Chapter 1: Introduction

Below is a table with the percentages and numbers of various ethnic groups in Arizona.  This table is not broken into the various European groups.

Chapter 2:  Theory and Research

In the American Heritage Dictionary theory is defined as follows:

Systematically organized knowledge applicable in a relatively wide variety of circumstances, esp. a system of assumptions, accepted principles, and rules of procedure devised to analyze, predict, or otherwise explain the nature of behavior of a specified set of phenomena.

In common parlance however, most people think of theory as speculation, especially of the ungrounded variety.  This is not the usage that scientists are thinking of when they use the term.  A definition from the classic introduction to Sociology text by Ian Robertson defines theory in a more succinct way:

A theory is a statement that organizes a set of concepts in a meaningful way by explaining the relationship among them. (Robertson, 1977, page 17) 

I would posit that for the students the simplest way to conceptualize theory is to put it in the most economical fashion:  a theory is an explanation.  Robertson goes on to explain what a theory does:

If the theory is valid, it will correctly predict that identical relationships will occur in the future if the conditions are identical. 

This may be a bit too ambitious for the reader who conceives of the world of disparate, unique events with no semblance of order.  The sociologist’s job, however, is to point out the patterns and regularities that occur in the social world.  In gathering data, the sociologist realizes that mere data explain nothing without a theory to give meaning to the data.

Although it is sometimes thought that “the facts speak for themselves,” they do nothing of the kind.  Facts are silent.  They have no meaning until we give meaning to them, and that meaning is given by theory.

To illustrate, let me provide the student with an example of a fact that is at best useless and at worst misleading if the fact is considered in isolation without a theory to interpret the fact.  According to the 2000 Census, Hispanics now outnumber African Americans in the United States.  This fact has little meaning unless it is framed by theory and I would like to present a very simple theory.  The theory is:

1. Members of an ethnic group tend to identify themselves as members of that ethnic group and these members share a large degree of cultural unity

2. Thus, the term Hispanic is not a single ethnic group because they do not meet the criteria for being an ethnic group. 

Explanation:  The term Hispanic describes a panethnic group, not a single ethnic group.   

Recent research indicates that most Hispanics identify with the corresponding national term (Mexican, Guatemalan, Salvadoran,) and not with the term Hispanic (de la Garza et al., 1992 as found in Stark, 330).  African Americans, however, form a single ethnic group. Also, Hispanics do not have a level of cultural unity that approximates the level of cultural unity among African Americans.  For example, Argentinean culture and Mexican culture, have far less in common than Northern and Southern African Americans.   Furthermore, African Americans are burdened with the stigma of “black” skin while many Hispanics are identified by themselves and others as “white.”

That the category of “Hispanic” is of limited usefulness since to lump such disparate groups as Cubans with Mexicans, Peruvians with Dominicans, and Argentineans with Guatemalans, stretches the limits of ethnic group membership.  The fact that African Americans, even if we do not count recent immigrants from the continent of Africa and the nation of Haiti as members of this ethnic group, far outnumber any of the above mentioned “Hispanic” groups means that the census count of Hispanics as one group does not provide any insight at all into comparative groups’ sizes.  If anything, this lumping distorts the ethnic picture of the United States and distracts Americans from realizing the relative importance of what some observers have referred to African Americans as the “oldest ethnic group.”  For our purposes then, African Americans are by far the largest ethnic minority.  What the above illustration points out is that theory gives shape to facts.  Without some type of theoretical notion about the definition of ethnic group and the importance of culture applied to the census category “Hispanic”  it is likely that many people could be mislead by the blaring headlines which announced this “fact.”

But not all theories were created equal.  How, then, do we judge the usefulness of a theory?  The best theories use they fewest variables to explain the widest range of phenomena.  If a theory is too complicated or attempts to use too many variables, it becomes too cumbersome to be useful or understood.  In this text, I will attempt to select theories on the criterion of parsimony (economy or simplicity of assumptions in logical formulation), in addition to an assessment of how well the theory does in explaining the social world.  But even theories that do not have empirical support are useful in understanding how we got to the current state of sociological theory. 

Some students become perplexed and even discomforted when they are presented with opposing theories and may ask, “But which theory is correct? Which theory are we supposed to believe?”  In answer to this question, theories are judged by several criteria.

1. Is the theory logical?  Do the points of the theory following in a logical fashion?

2. Does the theory have empirical backing?

3. Is the theory currently useful?  In other words, is the theory pertinent today or is it to be applied only historically?

Myrdal’s “American Creed”

In the first few weeks after September 11, 2001 Americans experienced a widespread agreement on whether or not they had loyalty to the United States.  Americans expressed their nationalism by the exhibition of flags, by talking about defending the country and members of both of the major political parties tended to rally behind the President’s positions on terrorism.  Below the surface most Americans, if not almost all Americans believe in what Gunnar Myrdal called “The American Creed.”  This creed is a belief in tenets expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Preamble of the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, and it states a belief in freedom and equality.  Jefferson’s “self-evident truth” that “all men are created equal and from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and unalienable, among which are the preservation of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  Myrdal points out that the American creed is rooted in the Enlightenment and in Christianity, especially the type of Christianity that split from the Anglican Church and was developed among the lower classes in the colonies (Myrdal: 9).  Many observers of American culture have noted the generosity of Americans towards charities.  As Myrdal puts it:  “No country has so many cheerful givers as America.    The American creed is also rooted in English law, “The indebtedness of American civilization to the culture of the mother country is nowhere else as great as in respect to the democratic concept of law and order. . . .”  English law stressed the “principles of justice, equity, and equality before the law.”  Now that you are familiar with the concept of the American Creed we come to the Myrdal’s main point:  even though the people of the United States firmly believe in the American Creed, the realization of the principles of freedom, justice, and equality for all has never come close to being realized, especially when we consider the discriminatory treatment of racial minorities. The American Creed is expressed in law, held to be sacrosanct to the American populace but not executed in American life.  Myrdal calls the failure of the United States to fairly treat African Americans is a tragic fault of the country:  “The subordinate position of Negroes[4] is perhaps the most glaring conflict in the American conscience and the greatest unresolved task for American democracy.”  Even Patrick Henry lamented the fact that he owned slaves and felt it was wrong but nonetheless subscribed to the tenets of the American Creed.  (Myrdal:  22).  It would be incorrect to merely state that Americans only give “lip-service” to the creed.  On the contrary, the creed is taken quite seriously and Americans tend to be optimistic that it can be fulfilled.  Witness the power and success of the Civil Rights Movement that eliminated legalized discrimination by ending segregated schools, buses, facilities, etc. 

 I, for one, sincerely believe that race prejudice and discrimination based on race and ethnicity will one day end.  It seems inconceivable at this juncture in history, but it will someday pass.   What will not ever pass, in my estimation, is class conflict.  The battle between the halves and have-nots has barely begun.  Eventually[5] all of the races will likely mix and racism will cease to be even possible but social classes will continue on. 

Functionalism

The hey-day of functionalism was from the 1930s to the 1950s and most sociologists feel that this was a period of conservatism.  Functionalists assume that all elements of a society have a function and the functions all work together to create a balanced social world.   The pre-cursors of functionalism such as Herbert Spencer were open racists and elitists, which was not uncommon for the time, around 1900.  Spencer believed that poverty served a function for society and the poor should not be helped lest they reproduce which would weaken society.  Spencer was a social evolutionist in that he believed that the most advanced society according to Spencer was England and thus England deserved its dominant status of having a world empire and lesser societies should vanish if they can’t survive colonialism and economic competition.  This way of thinking was carried to a more extreme version by Adolph Hitler later in the twentieth century. 

Later functionalists adopted functionalism by adding an element of conflict to the theory.  The sociologist who accomplished this, Robert Merton, shall be examined in Chapter four.  He can be categorized as a conflict-functionalist. 

Conflict Theory

The most commonly used approach to studying our topic is conflict theory, a perspective which draws inspiration from the works of Karl Marx, a German philosopher whose writings helped in the development of the discipline of sociology.  It seems obvious that race and ethnic relations are characterized by conflict and this perspective is useful for this reason.  Conflict theorists have pointed out that in any given society the social groups with the most power do everything they can to keep their power.  According to Max Weber, power is defined as the ability to get others to do what they would not do otherwise.  The elite of any society promotes the ideas, religions, institutions, and customs that keep them in power.  Thus, if the elite can benefit from low wages for the working class, they will support policies and ideas that promote low wages.  If the elite can benefit from enslaving a population it will be done.  If the religion of the elite is in some way against slavery, some way of interpreting that religion in order to permit slavery to continue will be espoused.  More will be explained about this in the following section. 

