American Ethnicity: The Dynamics & Consequences of Discrimination

by Adalberto Aguirre Jr., Jonathan H. Turner

This brief and inexpensive text provides a concise introduction to the dynamics of racial and ethnic relations. After summarizing key concepts and theories, the authors develop a simple theoretical framework that guides the presentation of data on each of the prominent ethnic groups in America. As a result, the book examines each ethnic group from the same perspective, allowing students to compare the dynamics of discrimination against African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, white ethnics, and Latinos. Moreover, this framework provides a way to examine ethnic relations around the world and to compare the dynamics in other parts of the world with those operating in America.

Genres: Sociology

314 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

Reviews

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three and a half. This work provides an enlightening, if somewhat glancing, look at the historical constructions of the main racial "categories" in the United States, and the ethnicities from which they were constructed. In the earliest chapters, Aguirre and Turner establish a framework with which to examine and understand ethic relations in the United States, including identity and identification, values, sense of threat leading to discrimination, resources and resource shares, and stratification. From there, they examine different "groups" based on this framework, providing statistics, ethnographic analyses, and commentary on the American Anglo-Saxon "core", white ethnic Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, Asian and Pacific Island Americans, and Arab Americans. These categories (also the chapter titles) mirror popular understanding of racial "groups" in the United States, but also may undermine one of the authors' main conveyances, that these groups were constructed over time out of socio-cultural interpretations, and are not based in any clear delineations. Perhaps better chapter titles would have been "Persons Typically Identified as [Asians]" or something similar? Attempting to treat the spectacular complexity of ethnic dynamics (and their consequences!) in the United States is an ambitious project, and Aguirre and Turner pack a lot of thought-provoking and well-researched analysis into what is really a very short work considering its topic. This is a nice introduction, but may be best supplemented with other works for a more complete analysis.

[K. Parker Richmond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy-to-read, comprehensive overview of the dynamics of ethnicity in the United States. I read as an assigned textbook for a course on American ethnic studies, and felt like this opened my eyes to be more aware of how racism operates in U.S. society.

[Tashie · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hated this book, as I hate most anthologies. It was very dry, very hard to get through.

[Mills College Library]

305.80097 A2841 2011