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CASE STUDY / Ethnic Diversity in America

The is a country of ethnic diversity. The complex- geographers because its characteristics derive from the distinc- ity of ethnic identity in the United States is clearly illustrated tive features of particular places on Earth, such as rural eastern by Barack Obama: the country’s first black president, son of a Kenya. white mother and black father. Features of race, such as skin color, hair type and color, blood traits, and shape of body, head, and facial features, were • President Obama’s father, Barack Obama, Senior, was born once thought to be scientifically classifiable. Contemporary in the village of Kanyadhiang, Kenya. He was a member of geographers reject the entire biological basis of classifying Kenya’s third-largest ethnic group, known as the Luo. humans into a handful of races because these features are not • President Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, was born in rooted in specific places. . Most of her ancestors migrated to the United States However, one feature of race does matter to geographers— from England in the nineteenth century. the color of skin. President Obama’s race is black because of • President Obama’s step-father—his mother’s second hus- the color of his skin. The distribution of persons of color mat- band, Lolo Soetoro—was born in the village of Yogyakarta, ters to geographers because it is the fundamental basis by Indonesia. He was a member of Indonesia’s largest ethnic which people in many societies sort out where they reside, group, known as the Javanese. attend school, recreate, and perform many other activities of Race and ethnicity are often confused. Ethnicity, such as the daily life. ■ president’s Luo ancestry through his father, is important to

Ethnicity is identity with a group of people who share the cul- Ethnicity is especially important to geographers because in the tural traditions of a particular homeland or hearth. Ethnicity face of globalization trends in culture and economy, ethnicity comes from the Greek word ethnikos, which means “national.” stands as the strongest bulwark for the preservation of local diver- Ethnicity is distinct from race, which is identity with a group sity. Even if globalization engulfs language, religion, and other of people who share a biological ancestor. Race comes from a cultural elements, regions of distinct ethnic identity will remain. middle-French word for generation. Geographers are interested in where ethnicities are distributed across space, like other elements of culture. An ethnic group is KEY ISSUE 1 tied to a particular place, because members of the group—or their ancestors—were born and raised there. The cultural traits displayed by an ethnicity derive from particular conditions and Where Are Ethnicities practices in the group’s homeland. The reason why ethnicities have distinctive traits should by Distributed? now be familiar. Like other cultural elements, ethnic identity derives from the interplay of connections with other groups and ■ Distribution of Ethnicities in the isolation from them. United States Ethnicity is an especially important cultural element of ■ Differentiating Ethnicity and Race local diversity because our ethnic identity is immutable. We can deny or suppress our ethnicity, but we cannot choose to An ethnicity may be clustered in specific areas within a change it in the same way we can choose to speak a different country, or the area it inhabits may match closely the language or practice a different religion. If our parents come boundaries of a country. This section of the chapter exam- from two ethnic groups or our grandparents from four, our eth- ines the clustering of ethnicities within countries, and the nic identity may be extremely diluted, but it never completely next key issue looks at ethnicities on the national scale. ■ disappears. The study of ethnicity lacks the tension in scale between preservation of local diversity and globalization observed in other cultural elements. Despite efforts to preserve local lan- Distribution of Ethnicities guages, it is not far-fetched to envision a world in which virtu- ally all educated people speak English. And universalizing in the United States religions continue to gain adherents around the world. But no The two most numerous ethnicities in the United States are ethnicity is attempting or even aspiring to achieve global dom- Hispanics (or Latinos), at 15 percent of the total population, inance, although ethnic groups are fighting with each other to and African , at 13 percent. In addition, about 4 per- control specific areas of the world. cent are American and 1 percent American Indian. 208 Chapter 7: Ethnicity 209

Clustering of Ethnicities and more than one-third in (Figure 7-2). Con- centrations are even higher in selected counties. At the other Within a country, clustering of ethnicities can occur on two extreme, nine states in upper and the West scales. Ethnic groups may live in particular regions of the have less than 1 percent . country, and they may live in particular neighborhoods within . Clustered in the West, Asian Ameri- cities. Within the United States, ethnicities are clustered at • cans comprise more than 40 percent of the population of both scales. (Figure 7-3). One-half of all Asian Americans live in , where they comprise 12 percent of the popula- REGIONAL CONCENTRATIONS OF ETHNICITIES. tion. Chinese account for one-fourth of Asian Americans, On a regional scale, ethnicities have distinctive distributions Indians and Filipinos one-fifth each, and Korean and Viet- within the United States: namese one-tenth each. • American Indians and Natives. Within the 48 • Hispanic or Latino/Latina. Clustered in the Southwest, continental United States, American Indians are most numer- Hispanics exceed one-third of the population of , ous in the Southwest and the Plains states (Figure 7-4). New , and , and one-quarter of California (Figure 7-1). California is home to one-third of all Hispanics, Texas one-fifth, and and one-sixth each.

