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The Genesis of Ethnicity and Collective Identity
Alexandre Kimenyi
Ethnicity like other concepts is defined and understood differently depending
on the academic discipline and the school of thought. The reasons of scientific
inquiry into its formal and functional properties also differ according to the
discipline as well. For anthropologists and sociologists, for instance, the
scope of study is only descriptive and explanatory. For ethnic studies scholars,
however, the inquiry goes beyond. The three levels of analysis (observation,
description and explanation) are met, but a prescriptive element is also added.
The study of ethnicity is not done for pure knowledge sake but to improve the
minority rights and social justice. This essay shows that it is not easy to
draw the line between ethnicity and other social categorizations such as nationality,
race or class in pluralistic societies.
It is also shown that ethnicity is dynamic, ever changing because of paradigm
shift in scholarship and public policy and other socio-economic factors. Examples
drawn from different societies support the view that ethnicity is both essentialist
and a social construct.
Factors responsible for the genesis of ethnicity are space movement and movement
of the people as illustrated by nation-building processes, colonization, diaspora
phenomena and migration. Using the conflict model, it becomes clear that ethnicity
and collective identity are created for solidarity purposes and mutual support
because of shared existential experiences.
1. Defining ethnicity
Pluralism and ethnicity mean the same thing in pluralistic societies. For political
scientists, a pluralistic society is one which allows people to belong to a
party of their choice or tolerates different political persuasions. In ethnic
studies, however, pluralism refers to a complex social organization which is
diverse in its ethnic make-up. There is thus lack of homogeneity. Within the
discipline of ethnic studies itself, ethnicity acquires different meanings depending
on the theoretical bias. There are two competing theories namely the functionalist
model and the conflict model. Like many others, I will use the term "equilibrium"
for the former, because it creates ambiguity or assigns a new meaning to the
term functionalist. In both hard sciences and social sciences, the term functionalist
is used in opposition to formalist which is mainly interested in the architectural
organization of the subject under study namely how paradigmatic elements interact
with the whole structure.
In the equilibrium model's point of view a true pluralistic society is one in
which a peaceful coexistence of ethnic diversity exists. These groups have reached
a consensus that to live in harmony, to insure society's survival and progress,
it is necessary to tolerate each other. According to this theory, pluralism
is a prerequisite to true democracy since democracy means to accept the rules
of the game, to compromise, to accept the decision that has been agreed upon.
Democracy means diversity of opinions, groups, etc. Homogeneity doesn't therefore
create a good ground for democracy. To illustrate this concept, social scientists
cite Switzerland, Belgium and Canada as examples. They also call their respective
governments consociative democracies. They assert that in these three countries,
ethnic groups live in harmony.
The three are not good examples, however. Switzerland happens to be a federated
state where four groups, namely French, Germans, Italians and Romanche live
in four separate cantons. Switzerland doesn't have a national language or culture.
It is very clear that if one language were to be imposed, there will be without
any doubt a conflict. Belgium like Switzerland is a federation also where two
groups, two languages and two separate spaces are found, namely Flemish and
Walloons. It is true that Canada is more liberal as far as its immigration policy
is concerned. Despite its huge size, twice the United States, its total population
which numbers around 30 million is lower that of California. Canada also allows
symbolic ethnicity by aiding, with generous grants, different groups to organize
ethnic festivals. This has resulted in being assigned the label of an true exemplar
of a multiculturalist nation par excellence. The dominant group is still Anglo-Saxon,
however, just like in the United States. As far as the largest minority is concerned,
the French, there is always a conflict. There is a powerful separatist movement
which has been trying to secede but lost in successive referendums. For true
pluralism to exist, people of diverse ethnic backgrounds have to live harmoniously
in the same space. If there are no tensions among the various groups in Switzerland,
Belgium and Canada, it is because as we have noticed, they live in separate
spaces. The equilibrium model is fundamentally flawed because it is not supported
by any empirical data.
True pluralist societies lend support to the conflict model. Social unrests,
civil wars, separatist movements, nativist reactions, forced removal of individuals
to areas far from their homelands, destruction of minority cultures and mass
killings are endemic in multi-ethnic societies. There is a civil war pitting
Hutus against Tutsis in Burundi right now which has killed more than 200,000
in the last few years. In Northern Ireland, the war has been going on for a
long time between Catholics and Protestants. Belfast is literally a war zone.
