Culture, Race and Ethnicity

Culture and race are two words that are widely misused and often misunderstood. Culture refers to the way people live, the rules they set for themselves, the general ideas around which they organize their lives, the things they feel are good or bad, right or wrong, pleasurable or painful. Cultural norms or standards for behavior are learned from those around us: relatives, teachers, friends.

We often speak of "Western culture" as the principal source of the American heritage. And this concept is quite accurate for, despite many modifications, the American society is largely a product of European values and attitudes.

From ancient times to the present people in the so-called Western World have tended to divide the human species into such separate and visually distinct "races" as "black," "white," "red," and "yellow." Sometimes, when referring to persons of certain mixtures—"white" Spaniards and "red" Indians, for example—the term "brown" has been employed. Although there is no such thing as a "pure" race, various peoples have found it useful to divide humans into racial categories.

It is not illogical to want to group people according to gross similarities and not surprising that such external criteria as skin color, head form, facial features (like broad or narrow noses), stature, and color, texture, and distribution of body hair are used as variables.

Indeed, some anthropologists define a race as a statistical aggregate of persons who share a composite of genetically transmissible physical traits. American history is filled with instances of "race mixing." Mexican-Americans are largely the children of Spanish and Indian parentage; Puerto Ricans are the offsprings of White and Black as well as Indian ancestors; and many people whom we call "Black" are actually very white indeed. In fact, to find pure-Negroid types is very difficult in this country.

If no cultural value were placed upon ancestry—whether "pure" or "mixed"—it would matter very little what one was called or in which pigeonhole one was placed. In a race-conscious society like the United States, those who are "colored" (as opposed to "white") have generally been put in inferior positions and treated accordingly.

In almost every American town there has long been a close connection between the tasks people perform, the place in which they live, and the color of their skin. Menial work is disproportionately the province of "colored" citizens, the shabbier neighborhoods being their domain.

White people have tended to have a greater percentage of better and more varied jobs and, in many instances, finer homes in better neighborhoods. The sociological importance of such a correlation lies in the fact that it is culturally, not biologically, determined.

It is said that "man is separated from man, not only by real or assumed physiological traits, but by differences of group traditions, national, regional or religious, that may or may not be associated with biological distinctions."

Groups whose members share a unique social and cultural heritage passed on from one generation to the next are known as ethnic groups. Ethnic groups are frequently identified by distinctive patterns of family life, language, recreation, religion, and other customs that cause them to be differentiated from others. They often live—by choice or because of the requirements of others - in their own enclaves, ghettos, or neighborhoods.

In America, members of some ethnic groups or their ancestors may have come from a common homeland, as in the case of Italian-, Irish-, and Mexican-Americans. Such groups are often referred to as "nationalities." Some ethnic-group members, however, like Jews or Gypsies, are joined by common traditions and experiences that cut across political boundaries; they are frequently known as "peoples".

In a society made up of many cultural groups, like the United States, the intensity of ethnic identity or ethnicity is apt to be determined by the attitude of the members of the "host" society toward the "strangers" in their midst. This attitude, in turn, is often dependent upon how closely the ethnic group approximates the culture of the dominant society. Acceptance may loosen the bonds of ethnic identity, as in the case of Scottish and German immigrants to America; rejection and subordination may strengthen them, as among Mexican-Americans or African-Americans today.