Ethnicity in the 20 th Century U.S. What is race? What is ethnicity? Race presumes heritable, biological traits (blood, lineage, descendence, genes) and so is usually keyed to physicality and appearance (color, physiognomy, hair texture). Race is socially constructed (racial categories change over time, or from one setting to another, for instance) but it is often taken as part of the natural landscape. Unlike ethnicity, race has been legislated in a thousand ways in the United States (in laws governing citizenship, voting, slavery, marriage, the right to participate in malitias, housing, etc.) What is race? What is ethnicity? Ethnicity denotes human grouping according to cultural or associational traitsnationality, language, religion, custom. Unlike race, ethnicity has very rarely been legislated in the United States. A brief time line: The period of massive European immigration: The white races of EuropeCelt, Slav, Hebrew, Mediterranean, etc National Origins Act restricts immigration 1930s-1940s The retreat from scientific racism and the invention of ethnicity s Americanization and assimilation Post-1960s Ethnic resurgence, the roots phenomenon Becoming Caucasian 1) 1924 National Origins Act solves the immigration crisis and ends the racial threat posed by Europes inferior white races 2) The Great African American migration alters the racial alchemy of northern cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroitimmigrants whiteness now means more than their non-Anglo-Saxonness The ethnic group has no future in American life. Ethnic pluralists are backward-looking romantics who are out of touch with the unfolding American reality. --Will Herberg, ProtestantCatholicJew Root causes of the ethnic revival: 1) Anti-modernism (Everyone wants a village to look back to.) 2a) The Civil Rights Movement and the public language of group identity in the U.S. 2b) The Civil Rights Movement and the disavowal of real white privilege (Where did all the white people go who were here just a minute ago?) Ramifications of the Ethnic Revival 1) Identity quests, the new obsession with genealogy, the revival of Yiddish language study and Celtic dance, etc. But more importantly, 2) Social portraiture (whites figured as immigrants) and 3) Our national narrative (Ellis Island as touchstone) Mass Media and Ethnicity, 1960s & 1990s Meredith Baxter & David Birney Arnie Nuvo and family, Arnie Rob Reiner as Michael Stivic, All in the Family Valerie Harper as Rhoda Morgenstern, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Rhoda Margaret Houlihan and Radar OReilly, M*A*S*H Kojak David Starsky, Starsky and Hutch Baretta Mary Beth Lacy and Christine Cagney Welcome Back Kotter Arthur Fonzerelli, Happy Days Laverne Defazio and Shirley Feeny Carla Tortelli, Cheers Andy Kauffman as Latke Gravis, Taxi Bronson Pinchot as Balkie Bartokomus, Perfect Strangers The Silver family, Brooklyn Bridge Dharma Finkelstein Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl Ellis Island Everyone wants a ghetto to look back to. The Nation, 1977 [The new ethnic politics] demands that the American way of life be broken open like a cocoon giving way to the burgeoning wings of a butterfly. -- Michael Novak