On Ethnic Options

I really like this study, I find it both significant and interesting.

Here, Mary Waters uses the 1980 US Census as her starting point, as it was the first census where Americans were asked to select their own ancestry. In doing so, they were permitted to select up to three. Most of the Americans who selected ancestral backgrounds were third-, fourth-, or fifth-generation immigrants. Waters then asks: “Why would Americans select these if there is no direct connection to ethnic background?”

There is no overarching answer here. Waters combines quantitative data with a variety of interviews to make sense of the choices people make in selecting their identity. Some choose their ethnicity because of stereotypes (sometimes because they see one group in a really positive way, while others are not selected because they’re viewed negatively), others choose based on the foods they eat, political choices, a stronger sense of history, or family stories that are kept (while others are discarded). Others choose theirs simply because one ethnicity might be more “exotic” or “interesting.” One of the more interesting things here is that parents might say that their children are a different ethnicity than the children identify with. The same is true of children talking about their parents.

There’s also some really interesting stuff about falling back on historical legacies of racism faced by ethnic groups. In saying “my grandparents overcame discrimination, why can’t black people [or Latinos, or any other group]?”, these respondents suggest that they don’t recognize strong distinctions between ethnic and racial identity, and that anybody can overcome all obstacles due to the opportunities that the US offers. I’m skeptical that this is the case, but it makes sense for putting the “ethnic revival” of the 1960s and 1970s in more context.