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Ethnicity
Chapter 7
Introduction
 As citizens of the US, we are Americans
 Our nationality
 Many Americans also identify with an
ethnicity
 A group that they share a common culture with
 Ethnicity is a source of pride to many
continued
 Ethnicity- identity with a group of people
who share the cultural traditions of a
particular homeland or hearth
 Not the same as race
 Identity with a group of people who share a
biological ancestor
 Geographers are interested in where
ethnicities are distributed across space
Distribution of Ethnicities
in the United States
 2 most important are Hispanics (Latinos)
at 14% of pop. and African Americans at
12% of pop.
 Also have about 4% Asian American and
1% American Indian
Clustering of Ethnicities
 Clustering occurs on two scales
1. Particular regions of a country
2. Particular neighborhoods of cities
Regional Concentrations
of Ethnicities
 African Americans are clustered in the
SE, Hispanics in the SW, Asian
Americans in the West, and American
Indians in the SW and Plains states
African Americans
 Comprise at least ¼
of the pop. of AL, GA,
LA, MD, and SC
 More than 1/3 of MS
 9 states have fewer
than 1% African
Americans– ME, NH,
VT, ID, MT, ND, SD,
UT, and WY
Hispanic or Latino
 Most identify with a
more specific ethnic
group or nationality
 64% from Mexico,
Puerto Rico 10%,
Cuba 4%
 More than 1/3 of pop.
in AZ, NM, and TX
continued
 CA is home to 30% of all Hispanics in the
US
 Hispanics are more than ¼ pop. of CA
 TX home to 20%
 FL and NY home to about 15% each of
all Hispanics in the US
Asian Americans
 Chinese account for 23% of Asian
Americans
 19% are Indian
 18% Filipino
 Korean 10%
 Vietnamese 10%
 Japanese 7%
continued
 Largest
concentration of
Asian Americans is in
Hawaii- more than
40% of that State
 Half of all Asian
Americans live in CA,
where they make up
12% of pop.
American Indians and
Native Alaskans
 Most numerous in
the SW and Plains
states
Concentration of
Ethnicities In Cities
 African Americans are highly clustered
within cities
 Only ¼ of all Americans live in cities, but
more than ½ of African Americans do
 African Americans make up 7% of state
of Michigan, but 85% of Detroit
 Chicago is more than 1/3 African
American, state of Illinois only 1/12
continued
 Chicago is more than 1/3
African American, Illinois
only 1/12 black
 Hispanic distribution is
similar to African
Americans in large
Northern cities
 NYC more than ¼
Hispanic, state of New
York only 1/16
continued
 Clustering of ethnicities is especially
pronounced on the scale of neighborhoods
within cities
 Chicago, Cleveland, and Detroit attracted
ethnic groups from Southern and Eastern
Europe to work in steel and auto industries
during the early 1900s
 Their children and grandchildren moved out of
original inner-city neighborhoods during the
20th century
continued
 An abundance of ethnic restaurants are the
only visible signs of what was once an ethnic
neighborhood
 Today, African Americans, Latin Americans,
and Asian Americans increasingly make up
ethnic concentrations at the neighborhood level
 In many cases they have moved into neighborhoods
once dominated by European ethnicities
continued
 Los Angeles has large
groups of African
Americans, Asians, and
Hispanics
 African Americans are
locate din South Central
LA, Hispanics in East
LA, and Asians in the
South and West
African American
Migration Patterns


1.
2.
3.
