Ethnic identity is the foundation of any he althy society. Despite the social foundations of race and ethnicity, sociologists recognize that they are extremely important. Race and nationality form the social stratification that underlies individual and group identities, determine patterns of social conflict and the life priorities of entire nations. The concept of ethnic identity and identity is very important for understanding race. Eminent scholar George Fredrickson defines it as "a consciousness of status and identity based on shared ancestry and skin color."
Between Weber and Marx
Fredrickson traces interest in race and the formation of ethnic identity to the 1970s debate between neo-Marxists and Weberists about the origins of American racism. Until that time, the latter term had been interpreted in the light of psychological constructs, includingincluding ignorance, prejudice, and the projection of hostility onto low-status groups. Rejecting the causal significance of these factors, Marxist scholars such as Eugene Genovese have emphasized the economic benefits accruing to slaveholders in the exploitation of people of African descent. They argued that anti-black ideologies were defined by industrial relations and reflected the class consciousness of slave owners who imposed these views on non-working white workers. Recognizing the importance of class in racial inequality, Fredrickson and his colleagues countered Marxist claims about the economic basis of racism by resurrecting a controversy first made in the 1940s by W. E. B. Du Bois. They pointed out that poor whites, who had little interest in the exploitation of African American labor, were nevertheless passionate supporters of Suprematism. Race and ethnicity were significant determinants of social differentiation in their own right. Paraphrasing Marx, Fredrickson used the term "racial consciousness" as an alternative to class identity in the formation of identification and solidarity.
Race and ethnicity in sociology
Van Ousdale and Feigin's research shows the primacy of race consciousness in the construction of personality, demonstrating that children under the age of 3 are well aware of such classification and develop curious distinctions based on their understanding.
Significant sociological knowledge about the nature and functioning of racial and ethnic relations is fadingrooted in an analysis of the highly structured situation in the American South prior to the Civil Rights Movement. However, recent studies conducted in the most diverse, multicultural and globalized contemporary social environments, in which migrants are a large part of the local population and overtly racist statements are taboo, provide a much more complex and diverse set of racial and ethnic situations than in earlier times. Although race and the ethnic self-consciousness of an ethnos remain a powerful force in such conditions, their codification is much more difficult. Winant, Bonilla Silva, and others argue in their theories that racism has multiple foundations, affects groups in different ways, and varies across time, place, class, and gender. Hence the characteristic problems of national self-consciousness arise.
Migration
Migration can radically transform the prisms and boundaries through which the consciousness of a race is formulated. Accordingly, systems of national classification and consciousness ignore general principles and must be studied locally. For example, the literature on immigrants of African ancestry in North America shows that, despite the widespread phenotypically based ideology of racism that exists in the US, black newcomers often reject the American classification system and use language, social practices, and selective patterns of social interaction to liberate yourself from it.
In a large study of immigrant children in Californiaand Florida, Portes and Rumbaut found that the more such youth are assimilated, the less likely they are to identify themselves as American, and the more likely they are to identify with their country of origin. Thus, their self-proclaimed foreignness is "made in the USA". In contrast, immigrant children in the United Kingdom downplay national identity and instead emphasize their parents' religion, preferring to be classified as Hindu, Muslim or Sikh in their interactions with native Britons, even if they do not practice their faith more diligently than most of the Kingdom's subjects practice Christianity..
Race issue
In his study of white identity in Detroit's black majority, John Hartigan found that working-class whites are attributing the deteriorating quality of life in their neighborhoods not to African Americans. Here, rather, the racial category "fortified" is defined, "relative newcomers who entered Motor City from the Appalachians in search of industrial jobs." Finally, some groups with strong minority identities, such as Jews from the former Soviet Union who arrive in the US and Canada, are surprised to see themselves as members of the white majority, albeit with a foreign accent.