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Marx wrote little if anything directly on race relations.  My understanding of what he did say requires a little knowledge of conflict theory and of basic Marx.  As the founder of what sociologists later would use as “conflict theory” Marx believed that the world is divided with conflict and that this conflict is extremely important for understanding how a society works.  Social change is caused by social conflict.  The conflict is economic in nature and is between two groups in society:  the haves and the have-nots.   His terms were the “bourgeoisie” (the haves) and the “proletariat” (the have-nots).  The terms bourgeoisie and proletariat are terms Marx himself coined and refer to the owners of the means of production and those who work for them.  The owners, the bourgeoisie, own capital.  Capital is anything that can be used to make a profit:  any kind of business such as a factory, a farm, a patent, money, stocks, bonds, etc.  The owners and the proletariat are in an inherent battle over many things.  The bourgeoisie wants to make profit and the way to make profit is to keep costs down as much as possible by doing things like paying low wages, providing as few benefits as possible, etc. while the proletariat wants pretty much the exact opposite.  The proletariat wants things like higher wages, better and more benefits, and better working conditions all of which are things that the bourgeoisie would just as soon not pay for.  Hence societies are characterized by conflict between these two groups and Marx called this conflict “class conflict.”.  What does this have to do with race and ethnic relations? 

Marx thought that the bourgeoisie cared only about making profits, so race relations were not their direct concern.  However, the bourgeoisie has a strategy of divide and conquer in which they figure that if they can get the proletariat distracted from their plight then the bourgeoisie stands to gain.  So distract them the bourgeoisie may pit groups against each other so that they will be too busy hating and fighting each other that they don’t notice their real opponent, the bourgeoisie.  So the bourgeoisie may promote clashes between two racial or ethnic groups for their own purposes.  For Marx, racial and ethnic conflicts were merely subsets of class conflict.  Theorists who follow in the conflict tradition are now, not surprisingly called, conflict theorists. 

An extension of this concept can be found in the Southwest where copper mines were divided by owners into two types:  one type was for whites only and the pay was higher than the other type, which was for Mexican-Americans and Mexicans only.  The workers did the same labor but were paid different wages and it is easy to see how this could lead to hatred between the two groups.  This example is from the works of Edna Bonacich and she calls this the split-labor market, a notion based on Marxist ideas.

Another useful concept from Marx for our purposes is ideology.  An ideology, according to the 2^nd edition of the New World Dictionary is

The doctrines, opinions, or way of thinking of an individual, class, etc. specifically the body of ideas on which a particular political, economic, or social system is based. 

            Inn Robertson in Sociology defines it as:  “a set of ideas which justifies or explains current or potential social arrangements.”  During the period of American slavery, the practice was justified by defining Africans as sub-human and thus avoiding the “love one another’ philosophy of Jesus.  General Dewitt’s incarceration of 110,000 Japanese Americans, most of whom were citizens was justified by his notion that the “Japanese are inherently treacherous” which means that biologically the Japanese are traitorous or disloyal.   The Los Angeles police chief who testified in the famous “Zoot Suit” trial in the forties claimed that Mexicans instinctively use knives in fights while whites use their fists.  All of the previous examples are of racist ideologies.  In each case, mistreatment of an ethnic or racial group is justified by the belief that the group is biologically inferior and thus unequal and unfair treatment is justified. 

Chapter 3:  The United States, Land of the Free, the Not-So-Free and the Not-Free-At-All

            I would like to start by stating the following:  the United States has a long history of racism despite the founder’s love of equality and liberty.  Africans were brought here in chains, Native Americans were relegated to reservations after being defeated militarily, and racial violence has marked every generation for four hundred years.  In this chapter we will examine racism with an emphasis on the United States.  You may wonder how it is possible that racism seems to be still around in the form of the KKK and white supremacists.  In order to understand where these groups received their way of thinking we need to trace back through history to Adolph Hitler.  Likewise, to understand Hitler it is necessary to find out where his ideas came from, as they certainly weren’t original. 

Racism

This word has an emotional component that is unavoidable.  If you want to insult someone, just insert the word “racism” into any accusation and inevitably an argument will follow.  Racism as a word is used in many ways.  A person may say of another, “he’s a racist” or one may refer to any act of discrimination as racism.  An extension of this line of reasoning leads to using the term racism to describe prejudiced thinking as racism also.  For our purposes, however, we will be using the term in a more limited fashion. 

First of all, racism is an ideology.  As I explained in chapter two Robertson (198_) defines an ideology as “a belief that justifies or explains current or potential social arrangements.”  Thus racism is a mental construct that emerges in a particular historical context to explain or justify the social order of the time.  This means that racism develops in a particular place and time.  It can be argued that racism originated in ancient Greece and Rome, in the Old Testament, and in third century Chinese (Jaret, 1995: 130) but that the racism of those epochs differs from modern racist ideology in two ways:  1.     Religious differences or loyalty to a ruler or a nation were used to justify mistreatment of a group.  Not until the past four hundred years has race been used to justify violence and oppression of a group.  2.  Ancient racism was not deeply embedded in the mind of most people, as there was no popular support in science, literature and folklore.  During slavery Americans developed a racist ideology with “a record not even remotely approached in either scope or complexity by any other cultural tradition” (van den Berghe, 1967:13 as cited in Jaret, 1995: 131).  In other words, the racist tradition of the United States has no parallel in history. 

The early impressions of the Europeans toward the Indians were often quite negative.  According to a Spanish historian in the 1500s, the Spaniards believed the Indians were:

                Naturally lazy and vicious, melancholic, cowardly, an in general a lying, shiftless people…. Their chief desire is to eat, drink, worship heathen idols, and commit bestial obscenities.  What could one expect from a people whose skulls are so thick and hard the Spanish had to take care in fighting not to strike on the head lest their swords be blunted (cited in Gosset, 1965:12 as cited in Jaret, 2000: 131). 

If a justification for mistreatment of the Indians was needed, the belief that the Indians were not quite human would be enough to allow the Spaniards to kill and enslave them.  According to Jaret, if it were not for priests such as Bartolome de Las Casas, who argued that Indians had souls and needed the protection of the Catholic Church, it is possible that the Spaniards would have killed all of the Indians in Latin America. 

The early English were equally racist.  The English believe that Africans were related to the devil or to the apes.  Many of the associations of blackness with “dirtiness, evil, and impurity were rooted in the prejudice of the English.  The development of a more full-blown racism didn’t develop until later with the debate over slavery. 

American Racism

            In 1783 a black slave in Massachusetts argued in court that since the preamble to the state constitution stated that all men are created free and equal, then slavery must be illegal.  He won his case, the state of Massachusetts made slavery illegal and several northern states followed suit.  Many people today might be surprised that even two states located in the traditional South, Virginia and North Carolina, passed laws encouraging slave owners to free their slaves.

----Responded by arguing that their right to private property had “priority to slaves’ rights to liberty” (Jaret, 1995: 132).  They believed that the slaves were better off as slaves because they could not manage their own affairs due to their being closer to being beasts than to being human. 

A similar way of thinking was used on Mexican Americans in the Southwest.  Acuna (in Jaret, 1994:133) points out that the racist ideas about Mexican Americans were not only held by uneducated and lower-class whites, but by “the most prominent professor of Texas history that “to have a ‘cruel streak’ is a most basic part of the ‘Mexican nature,’ owing to Mexicans’ Indian blood and their heritage from the Spanish Inquisition” (Jaret, 1994: 133).  Anti-Mexican sentiment was exemplified by white barbers refusing to cut Mexicans’ hair and the practice of allowing only certain days of the week for Mexicans to swim, and then draining the pools to remove the “stain” (Vigil, 1984:178).

In the 1880s another group of people, the Eastern and Southern Europeans, did not escape “classic” American racist ideology despite their white skin.  Eastern and Southern European groups were not exempt from racism when they first arrived in the United States from countries like Poland and Italy.  The immigrants who arrived in the United States were viewed as a threat and were viewed as inferior to the Americans whose ancestors had immigrated from England and German.  Mostly from Poland, Italy, Russia, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, these ethnic groups differed not only in language, but in religion as most were either Catholic or Jewish and were thought to be so different, so criminal, so primitive, and so unintelligent, that they did not have the ability to assimilate into American culture.  Madison Grant, an American eugenicist[6] (1916 as cited in Jaret: 134) referred to this group as “amazing racial hybrids” and warned of “ethnic horrors” for New York City. 