The clustering of ethnicities in the United States is
partly a function of migration
Three migration flows have shaped the current
distribution of African Americans in the US
Forced immigration from Africa in the 18th century
Immigration from the Us South to northern cities
during the first half of the 20th century
Immigration from inner-city ghettos to other urban
neighborhoods during the second half of the 20th
century and first decade of the 21st
Forced Migration From
Africa
 Most African Americans are descended from
slaves
 The first African slaves arrived in Jamestown in
1619
 In 1700s 400,000 African slaves were brought
to the American colonies
 In 1808 the US banned the importation of new
African slaves, but it is estimated 250,000
more were brought in illegally
continued
 The large-scale slave trade was a response to
a shortage of labor in the sparsely inhabited
Americas
 b/w 1710 and 1810 more than 10 million
Africans were sold into slavery in the Western
Hemisphere
 The British and Portuguese each shipped
about 2 million during this period
 Most British went to Caribbean Islands, most
Portuguese to Brazil
continued
 Triangular slave trade- practice of
European ships transported slaves from
Africa to Caribbean islands, molasses
from the Caribbean to Europe, and trade
goods from Europe to Africa
 “Middle passage” was middle leg where
slaves were transported to the Americas
continued
 In the American colonies, the need for
large scale agricultural labor was
greatest in the South
 Mostly for cotton and tobacco
 After the Emancipation Proclamation, the
Civil War, and the 13th Amendment
slavery was outlawed
continued
 Most freed slaves remained in the South
during the late 19th century working as
sharecroppers
 Farmer who works land owned by someone else,
turning over a portion of proceeds for use of the
land
 Sharecroppers had to get a line of credit to
buy seeds, tools, living quarters, etc. from
the landowner
 The debt was to be repaid with more crops
continued
 Sharecropping burdened African
Americans with a large amount of debt
and high interest rates
 They were forced to grow cash crops
instead of food they could eat
Immigration to the North
 Sharecropping declined
in early 20th century
with the introduction of
farm machinery
 Got pushed off the farms
 Pulled to Northern cities
and the prospect of jobs
 Migration happened in
2 main waves
continued
1. 1910s-1920s before and after WWI
2. 19402-1950s before after WWII
 Factories had a huge demand for labor
to produce war materials and the
increase in demand for consumer
goods after the wars
Expansion of the Ghetto
 Most immigrants to big cities clustered in
the one or two neighborhoods were
African Americans were already living
 Ex. 500,000 African Americans lived in a 3
sq. mile ghetto in Chicago
 Ghettos were small and overcrowded
and African Americans began to push
into areas adjacent to the Ghettos
Differentiating Ethnicity
and Race
 Asian is recognized as a race by US Census
Bureau– therefore Asian as a race and Asian
American ethnicity pretty much mean the same
thing
 African American and black are diff. groups–
some American blacks trace back their
heritage to places other than Africa
 Hispanic or Latino in not a race– on the census
they may choose any race they wish
continued
 The traits that characterize race are
those that can be transmitted genetically
from parents to children
 Biological classification by race can lead
to racism
 Belief that race is the primary determinant of
human traits and capacities and that racial
differences produce an inherent superiority of a
particular race
continued
 Contemporary geographers reject the
entire biological basis of classifying
humans into a handful of races because
these features are not rooted in specific
places
 Only one feature of race matters to
geographers
 The color of skin
 Matters because in many societies it helps
determine where you live, attend school,
recreate, and perform many activities of daily life
Race in the United States
 2000 census listed 14 races for
respondents to choose from






75% indicated they were white
12% black
4% Asian
1% American Indian
6% other
2% checked more than 1
“Separate But Equal”
Doctrine
 A distinctive feature if US race relations
has been the history of discouragement
of spatial interaction b/w races
 In the past thru legal means, today thru
cultural preferences or discrimination
 Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
 Led to “Jim Crow” laws and legalized
segregation
“White Flight”
 Segregation laws were eliminated in the 1950s
and 1960s after Brown v. Board of Education
(1954)
 Rather than integrate, many whites moved into
area that African Americans could not afford to
live (white flight)
 Helped spur the growth of the ghetto
 Ex. Detroit
 1950 1.7 million whites, 300 thousand blacks
 2000 200 thousand whites, 800 thousand blacks
continued
 Blockbusting encouraged white flight
 A process by which real estate agents convince
white property owners to sell their houses at low
prices because of fear that persons of color will
soon move into the neighborhood
 The agents would then sell the home at a
higher price to black families hoping to
escape the ghetto
 Neighborhoods went from all white to all
black in a matter of months
Division b Race in South
Africa
 While the US was repealing segregation
laws South Africa was enacting them
 Done thru a legal system known as
apartheid
 The physical separation of diff. races into
diff. geographic areas
 Laws were repealed in 1990s, but policies are
still impacting South Africa
Apartheid
continued
 4 classifications of race
 White, black, colored (mixed), Asian
 75% black, 14% white, 8% colored, 3%
Asian
 Each group had a different legal status
 Laws determined where you could live,
go to school, work, shop, and own land
based upon your race
continued
 Blacks were only allowed to do certain
jobs and could not vote or run for office
 Read page 228+229 for the colonial
history of South Africa to learn the origin
of apartheid
 Many nations cut off relations with South
Africa in the 1970s and 1980s because
they opposed apartheid
continued
 Ford and GM closed factories in South
Africa
 However, neighboring nations were sill
compelled to trade with them, Why???