Hispanic or Hispanic American is a term that the U.S. 45° government chose in 1973 to describe the group because it

was an inoffensive label that could be applied to all people 40° 40° from Spanish-speaking countries. Some Americans of Latin American descent have instead adopted the terms Latino 35° (males) and Latina (females). A 1995 U.S. Census Bureau 35°

ATLANTIC survey found that 58 percent of Americans of Latin Ameri- PACIFIC OCEAN OCEAN 30° can descent preferred the term Hispanic and 12 percent 30° Latino/Latina. 22° 155° 0 200 MI.

0 200 KM. 0 Most Hispanics identify with a more specific ethnic 200 400 MILES 25°

0 400 MILES or national origin. Around two-thirds come from Mexico 0 200 400 KILOMETERS 0 400 KILOMETERS and are sometimes called Chicanos (males) or Chicanas 180° 160° 140° 95° 90° 85° 80° 75° (females). Originally the term was considered insulting, PERCENT AFRICAN AMERICAN but in the 1960s Mexican American youths in Los 50 and above 12–24 1–5 Angeles began to call themselves Chicanos and Chicanas 25–49 6–11 Below 1 with pride. • African Americans. Clustered in the Southeast, African FIGURE 7-2 Distribution of African Americans in the United States. The Americans comprise at least one-fourth of the population in highest percentages of African Americans are in the rural South and in northern cities. , , , , and ,

45°

45° 40° 40°

40° 40° 35° 35°

ATLANTIC PACIFIC 35° OCEAN OCEAN 35° 30° 30° ATLANTIC 22° 155° PACIFIC OCEAN 0 200 MI. OCEAN 30° 0 200 KM. 0 30° 200 400 MILES 25° 22° 155° 0 400 MILES 0 200 400 KILOMETERS 0 200 MI. 0 400 KILOMETERS 180° 160° 140° 95° 90° 85° 80° 75° 0 200 KM. 0 200 400 MILES 25°

0 400 MILES PERCENT HISPANIC-AMERICAN 0 200 400 KILOMETERS 0 400 KILOMETERS 180° 160° 140° 95° 90° 85° 80° 75° 60 and above 20–39 1–8 PERCENT ASIAN-AMERICAN (including Pacific Islanders) 40–59 9–19 Below 1 50 and above 10–49 3–9 1–2 Below 1 FIGURE 7-1 Distribution of Hispanic Americans in the United States. The highest percentages are in the Southwest, near the Mexican border, and in FIGURE 7-3 Distribution of Asian Americans in the United States. The highest northern cities. percentages are in Hawaii and California. 210 The Cultural Landscape

94 Vietnamese 45° 294 Hungarian Cambodian Polish Indian German Serbian 90 Swedish 40°

40° L Polish a k Italian e

35° German Cuban 35° Puerto

Rican ATLANTIC PACIFIC M OCEAN OCEAN i 30° c

30° h

22° 155° i g

0 200 MI. 290 a 0 200 KM. n

0 200 400 MILES 25° Chinese 0 400 MILES 0 200 400 KILOMETERS 0 400 KILOMETERS 180° 160° 140° 95° 90° 85° 80° 75° Irish 55 PERCENT AMERICAN INDIAN, ESKIMO AND ALEUT Mexican Polish 60 and above 15–29 1–4 Czech & 30–59 5–14 Below 1 Slovak Midway Airport Irish FIGURE 7-4 Distribution of American Indians in the United States. The highest percentages are in Alaska and the Plains states. 90 294 Mexican

Irish 57 CONCENTRATION OF ETHNICITIES IN CITIES. 94 African Americans and Hispanics are highly clustered in 0 24 MILES urban areas. Around 90 percent of these ethnicities live in 0 2 4 KILOMETERS