Even the prominent academics of the time joined in the racist parade of thought with a widely believed perspective called Social Darwinism which claimed that just as animals evolve from simple to complex forms, so do societies evolve from primitive to modern societies with the least evolved societies losing in the “survival of the fittest” battle to endure.  According to Social Darwinism, the competition among different societies results in the most successfully adapted societies rightfully dominating the other inferior ones.  The most advanced peoples, the Northeastern Europeans, need feel no pity for the inferior cultures and to exploit and take advantage of them is justified.

Another important form of “classic” American racism is expressed in the concept of the “White Man’s Burden” which is the belief that the white race is encumbered with the duty to improve the inferior races by teaching them Christianity, education, and other elements of Western culture even if they didn’t want them to.  In the United States if new immigrants and American Indians could be accepted into the mainstream only if they adopted the superior American way of life.  The boarding schools Indian children were forced to attend exemplify this approach as do the public schools stress on Americanization for immigrants.

More on Eugenics

According to Carlson Eugenics may be defined as a moral philosophy to improve humanity by encouraging the ablest and healthiest people to have children the study of human improvement by genetic means.  An Englishman, Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, coined the term in 1883 and his writings had a great influence on Madison Grant and American Eugenicists.  Galton’s version of eugenics is called “positive eugenics” while “negative eugenics” is the policy of eliminating the weakest and least desirable persons from the breeding population in order to preserve the health of the general population.  Negative eugenics was popular in the United States, Germany and Scandinavia.  

In order to give you an idea of the methods proposed by negative eugenicists I list the chapter headings from a eugenicist publication:  Life Segregation, Sterilization, Restrictive Marriage, Eugenic Education, System of Matings, General Environmental, Polygamy, Euthanasia, Neo-Malthusian Doctrine, and Laissez-Faire.  The eugenicists were worried that “degenerates” would reproduce.  It may amuse the 21^st century student that in the 19^th century medical schools taught that “onanism” (what we now call masturbation) was presented as the first biological theory of degeneracy.  Charles Davenport had a Ph.D. from Harvard in zoology and conducted experiments on chicken and canaries became on of the first to recognize the validity of the recently discovered Mendelian theory of heredity.  He later applied his knowledge to humans in his book, The Science of Human Improvement through Better Breeding and was secretary of the Eugenics Section of the American Breeders Association (the ABA[7]). I noticed that a sociologist was listed as a member of the expert advisory committee on a document (cite website) proposing the sterilization of “degenerates,” a word that was marked out with pencil and replaced by “defectives.”  In a report on naval officers, Davenport reported that sailors have a gene “thalassohilia” or love of the sea.  In Germany a “racial hygiene” movement started.  I should note here that the proponents of eugenics in the United States were sincere in the efforts and were not as extreme as the Nazis would later become.  While some eugenicists proposed that defectives be quarantined in asylums, many doctors preferred sterilization in order to allow the defective to otherwise participate in society instead of being locked up and supported by taxes.

Galton published a book, Hereditary Genius in 1869 in which he proposed that members of the upper classes should marry exclusively within the upper class in order to maintain and even improve their superior physical and mental capabilities as a class.  As he put it, ““it would be quite practical to produce a highly gifted race of men by judicious marriages during several consecutive generations.”  This class would become a gifted race and would be justified staying in its superior position of advantage.  Galton clearly underestimated the impact of social environment on achievements in monetary and intellectual arenas.  He came down firmly on the side of nature in the nature vs. nurture question.  Galton’s eugenicist ideas were quite popular in England and were even supported by Winston Churchill in the beginning.  His ideas influenced some American intellectuals whose ideas became so popular that even politicians noticed.  In the United States, President Teddy Roosevelt (1901-1909), William Howard Taft (1909-1913), Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921), and Warren Harding (1921-1923) all subscribed to the racialist ideas of eugenics.  In 1926 the American Eugenics Society was formed by men who believed that the white race was superior to all other races and that among whites, the Northwestern European whites, or “Nordics” were superior.  They believed that “good blood” came from the original settlers of North America as these settlers were mainly from Northern and Western Europe (England, France, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, etc.)  The more recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe supposedly had defective genetic backgrounds.  For example, Germans were genetically programmed to be “thrifty, intelligent, and honest,” Italians were programmed to have a “tendency toward violence.”  Do some of you find yourself agreeing with these stereotypes?   These “scientific” findings were used to argue for restricting immigration.

In the twenties and thirties eugenics became part of the mainstream American culture.  Its ideas were taught in schools and churches.  High school biology textbooks often had a chapter on eugenics and advocated immigration restriction, sterilization, and race segregation.  There were “fitter family” contests in which the fittest would win a medal which proclaimed, “Yes, I have a goodly heritage.”   There were even “Religious Sermon Contests” for the best sermons preaching that human improvement could be achieved by marriage of the “best” with the “best.”  In the 1920s Eugenics exhibits, organized by the American Eugenics Society, took place in various locales such as Topeka, Kansas and Springfield, Massachusetts.  Prestigious universities such as the Harvard, Cornell, Columbia, and Brown offered courses in eugenics.  A content analysis of high school biology texts published from 1918 to 1948 revealed that a majority portrayed eugenics as a legitimate science.  The scientifically discredited science of Eugenics still has its proponents and can be found in the reasoning of many people even today.  One of my brightest students, a young man who came from a wealthy background, attempted to present me a eugenicist argument not long ago.

A major proponent in the United States of Eugenics was Madison Grant, the author of a very influential book, The Passing of the Great Race.  Published in 1916, this book would be used as a justification for a 1924 bill passed by Congress called the Johnson Act excluded restricted immigration from southern and eastern European groups, especially Jews and Catholics and favored Northwestern Europeans immigration.  In the book Grant warned that “The immigrant laborers are now breeding out their masters and killing by filth and by crowding as effectively as by the sword.”  Grant divided Europeans into three racial types—Alpines, Mediterraneans, and Nordics—and declared that Nordics, people from Northwestern Europe were superior physically and mentally to the other groups.   He believed that race mixing was a “social and racial crime.”  If superior racial groups mix with inferior groups the result is the weakening of the superior race.  In

The Passing of the Great Race he warned:

The cross between a white man and an Indian is an Indian; the cross between a white man and a Negro is a Negro…When it becomes thoroughly understood that the children of mixed marriages between contrasted races belong to the lower type, the importance of transmitting in unimpaired purity the blood inheritance of ages will be appreciated at its full value.

Madison Grant’s racist ideas encouraged even Presidents of the United States.  Upon the passage of 1924 immigration act:  President Coolidge, who signed the bill into law, had stated when he was vice president, "America should be kept American . . .. Biological laws show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races."

The racist ideas proposed by Grant were used during World War I to explain the differences in scores on the newly developed intelligence tests that tested tens of thousands of soldiers.  Americans of Southern and Eastern Europe scored lower on the intelligence tests than did Nordics and at first glance seem to support Grant’s ideas.  Further analysis of the results found that the longer these Southern and Eastern Europeans had been in the United the higher their scores, indicating that their assimilation enabled them to score higher, not their genetics was ignored by Grant and his associates.  They simply argued that more recent immigrants were less intelligent than earlier ones.  The intelligence tests were also given to blacks.  Northern blacks scored higher than blacks, which Grant incorrectly assumed, meant that the most intelligent blacks migrated from the South.  Other social scientists later corrected this falsehood when they showed that the same difference occurred among whites.  The reasons for the higher scores had little to do with genetics and everything to do with environment.  Both blacks and whites received better educations in the North. 

                        By the 1920s the popularity among academics for eugenics and other racist notions lost their prestige for many reasons.   For one, the carnage of World War I demonstrated that Europeans were capable of savagery as much as any other group of people on earth.  The excesses of Adolph Hitler and the Nazis undermined the popularity and credibility of eugenics.  Anthropologist Franz Boas anti-racist ideas which he had espoused since the 1880s were finally becoming mainstream and Boas fought eugenics energetically all of his life.

                        Does eugenics have any scientific validity?  None whatsoever.  Even in eugenics heyday of the turn of the century mainstream geneticists felt the field was not useful.    There are no pure races as all of the races contain mixtures of races.  Genetic characteristics are spread out across all of the races with the example of blood type being a prime example. 