Separatist movements are operating right now in Sudan, Sri Lanka, India, in
the Basque territory, in Chechnya just to name a few. The Chechens want to be
independent from the Russians who they see as colonialists or occupiers. In
France and Spain, Basques want their own homeland. In Sri Lanka, the Tamils
want to secede from the Sinhalese majority. The Muslim Kashmir state wants to
separate from the Hindu India. Southern Sudanese are fighting the federal government
because it is dominated by the northerners who are Muslims whereas the southerners
are Christian or animists. In early 60s, more than one million ethnic Ibos died
during the Biafra war when they tried to secede from the federal Nigerian government.
The Berbers in Algeria are complaining about the Arabization of their language
and culture by the Arab majority. This also explains the disintegration of the
Soviet Union and the collapse of Yugoslavia and the failed modern states of
Liberia, Sierra Leone and Somalia.
Not only are minority groups segregated but they are also sometimes forcedly
removed to undesirable areas and hostile environments such as the infamous Trail
of Tears when thousands of Cherokee together with the Seminoles, the Creeks,
the Choctaws, the Chickasaws were relocated to Oklahoma and later this forced
relocation became the law of the land forcing all Native Americans to move to
reservations in compliance with the Manifest Destiny doctrine. A similar experience
happened to Blacks in South Africa during the apartheid regime. They were forced
to move to Bantustans or Homelands which were really unfertile lands that Whites
didn't like. The relocation of Tutsi to Nyamata , a tsetse fly infected area
by the Parmehutu regime of Gregoire Kayibanda follows the same pattern.
Nativist reactions are increasing in many parts of the world because of the
economic downturn. In Malaysia, the government is deporting Indonesians and
Filipinos. The current troubles that the West African country Ivory Coast is
experiencing right now are due to the current government policies which discriminate
and exclude Northerners from participating in the national affairs accusing
them of being aliens. This xenophobic attitude is seen in my European countries
where Middle Easterners and African immigrants are being scapegoated for all
social ailments. In Uganda under Idi Amin's regime all Indians were expelled
and left behind their businesses, farms and properties. A similar fate affected
Chinese in the United States in the late 19th century with the 1882 Chinese
Exclusion Act when the Chinese were expelled from the United States. During
the Great Depression bona fide US citizens of Mexican descent were repatriated,
(a euphemism for forced mass deportation), living behind everything they cherished.
The most extreme behavior in multi-ethnic societies is the total extermination
of the minority by the majority such as the Jewish Holocaust by Nazi Germany,
the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda by the Hutu government, the ethnic cleansings
in the Balkans, the Albanian massacres in Kosovo. The massacre in Srebrenka,
a Muslim enclave in Serbia by Bosnian Serb troops and Serbian police and the
killings in Sarajevo was an attempt by President Slobodan Milosevic to create
an enlarged state for Serbs only by driving out non-Serbs. This man's inhumanity
to man by the majority is usually rationalized with moral justification by demonizing
and dehumanizing the victim. These subordinate groups are not only aliens, they
are also believed to be inferior, parasites, sub-humans and responsible for
all of types of evil. In pluralistic societies, subordinate groups are always
denied their basic rights: civil liberties, civil rights, human rights and constitutional
rights. The disaffection and disenfranchisement of victimized groups create
tension which oftentimes explodes into violence. It is with the conflict model
that the terms majority meaning dominant group and minority subordinate group
and also the concepts of "us" and "they" find meaning.
Ethnicity and Phenomenological awareness
Phenomenological awareness is used in Edmund Husserl's sense. Members of the
minority and majority groups have to discover this "otherness". A
good example which illustrates this view is the newly persecuted minority namely
Arab Americans. Arab Americans were formerly classified among Caucasians and
nobody paid attention to them but because of the 9/11 terrorism attacks the
situation has changed. In Russia, the Cossarks have recently "discovered"
that they are a distinct minority, different from Russians. There are also members
of minority groups who distance themselves from their group and join only when
a wake-up takes place, such as being treated differently because of specific
group membership. Blacks in Brazil, for instance, since they lack this phenomenological
awareness and therefore don't show any group solidarity cannot be described
as an ethnicity according to this view. The two most important movements which
have put ethnicity at the forefront are the 18th century Enlightenment philosophy
of Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesqieu and the 1960's American Civil Rights movement.
