Thursday, March 22, 2012

American Ethnicity: Theories and Approaches

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A sociological approach to study race and ethnicity began around the end of the nineteenth century and it turned the study of race and ethnicity away from its biological perspective. According to the sociological approach, there are no pure races. Social Darwinism, a result of the larger Darwinian perspective, believed in biological differences among races. However, the social science changed and looked at the race, ethnicity and society as social phenomena and at the beginning of the twentieth century, social scientists left the Social Darwinian views behind.
As time passed and traditional societies transformed to modern ones, people emigrated to urbanized and modern cities and societies to get better opportunities. Then, when ethnic and racial groups emigrated to modern cities, they were considered as minorities, and this was the beginning of the sociology of race and ethnicity in modern society.
This societal change in American society has three phases: Agrarian society, industrial society and post-industrial society. The first phase is after the European colonization in America. America at this time was an agricultural society. Following the Civil War, the United States became an industrial society and after the World War II, because of a second change in labor need, the United States entered a post-industrial phase which needed white-collar workers more and more. As a result of this change, the ethnic and racial groups have changed during this period.
There are three major schools of thought on American ethnicity. The first is assimilation-ism, which believes that racial and ethnic groups assimilate into a changing society. The ethnic pluralism is the second school of thought, which believes that ethnic groups survive in the change process. The third school of thought on American ethnicity is the ethnic conflict theory, which argues that there is an ethnic competition for resources in a changing society. These were the social theories of race and ethnic relations on American ethnicity. Beside this, and taking the prejudice of individual Americans, there is a kind of psychological approach as well. Of course the sociological and the psychological approaches are interrelated and inseparable.
Immigration is considered as the most important factor in shaping American ethnicity. It began with the immigration of diverse groups into North America and their contact with one another and with indigenous peoples. Although immigrants went to America for many reasons, one of the most important reasons was looking for jobs and new opportunities. Then, as we study American ethnicity, we must take the immigration as a response to labor needs into account. Not were all the immigrants to America pulled to immigrate, but some of the were pushed by high rents, population pressures, lack of opportunities and evictions. Then the immigration flow to the United States depend on economic and social conditions in home countries as well as labor needs in the United States.
Another important thing which should be taken into consideration considering immigration, putting the pull and push aside, is that the decision to emigrate was typically a family decision. That is, family members migrated to solve or lessen the economic problems at different stages of family life. the second factor could be the emigrated relatives and friends. They who had emigrated earlier wrote home about opportunities and chances in America and they sent money to them so that they pay their transportation costs to immigrate to America. The third factor is that many people immigrated to the United States to be reunited with family members already in America.
We can have two major perspectives when it comes to American ethnicity. The first perspective which comes from a conservative and neo-conservative approach is looking at the American ethnicity as a whole. That is, we try to create one out of many. This approach accepts the existence of many ethnic and racial groups in America, but it tries to consider them as a whole and wants to make them one. This approach comes from political science. The second perspective is a sociological one which comes from a new left approach. It tries to distinguish different ethnic and racial groups one by one and it focuses on the differences and tries to argue that this one has been made up of many ethnicities and peoples and it sees the society not as a whole but as parts.
Taking the theories we said above into consideration, we can categories these two approaches into them. The conservative approach can be categorized as the assimilation-ists who believe that the ethnic and racial groups assimilate into the society and become one. On the other hand, the new left approach can be seen as the pluralists, as they say that ethnic and racial groups survive and keep their own culture within the society and each of them should be into account.

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