George Garland of Washington University has listed the following flaws the eugenics:

1.      Problems of definition.   Eugenicists used terms like feeble-mindedness, criminality, sexual immorality, alcoholism, shiftlessness, and intelligence, all of which they were argued were genetically determined.  All of these terms may be defined in various ways and have subjective elements.  To illustrate, “shiftlessness” was supposed to be a genetic trait which led to pauperism, the tendency to be poor.

2.      Reification.  To reify is to treat something abstract (like truth, justice, or intelligence) as something real (like a tree, a bridge, a leopard).  In this case, reification is treating a complex trait, especially behaviors, as if they were coming from a single cause.  Eugenicists, for example, treated intelligence as if it were an inborn quality of the brain which originates from a single factor.  We now believe that several types of intelligence exist:  mechanical, artistic, emotional, quantitative, verbal, abstract.     

3.      Poor survey and statistical methods.   The data used in their studies of criminality and intelligence was based on limited information about the family backgrounds of their subjects.  Doctors and hospitals kept incomplete and inconsistent records so hearsay was substituted as evidence.  A “creative” use of statistics was used to prove their presupposed points.  For example, it was claimed that Southern and Eastern Europeans were over represented in the prisons.  To prove this claim, the numbers of Southern and Eastern Europeans were taken from the 1910 Census, while the institutionalization rates were collected in 1921.  By the later date, the large amount of immigration from these areas of Europe had increased their numbers.  This method was dishonest and exaggerated their presence in mental hospitals and prisons. 

4.      False quantification.  This is the assumption that if a number can be produced by a measure, then the measure is valid.  Thus, if the intelligence test produced an intelligence quotient in numerical form, it must valid.  The problem with this is that the measure may not be valid.  Intelligence tests in the early part of the 20^th century relied upon cultural knowledge, such as familiarity with the culture of the person who wrote the intelligence test.  The tests were inconsistently given by poorly trained persons.  In cases where the individual tested did not know English, the questions were sometimes pantomimed. 

5.      Social and environmental influences. 

Interracial Marriage and Eugenics

Race mixing was called miscegenation in those days, and by 1915, twenty-eight states had made marriage between blacks and whites illegal.  Let’s now examine in some detail Virginia’s miscegenation law, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924.  The legislation was directly influenced by eugenics as is evident in the following provision which made it illegal for any white person to marry anyone of a race other than white with one exception:  a white could marry a person with no more than one-sixteenth “blood of the American Indian.”  In fewer than ten years the Nazis would adopt similar laws in Germany in which percentages of Jewish blood were defined as acceptable or unacceptable.  In Georgia and Alabama similar laws were passed.  The following is an excerpt from a newspaper article from 1921, which illustrates a case in which illustrates the zeal in which the law was applied.

Carl Johnson, who claims to be a negro, was arrested last night at his home, 514 Broadway, Jeffersonville, where he resides with his negro wife, married recently at New Albany.  He is charged with miscegenation.

Johnson, 29 years old, applied for a marriage license three weeks ago at Jeffersonville.  He was denied it when the clerk noted the contrasting colors of man and woman.  The later is black, the former as white as the average Caucasian.

            Seventeen states still had laws prohibiting inter-racial marriage in the 1960s, but these laws were eventually stuck down by the United States Supreme Court in 1967.  The 1967 decision arose from a case in Virginia in which a white man and a black woman were married in Washington, D.C. and moved to neighboring Virginia.  In Virginia they were charged with violating the Racial Integrity Act and they plead guilty, were sentenced to one year in jail.  The judge suspended their sentences if they would accept “banishment from the state and not return together for 25 years.   The judge wrote in his opinion:

Almighty god created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents.  And but for the interference with this arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages.  The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

The Supreme Court of Virginia upheld the judges ruling and the couple moved back to D.C., but challenged the law again in 1963 but were unsuccessful.  They appealed to the United States Supreme Court and in 1967 finally won. 

European Racism

Meanwhile, the Europeans were busy with their own development of full-blown racist ideology.  A line of racist thought can be traced from Count Arthur de Gobineau to Houston S. Chamberlain to Adolph Hitler.  Count de Gobineau, a member of the French aristocracy, had a huge impact on the development of racist theories.  Despite the fact that De Gobineau attempted to be scientific as his works were based on many years of research, his work is now completely discredited.   De Gobineau’s 1854 book An Essay on the Inequality of Races claims that humans originate from three races:  white (“Aryan[8]”), black and yellow and each race has certain inborn characteristics which are passed on in its blood (Jaret: 135).  Whites were characterized by almost all positive traits:  masculine, motivated by honor, energetic, and intelligent while the “yellow” race was “passive, uninventive, and orderly and made better followers than leaders while the black race was allegedly sensual, gluttonous, and unintelligent” (Gosset as cited in Jaret:135).  Gobineau believed that he white race must avoid mixing with the yellow and black races in order and that “the more a civilization's racial character is diluted through miscegenation[9] the more likely it is to lose its vitality and creativity and sink into corruption and immorality” (Joseph-Arthur, Count de Gobineau. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved February 25, 2004, from Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service.  <http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=37879>. 

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica the most ludicrous of de Gobineau’s beliefs is that all of the “major ancient civilizations (e.g. Rome, Greece, India, Egypt) originated from the leadership of the superior Aryans.” (135). He also believed that each of the civilizations eventual fell because of mixing with people of the black and yellow races.  He concluded that the only civilization which remained relatively pure were the “French aristocrats of Teutonic ancestry.”  He believed that the “white” race was an unfortunate mixture of “misfits and incompetents” (jaret: 135) and concluded that democracy, which favors rule by the common people, should be stopped  while rule by the superior Tuetonic aristocracy of which he was a part, must occur if French civilization is to survive.

These ideas were more popular with non-academic people than with scholars, but they certainly influenced racist thinkers in Germany and the United States.  An important scholar that followed de Gobineau’s racist line of thinking was Houston S. Chamberlain, a British scholar who was such a Germanophile[10] that he married a German, won a medal fighting for Germany in World War I and became a naturalized German citizen in 1916.  Chamberlain, like de Gobineau, believed that Western European civilization owed its debt completely to the Aryan people and that the Jews influence was negative and was clearly anti-Semitic[11].   In his two-volume book published in 1911, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century he states that Jesus had German Teutonic blood and rejected the view that Christianity is about human brotherhood, forgiveness and equality as these were Jewish ideas created to weaken Christianity and instead claimed that a Christian should be “hard, aggressive, strong-willed, intolerant, and embodied no ‘sickly humanitarianism.’ “ (Jaret: 135). 

None other than Adolph Hitler read Chamberlain and incorporated his racist ideas and his glorification of Germans as a “master race” into an even more potent and ridiculous level.  Hitler, like de Gobineau and Chamberlain believed that each race had a personality with the Germanic peoples being responsible for all of the triumphs of modern civilization.  The inferior races, especially the Jews were scapegoats[12] for the Hitler and the Nazis.  They claimed that the Jews were traitors in World War I, that they enriched themselves at the expense of the poor, that they supported Communist plots, and that they corrupted the morality of the German people.  In order to “purify” the German race 6 million Jews and millions of Poles, gypsies, homosexuals, and Communists were tortured and murdered systematically.

Jim Crow[13]

            In the aftermath of the Civil War (1861-1865), slavery was abolished (13^th Amendment) and African Americans were made citizens and given equal protection under the law (14^th Amendment), and the right to vote (15^th Amendment).  To this day there have never been as many blacks in political office as the first 10 years after the war, a period referred to as Reconstruction[14].  In the South the reaction against these progressive measures was very negative.  The Ku Klux Klan was founded, the Black Codes[15] were enacted, and resentment against African Americans festered.  The Black Codes were the first of many laws designed to segregate blacks. They were repealed, but efforts to establish segregation continued and tended to succeed.  In the beginning the right to vote and to use public transportation were restricted but in time many different types of activities were affected:  “housing, religion, jobs, the courts, recreation, health care, and so on….”(McLemore, 1991:318). 

The details of the Jim Crow laws are fascinating and horrifying. 

Current Racism

            I stated in the beginning of this chapter that I would address the ideas of current hard-line racists such as the KKK and white supremacists.  In the 1980s these groups started to rejuvenate by the end of the nineties many racist groups were enabled to expand their ability to recruit through the Internet.  In the late 1990s a 24-year-old man, Shawn Allen Berry with no history of racist activities was with two avowed white supremacists that picked up James Byrd, a 49-year-old black man who was walking home from a party.   He accepted a ride from the three men and was told that they would take him to a nearby restaurant.  On June 7, 1998 Byrd was beaten, stripped of his clothes,  spray-painted in the face, chained by his ankles, and dragged for 3 and ½ miles behind Berry’s pickup truck, shredding and dismembering his body.  According to the pathologist Berry was alive until his head was torn off in a culvert.  The prosecution believes that Berry drove the pick-up and the tracks from the vehicle indicate that it swerved from side to side.   While the other two men who participated in the murder, John Williams King, 24, and Laurence Russell Brewer, 32, (who was an “Exalted Cyclops” of a white racist gang), and had racist tattoos covering their bodies, Berry seemed quite ordinary.  He was engaged to Christie Marcontell and had a two-year-old son with her and managed a movie theater and had two prior criminal convictions:  one for drunk driving and the other for burglary.  What would make these young men do such a horrendous act?  Where did they get their inspiration?   “Prosecutors believe that the murder was a publicity event King and Brewer staged to launch their own fledgling hate group, the Texas Rebel Soldiers, a branch of the Confederate Knights of America the two men joined in prison.” (http://www.courttv.com/archive/trials/brewer/091499_ctv.html). 

It should be pointed out here that a lynching such as this had it occurred in the mid fifties would possibly had a much different reaction by law enforcement.  The 1955 murder of Emmit Till ended up in a not guilty verdict.  In the Jasper case, the three men were arrested within 24 hours and all three convicted, two of whom were sentenced to death by lethal injection[16].   It is useful to look back into history to get an idea of the long history of such acts to address these questions. 

Let’s examine the KKK first.  There were distinct KKK’s, one that was organized immediately after the Civil War and the other from 1915 to the present.  Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Texas, organized the first Klan in 1966 as a social club.  The name comes from the Greek work kyklos from which the English word circle.  The group was lead by Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate cavalry general, who is believed to be the first grand wizard, and a descending hierarchy of grand dragons, grand titans, and grand cyclopses (Brewer’s rank).  They dressed in white robes to frighten superstitious blacks and to keep from being identified by Federal Troops.  The group reached its heyday between 1868 and 1870 and enabled whites to regain control of several Southern states.  The twentieth century Klan was organized in 1915 outside of Atlanta, Georgia by Colonel William J. Simmons, a preacher.  He was inspired by the Thomas Nixon book The Clansman (1905), the book that inspired one of the first “blockbuster” movies, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation.  A large part of the drive of the organization came from small-town white Protestants who felt threatened by the large-scale immigration then occurring.  The second Klan grew to 5 million members in the twenties and hostility towards Catholics, Jews, immigrants and labor unions was added to the traditional hatred of blacks and helped elect several senators, governors, and local officials throughout the South as well as in Indiana, Oregon, and Oklahoma.   Klan activities extended into the North and in June, 1923 25,000 men and women assembled for a Klan presentation in East Islip, on the South Shore of Long Island, New York  

(http://www.newsday.com/extras/lihistory/7/hs725a.htm).    A Klavern[17] had been established in Long Island.  The audience was warned of the dangers of Jews and Catholics, but less so about blacks as they were seen as less of a “threat” since they represented only 2 percent of the population of Long Island.   By the mid twenties Klan support had dwindled in Long Island and during the depression of the 1930s national membership declined until the various Klan groups were disbanded in 1944.  A resurgence of the Klan, this time much smaller, occurred as reaction to the Civil Rights movement.  But the Klan’s membership still remains much less than in the twenties with membership estimated at around 10,000 but accurate numbers are impossible due to the secret nature of the organization.

A sociological explanation for the variation in the Klan’s size is

“that they occur when a large segment of the dominant group comes to believe that, for no justifiable reason, in social status, economic position, or political influence is endangered or is actually declining (Jaret: 138). 

Like most things in sociology, the things we find most interesting in society have interconnections with other elements, especially the economy.

A recent example of a well-known politician with Klan roots is David Duke of Louisiana.  Duke, a former Klan leader,  who became a state representative states that he was influenced by Carleton Putnam’s Race and Reason as part of his transformation into a full-blown racist (Duke, 2002: 193). 

Skinheads

The skinheads[18] are another phenomenon worth examining.  In the popular mind, the skinhead is associated with violence, intolerance, and hate.  We shall examine this group and style now.  

 To start this section I thought it might be interesting to check out the Amazon.com website and to see the reviews of a book on skinheads, Skinheads Shaved for Battle: A Cultural History of American Skinheads by Jack B. Moore, a literature professor at the University of South Florida.  Although I have not read the book, here is a synopsis of it from Book News, Inc.:

Moore investigates the English roots of skinhead style, the American variants development within larger youth group scenes, the ideas and activities of racist skinheads, their modes of organizations, the role of music in their formation, their presentation in the media, and the damage they have done in American society.
 

            Here is the first customer review who gave it one star, the lowest rating out of five stars:

I bought this book at a local bookstore, without reading anything about it, and was extremely displeased. The author knows very little about the true skinhead culture. Skinheads are completely non political. Obviously skinheads have political views (the majority of which are not racist or to the contrary, extremely non-racist), but the author seems to say that SKINHEADS are racist, a generalization which is in itself prejudice, but the fact of the matter is that PEOPLE are racist. Whether they shave their heads and wear steel-toed Doc Martins with their flight jackets is beyond the point. This man judges people on their appearance, and is a miserable human being because of it. I do not recommend purchasing this book to anyone.

            I included this review because of the eight customer reviews on the book, six gave it one star.  The other two gave it four and five stars.  Here is the five star review:

Jack Moore did a good job researching and reporting the history of the Skinhead movement. His observations on how the media came to a certain extent define Skinhead self-perception was also right on target. However, like most books written on subcultures, the author lacks the "inside" view. Throughout the book I always got the impression he had never really attempted to submerge himself in the apathy, violence and lifestyle of the sub-culture he claimed to be documenting. Jack Moore's book is a good text for sociologists, but not for those really looking for an insiders view into the gritty underground that is Skinhead culture.

Apparently some nerves were touched upon as expressed in the first review, and the second review slams sociologists.  I included these reviews because they bring up some issues that I think are important to address.  First of all, as a sociologist I believe it is important to be open-minded and to listen to people insights and views on cultural phenomena.  Second, both the positive and the negative reviews assume that they are experts on skinheads.  I think both readers are making a valid point, the author Moore is equating skinheads with violent racist crimes, while clearly the vast majority of people who take on the dress and culture of the skinheads in all of its various manifestations, do not commit racist crimes any more than those who subscribe to the hip-hop culture commit crimes of violence.    I don’t think both customer reviewers would deny that many skinheads are racist and do commit hate crimes. 

After reading the introduction to the book provided by Amazon’s website, I agree in many ways with both reviewers, it does stereotype and it doesn’t include an inside look.  So I decided to do some research to see if there is any more objective academic research on the topic.  The best way to do that is not by looking at the popular media of books like Moore’s and magazines, but to look a peer-reviewed scholarly journals, the kind with no advertisements, no photos, no color, and is not sold for profit but found only in university libraries and professor’s offices.  The first one I found seemed objective and insightful.  Here is an abstract written by the authors of the article.  

The Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, May 1997 v34 n2 p, 175(32)

Beyond white pride: identity, meaning and contradiction in the Canadian skinhead subculture. Kevin Young; Laura Craig.

Author's Abstract: COPYRIGHT 1997 Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Assn.

Grounded in a cultural studies approach to youth subcultures and based on participant observation in a Western Canadian city, this study examines the meanings associated with membership for participants in a self-described "non-political" branch of the skinhead subculture. Despite popular images that imply homogeneity, the study shows that the skinhead subculture is both complex and multi-dimensional and that it accommodates, albeit in often-contradictory ways, a range of behavioural and ideological opportunities for its members. The study also suggests that, far from being resistant or transformative in any significant way, skinhead groups may represent a vehicle for social reproduction, specifically with respect to gender, race and ethnicity.

Another excerpt is included more to show the student the tone of the article than for the actual information.