IL

IN metropolitan areas, compared to around 75 percent for all ETHNICITIES Americans. The distinctive distribution of African Americans and His- African American Asian panics is especially noticeable at the levels of states and neigh- Hispanic White borhoods. At the state level, African Americans comprise 85 percent of the population in the city of and only 7 per- FIGURE 7-5 Distribution of ethnicities in Chicago. African Americans occupy cent in the rest of . Otherwise stated, Detroit contains extensive areas on the south and west sides. Hispanic Americans are clustered in several neighborhoods on the west side. European ethnic groups are located to less than one-tenth of Michigan’s total population, but more the northwest, southwest, and far south side. Asian ethnic groups are clustered in than one-half of the state’s African American population. Simi- the far north side. larly, Chicago is more than one-third African American, com- pared to one-twelfth in the rest of . Chicago has less than one-fourth of Illinois’ total population and more than one- were immigrants and children of immigrants. Southern and half of the state’s African Americans. Eastern European ethnic groups clustered in newly constructed The distribution of Hispanics is similar to that of African neighborhoods that were often named for their predominant Americans in large northern cities. For example, is ethnicities, such as Detroit’s Greektown and Poletown. more than one-fourth Hispanic, compared to one-sixteenth in the The children and grandchildren of European immigrants rest of New York State, and New York City contains two-fifths of moved out of most of the original inner-city neighborhoods the state’s total population and three-fourths of its Hispanics. during the twentieth century. For descendants of European In the states with the largest Hispanic populations— immigrants, ethnic identity is more likely to be retained California and Texas—the distribution is mixed. In California, through religion, food, and other cultural traditions rather Hispanics comprise nearly half of ’s population, than through location of residence. A visible remnant of early but the percentage of Hispanics in California’s other large twentieth-century European ethnic neighborhoods is the clus- cities is less than or about equal to the overall state average. tering of restaurants in such areas as Little Italy and Greektown. In Texas, El Paso and San Antonio—the two large cities clos- Ethnic concentrations in U.S. cities increasingly consist of est to the Mexican border—are more than one-half Hispanic, African Americans who migrate from the South or immigrants but the state’s other large cities have percentages below or from Latin America and Asia. In cities such as Detroit, African about equal to the state’s average of around one-third. Americans now comprise the majority and live in neighbor- The clustering of ethnicities is especially pronounced on the hoods originally inhabited by European ethnic groups. Chicago scale of neighborhoods within cities. In the early twentieth has extensive African American neighborhoods on the south century, Chicago, , Detroit, and other Midwest cities and west sides of the city, but the city also contains a mix of attracted ethnic groups primarily from Southern and Eastern neighborhoods inhabited by European, Latin American, and to work in the rapidly growing steel, automotive, and Asian ethnicities (Figure 7-5). related industries. For example, in 1910, when Detroit’s auto In Los Angeles, which contains large percentages of African production was expanding, three-fourths of the city’s residents Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans, the major ethnic Chapter 7: Ethnicity 211

0 36 MILES

0 3 6 KILOMETERS

210

5 101

405

10 10

10

110 710 605

105

5

AT LEAST 50%: Hispanic

405 White

African American

Asian PACIFIC OCEAN No Majority Group

FIGURE 7-6 Distribution of ethnicities in Los Angeles. African Americans are clustered to the south of downtown Los Angeles, and Hispanics to the east. Asian American neighborhoods are contiguous to the African American and Hispanic FIGURE 7-7 Slave ship. The diagrams show the extremely high density by areas. which Africans were transported to the Americas to be sold as slaves. The bottom two images show human figures packed into the hold of the ship lying next to each other with no room to move. groups are clustered in different areas (Figure 7-6). African Americans are located in south-central Los Angeles and His- panics in the east. Asian Americans are located to the south and (Figure 7-7). During the eighteenth century, the British west, contiguous to the African American and Hispanic areas. shipped about 400,000 Africans to the 13 colonies that later formed the United States. In 1808, the United States banned African American Migration Patterns bringing in additional Africans as slaves, but an estimated The clustering of ethnicities within the United States is partly a 250,000 were illegally imported during the next half-century. function of the same process that helps geographers to explain Slavery was widespread during the time of the Roman the regular distribution of other cultural factors, such as lan- Empire, about 2,000 years ago. During the Middle Ages, slav- guage and religion—namely migration. The migration patterns ery was replaced in Europe by a feudal system, in which labor- of African Americans have been especially distinctive. ers working the land (known as serfs) were bound to the land Three major migration flows have shaped the current distri- and not free to migrate elsewhere. Serfs had to turn over a por- bution of African Americans within the United States: tion of their crops to the lord and provide other services as demanded by the lord. • Forced migration from Africa to the American colonies in Although slavery was rare in Europe, Europeans were respon- the eighteenth century. sible for diffusing the practice to the Western Hemisphere. Euro- • Immigration from the U.S. South to northern cities during peans who owned large plantations in the Americas turned to the first half of the twentieth century. African slaves as an abundant source of labor that cost less than • Immigration from inner-city to other urban neigh- paying wages to other Europeans. borhoods during the second half of the twentieth and first At the height of the slave trade between 1710 and 1810, at decade of the twenty-first centuries. least 10 million Africans were uprooted from their homes and sent on European ships to the Western Hemisphere for sale in FORCED MIGRATION FROM AFRICA. Most African the slave market. During that period, the British and are descended from Africans forced to migrate to the each shipped about 2 million slaves to the Western Hemisphere, Western Hemisphere as slaves. Slavery is a system whereby one with most of the British slaves going to Caribbean islands and person owns another person as a piece of property and can the Portuguese slaves to . force that slave to work for the owner’s benefit. The forced migration began when people living along the The first Africans brought to the American colonies as east and west coasts of Africa, taking advantage of their supe- slaves arrived at Jamestown, , on a Dutch ship in 1619 rior weapons, captured members of other groups living farther 212 The Cultural Landscape