Sociologists Jennifer Lee and Frank Bean have studied the changing nature of the color line in the US as the country includes a growing mixed-race population and numerous immigrants who are neither black norwhite. The authors review theories and data that suggest that growing diversity will cause American society to either care less about such differences (bringing a color blind society) or cause the color line to shift. Citing low rates of segregation in residential areas and high rates of intermarriage between Asians and Hispanics and native whites, compared to lower rates of black and white interaction, the authors conclude that a new color line that distinguishes blacks from all others, may arise, leaving African Americans at disadvantages that are not qualitatively different from those maintained by the traditional black-and-white division.
Theoretical base
Since the 1960s, sociologists have increasingly begun to agree that ethnic identity is the basis for assessing group status and the concomitant formation of collective identities. Herbert Blumer's theory of race relations, describing it as a sense of group position, argued that this sense was critical to the relationship between dominant and subordinate groups in society. This provided the dominant culture with its perceptions, values, sensitivities and emotions. A more recent view sees the group position as applicable to subordinate as well as dominant groups.
Theorists involved in national mobilization and economics, social capital, argue that the general concepts of ethnic and racial consciousness lieat the heart of forms of trust, political and economic cooperation and mobilization. In their key work on social capital, Portes and colleagues identify a common national consciousness as contributing to the achievement of common goals. These include attracting investment capital, encouraging academic excellence, promoting political activism, and encouraging self-help philanthropy. At the same time, they remind us that social capital can be deficient, such that members of the same ethnic group will sometimes scorn assimilation, achievement, and upward mobility, violating group norms. Those who engage in sanctioned behavior will be seen as disloyal and without access to group-based resources.
Conscience and oppression
Racial and ethnic identity are social instincts that are strongest in societies where the population is clearly divided and scarce and valuable resources are distributed unevenly based on very national characteristics. Often the process is initiated as an elite group - for example, white slave owners in the antebellum south - unites dominance among a minority - Africans - using state power to legitimize the socio-economic structures that underlie inequality. This in turn heightens the consciousness of the oppressed group, leading to conflict.
The practice of destroying racial and ethnic identity
From the 1960s to the 1990s, several states, unfortunately, pursued a policy ofdestruction of the self-consciousness of ethnic communities, and therefore left many problems to their descendants. This often included the involvement of two related policies that stimulated assimilation and minimized racial, ethnic and gender disparities in job distribution, education and other social benefits, while promoting group awareness through affirmative action and the implementation of multicultural programs (maintaining language, identity, political incorporation and religious practice). Michael Bunton offers an interpretation of this apparent paradox, arguing that the individual goal seeks to reduce group consciousness and promote assimilation, but that certain goals (such as public goods) can only be achieved by collective action.
The collapse of the USSR and the revival of nationalism
However, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1990, which led to the obsolescence of state socialism, there were outbreaks of terrible ethnic conflicts in the Balkan region and the events of September 11, 2001. Many states have become much more cynical about their ability to manage the negative manifestations of racial and ethnic consciousness through tolerance and moderate state support. Instead, majoritarian movements from the US and the Netherlands to Zimbabwe and Iran have argued that major social conflicts are best resolved by providing an idealized version of the cultural, religious, racial, and national roots of these states, while limiting immigration and making small concessions. In developed countriessuch a policy would lead to a positive growth in the ethnic self-consciousness of the people, while in the states of the third world any attempt to revive self-consciousness sooner or later leads to radicalism and terrorism.
The world is on fire
In his provocatively titled book World on Fire (2003), lawyer Amy Chua argued that, at least for the short term, the correlates of Western modernization-expansion of free markets plus democratization-will strengthen, not diminish international conflicts. This is because, under conditions of economic liberalization, the heightened we alth of ethnically isolated minorities contrasts sharply with the hardship usually experienced by the local majority. As a result, entrepreneurial "outsiders", including South Asians in Fiji, Chinese in Malaysia, Jewish "oligarchs" in Russia, and whites in Zimbabwe and Bolivia, were ostracized by impoverished indigenous people who, as the national majority, had much to greater influence within a democratic society.
Given the diverse nature of ethnic and racial identities in today's globalized world, characterized by economic transformation, transnational ties, the intersection of social and religious movements at the frontier, and increased access to communication and travel, it seems likely that forms of national consciousness will continue to enormously influence the political situation in the world. ATthis is the main problem of ethnic identity.