Of course, the deviant reputation of skinheads stems not only from their behaviour but also from the very menacing image they project or, in other words, their style. According to Brake, style is made up of three main ingredients: image, which includes costume and accessories; demeanor, which includes gait, posture and practice; and argot, or the use of a distinct vocabulary (1985: 12). With such identifying characteristics or style in mind, Brake described the early British skinheads as:

Aggressive working-class puritans in big industrial boots, jeans rolled up high to reveal them, hair cut to the skull, braces, and a violence and racism [that] earned for them the title "bovver boys," "boot-boys" on the look out for "aggro" (aggravation). Stylistically they have roots in the hard mods, forming local gangs called after a local leader or an area. Ardent football fans, they were involved in violence on the terraces against rival supporters. They espoused traditional conservative values, hard work, patriotism, defence of local territory, which led to attacks on hippies, gays and minorities. They became a metaphor for racism .... "Puritans in boots," they opposed hippy liberalism, subjectivity and disdain for work, attempting to "magically recover the traditional working-class community" (75-76).

The article points out that skinheads are not a homogenous group in their “values, goals, and practices.(Young, 1997:  ”   Clearly, it is important to note the racist activities of many skinheads.  For example, according to the article in November 1989, three skinheads spray-painted Celtic crosses on what they thought was a Jewish synagogue and the world  “six million is not enough.”  In the United States James Tyler Williams, a white supremacist who admitted killing a Happy Valley, Calif., gay couple four years ago, was sentenced March 27 to 29 years to life in prison. He will serve the sentence after he completes a 21-year sentence for firebombing three synagogues and an abortion clinic.  (The Advocate (The national gay & lesbian newsmagazine), April 29, 2003 p17(1) Across the nation. (The Advocate Report).

Following procedural recommendations for pursuing ethnographic work laid out by Willis (1977; 1978; 1980) and other cultural studies writers (see Butters, 1976; Roberts, 1976), the participant observation portion of the study involved meeting with subjects weekly at their local "hang-outs," which included food courts, coffee shops and pubs. In meetings with the crew, our role was closest to what Gold might call "observer as participant" (1958: 220-21), although "just being around" and group discussion (Willis, 1980) proved to be equally valuable methods. Subjects were aware that ours was a "field" relationship, and we made no pretence of being actual members or wanting to join the group. Data from the field consisted of notes, which were written up directly following each visit in the field. In all, 75 hours of participation were logged over a four-month period.

There is a split between racist and non-racist skinheads as illustrated by the murder of two non-racist skinheads, Lin Newborn and Daniel Shersty whose murderers were alleged to be racist skinheads outside of Las Vegas (The New York Times, August 29, 1998 v147 pA8(N) pA8(L) col 1 (34 col in)

However this split between racist and non-racist skinheads that seems to in the United States and Western Europe, does not exist in Central Europe according to a 1999 article in the The Economist (US), March 20, 1999 v350 i8111 p56 (1) t.  It reports that in Western Europe there is a great deal of variation among none-racist skinheads ranging the non-violent and not racist and even “glad to be gay” skinheads.  In contrast in Central Europe (which includes Germany, Austria, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and a few other countries), the skinheads tend to be more uniformly racist and violent.  The Anti-Defamation League[19] estimates that there are 70,000 hardcore neo-Nazi skinheads worldwide (this estimate would not include the non-racist skinheads) with a fourth of them in Central Europe.  Only 1500 are estimated to reside in England the birthplace of the movement.  In Central Europe the target of skinheads is Gypsies, Africans, other ethnic minorities, drug addicts, and the homeless.

Chapter 4:  Assimilation

What is assimilation?  The easiest way to think about assimilation is to look at the etymology of the word.  It comes from the Latin word assimulare, which means “to make similar.”  If a group immigrates to a new country, for example, it may take a few generations for them to acquire the new culture and to mix in.  The end process of assimilation is for the group to become indistinguishable from the new culture and to disappear.  The early sociologists liked to use biological terms when they would invent sociological concepts, hence the word assimilation.  Most of you are familiar with the process in which a person eats something (a hamburger and fries, for example) which is then digested and absorbed by the body and incorporated into the body (as fat, for example). 

            When we apply the term to society, it is best to not take the biological analogy too far.  Assimilation occurs in stages according to the sociologists who have written on the topic.  One of the first was to address this issue was Robert E. Park, a prominent sociologist from early in the twentieth century that should be paid more attention to as his theories may come back into vogue.  Park worked for eleven years as a newspaper reporter and acquired an interest in the social problems of society.  Among his many accomplishments, he developed a theory that employed a “race relations cycle.”

Before discussing Parks theory a little background history should be include. The tenor of the times in which Park wrote was very anti-immigrant.  A three-year, 41-volume study called the Dillingham Commission Report (1911 as cited in Jaret: 344) states that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were inferior to Western and Northern Europeans and that they could not be Americanized (assimilated).  The commission states that the immigrants from the “progressive sections of Europe” (and they meant the “old immigrants” from Western and Northern Europeans such as the Germans and the Irish) would assimilate quickly but that the new immigrants (from Southern and Eastern European countries such as Italy and Poland) were “far less intelligent than the old” and that they were unwilling and unable to assimilate (Stark, 2004: 32-33).  According to the expert witnesses in the study,” Jew, Italian, Greeks, Poles, Slavs, Hungarians, and other new immigrants would never fit in, never become educated, never contribute to the culture or the economy” (Stark, 2004: 32).

Now enters our sociological hero, Robert Park.  In contrast to the Dillingham Report, he was convinced that the new immigrants would assimilate into American culture just as the older immigrants had.  It is obvious that he is correct.  Jews, Italians, Greeks, Russians, and Poles have all mastered English, have high educational levels and have contributed to the economy.  According to Park the explanation of the process of assimilation can be best explained by using a theoretical model.[20]  In Parks model assimilation is a cycle that consists of four steps:  contact, competition, accommodation, and assimilation.  I want you to pay attention to the second step:  competition.  Skerry (2000: 57) argues that competition is an overlooked part of assimilation.  One (2002) point out that competition increases “Mexican” identification among second immigrants and the declines in the third generation. 

The Generational Process of Assimilation    

It is very important to be aware that assimilation can occur within an immigrant’s own lifetime or from one generation to the next.   Let’s begin by defining some terms.  First generation means that the immigrant was born in another country.  If they arrive in the new country as a child, they may have more in common with the second generation.  The second generation was born in the United States to foreign born parents.  They usually first learn the language of their parents, Spanish for example, and then learn English when they enter school.  By the time they are in around 5^th or 6^th grade they usually begin to speak English better than their parents’ language.  The third generation person is born to parents whose parents were born outside of the United States.  Usually their parents (second generation) speak to them in English because they want them to get ahead and not to suffer when they enter school so they typically learn only a few words in Spanish, and perhaps understand it some.  The third generations often regrets not knowing Spanish and so they may even take classes in high school or college to learn it, but frequently do not achieve fluency as it is very hard to learn a foreign language outside of the country in which the language is spoken.  Their first generation grandparents may complain that their grandchildren do not understand them very well, if at all.  The historian Marcus Hansen has formulated a “law” to describe this phenomenon:  the “Law of the Return of the Third Generation.”  It goes like this:  “What the child wishes to forget, the grandchild wishes to remember.”  It should be noted here that Hansen formulated this law based mostly on Midwestern Swedish Americans.  I believe that it also applies to Mexican Americans and other Hispanics; even some have argued that Hansen’s law only applies to European immigrants. 

  It is clear that Hispanics are assimilating in every way that assimilation occurs.  To examine this the student needs to become familiar with a very well known model of assimilation by Milton Gordon (1964:71).  We will go into more detail on this model than we did on Park’s model.  Gordon thesis is that assimilation goes through stages, like Park’s model, but that in the case of racial minorities, assimilation can get stuck at any point.  The first stage of assimilation is cultural assimilation, the adopting of the immigrant group cultural characteristics such as language, dress, diet, norms[21], and values[22].  The second stage is structural assimilation has two types:  secondary and primary.  The third stage is marital assimilation.   This is a much harder concept to grasp but is very important to understanding sociology’s approach to analyzing society.  Society has a structure; just any building has a structure.  In the case of the building, all buildings, regardless of the culture that builds it has a structure consisting of walls, ceiling, entrance and floor.  Likewise, all societies, regardless of the culture, has certain structures such as population density, the number of children born to women of childbearing age, the ratio of men to women (the sex ratio) and many others.  Next we need to define primary and secondary before we continue our discussion of Gordon’s stages of assimilation.   A secondary group:

1. It is temporary.  It has a beginning and an end.  A college course has a start and finish date, for example.  ]
2. It is goal driven.  The purpose of the group is known to its members.  A person who goes to work everyday is working with others in a secondary group setting. 