60° 30° 10° 0° 40° destroying villages. Traders generally seized AFRICAN SOURCE AREAS FOR SLAVERY the stronger and younger villagers, who

30° Primary could be sold as slaves for the highest price. RUM Secondary The Africans were packed onto ships at

extremely high density, kept in chains, and S T E

MOLASSES K provided with minimal food and sanitary N I MOLASSES R TO ARAB LAND AND T TO facilities. Approximately one-fourth died , ANGLO-AMERICA POINTS NORTH H AND EAST ATLANTIC T AND THE

O 0° crossing the Atlantic.

L WEST

Tropic of Cancer

C INDIES 20° In the 13 colonies that later formed the OCEAN 10° United States, most of the large plantations TO BRAZIL S LAV AND OTHER in need of labor were located in the South, ES 20° PORTUGUESE TO BRAZIL POSSESSIONS AND OTHER PORTUGUESE primarily those growing cotton as well as Equator 0° POSSESSIONS 0 750 1,500 MILES 30° tobacco. Consequently, nearly all Africans 0 750 1,500 MILES shipped to the 13 colonies ended up in the 0 750 1,500 KILOMETERS 10° 0 750 1,500 KILOMETERS 40° 80° 30° 20° 10° 0° 10° 10° 0°10° 20° 30° 40° 50° Southeast. Attitudes toward slavery dominated U.S. FIGURE 7-8 Triangular slave pattern. (left) The British initiated a triangular slave trading pattern in the politics during the nineteenth century. Dur- eighteenth century. Cloth, iron bars, and other goods were carried by ship from Britain to Africa to buy slaves. The same ships transported slaves from Africa to the Caribbean islands. The ships then completed ing the early 1800s, when new states were the triangle by returning to Britain with molasses to make rum. Sometimes the ships formed a rectangular carved out of western territory, anti-slavery pattern by carrying the molasses from the Caribbean islands to the North American colonies, where the northeastern states and pro-slavery south- rum was distilled and shipped to Britain. (right) Slave sources. The British and other European powers eastern states bitterly debated whether to obtained slaves primarily from a narrow strip along the west coast of Africa, from Liberia to . In the permit slavery in the new states. The Civil early days of colonization, Europeans secured territory along the Atlantic Coast and rarely ventured more than 160 kilometers (100 miles) into the interior of the continent. War (1861–1865) was fought to prevent 11 pro-slavery Southern states from seceding from the Union. In 1863, during the Civil inland and sold the captives to Europeans. Europeans in turn War, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, shipped the captured Africans to the Americas, selling them as freeing the slaves in the 11 Confederate states. The Thirteenth slaves either on consignment or through auctions. The Spanish Amendment to the Constitution, adopted 8 months after the and Portuguese first participated in the slave trade in the early South surrendered, outlawed slavery. sixteenth century, and the British, Dutch, and French joined in Freed as slaves, most African Americans remained in the rural during the next century. South during the late nineteenth century working as sharecrop- Different European countries operated in various regions of pers (Figure 7-9). A sharecropper works fields rented from a Africa, each sending slaves to different destinations in the landowner and pays the rent by turning over to the landowner a Americas (Figure 7-8, right). The Portuguese shipped slaves share of the crops. To obtain seed, tools, food, and living quar- primarily from their principal African colonies—Angola and ters, a sharecropper gets a line of credit from the landowner and —to their major American colony, Brazil. Other repays the debt with yet more crops. The sharecropper system European countries took slaves primarily from a coastal strip of burdened poor African Americans with high interest rates and West Africa between Liberia and the Congo, 4,000 kilometers heavy debts. Instead of growing food that they could eat, share- (2,500 miles) long and 160 kilometers (100 miles) wide. The croppers were forced by landowners to plant extensive areas of majority of these slaves went to Caribbean islands and most of crops such as cotton that could be sold for cash. the remainder to Central and South America. Fewer than 5 per- cent of the slaves ended up in the United States. IMMIGRATION TO THE NORTH. Sharecropping became At the height of the eighteenth-century slave demand, a less common into the twentieth century as the introduction of number of European countries adopted the triangular slave farm machinery and a decline in land devoted to cotton reduced trade, an efficient triangular trading pattern (Figure 7-8, left): demand for labor. At the same time sharecroppers were being • Ships left Europe for Africa with cloth and other trade goods, pushed off the farms, they were being pulled by the prospect of used to buy the slaves. jobs in the booming industrial cities of the North. • They then transported slaves and gold from Africa to the African Americans migrated out of the South along several Western Hemisphere, primarily to the Caribbean islands. clearly defined channels (Figure 7-10). Most traveled by bus • To complete the triangle, the same ships then carried sugar and car along the major two-lane long-distance U.S. roads and molasses from the Caribbean on their return trip to that were paved and signposted in the early decades of the Europe. twentieth century and have since been replaced by interstate highways: Some ships added another step, making a rectangular trading pattern, in which molasses was carried from the Caribbean to the • East coast: From the Carolinas and other South Atlantic North American colonies, and rum from the colonies to Europe. states north to , , New York, and The large-scale forced migration of Africans obviously other northeastern cities, along U.S. Route 1 (parallel to caused them unimaginable hardship, separating families and present-day I-95). Chapter 7: Ethnicity 213

