Inequality in Ethnic and Racial Relationships

Paper Summary:

This paper explores how racism in America has affected public opinion toward immigration and minorities. The paper begins with a discussion of America's historic support for immigration and then argues that this support has been corrupted by racism. The paper also cites statistics about demographic changes in the U.S. over the past several decades, examining how certain minority populations have actually grown to be nearly on par with the Caucasian majority in some places. This realignment, according to the paper, has challenged some of the deeply-rooted notions of what it means to be in a majority, which, in turn, has sparked a new wave of racism from previously more tolerant quarters. The pain concludes by studying recent research efforts to to explore the structural roots of inequality in America, focusing on a Rhode Island study on the tension between strong individual rights promised to U.S. citizens and ethnic or racial discrimination against African-Americans and other minority groups.

From the Paper:

"The paradox of a US national identity involves multiple contradictions, such as citizenship rights promised to US citizens in contrast with differential group discrimination; of external and internal forms of racism with and through one another accepting and excluding certain categories of citizens; of civic and ethnic nationalisms that respond to the established but unstable two-faced US national identity; the combined change and continuity that has allowed American society to constantly and repeatedly transform while retaining a deeply entrenched racial hierarchy; and a deeply gendered or masculine American family ideal that constructs and hides these contradictions, at the same time. Addressing these inconsistencies, inequalities and contradictions requires listening to those with different interpretations of how it is to be treated "like one of the US national family" but actually excluded from that US national family altogether. It will mean finding a way to reconfigure that long-standing relationships among race, ethnicity and that idealized US national identity as well as working to reclaim the language of family in the process."

More papers on Inequality in Ethnic and Racial Relationships:

• Essay # 89001 : "Ethnic and Racial Segregation in Canadian Cities"
• Essay # 71670 : "Ethnic and Racial Films"
• Essay # 47571 : "Ethnic and Racial Identity"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: