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In sociology, symbolic ethnicity is a nostalgic allegiance to, love for, and pride in a cultural tradition that can be felt and lived without having to be incorporated to the person's everyday behavior; [5] as such, a symbolic ethnic identity usually is composed of images from mass communications media.[ vague ] [4]
The term was introduced in the article "Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America" (1979), by Herbert J. Gans, in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies . [6] [7]
The development of symbolic ethnicity, as a sociological phenomenon, is attributed to mainly to ethnic European immigrants of second and subsequent generations, because "Black, Hispanic, Asian and Indian Americans do not have the option of a symbolic ethnicity, at present, in the United States"; a socio-economic circumstance "in which ethnicity does not matter for white Americans, [yet] it does matter for non-whites". [4]
This view, however, ignores the complicated history of actual race relations in the United States, including persons of black ancestry who appeared phenotypically close enough to perceived norms of "whiteness" to allow them to pass as white. It also ignores the reality of many Americans of Cuban, Argentine, and other Latino descent who have fair complexions and who are often subsumed into the general "white" population, including on historical Census Bureau returns, which did not have a separate category for "Hispanic". That term did not refer to a race in the traditional conception of the term, as it was understood during the 19th century. Many Latinos were recorded on official US government records as simply "white". This is doubly true for fair-skinned Latinos who only speak English, and remains true to this day, as the primary marker of ethnicity for Latino group membership is not physical appearance but rather language spoken.
Lastly, there are a number of "thin-blooded" Native American tribes where many members appear phenotypically white, such as the Seminole Tribe of Florida, which often require only 25% blood quotient to be a member of the tribe (ie, 3 white ancestors and 1 Native American ancestor). Many of these people can easily pass themselves as white, if they so choose, thus rendering their ethnicity "optional", as well.
In the U.S., symbolic ethnicity is an important component of American cultural identity, assumed as "a voluntary, personally chosen identity marker, rather than the totally ascribed characteristic" determined by physical appearance. [8] As a sociological phenomenon, symbolic ethnicity is attributed to Americans of European ancestry, most of whom either are influenced by or assimilated to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) community. [4]
As such, symbolic ethnicity is the process of social identity whereby the person's "ethnic identity is solely associated with iconic elements of the culture" from which he or she originated. Gans's investigations concentrated on the later generations of Roman Catholic and Jewish Americans who had "begun to re-associate themselves with their ethnic culture", noting that "the ethnic associations were mainly symbolic, and that the traditional community interactions were lost". Those Catholic and Jewish Americans identified "their ethnic race in a personal perspective, as opposed to a communal" perspective, which actions produced an "outward ethnic identity that uses superficial symbols and icons to label and categorizes a certain race". That is to say, people identify their ethnicity by way of images from the mass communications media, as accepted through past associations derived from social and historical judgments. [9]
In (E)race: Symbolic Ethnicity and the Asian Image (1993), Stephen Lee describes symbolic ethnicity:
From unrelenting integration of outside influences, self-definition becomes less associated with the community as a collective and becomes more associated with personal ethnicity as self. As the definition of ethnicity becomes increasingly personal, the need to reassert the community associations decreases. Ethnicity then becomes a symbolic identity more than a lifestyle. The definition of ethnicity, as formed by cinema, follows this symbolic pattern. In fact, in most cinemas that deals with ethnic integration, ethnic lifestyle is inseparable from its symbolic codes. Ethnic lifestyle is not an associative or collective means of existence, but a symbolic code—an icon. [9]
In the book Identity and Belonging: Rethinking Race and Ethnicity in Canadian Society (2006), by B. Singh Bolaria and Sean P. Hier, symbolic ethnicity is defined by, with, and in the actions of "individuals who identify as Irish, for example, on occasions such as Saint Patrick's Day, on family holidays, or for vacations. They do not usually belong to Irish-American organizations, live in Irish neighborhoods, work in Irish jobs, or marry other Irish people." [4] Therefore, the symbolic identity of "being Irish" is:
. . . [an] ethnicity that is individualistic in nature and without real social cost for the individual. These symbolic identifications are essentially leisure-time activities, rooted in nuclear family traditions and reinforced by the voluntary enjoyable aspects of being ethnic. [4]
In terms of the derogatory term Plastic Paddy used to describe symbolic ethnicity in the Irish diaspora, Hickman (2002) states that the use of this term was "a part of the process by which the second-generation Irish are positioned as inauthentic within the two identities, of Englishness and Irishness... [10] [11] The message from each is that second-generation Irish are 'really English' and many of the second-generation resist this." [10] This perspective suggests that symbolic ethnicity is a result of assimilation and some assimilated individuals may prefer to explore a culture that they may not have been raised with to a significant extent.