The genesis of ethnicity requires social consciousness.
Ethnicity and the existential otherness
Phenomenology and existentialism are closely linked. The phenomenological awareness
is responsible for the awareness of the "us" and "they".
The discovery of the existence of the other is a terrible experience. It proves
the existentialist credo "Hell is others". This doesn't mean that
human beings should let this "absurd world" keep its course. True
human beings have a responsibility to keep fighting for equality and social
justice even if this life doesn't seem to have meaning.
2. Essentialist and social construct ethnicities
There is a big debate in social sciences as to whether ethnicity is essentialist,
that is natural, biologically based or a social construct, that is artificial
or man-made. Ethnic or racial classification in the United States, South Africa,
Brazil and Rwanda would support the social construct thesis. In the United States
as far as race is concerned, there are two groups, whites and blacks. A mixed
person with 90% white blood and 10% black blood is automatically classified
in the black category. There is nothing in between. In South Africa, however,
there are three distinct groups, whites, blacks and coloreds. The latter group
consists of people with mixed blood between white and black. A colored cannot
be white or black. Brazil presents a different situation. It has the fifth largest
population in the world with 174 million people, coming after China, India,
United States and Indonesia. It also has the second largest black population
in the world around 80 million after Nigeria which counts 120 million. The latest
census, however, found out that there are only 6% of the population who recognize
themselves as blacks. This is due to the practice of the Brazilian government
of classifying people according to the degree of skin color from the lightest
to the darkest. There are around 40 categories. In the conflict model of ethnicity,
black ethnicity doesn't exist in Brazil since there is lack of conscientiousness
and black group solidarity. In Rwanda, ethnicity is determined by the father.
A child from a Tutsi father and a Hutu mother is a Tutsi and a child from a
Hutu father and a Tutsi mother ever if she comes from the highest aristocracy,
is a Hutu. Since, Hutu and Tutsi share the same language and culture, and had
a very high intermarriage rate, it was possible for a Tutsi to change his or
her identity when he or she moved to an area where people didn't know who the
parents were. It is the reason why during the anti-Tutsi regimes from the 1959
to 1994, to enforce the discrimination policies, everybody in the country had
to carry an identity card which mentioned whether the ID carrier was a Hutu
or a Tutsi. It is also important to note that this type of categorization has
been ingrained in Rwandans' minds. When asked about their ancestry and genealogy
the majority know only about their father's side. This is the opposite of what
happens among the Seneca and some other Iroquois groups. It is the mother who
determines ethnicity. This classification as examples eloquently indicate seems
to be arbitrary and is indeed socially constructed.
The majority of ethnic groups, however, are natural because members of the group
share the same culture, the same history, the same language. They have characteristics
which set them apart from other groups. The Gypsies in Europe are different
from other Europeans, the Kikuyu in Kenya are different the Luhya. The Xhosa
in South Africa are different from the Zulu. The Hopi are not the same as the
Navajo. Essentialism as a theory was very popular in the 70's in many social
sciences such as the feminist theory, took back seat in the 80's in favor of
social construct but came back in the 90's. The existence of socially constructed
ethnicity doesn't preclude the existence of an essentialist ethnicity and as
the existence of genetically engineered crops doesn't preclude the existence
of natural ones. Essentialism versus social construction is the same old debate
under different names namely between nature versus nurture, or behavioral psychology
and evolutionary psychology, or universalist and relativist, as to whether concepts,
perception and social behavior are innate, biologically programmed or are shaped
by culture and environment. Essentialism is back in full force and has been
resurrected among many others by the MIT linguist Steven Pinker in his latest
book The Blank Slate and the Modern Denial of Human Nature. Empirical evidence
from both cultural anthropology and anthropological linguistics show that people
from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds perceive and conceive the
same reality differently and classify and categorize the same phenomena differently
as well in what has become to be known as the Sapir-Wholf hypothesis.Theories
like ideologies sometimes blind the practitioners by preventing them from seeing
the whole picture. The Balkanization of academic theories does not advance a
true intellectual debate.