after World War II. The world wars stim- ulated expansion of factories in the 1910s and 1940s to produce war materiel, while the demands of the armed forces created shortages of factory workers. After the wars, during the 1920s and 1950s, factories produced steel, motor vehicles, and other goods demanded in civilian society. In 1910, only 5,741 of Detroit’s 465,766 inhabitants were African Ameri- can. With the expansion of the auto industry during the 1910s and 1920s, the African American population increased to 120,000 in 1930, 300,000 in 1950, and 500,000 in 1960.

EXPANSION OF THE . When they reached the big cities, African American immigrants clustered in the one or two neighborhoods where the small numbers who had arrived in the nineteenth century were already living. FIGURE 7-9 Sharecroppers. Many African Americans became sharecroppers after slavery was abolished. These areas became known as ghettos, Fields were rented from a landowner, and rent was paid in crops, in this case cotton from a Georgia farm in 1898. after the term for neighborhoods in which were forced to live in the Middle Ages (see Chapter 6). • East central: From Alabama and eastern north to In 1950, most of Baltimore’s quarter-million African Ameri- either Detroit, along U.S. Route 25 (present-day I-75), or cans lived in a 3-square-kilometer (1-square-mile) neighbor- Cleveland, along U.S. Route 21 (present-day I-77). hood northwest of downtown (Figure 7-11). The remainder • West central: From Mississippi and western Tennessee were clustered east of downtown or in a large isolated housing north to St. Louis and Chicago, along U.S. routes 61 and 66 project on the south side built for black wartime workers in (present-day I-55) port industries. Densities in the ghettos were high, with • Southwest: From Texas west to California, along U.S. routes 40,000 inhabitants per square kilometer (100,000 per square 80 and 90 (present-day I-10 and I-20). mile) common. Contrast that density with the current level found in typical American suburbs of 2,000 inhabitants per Southern African Americans migrated north and west in two square kilometer (5,000 per square mile). Because of the main waves, the first in the 1910s and 1920s before and after shortage of housing in the ghettos, families were forced to live and the second in the 1940s and 1950s before and in one room. Many dwellings lacked bathrooms, kitchens, hot water, and heat. African Americans moved from the tight ghettos into imme- diately adjacent neighborhoods during the 1950s and 1960s. In Baltimore, the west side African American area expanded from

Northeast 3 square kilometers (1 square mile) in 1950 to 25 square New York City kilometers (10 square miles) in 1970, and a 5-square-kilometer Detroit Philadelphia Cleveland MidwestChicago (2-square-mile) area on the east side became mainly populated West by African Americans. Expansion of the ghetto continued to St. Louis follow major avenues to the northwest and northeast in

Los South subsequent decades. Angeles Differentiating Ethnicity and Race FIGURE 7-10 African American twentieth-century migration within the Race and ethnicity are often confused. In the United States, con- United States. Migration followed four distinctive channels along the east coast, sider three prominent ethnic groups—Asian Americans, African east central, west central, and southwest regions of the country. Americans, and Hispanic Americans. All three ethnicities display 214 The Cultural Landscape

P A African Americans and Native Americans, and 50 percent of His- R K H E panics, compared to only 15 percent of Americans of European REISTERSTOWNIG RD.