Many displays of what could be argued to be symbolic ethnicity, such as the study of Scottish Gaelic by the Scottish diaspora in North America, do not necessarily conform to the stereotype of individuals feeling entitled to a cultural ethnicity due to ancestry. Most Gaelic learners in one study, even those with Scottish ancestry, stated that Gaelic ethnic identity was not related to ancestry. [12]
An ethnic group or ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, society, culture, nation, religion, or social treatment within their residing area. Ethnicity is sometimes used interchangeably with the term nation, particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism, and is separate from the related concept of races.
Mestizo is a racial classification used to refer to a person of a combined European and Indigenous American ancestry. The term was used as an ethnic/racial category for mixed-race castas that evolved during the Spanish Empire. Although, broadly speaking, mestizo means someone of mixed European/Indigenous heritage, the term did not have a fixed meaning in the colonial period. It was a formal label for individuals in official documentation, such as censuses, parish registers, Inquisition trials, and other matters. Priests and royal officials might classify persons as mestizos, but individuals also used the term in self-identification.
The melting pot is a monocultural metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming more homogeneous, the different elements "melting together" with a common culture; an alternative being a homogeneous society becoming more heterogeneous through the influx of foreign elements with different cultural backgrounds, possessing the potential to create disharmony within the previous culture. Historically, it is often used to describe the cultural integration of immigrants to the United States.
Race and ethnicity in the United States census, defined by the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the United States Census Bureau, are the self-identified categories of race or races and ethnicity chosen by residents, with which they most closely identify, and indicate whether they are of Hispanic or Latino origin.
In the United States, the term hyphenated American refers to the use of a hyphen between the name of an ethnicity and the word "American" in compound nouns, e.g., as in "Irish-American". It was an epithet used from 1890 to 1920 to disparage Americans who were of foreign birth or origin, and who displayed an allegiance to a foreign country through the use of the hyphen. It was most commonly directed at German Americans or Irish Americans (Catholics) who called for U.S. neutrality in World War I.
European Americans are Americans of European ancestry. This term includes people who are descended from the first European settlers in the United States as well as people who are descended from more recent European arrivals. European Americans are the largest panethnic group in the United States, both historically and at present.
White Americans are Americans who identify as and are perceived to be white people. This group constitutes the majority of the people in the United States. As of the 2020 Census, 61.6%, or 204,277,273 people, were white alone, and 71.0%, or 235,411,507 people, were white alone or combined with another race. Non-Latino whites totaled roughly 191,697,647, or 57.8%. White Latino Americans totaled about 12,579,626, or 3.8% of the population. European Americans are the largest panethnic group of white Americans and have constituted the majority population of the United States since the nation's founding.
The United States of America has a racially and ethnically diverse population. At the federal level, race and ethnicity have been categorized separately. The most recent United States Census officially recognized five racial categories as well as people of two or more races. The Census Bureau also classified respondents as "Hispanic or Latino" or "Not Hispanic or Latino", identifying Hispanic and Latino as an ethnicity, which comprises the largest minority group in the nation. The Census also asked an "Ancestry Question," which covers the broader notion of ethnicity, in the 2000 Census long form and the 2010 American Community Survey; the question worded differently on “origins” will return in the 2020 Census.
In sociology, racialization or ethnicization is a political process of ascribing ethnic or racial identities to a relationship, social practice, or group that did not identify itself as such. Racialization or ethnicization often arises out of the interaction of a group with a group that it dominates and ascribes a racial identity for the purpose of continued domination and social exclusion; over time, the racialized and ethnicized group develop the society enforced construct that races are real, different and unequal in ways that matter to economic, political and social life. These processes have been common throughout the history of imperialism, nationalism, racial and ethnic hierarchies.
