BECOMING NEW YOitKEitS ETHNOGR.APHIES OF THE NEW SECOND GENEMTION PHILIP KASINITZ, JOHN H. MOLLENKOPF, AND MAltY C. WATER.S, EDITOR_S RuSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION, NEW YORK The Russell Sage Foundation The Russell Sage Foundation, one of the oldest of America's general purpose foundations, was ' established in 1907 by Mrs. Margaret Olivia Sage for "the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States." The Foundation seeks to fulfill this mandate by fostering the development and dissemination of knowledge about the country's political, social, and eco- nomic problems. While the Foundation endeavors to assure the accuracy and objectivity of each book it publishes, the conclusions and interpretations in Russell Sage Foundation publi- cations are those of the authors and not of the Foundation, irs Trustees, or its staff. Publica- J tion by Russell Sage, therefore, does not imply Foundation endorsement. BOARD OF TRUSTEES For Basya Xiaoshan Kasinitz, Robert E. Denham, Chair Katie Xiaorong Bayly, Harry Quang Bayly, Alan S. Blinder Jennifer L. Hochschild Cora B. Marrett Christine K. Cassel Timothy A. Hultquist Eugene Smolensky Maggie Chun Ning Bayly, Thomas D. Cook Kathleen Hall Jamieson Eric Wanner and Mira Chun Kasinitz John A. Ferejohn Melvin Konner Mary C. Waters Larry V. Hedges -all "1.5 generation," albeit of an unusual sort- and Emily Gerson Mollenkopf Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data -4th generation (more or less)- Becoming New Yorkers : ethnographies of the new second generation I edited by and the very different America they will inherit. Philip Kasinitz, John H. Mollenkopf, and Mary C. Waters. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87154-436-9 I. New York (N.Y.)-Ethnic relations. 2. New York (N.Y.)-Race relations. 3. Ethnicity-New York (State)-New York. 4. Minorities- New York (State)-New York-Social conditions. 5. Children of immigrants-New York (State)-New York-Social conditions. 6. lntergenerational relations-New York (State)-New York. I. Kasinitz, Philip, 1957- II. Mollenkopf, John H., 1946- III. Waters, Mary C. Fl28.9.AIB33 2004 305.8'00974971-dc22 2004046633 Copyright © 2004 by Russell Sage Foundation. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Reproduction by the United States Government in whole or in part is permitted for any purpose. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1992. Text design by Genna Patacsil. j RUSSELL SAGE FOUNDATION 112 East 64th Street, New York, New York 10021 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I 360 Becoming New Yorkers 5. For a full description of the Russian Jewish sample, see Kasinitz, Zeltzer-Zubida, and Zoya Simakhodskaya (2001). 6. The proximate host is the group to which the receiving society assigns immi- CHAPTER 13 grants-the waiting category in the minds of the individuals in the receiving society. REFERENCES COSMOPOLITAN ETHNICITY: SECOND-GENERATION Alba, Richard. 1985. "The Twilight ofEthnicity Among Americans of European An- INDO-CARJBBEAN IDENTITIES cestry: The Case ofltalians." Ethnic and Racial Studies 8: 134-58. ---. 1990. Ethnic Identity: The Transformation ofWhite America. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. NATASHA WARIKOO Brodkin, Karen. 1998. How the jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press. Gans, Herbert. 1979. "Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cul- tures in America." Ethnic and Racial Studies 2(1): 1-20. Gold, Steven J. 199 5. From the WOrkers' State to the Golden State: jews ftom the Former Soviet Union in California. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. the applicant is a white person within the meaning ofthis section he is en- Hurtado, Aida, Patricia Gurin, and Timothy Peng. 1994. "Social Identities: A Frame- If titled to naturalization; otherwise not. ... A high caste Hindu, offull In- work for Studying the Adaptations oflmmigrants and Ethnics: The Adaptation of dian blood, born at Amritsar, Punjab, India, is not a "white person. " Mexicans in the United States." 41: 129-51. Social Problems -U.S. Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 1923 Kasinitz Philip, Aviva Zeltzer-Zubida, and Zoya Simakhodskaya. 2001. "The Next Generation: Russian Jewish Young Adults in Contemporary New York." Working paper 178. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Keefe, Susan Emley 1992. "Ethnic Identity: The Domain of Perceptions of and At- tachment to Ethnic Groups and Cultures." Human Organization 51: 35-43. Mittelberg, David, and Mary Waters. 1992. "The Process of Ethnogenesis Among Haitian and Israeli Immigrants in the United States." Ethnic and Racial Studies URING the 1920s, Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian immigrant to the 15(3): 412-35. D United States, attempted to become a naturalized citizen under a law Nagel, Joane. 1994. "Constructing Ethnicity: Creating and Recreating Ethnic Iden- that gave the right of naturalization to "white" residents. The U.S. Supreme tity." SocialProblems4l(l): 152-76. Court eventually denied Thind's right to citizenship, based on his nonwhite Ogbu, John U. 1990. "Cultural Model, Identity, and Literacy." In Cultural Psychol- status, in spite of arguments that scientific racial classification systems at the ogy: Essays on Comparative Human Development, edited by James W. Stingier, time placed northern Indians in the category of "Caucasian." Richard Shweder, and Gilbert Herdt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. A. Since the time ofBhagat Singh Thind, race has had a strong impact on the Orleck, Annelise. 1987. "The Soviet Jews: Life in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn." In experiences of immigrants, although today's immigrants have less interest in New Immigrants in New York, edited by Nancy Foner. New York: Columbia Uni- versity Press. pushing for identification as "white" in all spheres of their lives. Arturo Var- ---. 1999. The Soviet jewish Americans. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. gas, the executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Sales, Teresa. 1999. "Constructing an Ethnic Identity: Brazilian Immigrants in Appointed Officials, suggests that, "to the extent that being white means be- Boston, Mass." Migration WOrld Magazine 27: 15-21. ing American, we [Latinos] are white. But at the same time, we don't have to Waters, Mary C. 1990. Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley: Uni- deny being Latino as much as before because we've had a significant civil versity of California Press. rights movement, and politically we're still one block" (quoted in Moore and Fields 2002). In this chapter, I explore the relationship between race and eth- nic identity through the experiences of second-generation Indo-Caribbean 362 Becoming New Yorkers Cosmopolitan Ethnicity 363 teenagers. I ask: What happens to the identities of second-generation youth often influences ethnicity as well. Indo-Caribbeans are racially South Asian who do not fit into American white or black categories, who are not easily yet ethnically West Indian, and this complexity was evident in how they dis.. identified racially, and who live in neighborhoods in which no ethno-racial cussed their identities.3 group dominates? Cornell and Hartmann (1998, 82) also look at the thickness versus tbi.ft;., I used second-generation Indo-Caribbean teenagers as a case study in an ness of identities, or "the degree to which an ethnic or racial identity organif4 attempt to answer this question. lndb-Caribbeans hail mostly from Guyana the social life of the group." This notion of the depth of ethnic or racial idea:. and Trinidad. Their ancestors came t~ the West Indies during the nineteenth tity is relevant to my research as well, although I used thickness to mean the and early twentieth centuries as indentured servants from India to work on thick presence and expectation of ethnic identity assertion in general ratheJ' sugar plantations. Through in-depth interviews with thirty-one teenagers in than the thickness of particular identities. I found that thick identity does~ the New York City metropolitan area and a school ethnography in Queens, I necessarily parallel racial assignment. That is, my respondents had thick ideu!' explored the identities of second-generation Indo-Caribbean teenagers, who tides that were more asserted and multivalent than assigned and unitary. are South Asian by race, West Indian by ethnicity, American by nationality, and Hindu, Christian, and Muslim by religious background. The interviews THEORIES OF IDENTITY discussed self-definitions of identity; tastes in music, dress, and Hindi movies; and social networks. I found that Indo-Caribbean youth had multivalent, In Ethnic Options, Mary Waters finds that white suburban Catholics who are "thick," and fluid identities that could not be categorized simply. This cosmo- second-generation or higher have "symbolic ethnicity": ethnic identity that is politan ethnicity, as I call it, was thick, like black racial identity in the United chosen and can be turned off or on according to convenience or cultural States, because it influenced all aspects of life.' Thickness, or salience, in this trends or for any other reasons (Waters 1990; Gans 1979).4 This group fits context describes the presence and expectation of ethno-racial identity rather the traditional straight-line assimilation model, meaning that by the third than the weight of particular identities.2 generation the community has become part of mainstream white America in Simultaneously, cosmopolitan ethnicity is chosen and multifaceted, like its social networks, culture, and economic status. The white suburban Cath- the symbolic ethnicity of white ethnic communities (Gans 1979; Waters olics ofWaters's study choose to display their ethnicities only sometimes, such 1990; Alba 1990). Its cosmopolitanness stems from the influence and pres- as during ethnic holidays.