This open access library edition is supported by Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale. What We Now Know About Race and Ethnicity This open access library edition is supported by Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale. This open access library edition is supported by Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale. What We Now Know About Race and Ethnicity Michael Banton berghahn N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D www.berghahnbooks.com This open access library edition is supported by Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale. Published by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2015, 2018 Michael Banton Open access ebook edition published in 2018 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Banton, Michael, 1926– What we now know about race and ethnicity / by Michael Banton. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-78238-603-2 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-78238-717-6 (paperback. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-78533-658-4 (open access ebook) 1. Race. 2. Ethnicity. 3. Ethnicity—United States. 4. United States—Race relations. I. Title. HT1521.B354 2015 305.8—dc23 2015006532 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78238-603-2 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-78238-717-6 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-78533-658-4 (open access ebook) An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at knowledgeunlatched.org This work is published subject to a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No Derivatives 4.0 International license. The terms of the license can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. For uses beyond those covered in the license contact Berghahn Books. This open access library edition is supported by Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale. Contents Preface vii Introduction. The Paradox 1 Chapter 1. The Scientific Sources of the Paradox 11 Two Dimensions – Taxonomy – Typology – Darwin and Mendel – Two Vocabularies – The Power of the Ordinary Language Construct Chapter 2. The Political Sources of the Paradox 31 Social Categories and Their Names – After the Civil War – Discrimination – The One-Drop Rule – Counter Trends Chapter 3. International Pragmatism 50 The Racial Convention – Implementing the Convention – Other International Action – Naming the Categories Chapter 4. Sociological Knowledge 65 Theoretical or Practical? – The Chicago School – In World Perspective – Social Race? Chapter 5. Conceptions of Racism 81 Writing History – Teaching Philosophy – Teaching Sociology – Sociological Textbooks — Political Ends Chapter 6. Ethnic Origin and Ethnicity 96 Census Categories – Anthropology – A New Reality? – Nomenclature — Sociobiology — Ethnic Origin as a Social Sign – Comparative Politics – The Current Sociology of Ethnicity This open access library edition is supported by Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale. vi | Contents Chapter 7. Collective Action 123 The Rediscovery of Weber’s 1911 Notes – Four Propositions – Closure – The Human Capital Variable – The Colour Variable – Ethnic Preferences – Opening Relationships Conclusion. The Paradox Resolved 149 Select Bibliography 158 Index of Names 162 Index of Subjects 166 This open access library edition is supported by Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale. Preface Anyone who opens this book will already know a lot about ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’. They are words heard on television, read in newspapers and used in conversation. What the words mean will usually be clear from the context in which they are employed. Yet, because it is not always easy to distinguish between words and things, people some- times wonder what race (or ethnicity) actually is. This book tries to resolve some of the confusion by distinguishing between the words’ meanings in the popular or practical language of everyday life, and attempts to sharpen their meanings (or supersede use of them alto- gether) in technical or scientific language. So there is more than one kind of knowledge. While we – all of us – know about the place of ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity’ in the practical sphere, this is not the end of the story. What specialists have learned in the past two hundred years or so about when and why racial and eth- nic distinctions have become socially important is a different kind of knowledge, even if the two kinds can overlap. There may never be final answers to all the questions, but hopefully the nature of the underlying difficulties will have been clarified by the end of this book. Many of the academic books about race and ethnicity that have been written by authors in the United States are prefaced by lists of the seminars and conferences at which portions of the work have been presented, exposing the arguments to beneficial criticism. The authors acknowledge the financial support of institutions, and, almost invariably, the contributions of many friends and colleagues who have helped them polish their texts. This is not that kind of book. The manuscript has been prepared in relative isolation and without any kind of grant. The stimulus for it – which came to me in June 2013 – has been the reaction of other specialists in the study of ra- cial and ethnic relations who either reject or do not understand the philosophical presuppositions that underlie my recent writing. This This open access library edition is supported by Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale. viii | Preface impulse has been coupled with a desire to address colleagues in the United States. To me, very many of them seem so concerned with the political aspects of the black-white division in their own country that they do not reflect sufficiently on what they might learn from a European perspective. Michael Banton Downe, Kent This open access library edition is supported by Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale. introduction The Paradox In 2002 the American Sociological Association (ASA) formally noted: Some scholarly and civic leaders believe that the very idea of ‘race’ has the eff ect of promoting social division and they have proposed that the gov- ernment stop collecting these data altogether. Respected voices from the fi elds of human molecular biology and physical anthropology (supported by research from the Human Genome Project) assert that the concept of race has no validity in their respective fi elds.1 Th is may have been a reference to the statement issued by the Amer- ican Association of Physical Anthropologists that declared, among other things, that ‘there is no national, religious, linguistic or cultural group or economic class that constitutes a race’.2 Th e ASA statement continued: ‘Growing numbers of humanist scholars, social anthropologists, and political commentators have joined the chorus in urging the nation to rid itself of the concept of race.’ One scholar was quoted as saying that ‘identifying people by race only deepens the racial divide’. Th e ASA thereby recognized an intellectual challenge. Scholars in several diff erent fi elds were asking the ASA to help supersede an obsolete expression earlier advanced for the identifi cation of certain kinds of biological diff erence. Th e Association was in a fi x. Th ere was an intellectual issue and a political issue, for it was urged to respond to a proposal to forbid the California state government from collecting information on race and ethnicity.3 Understandably, the political issue was given priority because a professional association can take a vote on a proposal of this kind, whereas an intellectual issue is better addressed by debate in academic books, journal articles and seminars. So the Association issued an offi cial statement on the ‘Importance of Collecting Data on Race’. It maintained that such data should be collected because they were needed for the monitoring of social pol- icies in the United States. Th ere was no reference to ethnicity or to This open access library edition is supported by Knowledge Unlatched. Not for resale. 2 | What We Now Know about Race and Ethnicity any ‘racial divide’ other than that between blacks and whites. Th e As- sociation did not seize the opportunity to remind interested persons that, as a party to the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), the United States had, since 1994, been under a treaty obligation to monitor and report to the Secretary- General of the United Nations about any inequalities aff ecting racial and ethnic groups within its population. Th e position adopted by the ASA was paradoxical in that it com- bined two contradictory elements: a recognition that race no longer had any validity in the academic fi eld within which it originated to- gether with a defence of procedures which implied the opposite. Its response was reactive, neglecting the opportunity to comment on the basis on which population data are collected. Th e US census of 2000 had introduced an important change when (in Question 6) it asked, ‘What is this person’s race? Mark one or more races to indicate what this person considers himself/herself to be’; this was followed by fi ft een tick boxes. Th is momentous change, however, had come about by accident! A former director of the Census Bureau has reported that it was an ‘anomaly’ that had been left on the form ‘inadvertently’.4 Th e same question was then repeated in 2010.