Michael Ryan's "Ethnicity"

 

Ethnic cultures are incredibly diverse and fascinating worldwide. While cultural expressions like storytelling, theater, music, and visual art are found everywhere, the specific content and the way these expressions take shape can vary greatly based on the particular circumstances, location, and time.

 

People often come together in communities based on their shared ethnic backgrounds and identities. This is significant because ethnicity is both a biological reality and a cultural construct. An ethnic group forms when a community intermarries and becomes a large extended family, which can last for many centuries, or even millennia. In this sense, an ethnicity refers to a group of people who share certain genetic traits, which persist as long as the pattern of intermarriage continues. These shared traits may be visible physical characteristics like eye shape or skin color. However, it's important to note that ethnicity typically doesn't go beyond these physical traits.

 

Some conservative thinkers with racist beliefs argue that external traits indicate internal mental differences. For example, they may claim that Asians are inherently more hardworking, while Africans lack initiative due to their genetics. However, liberal thinkers counter this by pointing out that if this were true, all Africans would be lacking in initiative and all Asians would be industrious, which is not the case. They also emphasize that factors like economic class, access to education, and family environment have a much greater impact on a person's success in life than their ethnicity. When we remove cultural differences from the equation, ethnic distinctions become less significant. No ethnic group is inherently more industrious than another due to genetic or ethnic reasons. Instead, it's likely that the specific culture associated with an economic class plays a larger role in determining what an ethnic group appears capable or incapable of. And this cultural influence is ultimately tied to wealth – who has it and who doesn't. Essentially, it's the culture of a group that gives the impression that ethnicity is something more than a physical trait, similar to hair color, that only seems important due to its repetition over time.

Ethnicity is a genetic inheritance that is physically evident. It also holds cultural significance, linking to emotions like fear and anger, and actions such as violence and discrimination. Our skin color isn't just a surface feature; it carries meaning for both ourselves and others, within systems of cultural identification and categorization. This is how ethnic social groups assign roles, places, and distinct identities to others, often to justify their subordination or exclusion from accessing limited social resources.

 

Ethnic violence stems from humanity's early history in a world where resources were scarce, and violence was sometimes the only means of securing access to them. Forming alliances with others of the same ethnic or tribal background was essential for individual survival and resource access, as there were no established laws or institutions beyond simple tribal ones.

 

While modern liberal institutions aim to treat everyone equally and transcend primitive ethnic tribal behavior, our conservative instinct to protect our group remains. Ideally, a citizen should be anyone with legal rights, not limited to a specific ethnic group. An ideal parliament should represent all and provide a voice in governance, regardless of ethnic identity. These liberal advancements aim to move society beyond primitive instincts and toward a more civil, liberal-guided realm.

 

However, our primitive inclination to safeguard our ethnic group sometimes surfaces in the form of hatred and violence, as seen in major historical events like the Holocaust or the Armenian genocide. It also manifests in statistics, such as the fact that 8,000 African Americans die of high blood pressure annually, which is related to ongoing racial economic disparities in the US.

 

While modern liberal values of ethnic tolerance and diversity are gaining ground in many places, there are still societies where these ideals face resistance, often due to one ethnic group being dominant or in the majority. Ethnicity is also a framework we use to understand the world. However, like much information in media and everyday conversation, ethnic information can be a mixture of truth and inaccuracies. Cultural representations range from objective facts to fictional conjectures, and these representations can sometimes do a disservice to ethnic groups by oversimplifying or misrepresenting them.

 

Cultural images that we use to "know" other ethnic groups are inherently limited and may not capture the full complexity and diversity of the group. All ethnic groups also have internal divisions based on factors like class, income, and geography. This issue is particularly evident in industries like advertising, which target specific ethnic groups. It's important to recognize that even within a single ethnic group, there is a wide range of cultural diversity. For example, Asian Americans come from various places with distinct cultural backgrounds, such as Japan, China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, and more.