Ethnicity
Vocab, Models, and important facts.
Race: Identity with a group that shares the same biological ancestor.
Ethnicity: Identity with a group that shares the same cultural traditions of a particular hearth.
Nationality: Identity with a group that share legal attachment and personal allegiance as a result of being born there.
Hispanic-Americans:
- Hispanic is not a race, a Hispanic is someone from a Spanish speaking country.
- A Latino is someone from Latin America.
- Hispanic-Americans are clustered in SW United States because it's closest to Latin America.
- Clustered in SE United States due to former slaves.
- Clustered in cites. Ex: Detroit is 80% black, but 1/14 of Michigan state is black.
- Clustered on west coast of US because that's closest to Asia.
African American migration Patterns:
- Africa to American colonies in 18th century in triangular slave trade(cloth and trinkets to Africa, slaves to the Caribbean, and sugar and rum to Europe).
- From SE United States to northern United States in 1900s due to northern factory jobs.
- From inner city ghettos to urban neighborhoods in later 2nd half of 1900s.
Blockbusting: A process by which real estate agents convince white property owners to sell their houses at low prices because of fear that persons of color will soon move into the neighborhood (Rubenstein).
Apartheid: Laws (no longer in effect) in South Africa that physically separated different races into different geographic areas. Started by Dutch in 1948.
Segregation: A measure of the degree to which members of a minority group are uniformly distributed among a population. Separation of religions, races, ethnicities, etc.
Self-determination: The concept that ethnicities have the right to govern themselves.
Nation-state: A state whose territory corresponds to that occupied by a particular ethnicity that has been transformed into a nationality. Ex: Denmark
Nationalism is loyalty and devotion to a particular nationality.
- Centrifugal force- Something that divides a state.
- Centripetal force- Something that unifies the people of a state.
Multinational state: A state that contains two or more ethnic groups with traditions of self-determination that agree to coexist peacefully by recognizing each other as distinct nationalities.
Europe:
- The United Kindom contains for nationalities: England, Wales, Scotland(first three referred to as British), and Northern Irish. Most of Ireland gained independent from British in 1920. Northern part(protestants) remain with British.
- The former Soviet Union was the largest multinational state with 15 republics, including Baltic, European, Central Asian, and Caucasus states.
- Russia is now the largest multinational state with 39 recognized nationalities.
- The fall of Communism in 1991 led to revival of ethnicity.
- Caucasus is the area between the Black and Caspian Sea. Each nationality, such as the Azerbeijani, Armenians, and Georgians, want their own sovereign state.
- Balkans is an area of unrest where Communism meets capitalism and Islam meets Christianity. Former Yugoslavia.
- Yugoslavia was composed of Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Created after WWI based on Slavic language community. Croats-Roam Catholic; Serbs-Eastern Orthodox; Bosnians-Muslim. Breakup of Yugoslavia led to more boundary disputes and homeless ethnicites.
Balkanization: Breakdown of a state due to ethnic conflict.
Balkanized: The idea that some areas will never be stable due to the presence of a variety of conflicting ethnicities.
Enclave: An enclosed territory culturally distinct from foreign territory that surrounds it.
Exclave: A part of a country separated from the rest of its country and somewhat surrounded by foreign territory. Ex: Alaska.
Africa:
Colonized by western powers in 1800s. Boundaries made without regard for ethnicity.
- In Rwanda, the Hutus(denied higher education, land ownership, and positions in govt. 85% of population) and Tutsis(thought superior because more white) engaged in a civil war. 1959 Hutus ran Tutsis out of Rwanda. Genocide took place.
- In Sudan there had been civil war 1983-2005. Non-Muslin south wanted independence due to north enforcing Islamic punishment.
- In Darfur, a group of radical Arab Muslims called the Janjaweed tried to ethnically cleanse Darfur. Killed over 2 million fled and 450,000 killed.
Genocide: The mass killing of a group of people in an attempt to eliminate the entire group from existence.