Towards unifying racial and ethnic paradigms

ABSTRACT

Bridging the divide between the ethnic/assimilation and the race literatures has long vexed sociologists. Valdez and Golash-Boza are to be commended for the intellectual effort they display in this article to engage this messy and contentious relationship. The distinction between the ethnic paradigm which produces assimilation projects and the racial paradigm which produces structural racism projects is important. I further this by noting that the process involved in the racial paradigm is racialization. I engage three examples: Mexican Americans, African-Americans, and white Americans. Together, these provide clarity to the discussion of how to pursue a unified approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• ethnicity
• assimilation
• racialization
• Mexican Americans
• African-Americans

Acknowledgements

I appreciate comments by Celia Lacayo, Rocio Garcia, Ariana Valle, Casandra Salgado, and Joe Straw.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In Valdez and Golash-Boza, the discussion on black immigrant deportees is confusing and unclear. Black immigrants fall exactly at the intersection of immigrant/ethnic group and racial group and as such can best be analysed with unified approach. Additionally, racist nativism captures much of what black immigrants experience – outsider status due to immigration status and discrimination due to black racial status. A recognition of how a unified approach of ethnic and racial paradigms overlaps with racial nativism would have helped Valdez and Golash-Boza’s discussion. Furthermore, they could have strengthened their analysis with a discussion of Dominicans as both racially black and culturally Spanish-speaking Latinos. Such a discussion would have again furthered the unified approach they propose.

2 Among Europeans, no other group was considered more exceptional than Jews. First, they were united by religion (rather than country of origin), which marked them differently from other European groups; and this religious identity made them targets of anti-Semitism. Jews succeeded quicker than other Europeans (which also fuelled anti-Semitism). In the end, Jews became white (Brodkin 1998) even as remnants of anti-Semitism lingered. Today, however, the increased attention to white nationalism has increased anti-Semitism and reopened the question of whether Jews are white (Brodkin 2016). The economic power held by Jews (and political alliance between the United States and Israel) provides ways for Jews to remain white.