the US, is not so in Brazil, or South Africa
What is “white” now wasn’t in the 1920s
For race to have any meaning as a category it has to reflect MORE than
the indicators
Hair texture, skin color, etc
It doesn’t
Non-concordant with internal variables
Racial Variation
99.9% of human genetic characteristics are common to all humans
Richard Lewontin, 1972 – found that more variation occurred locally
than globally
Two random Koreans are likely to be as genetically different as a
random Korean and a random Italian
85% in local populations
93% of variation occurs within any given continental group
Race and Migration
Humans are incredibly migratory
Our DNA has been constantly intermixed since the very beginning
Race as a Social Construct
Race is a real cultural, social, and historical concept
Just not biologically sound
Interview with Alan Goodman
http://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-01-07.ht
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Racism
The beliefs and practices that assert that one race is superior to another
Rationalization for injustice
U.S. Bureau of Census Ethnic/Racial Categories
Survey’s three largest ethnic groups
Asian American
African American
Hispanic
Americans who ethnically identify with Spanish speaking peoples
Ethnic Clustering: Regional Scale
Ethnic Clustering: State Scale
Example: Michigan
African American population is very clustered in Detroit
85% of the city’s pop, but only 7% of the state’s pop
Example: New York
Hispanic population is very clustered in NYC
Ethnic Clustering: Urban Scale
Ethnic groups sometimes demonstrate clustered distribution in
particular neighborhoods
Los Angeles
Ethnic Neighborhood
An area within a city containing members of the same ethnic
background
Ghetto
A section of a city, especially a densely populated area with lower
standards of living indicators, inhabited primarily by members of an ethnic
or other minority group
Often the result of social or economic restrictions, pressures, or
hardships