Plastic Paddy is a slang expression for the cultural appropriation evidenced by unconvincing or obviously non-native Irishness. The phrase has been used as a positive reinforcement and as a derogatory term in various situations, particularly in London but also within Ireland itself. The term has sometimes been applied to people who may misappropriate or misrepresent stereotypical aspects of Irish customs. In this sense, the plastic Paddy may know little of actual Irish culture, but nevertheless assert an Irish identity. In other contexts, the term has been applied to members of the Irish diaspora who have distanced themselves from perceived stereotypes and, in the 1980s, the phrase was used to describe Irish people who had emigrated to England and were seeking assimilation into English culture.
In the United States, a white Hispanic or Latino is an individual who self-identifies as white and is of full or partial Hispanic or Latino descent, the largest group being white Mexican Americans. Although not differentiated in the U.S. Census definition, White Latino Americans may also be defined to include only those who identify as white and either originate from or have descent from countries in Latin America that speak Romance languages such as Brazil, Haiti, and French Guiana.
Panethnicity is a political neologism used to group various ethnic groups together based on their related cultural origins; geographic, linguistic, religious, or 'racial' similarities are often used alone or in combination to draw panethnic boundaries. The term panethnic was used extensively during mid-twentieth century anti-colonial/national liberation movements. In the United States, Yen Le Espiritu popularized the term and coined the nominal term panethnicity in reference to Asian Americans, a racial category composed of disparate peoples having in common only their origin in the continent of Asia.
Multiracial Americans are Americans who have mixed ancestry of two or more races. The term may also include Americans of mixed race ancestry who self-identify with just one group culturally and socially. In the 2010 US census, approximately 9 million individuals or 3.2% of the population, self-identified as multiracial. There is evidence that an accounting by genetic ancestry would produce a higher number. Historical reasons, including slavery creating a racial caste and the European-American suppression of Native Americans, often led people to identify or be classified by only one ethnicity, generally that of the culture in which they were raised. Prior to the mid-20th century, many people hid their multiracial heritage because of racial discrimination against minorities. While many Americans may be considered multiracial, they often do not know it or do not identify so culturally, any more than they maintain all the differing traditions of a variety of national ancestries.
American ancestry refers to people in the United States who self-identify their ancestral origin or descent as "American," rather than the more common officially recognized racial and ethnic groups that make up the bulk of the American people. The majority of these respondents are visibly White Americans, who either simply use this response as a political statement or are far removed from and no longer self-identify with their original ethnic ancestral origins. The latter response is attributed to a multitude of generational distance from ancestral lineages, and these tend be Anglo Americans, of English, Scotch-Irish, or other British ancestries, as demographers have observed that those ancestries tend to be recently undercounted in U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey ancestry self-reporting estimates. Although U.S. Census data indicates "American ancestry" is most commonly self-reported in the Deep South, the Upland South, and Appalachia, the vast majority of Americans and expatriates do not equate their nationality with ancestry, race, or ethnicity, but rather with citizenship and allegiance.
Hispanic and Latino are ethnonyms used to refer collectively to the inhabitants of the United States who are of Spanish or Latin American ancestry. While the terms are sometimes used interchangeably, for example, by the United States Census Bureau, Hispanic includes people with ancestry from Spain and Latin American Spanish-speaking countries, while Latino includes people from Latin American countries that were formerly colonized by Spain and Portugal.
There is no single system of races or ethnicities that covers all modern Latin America, and usage of labels may vary substantially.
Mestizo Americans are Latino Americans whose racial and/or ethnic identity is Mestizo, i.e. a mixed ancestry of European and Amerindian from Latin America.
Transracial people identify as a different race than the one associated with their ancestry.
Matthew Windust Hughey is an American sociologist known for his work on race and racism. He is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut, where he is also an adjunct faculty member in the Africana Studies Institute and the American Studies Program. His work has included studying whiteness, race and media, race and politics, racism and racial assumptions within genetic and genomic science, and racism and racial identity in white and black American fraternities and sororities.
Yasuko I. Takezawa(竹沢泰子, born 1957) is a Japanese cultural anthropologist who researches race, ethnicity, and immigration in the United States, Japan, and other countries. She is a professor of cultural anthropology and sociology at the Institute for Research in the Humanities of Kyoto University.
Symbolic ethnicity is concerned with the symbols of ethnic cultures rather than with the cultures themselves, and this seems true also of the cultural commitments of ethnic identity: the cultural stuff of ethnicity continues to wither, and thus ethnic identity tend to latch onto a few symbolic commitments (such as St. Patrick's Day among the Irish).
While symbolic expressions of Irish ethnicity, such as St. Patrick's Day...