H YORK RD. TS A ancestry. Nearly everyone is born with the ability to produce lac- V E . 83 tase, which enables infants to digest the large amount of lactose

HARFORD RD. in milk. Lactase production typically slackens during childhood, LIBERTY HEIGHTS AVE. BELAIR RD. leaving some with difficulty in absorbing a large amount of lac-

1 95 tose as adults. A large percentage of persons of Northern Euro- pean descent have a genetic mutation that results in lifelong 40 production of lactase. At best, biological features are so highly variable among EDMONSON O. BALT ORLEANS ST. members of a race that any prejudged classification is meaning- . PIKE AVE. NAT'L less. Perhaps many tens or hundreds of thousands of years ago, early “humans” (however they emerged as a distinct species)

95 lived in such isolation from other early “humans” that they were 1 truly distinct genetically. But the degree of isolation needed to keep biological features distinct genetically vanished when the AT LEAST 90% AFRICAN-AMERICAN 895 first human crossed a river or climbed a hill. BEFORE: At worst, biological classification by race is the basis for 1950 0 12 MILES racism, which is the belief that race is the primary determinant 1960 695 of human traits and capacities and that racial differences pro- 1970 0 1 2 KILOMETERS 1980 duce an inherent superiority of a particular race. A racist is a 1990 person who subscribes to the beliefs of racism. 2000

FIGURE 7-11 Expansion of African American ghetto in Baltimore, Maryland. Race in the United States In 1950, most African Americans in Baltimore lived in a small area northwest of Every 10 years, the U.S. Bureau of the Census asks people to downtown. During the 1950s and 1960s, the African American area expanded to classify themselves according to the race with which they most the northwest, along major radial roads, and a second node opened on the east closely identify. Americans are asked to identify themselves by side. The south-side African American area was an isolated public housing complex built for wartime workers in the nearby port industries. checking the box next to one of the following fourteen races: • White • Black, African American, or Negro distinct cultural traditions that originate at particular hearths, • American Indian or Alaska Native but the three are regarded in different ways: • Asian Indian • Chinese • Asian is recognized as a distinct race by the U.S. Bureau of • Filipino the Census, so Asian as a race and Asian American as an • Japanese ethnicity encompass basically the same group of people. • Korean However, the Asian American ethnicity lumps together • Vietnamese people with ties to many countries in Asia. • Other Asian • African American and black are different groups, although the • Native Hawaiian 2000 census combined the two. Most black Americans are • Guamanian or Chamorro descended from African immigrants and therefore also belong • Samoan to an African American ethnicity. Some American blacks, • Other Pacific Islander however, trace their cultural heritage to regions other than • Other race Africa, including Latin America, Asia, and Pacific islands. If American Indian, Other Pacific Islander, Other Asian, or The term African American identifies a group with an exten- • Other race is selected, the respondent is asked to write in the sive cultural tradition, whereas the term black in principle specific name. denotes nothing more than dark skin. Because many Amer- In 2000 about 75 percent of Americans checked that they icans make judgments about the values and behavior of were white, 12 percent black, 4 percent Asian (Asian Indian, others simply by observing skin color, black is substituted Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, or Vietnamese), 1 percent for African American in daily language. American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.1 percent Native Hawaiian Hispanic or Latino is not considered a race, so on the cen- • or other Pacific Islander (including Guamanian and Samoan), sus form members of the Hispanic or Latino ethnicity select and 6 percent some other race. The census permits people to any race they wish—white, black, or other. check more than one box, and 7 million Americans (2 percent) The traits that characterize race are those that can be trans- of the respondents did that in 2000. President Obama is an mitted genetically from parents to children. For example, lactose example of an American of more than one race. His father was intolerance affects 95 percent of Asian Americans, 65 percent of a black native of Africa and his mother was white. Chapter 7: Ethnicity 215

