Transcript Ch. 7: Ethnicity

What race do you consider yourself?
What ethnicity do you consider
yourself?
 What is the difference between the two?
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Ethnic clustering in the United States
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African Americans Southeast
Hispanics in the Southwest
Asians in in the West
American Indians Southwest and Plains
African Americans make up ¼ population of:
Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland and
S. Carolina, 1/3 in Mississippi
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African Americans are highly clustered within
cities
About ¼ of Americans live in cities, whereas
more than ½ of African Americans live in
cities
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Race describes biological descent. Ethnicity
describes cultural heritage.
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Ethnicity is learned, race is inherited.
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Race and ethnicity are often confused
 The traits that characterize race are those that
can be transmitted genetically from parents to
children
▪ Skin color, eye shape are among these
▪ Biological classification by race often leads to
racism
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American is considered a Nationality
Ethnicity
 Italian Americans
 Mexican Americans
 Asian Americans
 African Americans
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In explaining spatial regularities,
geographers look for patterns of spatial
interaction.
 Separate but equal in the US
 Apartheid in South Africa
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To preserve a distinct culture, ethnicities seek
to govern themselves
 This concept to self-government is known as self-
determination
 A Nation-State is a state whose territory
corresponds to that occupied by a particular
ethnicity that has been transformed into a
nationality.
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The French nationality fused together French
ethnic cultural traditions, Roman Catholic
Religion and in the beginning, a monarch.
French Revolution: liberty, equality,
brotherhood (common goals)
Most of Western Europe was made up of
Nation-states by 1900.
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Denmark comes close
 Territory occupied by the Danish ethnicity closely
corresponds to the state of Denmark
 Strong sense of unity
▪ Shared cultural characteristics and attitudes
▪ Recorded history for more than 1,000 years.
▪ But, as a result of WWI, some of the territory lost to
Germany was returned to Denmark…more diversity in
that region
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Loyalty and devotion to a nationality
Promotes a sense of a national consciousness that
exalts one nation above all others
 Emphasizes that nation’s culture and interests
 Mass media effective in fostering nationalism
 Flags
 Songs
 Symbols
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A state that contains more than one ethnicity
is a multi-ethnic state.
Some get along great (remember Belgium
with the Dutch-speaking Flemish and the
French-speaking Walloons?) Both groups
consider themselves as belonging to the
Belgian nationality.
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Other multi-ethnic states are known as
multinational states.
These contain two ethnic groups with
traditions of self-determination that agree to
coexist peacefully by recognizing each other
as distinct nationalities.
Can you think of an example?
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15 independent states consist of 5 groups
 Three Baltic
 Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania
 Three European
 Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine
 Five Central Asian
 Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and
Uzbekistan
 Three Caucasus
 Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia
 Russia
Ethiopia and Eritrea
Sudan: Black Christians vs. Animist rebels in
south and Arab-Muslims in the north
Somalia: Clans
Lebanon: Numerous religions
Holocaust: Forced migration, genocide
Ethnic Cleansing, modern term: a process in which
a more powerful ethnic group forcibly removes a
less powerful one in order to create an ethnically
homogeneous region.
 Unlike wars where the point was to defeat or
subjugate an enemy: this it to annihilate them.
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Iraq (Kurds)
Yugoslavia
Bosnia
Kosovo
Rwanda
Burundi
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Balkanized: Term used to describe a small
geographic area that could not
successfully be organized into one or more
stable states because it was inhabited by
many ethnicities with complex, longstanding antagonisms toward each other.
WWI
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Nationalism is an example of a centripetal
force (pulls together) as opposed to
centrifugal (pulls apart)
•Cultural Diversity
•A society's culture include its social institutions
like its political structure, but as we have just
learned it is much more than that.
•One country can be made up of people from
many different cultures and one cultural group
can exist in more than one country.
•Therefore political geographers have developed
a vocabulary to help distinguish between a
cultural group (called a nation) and a country
(called a State).
What is a "Nation"?
DEFINITION: a group of tightly knit people who
speak a single language, have a common history,
share the same cultural background, and who
may be united by common political institutions
What is a "State"?
DEFINITION: a politically organized territory that
is administered by a sovereign government and
recognized by a significant portion of the
international community
A "State"" is approximately synonymous with a
"country"
NOT: Illinois, Chihuahua (Mexico) , Tamil Nadu
(India), and Mato Grasso (Brazil) which are
political units within countries
The United Nations has established the
convention of using "State" to mean
country, and "state" to apply to the internal
political units of the US, Mexico, India,
and Brazil.
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A country whose population possesses a
substantial degree of cultural homogeneity
and unity.
A State wherein the territory coincides
with the area settled by a cultural group or
a NATION.
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Few States are 100% nation-states and there
is no exact criteria.
Most would agree that Japan is a nationstate, and Lesotho, Africa. The "opposite" of
a nation-state would be a multinational state
or a State made up of many nations.
Examples would include: Nigeria, and Liberia
in Africa.
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There are nations (cultural groups) without
States. Sometimes these cultural groups
are scattered among several States and
sometimes they are a minority in one State.
Sometimes these stateless nations are
unwelcome and are a source of conflict.
Some of the most well known include the
Kurds in Southwest Asia and the
Gypsies/Romani of Eastern Europe.
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World is populated by more than 1,600 stateless nations,
most of which are in one way or another engaged in
national movements.
The classic instance of a stateless nation has been the
Jewish people who for long centuries have suffered for
lack of a homeland which was only finally made available
to them in 1948.
The Kurds, numbering an estimated 20 million Kurds, are
commonly seen as the world's largest nation without a
state. About 10 million are in Turkey, 4 million in Iraq, 5
million in Iran and a million in Syria. There may be another
million in the former Soviet Union.
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Distilling Resentment
Ostracizing
Creating Legal Obstacles
Removal of Leadership
Relocations/Resettlement
Death Squads
Systematic Killing
Denial
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Ethnic Enclave: a small area occupies by a
distinctive minority culture
 Examples: Chinatown, Little Italy, Little Havana
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Charles Darwin
A Biological Process
Natural Selection
Survival of the Fittest
Adaptation
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Selective Breeding of People
To remove negative traits
To reinforce positive traits
To Reduce “The Burden on Society”
To create a “Better Society”
Physical features determine racial purity
Lebensborn Program
Geography makes you smart!