From Many Strands: Ethnic and Racial Groups in Contemporary America - Ch. 8

In terms of most of the major indices of racial and ethnic group segregation/stratification/differentiation, the white - non-white distinction has always been the most significant gap in the United States. This article looks at the intra-racial relationship of various white ethnic groups, and concludes that ethnic differences among the European origin groups are declining in significance as a basis of social differentiation and sociopolitical issues.
 

How the argument is constructed methodologically

In order to probe into this issue of significance of ethnic consciousness among whites, the method adopted by the authors is the detailed analysis of the census record. Specifically, the argument is developed in a following manner. In analyzing people's responses regarding their self-identification of ethnic background, they report that there is quite a good deal of "flux" in responses. First, there is the increasing presence of those who simply identify themselves as "American" for ethnic identity (whom the authors label "unhyphenated white"), and secondly, there seems to be considerable amount of distortion occurring in these responses, e.g., parents' and children's responses not matching with each other. Looking at these trends, then, the authors argue that these do not merely represent the errors in measurement or other forms of illusory mistakes, but rather they stand for the real social trend of considerable segments of the white population coming to be rather flexible in their ethnic identity and in general ethnicity is losing its importance as a basis of sociopolitical differentiation. The authors call this general trend "ethnic flux", and give some more generalized theoretical perspective regarding this issue - that is, ethnicity is not a static and fixed trait but rather it is both a status and a process - it is constantly evolving and changing to certain extent as people intermarry, change their identity, give different forms of mobilization based on ethnicity, etc. So, in short, what we are seeing in the contemporary U.S. is this trend of ethnic flux occurring at fairly visible level.

But how can we read off this trend of ethnic flux from the quantitative data of census record? For this, the authors pay particular attention to three indicators that could be interpreted as representing flux in the ethnic category themselves, rather than simply as conventional respondent or enumeration errors. These are differences in the age distribution of persons of single and mixed ancestries, inconsistencies within families in the ancestry labeling of children and parents, and the association of educational and marital status with the nature of the reported ancestry. Let's look at each of the three briefly. For the first, it is reported that as people age, there are greater proportions of them reporting the single, rather than the mixed form of double or triple, ancestry. The move from the reporting of double or triple to single ancestry is particularly evident as when one compares the age groups of 14 - 17 with that of the 18 - 24, the latter being the ages when children move away from their parents' home. So the logic is: when the parental control is less, there is a tendency for the following generation to "simplify" their ethnic background. Next, the second factor of intergenerational inconsistency. Variety of factors may contribute to the intergenerational erosion of ethnic consciousness and identity. Sometimes the process involves the complicating demographic factors, such as divorce, desertion, death of parents, or maybe adoption. Or parents simply do not want to or are uninterested in transmitting accurate ethnic background information. Whatever the mechanism, the direction is unidirectional - from knowledge to ignorance, from detail to blur. Anyway, data indicates the presence of these processes quite clearly. In cases of intermarriage where the spouses each have a different single ethnic origin, the correct identification requires children identified as the mix of both of parents' ethnic origins. Here, it is reported that remarkably low percentage of parents do indeed report the correct ethnic identity of their children. Now, the third factor. Here, the effects of education and marriage on potential distortion of ethnic background reporting are noted of. For education, it is reported that the lower the educational attainment, the simpler the identification of ethnic background. On the other hand, marriage affects the ethnic origin reporting in two different ways according to the authors. The first is simply the enumeration procedure itself - when a spouse answers the census question for the other spouse, there is likely to be a greater amount of distortion compared to when he/she answers the questions themselves. The second way is that spouses may be intentionally emphasizing common heritage and ethnic identity by either dropping other heritages or introducing a spurious identity.

Finally, in the ending pages some considerations are given for the "new ethnic group" of those who simply respond as "American" for their ethnic identity. While this type of detail may not be so important, nevertheless their characterization is quite interesting. They are more likely to be in the South, where traditionally immigration has had a lesser degree of impact than elsewhere. The authors infer that this fact may have led these people to be insensitive to the ethnic consciousness and drop their heritages quickly. They are of somewhat lower socioeconomic status than the average, but by no means this is simply a class phenomenon, the authors assert. Whether these new "Americans" truly do represent a new "ethnic identity" or are they merely the convenient labels for people who really do not know or do not want to identify their ethnic origin remain to be seen clearly. Yet, nevertheless, it does seem undeniable that when all evidence are taken together including the aforementioned "flux" in ethnic origin responses, for significant portions of the white population in the U.S. their ethnic identity is losing significance as a basis of sociopolitical issues.