Category Archives: Geopolitics
The Difference Between Race, Ethnicity, and Culture
One of my most popular posts is The Difference Between Race and Culture (thanks for all the love!). Here, I have expanded to include ethnicity. Please note, this is a very basic introduction and does not include a lot of complex intricacies that are found in the world.
NOTE: This information is copyright protected. DO NOT copy/paste without giving appropriate credit. An appropriate APA citation for this would be:Kean, M. (2011). The difference between race and culture. Progressive Scholar blog. Retrieved from http://progressivescholar.wordpress.com/?p=615
A lot of people confuse ‘race’, ‘ethnicity’, and ‘culture’ or think they are the same thing. To address the difference, we must start at the fundamental concepts of race and culture. Race is a social construct that is used to categorize and divide people based on physical characteristics, which often leads to conflict and oppression. In short, Race is a label forced on someone based on their skin tone and physical characteristics. A person’s race is externally decided and has nothing to do with culture, intellect, ability, or personality.
Ethnicity, on the other hand, is determined by such attributes as cultural traditions, religion, ancestry, language, and beliefs. Your textbook defines ethnicity as “identity with a group of people who share the cultural traditions of a particular homeland or hearth” (Rubenstein, p. 208). Let’s consider this example. ‘Caucasian’ is considered to be a race, with particular physical characteristics attributed to Caucasians such as a narrow nose, light skin, and straight or wavy hair. Within the Caucasian race, however, you will find many different ethnicities, such as Irish, Finnish, German or French. Also within the Caucasian race, you will find many different cultures and sub-cultures such as punk, gamers, straight edge, bikers – even the military can be seen as its own culture.
Different from race, culture is a system of shared beliefs and values (also known as ‘worldviews’) that may include a shared geographic region, language, religion, spirituality, or livelihoods. Communication style and interpersonal relationships are integral aspects of culture and can vary dramatically from one culture to another. It is important to remember that everyone on earth belongs to at least one culture; not just those groups who are considered ‘civilized’. The majority of culture is unseen, below the surface. The beliefs and values that lie beneath the surface can be the most difficult to change when it is necessary.
People of the same race can have many different cultures among them, and people of the same culture can have many different races among them.
So, someone’s race is determined their physical characteristics and those of their biological family. Culture is all the ways that we express ourselves, how we interact, what we believe in spiritually, and how we perceive things. Culture is not based on physical characteristics but on a person’s way of life. Ethnicity takes into account cultural traditions, language, religion, and place of origin.
References
Banks, J. A., & Banks, C. A. (2007). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (6th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Manning, M. L., & Baruth, L. G. (2009). Multicultural education of children and adolescents (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Rubenstein, J.M. (2011). The cultural landscape: An introduction to human geography (10th ed.). Prentice Hall.
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Technology and conquest
Technology was the key for expansion and domination. Warfare technology was especially vital in this endeavor. Jared Diamond wrote about this at length in his book “Guns, Germs and Steel” where he identifies those three as the most vital agents of conquest. Here’s an excerpt from the PBS website about the show based on the book:
Jared Diamond’s journey of discovery began on the island of Papua New Guinea. There, in 1974, a local named Yali asked Diamond a deceptively simple question:
Image via Wikipedia
“Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”
Diamond realized that Yali’s question penetrated the heart of a great mystery of human history — the roots of global inequality.
Why were Europeans the ones with all the cargo? Why had they taken over so much of the world, instead of the native people of New Guinea? How did Europeans end up with what Diamond terms the agents of conquest: guns, germs and steel? It was these agents of conquest that allowed 168 Spanish conquistadors to defeat an Imperial Inca army of 80,000 in 1532, and set a pattern of European conquest which would continue right up to the present day.
Diamond knew that the answer had little to do with ingenuity or individual skill. From his own experience in the jungles of New Guinea, he had observed that native hunter-gatherers were just as intelligent as people of European descent — and far more resourceful. Their lives were tough, and it seemed a terrible paradox of history that these extraordinary people should be the conquered, and not the conquerors.
To examine the reasons for European success, Jared realized he had to peel back the layers of history and begin his search at a time of equality – a time when all the peoples of the world lived in exactly the same way.
To get a little philosophical, I want to pose some questions: Is conquest necessarily a good thing? Why was it important for a country like Britain to have a massive empire – in other words, why is expansion necessary to be seen as “thriving”? Can’t a country or nation thrive without colonizing other places?
Wetback, the Undocumented Documentary
It is often easy to forget about the impact of immigration on the individuals and families that experience it when the political conversation is all about building walls, border control and the new laws in places like Arizona and Mississippi. I recently saw an eye-opening documentary called “Wetback” which offers a first-person perspective of undocumented workers. It’s available on Netflix, here!