3. The genesis of ethnicity
Ethnicity or the creation of a multi-ethnic state comes from both the movement
of space and movement of the people. Traditional states such as city-states
or tribes were homogeneous and believed in a common mythical ancestry. However,
modern nation-states have been created through space expansion. This expansion
occurs either through annexation using brutal force or federation through mutual
agreement. Those whose territory has been annexed by force, most of the time
become automatically the subordinate group. The United States has used both
annexation and federation to be what it is today. Many states joined the thirteen
colonies through federation but the southwestern states were acquired by force
when Mexico was forced to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 making
californios, nuevos mexicanos, tejanos a subordinate group in their native land.
In modern times, Tanzania was formed after both Tanganyika and the Indian Ocean
island, Zanzibar became independent. Nation-building creates ethnicity because
people from different cultural, religious, linguistic or racial backgrounds
start sharing the same space for the first time.
In the 19th century, the factor mostly responsible for the creation of multi-ethnic
states was colonialism. The purpose of colonialism is the maximum exploitation
of both natural and human resources of the conquered nations. Colonialists sometimes
brought with them indentured workers to help in this exploitation. These indentured
workers were initially sojourners but later on settled permanently thus becoming
another minority in the new land. Examples of indentured workers who became
settlers are Indians in Fiji and the West Indies.
The reason why post-independence African nations have ethnic conflicts it is
because many states were created artificially without respect to geographical,
national, linguistic, historical and cultural boundaries. In the 1885-6 Berlin
Conference on the Partition of Africa, European powers carved the map of Africa
according to their own colonialists' interests thus separating families and
destroying nations and for the first time dumping together people from different
nationalities. For instance the kingdom of Congo was divided into three parts
one going to the Portuguese (Angola), another to the Belgians (Democratic Republic
of Congo) and the other one to the French (Republic of Congo). The Maasai saw
themselves separated into groups, one group being annexed to Kenya and another
one to Tanzania. Some nations ceased to exist altogether such as the Kurds.
They have now become minorities in countries that they have been attached to:
ethnic Kurds in Iran, ethnic Kurds in Turkey and ethnic Kurds in Iraq. Migrant
states such as the United States, Australia and New Zealand reduced the indigenous
people to an invisible minority.
Because of the end of the cold war, there are many instabilities in developing
countries. This situation has created a new wave of economical and political
refugees who automatically become minorities in the host countries where they
become targets of xenophobic treatment.
4. Race, class, clan, nationality and ethnicity
In a pluralistic society, a racial group, a class, a clan, a religious or national
group can be either a minority or majority, thus dominant or subordinate
It is sometimes difficult in the conflict model to draw the line between ethnicity
and these other types of social groups. Although some scientists dispute the
existence of race, race is a reality. They do so in reaction to those who espouse
a racist ideology, the belief in the superiority of certain races and the inferiority
of others. It is true that pure races are hard to find because of a very high
racial degree of inter-group mixture but this doesn't erase its presence. The
fact that certain types of diseases target specific groups is already evidence
of the existence of race. Skin color, hair texture differentiate certain groups
from others. Five different groups are usually recognized namely Caucasians
(Europeans, North Africans, Middle Easterners and Indians), Blacks (Sub-Sahara
Africa), Asians, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans.
Class is defined as a social group which shares the same values and lifestyles.
It is characterized by either social demotion or promotion. There is a possibility
of both horizontal and vertical mobility, being able to be elevated to a higher
social status and moving to better neighborhoods, being accepted into private
clubs and facing less discrimination and segregation.
It also happens that in pluralistic societies, a great number of the minority
groups belong to the low class and the majority of the upper class belong to
the dominant group. In Latin American countries such as Honduras, Guatemala,
El Salvador, the lowest class found at the bottom of the society is the landless
and jobless Indians. In the US the majority of Blacks, Mexican-Americans and
Asian-Americans live in the inner city slums.
Caste is an inherited social status, there is no possibility of mobility, or
moving out as illustrated by Burachumin of Japan and the Untouchables of India.
The term caste is usually used to refer to the low caste, the pariahs of the
society. These people are usually marginalized, ostracized, do the dirty work
that other citizens refuse to do and are totally dehumanized. In both India
and Japan, they are indeed "untouchables" They cannot mix with other
groups. Marrying them is a social demotion. A caste is clearly a social construct
since there are no distinctive physical, cultural or behavioral features which
distinguish caste members from the mainstream society.