 Needed to use their ports to ship goods,
and needed some of heir natural
resources as well– chromium, platinum,
and manganese
continued
 Trying to further separate the races the gov.
created 10 “homelands” for blacks
 The white gov. expected every black to
become a citizen of a homeland and move
there
 Only got around to making 4 homelands
 If it had been fully implemented, the homelands
would have been 19% of the land mass, but
44% of the pop.
Dismantling of Apartheid
 Laws repealed in 1991
 The African National Congress, was legalized
and its leader Nelson Mandela, was released
from prison after 27 years
 1994 all citizens were allowed to vote for first
time and Mandela was elected President
 Blacks have achieved political equality, but are
still much poorer than whites
Rise of Nationalities
 Nationality- identity with a group of
people who share legal attachment,
cultural tradition, and personal allegiance
to a particular country
 Cultural traditions are different form than
those of ethnicities
 Thinks like voting, civic duties, and obtaining
a passport
continued
 Every citizen of the US is a member of
the American nationality and a member
of a race, but not all Americans identify
with an ethnicity
Nation-States
 Self-determination- the concept that
ethnicities have the right to govern
themselves
 Wanted so they can preserve and enhance
distinctive cultural characteristics
 Modern political leaders have tried to
support the right of self-determination
and have attempted to organize Earth’s
surface into a collection of nation-states
continued
 Nation-states- a state whose territory
corresponds to that occupied by a
particular ethnicity that has been
transformed into a nationality
 Despite these efforts the territory of a state
rarely corresponds to the territory occupied
by an ethnicity
Nation-States in Europe
 During the 19th century, ethnicities were
transformed into nationalities in Europe
 By 1900, most of Western Europe was made
up of nation-states
 They had boundary disagreements and
competed to control Asia and Africa
 Eastern Europe did not fit this pattern until the
fall of the Ottoman Empire and the AustroHungarian Empire at the end of WWI
continued
 The boundaries of Eastern Europe were
redrawn according to the principles of
nation-states
 In the 1930 the Nazis used the same
idea to claim that all German speaking
peoples should be united into one state
Denmark: There are No
Perfect Nation-States
 Territory occupied by Danish ethnicity
closely matches the state of Denmark
 However, the southern boundary with
Germany does not divide Danish and
German nationalities precisely
 Area is known as Schleswig-Holstein
 Historically part of Denmark, taken by
Germans in 19th century, voted to return
to Denmark after WWI
continued
 Now some native German speakers live
in Denmark and some native Danish
speakers live in Germany
 Denmark also controls two territories that
are not populated heavily with Danes
 Faeroe Islands and Greenland
Nationalism
 A nationality must hold the loyalty of its citizens
to survive
 Politicians and governments use nationalism
to do this
 Loyalty and devotion to a nationality
 Promotes a sense of national consciousness that
promotes that nation over all others
 Mass media is used in many states to foster
nationalism
continued
 In the US, an independent news media is
used
 Most countries regard independent news
sources as a risk to the stability of gov.
