Ethnic America

This classic work by the distinguished economist traces the history of nine American ethnic groups -- the Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians, Chinese, African-Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans.

"Every chapter of Race in America examines how racism intersects with other forms of social division-those based on gender, class, sexuality, ability, religion, and nationhood-as well as how whiteness surrounds us in unnamed ways that produce and reproduce a multitude of privileges for white people. In the revised second edition, students will find relevant examples drawn from the headlines and from their own experiences. Each chapter is updated to include references to recent social movements and popular culture, making the book a more helpful tool for navigating society's critical conversations about race, racism, ethnicity, and white privilege. And throughout the book, students will find updated scholarship and data figures, reflecting the most cutting-edge sociological research"--

Winner of the 2009 Book Award in Social Sciences, Association for Asian American Studies This innovative work provides a new model for the analysis of ethnic and racial settlement patterns in the United States and Canada. Ethnoburbs—suburban ethnic clusters of residential areas and business districts in large metropolitan areas—are multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural, multilingual, and often multinational communities in which one ethnic minority group has a significant concentration but does not necessarily constitute a majority. Wei Li documents the processes that have evolved with the spatial transformation of the Chinese American community of Los Angeles and that have converted the San Gabriel Valley into ethnoburbs in the latter half of the twentieth century, and she examines the opportunities and challenges that occurred as a result of these changes. Traditional ethnic and immigrant settlements customarily take the form of either ghettos or enclaves. Thus the majority of scholarly publications and mass media covering the San Gabriel Valley has described it as a Chinatown located in Los Angeles’ suburbs. Li offers a completely different approach to understanding and analyzing this fascinating place. By conducting interviews with residents, a comparative spatial examination of census data and other statistical sources, and fieldwork—coupled with her own holistic view of the area—Li gives readers an effective and fine-tuned socio-spatial analysis of the evolution of a new type of racially defined place. The San Gabriel Valley tells a unique story, but its evolution also speaks to those experiencing a similar type of ethnic and racial conurbation. In sum, Li sheds light on processes that are shaping other present (and future) ethnically and racially diverse communities. The concept of the ethnoburb has redefined the way geographers and other scholars think about ethnic space, place, and process. This book will contribute significantly to both theoretical and empirical studies of immigration by presenting a more intensive and thorough "take" on arguments about spatial and social processes in urban and suburban America.

Offers a comparative approach to ethnic literature that begins by accounting for the intrinsic historical, geographical, and political contingencies of different American cultures. This work looks at a range of writing, from novels to literature.

First published in 1995, Postethnic America was widely hailed as a groundbreaking proposal for healing our nation's ethnic divisions. David A. Hollinger, one of America's foremost intellectual historians, argues for replacing the pluralist model of multiculturalism that is based on the idea of group rights with a cosmopolitan model that recognizes the reality of shifting group boundaries and multiple identities. Postethnic America is a bracing reminder of America's universalist promise, and a stirring call for a new form of nationalism. In this tenth-anniversary edition, Hollinger has added a new postscript in which he responds to his critics and addresses the contemporary conversation about race, ethnicity, inequality, and nationalism in America.

"This book examines patterns and trends in racial inequality over the past several decades. Iceland finds that color lines have softened over time, as there has been some narrowing of differences across many indicators for most groups over the past sixty years. Asian Americans in particular have reached socioeconomic parity with white Americans. Nevertheless, deep-seated inequalities in income, poverty, unemployment, and health remain, especially among blacks, and, to a lesser extent, Hispanics. The causes for disadvantage for the groups vary, ranging from a legacy of racism, current discrimination, human capital deficits, the unfolding process of immigrant incorporation, and cultural responses to disadvantage."--Provided by publisher.

"Mary Waters' admirable study of Americans' ethnic choices produces a rich social-scientific yield. Its theoretical interest derives from the American irony that while ethnicity is 'supposed to be' ascribed, many Americans are active in choosing and making their ethnic memberships and identities. The monograph is simultaneously objective and attentive to subjective meaning, simultaneously quantitative and qualitative, and simultaneously sociological and psychological. Her research problems are well-conceived, and her findings important and well-documented. As ethnicity and race continue in their high salience in American society and politics, sound social-scientific studies like this one are all the more valuable."—Neil Smelser, co-editor of The Social Importance of Self-Esteem "One of the most sensible and elegant books about ethnicity in the United States that has ever been my great pleasure to read."—Andrew M. Greeley, University of Chicago "Skilled in both demographic and interviewing methods, Mary Waters makes ethnicity in contemporary America come alive. We learn how people construct their identities, and why. This is sociological research at its very best, and will be of interest to policy makers and educated Americans as well as to students and scholars in several disciplines."—Theda Skocpol, Harvard University "Perhaps the most intriguing question in the study of the 'old (European) immigration" is how the 4th, 5th and later generations who are the offspring of several intermarriages are choosing their ethnic identities from the several available to them. Professor Waters' clever mix of quantitative and qualitative research has produced some thoughtful and eminently sensible answers to that question, making her book required reading for students of ethnicity. Her work should also interest general readers concerned with their or their children's ethnic identity—or just curious about this yet little known variety of American pluralism."—Herbert J. Gans, Columbia University "Waters has produced a work with broad theoretical implications. The title . . . may be regarded as one of the first serious attempts to understand the dynamics of postmodern societies. Waters shows that ethnicity becomes transformed from as ascriptive into an achieved status, a voluntary construction of individual identity and group solidarity. Waters also shows that, in America at least, this increased flexibility is unavailable to racial minorities."—Jeffrey C. Alexander, University of California, Los Angeles "A theoretically informed and theoretically driven fine-grained analysis pooling ideas and issues in both ethnography and demography."—Stanley Lieberson, Harvard University "Thanks to Ethnic Options we have a much better understanding of the social and cultural significance of responses to the ancestry question on the 1980 census. By combining in-depth interviews with analysis of census data, Mary Waters puts flesh on the demographic bare bones. Her findings suggest that ethnicity is becoming less an ascribed trait, fixed at birth, than an 'option' that depends on circumstance, whim, and increasingly, the ethnicity of one's spouse."—Stephen Steinberg, author of The Ethnic Myth