A clan is a social organization found mostly in traditional societies. Its formal
features are totems and taboos. The totems in many societies which have clans
are mostly birds and animals. Rwanda has around 14 clans and some of the totems
are frogs, royal cranes, wagtails, hyenas, etc (Kimenyi, 1988).
Among the Ndebele of Zimbabwe, some of the totems are "the monkey",
"the leopard", "the crocodile". It is the same with Native
Americans as well where we find the "fox" clan, the "crow"
clan, "eagle" clan, the "turtle" clan, etc. There are certain
things that clan members are not allowed to do such as eating certain types
of foods. A clan member cannot kill and eat the meat of the animal which is
his or her totem. There are certain groups that they cannot marry from, either.
Strict rules of endogamy and exogamy exist in those societies.
Ethnicity is, as examples show, connected to some of these other social groups.
In many parts of the world, people are being persecuted because they are a religious
minority as in Northern Ireland for Catholics, Muslims in India, Shiite Muslims
in Iraq by the ruling minority Sunni Muslims. Women are discriminated against
in many parts of the world, like other minorities they are victims of glass
ceilings and glass walls, these invisible barriers which prevent them from getting
social promotion or preventing them from having access to private clubs or other
areas. The French revolution, the Bolshevik revolution and the Cambodia "killing
fields" by the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot were class conflicts. The French
peasants didn't only kill the royal family but the whole French aristocracy.
The Bolshevik revolution massacred the czar's family and the upper class as
well. In Cambodia, Pol Pot targeted the whole bourgeoisie or elite. It is possible
for some individuals to belong to more than one of these oppressed and powerless
groups. Since women regardless of class, race, ethnicity, religion, are already
discriminated against in many societies, those who belong to the ethnic minority
are being victimized twice. This type of treatment is referred to as double-jeopardy,
triple-jeopardy or multiple jeopardy.
5. The illusion of ethnic homogeneity.
The majority always has a tendency to lump together minority groups who are
not related in any way whether it be culture, language or nationality. This
ignorance is due to the lack of interest in knowing who these subordinate groups
truly are because they are seen as irrelevant in social, economic and political
national affairs because of their marginal status. This essay will limit itself
on Asian Americans and Native Americans as examples, only for illustration purposes.
Asian Americans are labeled the model minority by the media and politicians
because unlike other minorities, they are seen as very close to the majority
by their work ethic, family values, success in business and education and as
law-abiding citizens. Far from being a compliment, not only is this perception
a myth, a distortion of the reality but it is also harmful to this group because
the majority fails to recognize and acknowledge problems rampant in the Asian
communities. Romanticized Chinatowns are like other ethnic ghettos, where misery
and crimes are found. This assertion also implies that Asian Americans are the
same. The truth of the matter is that it is the most diverse group second only
to Native Americans. Take the countries of Indonesia and the Philippines, for
instance. Their respective nationals were already multi-ethnic before migrating
to the United States. Indonesia, the largest archipelago in the world with around
1400 islands, is very diverse linguistically and culturally. The Philippines,
another archipelago with approximately 700 islands also has many ethnic groups,
languages and cultures. Thus the Asian-American diversity is seen in national
origin, race, ethnicity, class, language, religion, experience here in the United
States and period and purpose of migration. Asian Americans are separated by
religion namely Buddhism, Shintoim, Islam, Catholicism and animism. The oldest
immigrants, the Chinese, came from rural areas and were sojourners. They initially
came to make money and go home. The immigrants who come in the 1960's after
the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act were mostly middle
class who came as university students or businessmen whereas the 1970's immigrants,
the "boat people" were political refugees from Laos and Cambodia.
The majority were poor and illiterate.
The difficulty in finding the right term to refer to Native Americans is already
an indication that we are dealing with a very heterogeneous group. The only
thing that Native Americans have in common is the shared existential experience,
being uprooted, degraded, humiliated, alienated and being the only indigenous
people of the American continent. They are a very diverse group, with different
histories, cultures, languages and nationalities. Although they numbered 1.9
million people in the 1990's census, they were at least more than 10 million
when Whites came to this country. The dramatic reduction which is attributed
to diseases for which they didn't have any immunity with their contact with
Europeans, was definitely due to genocide. There are now 558 federally recognized
Indian tribes. Scientists classify them into eleven geo-cultural groups, namely
Arctic Indians, Subarctic Indians, Northwest Indians, Plateau Indians, Great
Basin Indians, Plains Indians, Northeast Indians, Southeast Indians, Southwest
Indians, Pacific Indians and California Indians. The Arctic Indians (Inuit and
Aleut) are found in Canada and are physically and culturally different from
the other groups. Northwestern Coast Indians (Chinook, Makah, Nookta, Kwakiutl,
Haida, Tlingit, Shimshian, etc) were known for their totem poles, woodwork and
sophisticated fishing techniques. The Subarctic Indians (Carrier, Chipewyan,
Cutchin, Cree, Mountagnais, Naskapi, Beothuk, ) also found mostly in Canada.