Image via IMDB
What it means to be a colony
America began as a colony of England in the 16th Century. At this time in history, European countries were busy at work colonizing areas – you may have heard this called the Age of Discovery. This era in history was focused on European powers competing with each other for the control of “new” territories (new to the Europeans, anyway). What often gets lost in the story of European expansion is the stories of all the indigenous people that were colonized by the European empires, and did not appreciate the Europeans “discovering” their long-established cultures.
Some of these European powers included the Portuguese Empire, Spanish Empire, French Empire, and British Empire. In addition to the negative effects on the indigenous cultures, the European demand for labor in its new colonies is what prompted the African enslavement system across the Atlantic. This devastating holocaust had a hard-hitting and long-lasting affect on Africa and Africans. The enslavement caused a depopulation, societal disruption and destruction of Africa, especially West Africa; a loss of youth and skilled personnel; and economic devastations among other repercussions.
Some positive aspects of colonialism are: technological advancements, medical advances and new institutions in the colonized area. Some negative aspects include: spread of diseases, social oppression and exploitation, enslavement and genocide of the natives by the colonizers. Do the positives outweigh the negatives?
If you’d like to learn more here are some resources:
The impact of the slave trade on Africa by Elikia M’bokolo
Slave trade: a root of contemporary African Crisis by Tunde Obadina
Mid-November Post Round-up
From Mother Jones: Closing the Achievement Gap: Race Still Matters:
“A new report (PDF) looking at math and reading proficiency among young black males in urban public schools concludes they’re doing even worse than is generally known, and poverty alone doesn’t explain it. Most K-12 data is usually broken up by race or ethnicity, but not gender. What this sharpened interpretation reveals is that young black males face more obstacles to graduating from high school than any other subgroup, from living in a household without a male guardian, to more frequent encounters with overzealous cops, to higher dropout rates and more suspensions.”
From Pam’s House Blend: Disillusionment & Consequences: Moving Equality Forward After Setbacks:
“Now that a little time has passed after the midterm elections, it’s time for us to pick ourselves up and figure out how to move forward in a very different political climate. There has been much talk about voter disillusionment with the Democrats, especially in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender (LGBT) community, which voted for the GOP in much higher numbers than in previous cycles — even against their own interests and rights in many cases.”
From Tim Wise: An Open Letter to the White Right, On the Occasion of Your Recent, Successful Temper Tantrum:
“I know, you think you’ve taken “your country back” with this election — and of course you have always thought it was yours for the taking, cuz that’s what we white folks are bred to believe, that it’s ours, and how dare anyone else say otherwise — but you are wrong.” Read the rest of this entry
The Mexican-American War and how it still impacts us today
Image via Wikipedia
I don’t know if any of you remember the Mexican-American War in your U.S. History classes, but it’s actually very relevant to the current discussion on language rights in schools. The war was fought over Mexican land that America wanted. Based on the ideology of manifest destiny, Americans thought it was their destiny to own the entire continent from coast to coast. Even if this meant taking land from another country. The Mexican-American war ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 in which Mexico gave up Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California to America.
To think about this war of 1846 to 1848 as only a war between two nations leaves out an entire body of people. The mestizo peoples in Tejas, the Tejanos in Texas; the Nuevo Mexicanos in New Mexico, the Californianos in California and in other parts of what is now Arizona — these people were not claimed by either nation. And so to think of the war only in terms of national histories excludes thousands of people who were already here including indigenous populations that were already here even longer. These peoples are not claimed by the United States or not claimed fully as citizens, and they’re lost to Mexico. Where does that leave these people? They’ve lost their homeland and they don’t have a nation because neither claimed them. Where does it leave them? Basically, it erases their existence or subjugates them as less than second-class citizens, which, in fact, happened.
The violations then and now are multiple. This was a violation in terms of land. All of a sudden people lost their land through legal and extra legal means — so, what was a homeland is no longer yours. There is a violation and violence in terms of language — what was your language and your forbearers and your ancestors is no longer acceptable so it’s illegitimate and, therefore, you’re illegitimate. Cultural forms and formulations, sensibilities and aesthetics were demeaned, dismissed, discredited or delegitimized — in other words, were unacceptable.
‘Why should we change our language for them?’: False ownership and the importance of language
America doesn’t have an official language at this time. We are a country comprised almost entirely of immigrants and many of our families did not speak English when they first arrived here. There is not one monolithic group that people can point to and say, “those are Americans” and “those are not Americans” based on their language. Throughout our history, Americans have spoken hundreds of languages. English is England’s language, and on this Fourth of July holiday we remember that we claimed independence from England. So, consider the idea of false ownership when you say or hear things like ”our language” or “our country”. This country does not belong to English speaking people any more than Spanish speaking people or Mandarin speaking people. We are all Americans.