In contrast to a secondary group, a primary group has the following characteristics: 

1. It is enduring, not temporary.  The best examples of a primary group would be a family or a small group of close friends (even just two people who consider each other close friends).  There may be a beginning of a friendship but the end date is not known. 
2. The purpose of the group is interaction itself; it does not have a specific, achievable goal. 

Marital assimilation generally occurs when the immigrant group has assimilated culturally, and structurally.  Each stage has a connection to the previous stage.  As the immigrants acculturate they are able to assimilate structurally.  To illustrate, let us apply the first, second and third generation conceptualization of assimilation.  In first generation the newcomer from Italy, let’s say, speaks no English and knows little about American cultural customs, but in the second generation, his children speak English fluently, dress in the styles that predominate and are thoroughly immersed in American culture.  A great deal of cultural assimilation has occurred immigrant who worked on a predominantly Italian construction crew immigrant as more and more of the immigrant group assimilate.  In the second generation it is also likely that a great deal of secondary structural assimilation will occur.  The children of the immigrant may attend public schools, and later get a job in any one of many areas that do not isolate or segregate the Italian worker.  For example, after serving time in the military, the individual becomes a manager of a larger supermarket.  All of these are secondary group situations – school, military, and occupation – and this leads us to the possibility of the primary structural assimilation.  This may be more common in the third generation than in the second but is certainly possible in the second.  The individual becomes friends with Americans who are not of Italian descent.  An example of friendship might be the situation where the person confides in the other person, feels free to loan or borrow money, go to movies, sports events, and just hang out.  When this occurs primary structural assimilation is happening.  It is important to note that not all groups move smoothly from one stage of assimilation to the next.  Clearly, European groups do tend to move smoothly, but this is definitely not the case for two exceptional groups that deserve our utmost attention:  American Indians and African Americans.  This is because in part neither group is an immigrant group.  And in the case of African Americans, skin color and other so-called racial features play a very large role in slowing down and even stopping the movement from stage to stage. 

It is important that the student realize how crucial primary structural assimilation is to achieving full assimilation.  No group can fully assimilate without primary structural assimilation and ALL immigrant groups (again except African Americans who are not a voluntary immigrant group, if using the word “immigrant” is even remotely applicable), I repeat, ALL immigrant groups are clearly assimilating rapidly into the American mainstream.  Mexican, Polish, Italians, Japanese, Chinese, Greeks, Russians, Russian Jews, Polish Jews, Germans, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, French, and all of the other major immigrant groups are assimilating in the fashion Gordon describes.  Typically by the third generation the language of the “old country” has been mostly lost and identifies begin to shift from, for example, “Polish” to “Polish American” to “American” as in “I think my grandparents were Polish?”  When primary structural assimilation occurs, which means when the immigrant group is accepted enough that they become friends with the host group’s peoples, another important type of assimilation begins to occur with increasing frequency:  marital assimilation.  This type of assimilation is the last stage of assimilation in that the more a group mixes with members of other groups, the more “diluted” the groups becomes until the group disappears.  Large-scale marital assimilation can only occur when primary structural assimilation has first become commonplace as it is unlikely for people to fall in love if they don’t know each other on a very personal level.  Most sociologists agree that the degree to which a group “out-marries,” indicates the level of acceptance the group has.  By this measure, groups such as the Italian Americans and the Japanese Americans are out marrying so often that some have claimed that both of these groups may disappear within a few generations barring massive immigration from Italy or Japan (both possibilities are unlikely).  Approximately 50 percent of Japanese Americans intermarry with whites and the intermarriage of Italian Americans with non-Italians is even higher, between two-thirds and three-quarters.

The other types of assimilation that Gordon includes are:  identificational assimilation (a sense of peoplehood based exclusively on the host society), attitude receptional assimilation (the absence of prejudice), behavioral receptional assimilation (the absence of discrimination), and civic assimilation (the absence of value and power conflicts).  Thus we have a list of stages of assimilation at this point:

1. Cultural Assimilation:  language, norms, values, diet, clothing, music, and other elements of culture are adopted.
2. Structural Assimilation:  first secondary (jobs, schools, neighborhoods, civic organizations) and then primary (friendships)
3. Marital Assimilation (intermarriage)
4. Identificational Assimilation (for example, “I am American instead of I am Mexican-American”)
5. Attitude Receptional Assimilation (prejudice against the group diminishes and eventually disappears)
6. Behavioral Receptional Assimilation (discrimination in employment, education, the criminal justice system, banks, housing are eliminated)
7. Civic Assimilation (the group votes, runs for political offices, join political organizations, write editorials, etc.)

MYTH:  the new immigrants, especially those from Mexico, are not assimilating. 

This myth is completely without an ounce of truth.  It has been the fear of some white Americans that the “American Way of Life” is rapidly disappearing because the U.S. is being inundating by foreigners. 

                We Americans are a perishing people.  From the point of view of history we are being wiped from the face of the earth with a rapidity which almost staggers the hope.  First let me clearly define what I mean by the phrase, “We American People.”  I mean by that phrase those white, native-born citizens of this country whose ancestry, birth and training has been such as to give them to-day a full share in the basic principles, the ideals and the practice of our American civilization….  The mighty length and breadth of the soil made sacred by our struggles and our victories is now being given over, with ever greater rapidity, to various peoples of a totally different mold. 

Apparently this author felt that time was of essence in his drastic pronouncement of the doom of “We American People” but as alarmists are often mistaken, so was he.  The statement was written in the early twenties by William Joseph Simmons, the first Grand Wizard of the second (begun in 1915) Ku Klux Klan.   I will quote in length portions of Simmons tract as it bears a remarkable resemblance to current alarmists who claim that the United States is being overrun by foreigners who threaten the “American Way of Life”

Incoming mass by the hundred thousand flood New England.  They do not speak our language, can not know our laws, and do not mix with our native people because there are hardly any natives in New England left to mix with. 

Obviously, this fear was not realized in New England.  Nor were his fears of inundation by the Japanese realized in California.  There are counties in California where more Japanese babies are being born each year than white babies.  The Japanese in California are multiplying at the stupendous rate of sixty-nine per thousand, annually, while the white people of California increase at the rate of eighteen per thousand.  This is a calculated misuse of statistics.    While the birth rates may be correct, the proportion of Japanese was so small in California that even if the birth rate were that high, it would not stay that high.  It doesn’t seem that the Japanese have taken over the state by any means.  In fact, the entire Asian population is not large enough to be a majority in any single county in the entire state, including the county in which San Francisco is located. 

            Let us now apply each of Gordon’s stages of assimilation to Mexican-Americans and other Hispanic groups.  The reason why I am focusing on this issue is because it is a common misunderstanding in our culture to believe that the Hispanic population is fundamentally different from previous immigrant groups.  Many have claimed that Hispanics are not assimilating and the culture of the Untied States is in peril. 

The document we will rely upon for assimilation information was done by the Pew Hispanic Center/Kaiser Family Foundation.   The 2002 National Survey of Latinos used a nationally representative sample 2,929 Hispanics adults of many different backgrounds and groups who were interviewed on the telephone between April 4 and June 11, 2002.      We shall first examine various elements of Gordon’s first stage, cultural assimilation

Language:  A large majority of Latino adults are first generation (63%)[23].  The second generation is 19% and the third generation and higher is 17% of the respondents.  Of the first generation only 4% are English-dominant.  The rate of English-dominance increases to 46% in the second generation, and among the third generation or higher a large majority (78$) are English-dominant.  

Identificational Assimilation.  What do the terms Hispanic and Latino mean?  These two terms are umbrella terms that encompass any individual who can trance their ancestry to Mexico, Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica), the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba or South America or “some other Latin American background.” (In regards to Mexico, those who identify with the terms “Mexican American” or “Chicano” would be included in Hispanic category.  Many people in university settings believe that the term “Hispanic” connotes assimilation while “Latino” connotes ethnic pride.  When asked about which term is preferred, a slight majority (53%) indicate that they do not have a preference.   Of the 47% who do have a preference, Hispanic is generally preferred over Latino.  Respondents from Texas are more likely than those from California to prefer “Hispanic” and the reverse is true of “Latino” in that Californian respondents tend to prefer “Latino>” 

According to the 2002 National Survey of Latinos when respondents were asked which terms they would use first over half (54%) indicated that they would chose the country of origin while only one quarter (24%) selected “Latino” or “Hispanic.”  However, as one might expect, the first generation respondents tended them to overwhelmingly identify with the country of origin while second generation respondents split between those who identified themselves primarily by their parents country of origin (38%) and those who identified themselves as American (35%).  (Puerto Ricans and Cubans were the most likely to identify with the term “American.”)  By the third generation, the identification themselves “first and foremost” American rises to (57%). 