Plateau Indians: Spokan, Yakama, Walla Walla, Klamath, Modoc, Nez Perce lived
mostly on fish. Great Basin Indians such as the Paiute, Ute, Shoshone, Washoe,
Chemehuevi and Bannock lived in a poor area unsuitable for farming and animal
domestication and therefore subsisted on wild fruits and small animals. Plains
Indians such as the Sioux (Dakota, Lakota, Nakota), Osage, Omaha, Apache, Comanche,
Cheyene, Arapaho, Blackfoot, …are probably the most known in the mainstream
society because of Hollywood with their horse-riding mastery and their relation
with the Plains icon, the buffalo.
The Northeastern Indians were sedentary. These include among others, the Pequot,
Chippewa, Illinois, Ottawa, Miami, Menominee, Massachusetts, Winnebago, Shawnee,
Algonkin, Narragansett, Mahican and the famous League of Six Nations: Cayuga,
Seneca, Mohawk, Onondaga, Oneida, and Tuscarora from whom the United States
borrowed the concept of federation and representative government. The Southeast
Indians were very much advanced in agriculture. Among them are found the five
Civilized Nations: the Cherokees, the Chickasaws, the Choctaws, the Creeks,
and the Seminoles as well as other groups such such Alabama, Apalachee, Caddo,
Calusa, Catawba, Coushatta, and Yamasee. Indians in the Southwest had also developed
farming techniques and had domesticated many crops and animals. Their architecture
was also spectacular. These are Apache, Hopi, Mojave, Navajo, Pueblos, Yaqui,
Zuni. California or Pacific Coast Indians were hunter gatherers. These include
Hupa, Chumah, Pomo, Yahi, Shasta, Salinas, Diegueno, Maidu, Miwok, Wintun, Yokuts,
and Mission Indians.
Like other nations, Native Americans also, had different political systems,
different social organizations, waged wars against each other, signed treaties
and many didn't have contacts with others because of the distance, lack of communication
and means of contact were very much limited that time. To call this diverse
group one ethnic group is clearly an aberration and one fails to see interethnic
problems that exist between these groups. The Navajos and Hopis, for example,
are always having disputes over land and respective boundaries. This is ignorance
is due to the fact that ethnicity is defined from the top, the distance that
exists between the dominant and the subordinate group and the lack of interaction
between the majority and the minority.
6. Identity shift
Ethnic identity shift occurs because of shift of space boundaries or because
of paradigm shift. To illustrate the former, I will use myself as an example.
In Rwanda, when I was there before the extermination of my family in the 1994
Tutsi genocide, I was known as a Tutsi in my home village, but in the capital
Kigali, I was recognized as either a southerner or a Butarean (from Butare prefecture).
During Habyarimana's regime, southern Hutus were also subjects of discrimination.
Their Hutuism was being questioned. They were accused of having a lot of Tutsi
blood. When I am in any African capital such as Kampala, Nairobi, Bamako, Dakar,
and so on for the first time I am called Rwandan. Nobody knows or cares about
my ethnicity. All Rwandans living in other African countries are called ethnic
Rwandans. Hutus and Tutsi mix freely. In Europe, however, when I am in Paris,
Rome, London, Brussels or Frankfort, I become African. Nobody cares to know
about my nationality. It is in the US that I become Black. This observation
supports the idea that indeed ethnicity has to do with group solidarity because
of shared experience in a hostile environment.