“SEPARATE BUT EQUAL” DOCTRINE. In explaining “.” Segregation laws were eliminated spatial regularities, geographers look for patterns of spatial during the 1950s and 1960s. The landmark Supreme Court interaction. A distinctive feature of race relations in the United decision Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, in 1954, States has been the strong discouragement of spatial found that having separate schools for blacks and whites was interaction—in the past through legal means, today through unconstitutional, because no matter how equivalent the cultural preferences or discrimination. facilities, racial separation branded minority children as The U.S. Supreme Court in 1896 upheld a Louisiana law inferior and therefore was inherently unequal. A year later, the that required black and white passengers to ride in separate Supreme Court further ruled that schools had to be railway cars. In Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court stated desegregated “with all deliberate speed.” that Louisiana’s law was constitutional because it provided Rather than integrate, whites fled. The expansion of the black separate, but equal, treatment of blacks and whites, and equality ghettos in American cities was made possible by “white flight,” did not mean that whites had to mix socially with blacks. the emigration of whites from an area in anticipation of blacks Once the Supreme Court permitted “separate but equal” immigrating into the area. Detroit provides a clear example. Black treatment of the races, southern states enacted a comprehen- immigration into Detroit from the South subsided during the sive set of laws to segregate blacks from whites as much as pos- 1950s, but as legal barriers to integration crumbled, whites began sible (Figure 7-12). These were called “Jim Crow” laws, named to emigrate out of Detroit. Detroit’s white population dropped by for a nineteenth-century song-and-dance act that depicted about 1 million between 1950 and 1975 and by another half mil- blacks offensively. Blacks had to sit in the back of buses, and lion between 1975 and 2000. While whites fled, Detroit’s black shops, restaurants, and hotels could choose to serve only population continued to grow, but at a more modest rate, as a whites. Separate schools were established for blacks and result of natural increase. In sum, Detroit in 1950 contained about whites. After all, argued, the bus got blacks 1.7 million whites and 300,000 blacks. The black population sitting in the rear to the destination at the same time as the increased to 500,000 in 1960, 700,000 in 1970, and 800,000 in whites in the front, some commercial establishments served both 1990 and 2000, while the white population declined from only blacks, and all of the schools had teachers and classrooms. 1.7 million in 1950 to 1.3 million in 1960, 900,000 in 1970, Throughout the country, not just in the South, house deeds 500,000 in 1980, 300,000 in 1990, and 200,000 in 2000. contained restrictive covenants that prevented the owners from White flight was encouraged by unscrupulous real estate prac- selling to blacks, as well as to Roman Catholics or Jews in some tices, especially blockbusting. Under blockbusting, real estate places. Restrictive covenants kept blacks from moving into an agents convinced white homeowners living near a black area to all-white neighborhood. And because schools, especially at the sell their houses at low prices, preying on their fears that black elementary level, were located to serve individual neighbor- families would soon move into the neighborhood and cause prop- hoods, most were segregated in practice, even if not legally erty values to decline. The agents then sold the houses at much mandated. higher prices to black families desperate to escape the over- crowded ghettos. Through blockbusting, a neighborhood could change from all-white to all-black in a matter of months, and real estate agents could start the process all over again in the next white area. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, known as the Kerner Commission, wrote in 1968 that U.S. cities were divided into two separate and unequal societies, one black and one white. Four decades later, despite serious efforts to integrate and equalize the two, segregation and inequality persist. Division by Race in Discrimination by race reached its peak in the late twentieth century in South Africa. While the United States was repealing laws that segregated people by race, South Africa was enacting them. The corner- stone of the South African policy was the FIGURE 7-12 Segregation in the United States. Until the 1960s in the U.S. South, whites and blacks had creation of a legal system called to use separate drinking fountains, as well as separate restrooms, bus seats, hotel rooms, and other public (Figure 7-13). Apartheid was the physical facilities. separation of different races into different 216 The Cultural Landscape

FIGURE 7-13 Apartheid. South Africa’s apartheid laws were designed to spatially segregate races as much as possible. Blacks and whites reached the platform at this train station in by walking up separate stairs. Whites waited at the front of the platform to get into cars at the head of the train, while blacks waited at the rear.

different legal status in South Africa. The apartheid laws determined where different CREATED HOMELANDS BOTSWANA races could live, attend school, work, Northern Bophuthatswana Transvaal NAMIBIA shop, and own land. Blacks were restricted Ciskei to certain occupations and were paid far 25° Transkei lower wages than were whites for similar North SWAZILAND Venda work. Blacks could not vote or run for West KwaZulu/ political office in national elections. The Orange Free Natal State PROPOSED HOMELANDS apartheid system was created by descen-

