Race and ethnicity  (Page 11/22)

Sociologist Alejandro Portes has long studied ethnic enclaves and has argued that for an ethnic enclave to survive it requires early immigrants to arrive with business skills and funds or access to funds. Ethnic enclaves survive over more than two generations only when there is a constant migration stream from the country of origin that lasts over more than two generations. Ethnic enclaves, once they have served their purpose of socializing new immigrants into American culture, tend to disappear as later generations follow the traditional assimilation pattern and move further and further out into the wider society. Harrison, Roderick J. and Claudette E. Bennett. “Racial and Ethnic Diversity” in State of the Union: America in the 1990s Volume Two: Social Trends . Reynolds Farley, Ed. New York: Russell Sage 1995. 141-210. Current, Richard N. and T. Harry Williams, Frank Freidel, Alan Brinkley. American History: A Survey Sixth Edition . New York: Alfred A. Knopf 1987. Marger Martin, Race and Ethnic Relations: American and Global Perspectives: Fourth Edition . Wadsworth: Belmont CA. 1996.

Middleman minorities

Some minority immigrants, most notably Jews and Asians, have found themselves in the unique position of being middleman minorities.

Certain ethnic groups in multiethnic societies sometimes occupy a middle status between the dominant group at the top of the ethnic hierarchy and subordinate groups in lower positions. These have been referred to as middleman minorities . . . Middleman minorities often act as mediators between dominant and subordinate ethnic groups. They ordinarily occupy an intermediate niche in the economic system being neither capitalists (mainly members of the dominant group) at the top nor working masses (mainly those of the subordinate group) at the bottom. They play such occupational roles as traders, shopkeepers, moneylenders, and independent professionals. . . . They perform economic duties that those at the top find distasteful or lacking in prestige and they frequently supply business and professional services to members of ethnic minorities who lack such skills and resources. . . . In times of stress they are . . . natural scapegoats. . . . Subordinate groups will view middleman minorities with disdain because they often encounter them as providers of necessary business and professional services [that members of their own group do not or cannot provide in sufficient numbers to supply the demand]. Such entrepreneurs therefore come to be seen as exploiters. . . . Because they stand in a kind of social no-man’s-land middleman minorities tend to develop an unusually strong in-group solidarity and are often seen by other groups as clannish. (Marger p. 51) Ibid.

Assimilation patterns

While white ethnics, Cubans, Asians, non-Mexican Hispanics, and Middle Easterners follow the traditional assimilation pattern, three significantly large minorities do not: Mexican Americans (about 50%), Puerto Ricans, and African Americans. The assimilation patterns for these groups differ due to propinquity, method of immigration, and let us not mince words, racism. Approximately 50% of all Mexican immigrants to the United States do not follow the traditional assimilation pattern. This is partly due to the propinquity of the mother country, the nearly continuous new migration stream, a relatively high rate of return migration, racism, and in some cases, involuntary immigration in that parts of Mexico have been annexed by the United States so that some people’s native land quite literally changed overnight—they went to bed Mexican and woke up American. Ibid. Parts of Mexico have been annexed through war—Texas, Arizona, New Mexico—and parts through treaty—most of California and the Southernmost borders of Arizona and New Mexico through the Gadsden Purchase. The history of Mexico since the coming of the European conqueror/explorers has been fraught with internal strife and external pressure.