Marital Assimilation:  Interracial Marriage and Interethnic Marriage

                Both interracial marriage and interethnic marriage can be controversial.  Parents often are very upset when their children date or marry a person of another group, be it race, ethnic group, or religious group.  Sometimes two of the categories overlap as when a Italian Catholic marries an German-American Lutheran, or a Irish Catholic marries a Baptist African American.  Sometimes all three overlap.  If one adds class to the mix, a great deal of differences between couples is possible.  But before we get too far into our topic, it should be noted that romantic couples do not randomly select each other.  As Ian Robertson (1988) as put it, cupid’s arrows are not haphazard in choice.  There are distinct patterns of who selects whom to date and to marry.  First, people tend to marry within their own groups.  Although there are exceptions, middle class people end up marrying middle class people; the rich marry the rich, and so on.  Again, although there are exceptions, people marry within their general religion, Catholics marry Catholics, Jews marry Jews, Muslims marry Muslims, and so on.  And not surprisingly, people usually marry within their own race.  If we examine interracial marriages there are distinct patterns that should be noted:

1.                              Interethnic marriage is not new.  By 1910 interethnic marriage was common among whites (Qian, 1999). 

2. Interracial marriage is quite rare (Qian, 1999). 

2.  The least common combination of interracial marriage is black/white.  Indian/white marriages are quite common, although the rate varies among tribes the rate at which Indians marrying whites can be as much as fifty percent or even more.   Asian/white marriages occur often, especially among Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans families who have more then a couple of generations in the United States often intermarry with whites (Qian, 2001).  The least likely to out marry among the Asians are Southeast Asian Americans and Asian Indian Americans (Qiann, 2001).    But blacks tend not to marry non-blacks in general; although the rate of out-marriage[24]  of blacks is increasing black/white marriage is exceedingly rare. 

A 1997 Gallup poll found the highest approval rating of interracial marriage ever by both black (77 percent) and white (61 percent) Americans. The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) also has found increased acceptance. By 1994, when people were asked, "Would you favor a law against racial intermarriage?" 84.9 percent of 1,626 white Americans answered in the negative. Even more black Americans--96.8 percent of the 258 polled--also answered no.

Black white marriage historically

From an 1869 an opinion of the Georgia Supreme Court

The amalgamation of the races is not only unnatural, but is always productive of deplorable results. Our daily observation shows us that the offspring of these unnatural connections are generally sickly and effeminate, and that they are inferior in physical development and strength to the full blood of either race. It is sometimes urged that such marriages should be encouraged for the purpose of elevating the inferior race. The reply is, that such connections never elevate the inferior race to the position of the superior, but they bring down the superior to that of the inferior. They are productive of evil and evil only, without any corresponding good.

Chapter 5:  The Economy

In no other part of society do race and ethnic relations matter more, have more effect and influence than in the economy.  Many people think of race relations as a purely social psychological phenomenon and tend to consider prejudice the most important topic.  But most sociologists have come to realize that the pocketbook is where race relations hurt the most.  A child growing up on an isolated Indian reservation, an inner city ghetto or barrio may encounter very few outsiders who stereotype them, but nonetheless suffer greatly.  The child may eat enough food, but not healthy food and suffer later in life from any one of several ailments associated with diet, such as adult onset diabetes.  The child will be able to go to public school, but the school will most likely be underfunded with a large portion of the students with special needs.  They may live in housing with some modern conveniences but at times do without heat when the gas bill cannot be paid.  They probably live with violence surrounding them, perhaps from family members or gang members, and come to view going to jail or prison as a part of growing up. 

Segregation

Housing segregation is declining in the United States when the overall statistics are considered.  In the 1990s black/white segregation decreased in most parts of the nation.  The rate of desegregation is slow, however, and some areas are becoming more segregated.  In an Urban Institute study of 69 metropolitan areas[25] changes in black/white segregation between 1990 and 2000 found that an increasing number of neighborhoods that were all white in 1990 now have Blacks moving into them (Rawlings, et al. 2004). 

However, all-black neighborhoods did not experience a similar increase in whites moving in.  Most importantly, contrary to what was once true, many mixed neighborhoods have become stable.  Previously it was thought that mixed neighborhoods were usually in transition from all white to all black or vice versa.  In general the numbers of all white neighborhoods are decreasing, but still are the most common type of neighborhoods.  Five neighborhood types were defined: 

1. Exclusively white—less than 5 percent black. 
2. Predominantly white:  5 to 10 percent black. 
3. Mixed-majority white:  10 to 50 percent black.
4. Mixed-majority black:  50 to 90 percent black population. 
5. Predominantly black or exclusively black:  more than 90 percent black.  

Mixed neighborhoods are increasing with mixed majority-white neighborhoods growing the fastest and predominately black or exclusively black neighborhoods growing the slowest. 

            Still large numbers of both Hispanics and African Americans live in neighborhoods with few people from outside groups.  These neighborhoods often are very poor and crime-ridden and seem to be culturally and financially far outside of the American mainstream.  Many books have described these neighborhoods in detail.  One of the best is Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol (1995).  It describes “one of the largest racially segregated concentrations of poor people in our nation” (Kozol, 1995:1).  Two thirds of the residents are Hispanic (Dominican and Puerto Rican) and one third are Black.  Some things have changed since Kozol wrote.  For one, according to the New York City Department of Planning, the infant mortality rate in 1990 was extremely high at 16.8 percent and dropped to 6.8 percent in 2000and both the birth rate and the death rates have decreased in the same time period (NYC.gov.planning).  In contrast, another New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene study reveals that Mott Haven is one of the unhealthiest neighborhoods in all of New York City.  35 percent of the residents do not consider themselves to be good health compared to 14 percent of the United States.  Mott Haven has two to three times the death rate of New York City in the following categories:  AIDS, Pneumonia and Influenza, drug-related, diabetes, accidents and injuries and homicide.  What makes this all the more striking is that the neighborhood is a young one, 35 percent of the residents are children while the NYC rate is 24%.  The homicide rate is three time higher than the New York City average.  64% feel that the neighborhood is unsafe compared to 32 percent for New York City as a whole.  56% of those who are 25 years or older did not graduate from high school compared to 28 percent of New Yorkers in general.  Clearly problems abound in Mott Haven in almost every category of health, education and crime.

Chapter 6:  Arizona and the Phoenix Metropolitan Area

            First, let’s look at Arizona’s statistics.   All of the following charts were retrieved from the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation website, “State Health Facts Online,”

Another graphic representation of Arizona.

Let’s compare by including a graphic of Minnesota, a particularly white state.

And now California.

And one more in the Midwest, Illinois.

Now the poverty rate by race for the United States:

Poverty Rate by Race/Ethnicity, state data 2000-2001, U.S. 2001

Here is Arizona:

Poverty Rate by Race/Ethnicity

Illinois is very similar to Arizona with the exception that Hispanics have a lower rate of poverty in Illinois than in Arizona. 

Poverty Rate by Race/Ethnicity

California is almost identical with the exception that Blacks have a lower rate of poverty in Arizona than in California. 

Poverty Rate by Race/Ethnicity

Minnesota’s poverty rates are lower for all of the groups when compared to Arizona, California and Illinois.

Poverty Rate by Race/Ethnicity

Here we see large differences between racial/ethnic groups for the nation as a whole.

Median Family Income by Race/Ethnicity, state data 2000-2001, U.S. 2001

Arizona seems to follow the same pattern.

Median Family Income by Race/Ethnicity

California has some significant differences with Arizona.  What are they? 

Median Family Income by Race/Ethnicity

Let’s look at Illinois. 

Median Family Income by Race/Ethnicity

And finally we examine  Minnesota. 

Median Family Income by Race/Ethnicity

Teen birth rates vary tremendously by racial/ethnic group in Arizona and similarly in the nation as a whole. 

 The good news is that the rate of teen births is going down in Arizona and in the United States.

One of the most important ways to measure the general health of a category of people is to look at the infant mortality rate.  The rate for infant mortality for blacks in Arizona is almost four times higher than it is for whites.  The Arizona black infant mortality rate is 61% higher than the national rate. 

The AIDS rate also varies by race/ethnic group.