Paradigm shifts and government policies also affect the changing definition
and understanding of ethnicity. If African-Americans are so labeled today, it
is the consciousness that they are indeed connected to their motherland. The
previous successive names namely Negroes, Coloreds, Blacks and Afro-Americans
reflected the attitudes of the time. During the Civil Rights movement, Mexicans
were divided into two camps, Mexican-Americans and Chicanos. Chicanos wanted
to reclaim their identity whereas Mexican-Americans wanted to assimilate. Today
there is a movement to make all them Hispanics. There was a time in the United
States when Jews, Irish and Italians were treated as non-whites. They were discriminated
against because they represented the urban underclass. But because of attitude
change and the move from their ethnic enclaves and the subsequent gentrification
of the housing, they have now melted and been accepted into the mainstream white
society.
Society's systemic changes such as family structure, political regime, religion,
economic system, education, etc. affect this ethnic dynamism. Minority status
doesn't differ from colonialism, either. Colonized people and minority groups
share the fact that they cannot determine their destiny. Groups which found
themselves into this type of situation are denied their right to be who they
want to be. They are even stripped of their names, like in the case of Native
Americans who had to abandon their names and were given European names. Even
names of their leaders and heroes such as Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Red Cloud,
Black Hawk are obviously calques, loan-translations from Native American languages.
It is the reason why former European colonies are redefining their identities
and renaming their post-colonial countries after their pre-colonial names. The
giant Central African nation, the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital, Kinshasa,
was called Leopoldville, after the name of Leopold, the Belgian king who held
it as a personal property. Other Congolese towns such as Kisangani, Lubumbashi
were also named after Europeans, Stanleyville and Elizabethville, respectively.
This led the late dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, the ruler of Congo to introduce
the policies of authenticity: the abolition of Christian European names. All
Congolese wherever they happened to be had to get rid of their European names
and go back to African names. Under the colonial Belgian rule, the Rwandan university
town of Butare was called Astrida, a Belgian queen. The country of Burundi became
Urundi and its capital Bujumbura became Usumbura. The Southern African countries,
Zimbabwe and Zambia, were called Southern Rhodesia and Northern Rhodesia, respectively
after Cecil Rhodes, who became billionaire by monopolizing the exploitation
of gold and diamonds of these countries. There are two polar opposite forces
at work. The dominant group always wants to define the subordinate group whereas
the minorities keep redefining and reinventing themselves.
7. Conclusion
Historical and comparative studies show that there is no homogeneous society.
This notion seems to be a utopia. Social harmony is not found anywhere among
pluralistic societies. As it has been illustrated in this article, ethnicity
overlaps with other social categorizations especially with gender, class and
caste because members of these groups inherit the subordinate status and have
difficulty moving out of it.
Ethnicity like culture to which it is symbiotically related is not static. It
is dynamic, ever changing. The change is not necessarily Darwinian, that is
evolutionary, linear and unidirectional. It can also be cyclic. The Jewish Holocaust
was planned and executed in a country which was the most advanced one scientifically,
intellectually and artistically. The architects of the 1994 Tutsi genocide in
Rwanda were graduates of some the best universities of Europe and North America.
In-group changes, mainstream social trends and transformations and revolving-door
paradigm shifts, such as the move from melting pot to multiculturalism, shape
and define ethnicity. The best way to understand it, define it and explain it
is through a panchronic approach instead of studying it either diachronically
or synchronically like a specimen in laboratory frozen in space and time. Like
language and culture, ethnicity although less abstract and fuzzy concept, is
always emerging, real but ideal, looking for its teleological structure and
function.
The dichotomy between essentialism or nature versus social construction or nurture
is not necessary. The whole phenomenon has to be looked at holistically to be
able to provide a satisfactory account.
References
Hochschild, Adam. 1998. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and
Heroism in Colonial Africa. Houghton Mifflin.
Kimenyi, Alexandre.1989. Kinyarwanda and Kirundi Names: A Semiolinguistic
Analysis of Bantu Onomastics. Newiston: New York. The Edwin Mellen Press.
Kimenyi, Alexandre and Otis L. Scott, eds. 2001. Anatomy of Genocide: State-
Sponsored Mass- Killings in the 20th Century. Newiston: New York. The
Edwin Mellen Press.
Lind, Michael. 1995. The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the
Fourth American Revolution.
Pinker, Steven. 2002. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.
New York: Viking.
Wilson, O. Edward. 2000. 25th Anniversary. Sociobiology. Cambridge, Mass:
Harvard University Press.
Wynter E. Leon. 2002. American Skin, Pop Culture, Big Business and the End of
White America. Crown Publishers.
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