LESOTHO Qwaqua dants of whites who arrived in South 30° 30° Africa from Holland in 1652 and settled in Gazankulu , at the southern tip of the terri- KwaZulu ATLANTIC INDIAN tory. They were known either as , Eastern Lebowa OCEAN Cape OCEAN from the Dutch word for “farmer,” or Capetown Ndebele , from the word “,” the 0 100 200 MILES Swazi name of their language, which is a dialect 35° 35° 0 100 200 KILOMETERS of Dutch. 15° 20° 25° 30° The British seized the Dutch colony FIGURE 7-14 Apartheid in South Africa. As part of its apartheid system, the government of South Africa in 1795, and controlled South Africa’s designated ten homelands, expecting that ultimately every black would become a citizen of one of them. government until 1948, when the South Africa declared four of these homelands to be independent states, but no other country recognized the Afrikaner-dominated Nationalist Party action. With the end of apartheid and the election of a black majority government, the homelands were won elections. The Afrikaners gained abolished, and South Africa was reorganized into nine provinces. power at a time when colonial rule was being replaced in the rest of Africa by a collection of independent states run by the local black popula- geographic areas. Although South Africa’s apartheid laws were tion. The Afrikaners vowed to resist pressures to turn over South repealed during the 1990s, it will take many years to erase the Africa’s government to blacks, and the Nationalist Party created impact of past policies. the apartheid laws in the next few years to perpetuate white In South Africa, under apartheid, a newborn baby was classified dominance of the country. To ensure geographic isolation of dif- as being one of four races—black, white, colored (mixed white ferent races, the South African government designated ten so- and black), or Asian. Under apartheid, each of the four races had a called homelands for blacks (Figure 7-14). The white minority Chapter 7: Ethnicity 217 government expected every black to become a citizen of one of • Race distinguishes blacks and other persons of color the homelands and to move there. More than 99 percent of the from whites. population in the ten homelands was black. The white-dominated government of South Africa repealed The United States forged a nationality in the late eighteenth the apartheid laws in 1991. The principal antiapartheid organiza- century out of a collection of ethnic groups gathered primarily tion, the African National Congress, was legalized, and its leader, from Europe and Africa, not through traditional means of issu- , was released from jail after more than 27 years ing passports (African Americans weren’t considered citizens of imprisonment. When all South Africans were permitted to then) or voting (women and African Americans couldn’t vote vote in national elections for the first time, in 1994, Mandela was then), but through sharing the values expressed in the Declara- overwhelmingly elected the country’s first black president. tion of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Now that South Africa’s apartheid laws have been dismantled Rights. To be an American meant believing in the “unalienable and the country is governed by its black majority, other coun- rights” of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” tries have reestablished economic and cultural ties. However, In Canada, the Québécois are clearly distinct from other the legacy of apartheid will linger for many years: South Africa’s Canadians in language, religion, and other cultural traditions. blacks have achieved political equality, but they are much But do the Québécois form a distinct ethnicity within the poorer than white South Africans. Average income among white Canadian nationality or a second nationality separate alto- South Africans is about ten times higher than that of blacks. gether from Anglo-Canadian? The distinction is critical, because if Québécois is recognized as a separate nationality from Anglo-Canadian, the Québec government would have a much stronger justification for breaking away from Canada to KEY ISSUE 2 form an independent country (refer to Figure 5-27). Outside North America, distinctions between ethnicity and Why Have Ethnicities nationality are even muddier. We have already seen in this chapter that identification with ethnicity and race can lead to Been Transformed discrimination and segregation. Confusion between ethnicity into Nationalities? and nationality can lead to violent conflicts. ■ Rise of Nationalities Nation-States ■ Multinational States To preserve and enhance distinctive cultural characteristics, ethnicities seek to govern themselves without interference. A ■ Revival of Ethnic Identity nation-state is a state whose territory corresponds to that occupied by a particular ethnicity that has been transformed Ethnicity and race are distinct from nationality, another into a nationality. term commonly used to describe a group of people with Ethnic groups have been transformed into nationalities shared traits. Nationality is identity with a group of people because desire for self-rule is a very important shared attitude who share legal attachment and personal allegiance to a for many of them. The concept that ethnicities have the right to particular country. It comes from the Latin word nasci, govern themselves is known as self-determination. which means “to have been born.” Nationality and ethnicity are similar concepts in that membership in both is defined through shared cultural val- DENMARK: THERE ARE NO PERFECT NATION- ues. In principle, the cultural values shared with others of STATES. Denmark is a fairly good example of a nation-state, the same ethnicity derive from religion, language, and because the territory occupied by the Danish ethnicity closely material culture, whereas those shared with others of the corresponds to the state of Denmark. The Danes have a strong same nationality derive from voting, obtaining a passport, sense of unity that derives from shared cultural characteristics and performing civic duties. ■ and attitudes and a recorded history that extends back more than 1,000 years. Nearly all Danes speak the same language— Danish—and nearly all the world’s speakers of Danish live in Denmark. Rise of Nationalities But even Denmark is not a perfect example of a nation-state. Ten percent of Denmark’s population consists of ethnic minori- In the United States, nationality is generally kept reasonably ties. The two largest groups are guest workers from and distinct from ethnicity and race in common usage: refugees from ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia (see • Nationality identifies citizens of the United States of America, Chapter 3). including those born in the country and those who immi- To dilute the concept of a nation-state further, Denmark grated and became citizens. controls two territories in the Atlantic Ocean that do not share • Ethnicity identifies groups with distinct ancestry and cultural Danish cultural characteristics. One is the Faeroe Islands, a traditions, such as African Americans, Hispanic Americans, group of 21 islands ruled by Denmark for more than 600 years. , or . The nearly 50,000 inhabitants of the Faeroe Islands speak