 States also foster nationalism by
promoting symbols of the nation-state,
such as flags and songs
continued
 Nationalism is an important example of
centripetal force
 An attitude that tends to unify people and
enhance support for a state
Multinational States
 Multi-ethnic state- a state that contains more
than one ethnicity
 sometimes all ethnicities can contribute cultural
features to the formation of a single nationality
 Ex. Belgium – Flemish and Walloons
 Multi-national states- state that contains two
or more ethnic groups with traditions of selfdetermination that agree to coexist peacefully
by recognizing each other as distinct
nationalities
continued
 In some multi-national states one
nationality tries to dominant another
(often when they have greater numbers
of people, and in some multi-national
states everyone gets along peacefully
 The people of one nation are sometimes
assimilated into another, but in some
cases the 2 nationalities remain distinct
continued
 The UK is a multi-national state
 4 main nationalities– England, Wales,
Scotland, and Northern Ireland
 Today they hold little independent power
 Even though Scotland and Wales have
separately elected gov.’s
 Main element of distinct national identity comes
from sports
 Each have their own national soccer team
Former Soviet Union: The
Largest Multinational State
 Its 15 Republics were based on the 15
largest ethnicities
 Smaller ethnicities were not given enough
recognition to get a republic
 Some of the smaller ethnicities are now
divided into more than one state
continued
 Former Soviet Republics are broken into f
different group
 Three Baltic: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
 Three European: Belarus, Moldova, and
Ukraine
 Five Central Asian: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan
 Three Caucasus: Azerbaijan, Armenia, and
Georgia
 Russia
continued
 Reasonably good examples of nationstates have been created in the Baltic,
European, and Central Asian states
 But the Caucasus states have not been so
lucky, and Russia itself has a difficult time
keeping all its diff. ethnicities happy
New Baltic Nation-States
 All had been independent b/w the end of
WWI until 1940 when they were annexed
into the Soviet Union with an agreement
with Nazi Germany
 Lithuania is the closet to a true nationstate—83% of pop. are ethnic
Lithuanians
continued
 The three Baltic states have distinct cultural
differences
 Most Estonians are Lutherans, Lithuanians are
mostly Catholic, and Latvians are Lutheran
with a large Catholic Minority
 Estonians speak a Uralic language, while
Lithuanians and Latvians speak languages
within the Balto-Slavic branch of IndoEuropean
Russia: Now the Largest
Multinational State
 Officially recognizes 39 nationalities, many eager for
independence
 20% of pop. is non-Russian
 Chechens have been a big problem
 They are Sunni Muslims
 Brought under Russian control in the 1800s after a 50 year
fight
 They declared independence in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet
Union, but Russians sent in the military to prevent it from
happening
 Areas contains important petroleum deposits
 Also didn’t want other groups to get any ideas
Revival of Ethnic Identity
 Europeans believed that ethnicity was a
thing of the past and that nationalism
could always be used to unite people
 In the late 20th century ethnic identity
once again became more important than
nationality
Ethnicity and Communism
 Until they lost power in the late 1980s and
early 1990s communists used centripetal
forces to discourage ethnicities from
expressing their cultural uniqueness
 Thought differences would serve as an
obstacle for unified support for communist
ideology
 Russian language was promoted as a unifying
force in Soviet Union and taught as a second
language n other communist countries
Ethnic Competition to
Dominate Nationality
 Sub-Saharan Africa is a region plagued
by conflicts among ethnic groups
competing to become dominant within
the various countries
 The Horn of Africa and central Africa are two
regions where conflicts have been brutal
Ethiopia and Eritrea
 Both were Italian colonies at one time
 After WWII Ethiopia was granted
independence and given control of
Eritrea
 Italians thought Ethiopia would give Eritrea
local authority, but they didn’t
 Actually banned their language and dissolved its
legislature
continued
 Led to civil war that lasted 30 years
(1961-1991)
 Eritrean rebels defeated Ethiopians in
1991 and became independent
 1998 disputes broke out again over the
location of the border
 In 2000 Ethiopia won, and took the territory
in dispute
Sudan
 Civil war has been raging since 1980s
 Christian and animist rebels in the south
vs. Arab-Muslim dominated forces in the
North
 Southerners are resisting gov. attempts
to make Sudan a totally Muslim state
 Gov. has instituted many sex segregation
laws
continued
 More than 2 million died during the war
 2005 peace accords called for autonomy for
southern Christians and sharing power in the
national gov.
 As the religion based civil war was winding
down an ethnic war erupted in the western
Darfur region
 Gov. has killed more than 450,000 and more than
2.5 million are living in refugee camps
Somalia
 Somalia is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim and
they speak the same language, Somali
 On surface they should get along
 However, there are six major ethnic groups or
clans that make up the population
 1991 the gov. fell apart and since then the
clans have been fighting for power
Ethnic Competition in
Lebanon
 4 million people living in 4000 sq. miles
 Since 1970s country has been damaged by
religious fighting
 Estimated that Lebanon is 60% Muslim, 30%
Christian, and 10% other
 Became independent in 1943, the constituion
required that each religion be represented in
the Chamber of Deputies according to
percentage from 1932 census
continued
 Chrisitians were the majority when the
gov. was created
 But now Muslims are the majority
 War broke out in 1975 and each religious
group formed a private army to guard its
territory
 Israel and the US sent troops into
Lebanon to try to restore peace several
times unsuccesfully