Spanish spoken in the United States: Image via Wikipedia
People also say that “even though the United States has become a melting pot, we still need to stay solid in keeping English our main language in our country.” At what point in American history did it become a melting pot? 20 years ago? 60 years? How about two hundred years ago? The English were not the only ones on this continent in 1776; there were Native Americans, Africans, and Hispanics already living here. When those millions of Irish and Eastern Europeans immigrated to the United States in the 19th century, they did not speak perfect English. If it were not for their efforts in construction and industry, we would not have experienced the industrial revolution. And when the United States took Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California from Mexico in 1848, the majority of those state’s inhabitants spoke Spanish. Enslaved Africans (who were actively encouraged to remain illiterate) contributed greatly to the economic strength of our nation. Chinese and Irish immigrants, who largely did not speak English, are responsible for our coast-to-coast railroad system.
And all of these immigrants (except enslaved Africans) built and operated their own schools where they used their mother tongue. All of these immigrants contributed to making America great, often without the use of the English language. So why do we gaffe at such attempts by immigrants today?
If you’re interested in learning more, Ronald Takaki’s book “A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America” is a wonderful read. Also check out Ronald Takaki’s videos on YouTube, like this one.
Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (1995), an international leader in linguistic human rights, offers this Declaration of Children’s Linguistic Human Rights:
1. Every child should have the right to identify positively with her original mother tongue(s) and have her identification accepted and respected by others.
2. Every child should have the right to learn the mother tongue(s) fully.
3. Every child should have the right to choose when she wants to use the mother tongue(s) in all official situations.
References
Angela Davis, 1/22/2010
I went to see Angela Davis speak for free this evening as part of the university’s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lecture series. It was a wonderful event; she was brilliant and captivating and before I knew it, an hour had gone by.
My camera phone took a shoddy far away picture of Dr. Davis, so here’s one I snagged off the interwebs:
Dr. Angela Davis, now and then
Here are some of the frantic notes I took, which may not make any sense to you but that’s okay.
She discussed a multitude of topics such as restoring our historical memory, feminism, the power of imperialism, slavery, Haiti, black women’s forgotten involvement in the civil rights movement (aka Freedom Movement), what it means to have a community organizer as head of state, and deconstructing freedom.
Quotables:
- we need to revise our historical memory to include all the nameless, faceless people who gave just as much effort as the heroes we recognize.
- citizenship does not mean freedom, but it precludes it.
- freedom involves the right to be healthy, the right to an education
- the goal of the freedom movement is not just civil rights, but to enlarge the terrain of freedom
- freedom is not a state of being but an effort to remake our lives and futures
- Book recommendations: Naomi Klein: Shock Doctrine and W.E.B. DuBois: Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880
Earthquake in Haiti
There was a major earthquake in Haiti yesterday. It impacted the area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s largest city of nearly 2 million people. It is estimated that more than 200,000 people have died in the earthquake. This is comparable to the entire population of these U.S. cities: Des Moines, Iowa; Irving, Texas; Shreveport, Louisiana; Montgomery, Alabama; and Spokane, Washington.
Most medical facilities were either damaged or destroyed. As the President Preval told the Miami Herald earlier: “Parliament has collapsed. The tax office has collapsed. Schools have collapsed. Hospitals have collapsed. There are a lot of schools that have a lot of dead people in them.”
If you can, please consider donating money to Yéle Haiti, Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF, or whatever charity of your choice to help the survivors.
Please remember, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere. We must do what we can to help them through this tragic time, and then we must do what we can to help them rebuild their country. We cannot rebuild it American-style, or European-style. Haiti can be rebuilt with the help of the world, but it must be rebuilt for Haitians.
White supremacists in Arizona
Jun 1
Posted by Progressive Scholar
The video, below, made me sick to my stomach. Fully armed white supremacists walking around and praising Hitler, asking where’s a country just for white people? News flash, America has never been a country of only white people. We stole it from the Native Americans, enslaved Africans to do our work for us, forced Chinese laborers to die while building the railroads, and grew to be an economic force on the backs of immigrants.
Our educational system has a responsibility to teach our children these facts, rather than white-washing history. Doing so encourages white supremacy by telling our children, “Look – no other race has done anything worthy of talking about except whites! We are the best!” That’s more than misleading, it’s historically inaccurate and deeply damaging to our ability to maintain our economic and political force in the world (a world that has more than white people in it!)
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Posted in Current Events, Geopolitics, Race and Ethnicity, Social Commentary
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Tags: american history, conservative, culture, Current Events, discrimination, diversity, Education and Schooling, historical inaccuracies, History, immigration, native americans, racism, slavery, United States, white privilege, White supremacy, youtube