Ethnicity theory

Ethnicity theory says that race is a social category and is but one of several factors in determining ethnicity. Some other criteria include: “religion, language, “customs,” nationality, and political identification” (Omi & Winant 15). This theory was put forth by sociologist Robert E. Park in the 1920s. It is based of the notion of “culture”.

This theory was preceded by over a century where biological essentialism was the dominant paradigm on race. Biological essentialism is the belief that white European races are biologically superior and other non-white races are inherently inferior. This view arose as a way to justify slavery of Africans and genocide of the Native Americans in a society which was supposedly founded on freedom for all. This was a notion that developed slowly and came to be a preoccupation of scientists, theologians, and the public. Religious institutions asked questions about whether there had been multiple genesis’s (polygenesis) and whether God had created lesser races of men. Many of the foremost scientists of the time took up idea of racial difference. They would inadvertently find that white Europeans were superior. One method that was used was the measurement of cranial capacity. (Omi Winant 58)

Ethnicity theory was based on the assimilation model. Park outlined his four steps to assimilation: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. Instead of explaining the marginalized status of people of color in the United States with an inherent biological inferiority, he instead said that it was a failure to assimilate into American culture that held people back. They could be equal as long as they dropped their culture which was deficient compared to white culture.

Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s theory of racial formation directly confronts both ethnicity theory’s premises and practices. They argue in Racial Formation in the United States that ethnicity theory was exclusively based on the immigration patterns of a white ethnic population and did not account for the unique experiences of non-whites in this country (Omi & Winant 17). While this theory identities different stages in an immigration process – contact, conflict, struggle, and as the last and best response, assimilation – it did so only for white ethnic communities (Omi & Winant 17). The ethnicity paradigm neglects the ways that race complicate a community’s interactions with basic social and political structures, especially upon contact.

And assimilation – shedding the particular qualities of a native culture for the purpose of blending in with a host culture – did not work for some groups as a response to racism and discrimination as it did for others (Omi & Winant 17). Moreover, once the legal barriers to achieving equality had been dismantled, the problem of racism became the sole responsibility of already disadvantaged communities (Omi &Winant 19). It was assumed that if a Black or Latino community was not ‘making it’ by the standards that had been set by white ethnics, it was because that community did not hold the right values or beliefs. Or they must be stubbornly resisting dominant norms because they did not want to fit in. Omi and Winant’s critique of ethnicity theory explains how looking towards a cultural defect for the source of inequality ignores the “concrete sociopolitical dynamics within which racial phenomena operate in the U.S.” (21). In other words, buying into this approach effectively strips us of our ability to critically examine the more structural components of racism and encourages, instead, a “benign neglect” of social inequality (21).

ee also

*Racial formation theory