Ethnic Social Groups. Issues Related to Ethnic Essay

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Ethnic Social Groups.

Issues Related to Ethnic Social Groups

In this paper we have discussed the issues African-Americans face in terms of employment, social stability and their identity as a separate ethnic community in the United States.

Sociological studies suggest that "black people" or "African-Americans" have always had little choice in the racial label given to them. Research and literature on this subject states that unlike some racial/ethnic identities, the "black identity" is conveniently assigned rather than asserted; "blacks have few options when it comes to choosing a racial label" (waters 1990). However, it is a possibility that African-Americans have a choice to select how relevant this racial identity is and how they choose to attach themselves with it. This choice can lead to specific political point-of-views, how it affects ones social relationships, how it affects ones employment chances. It's an identity that is very seldom considered.

During the latter half of the 20th century, Africans Americans were hired and held prominent positions in professional and managerial occupations than in any other period in the history of United States. For example according to statistics, there employment in the managerial and professional occupations increased from 13.7% in 1980 to 21.5% in 1999 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2000). However in comparison, the unemployment rate among African-Americans remained twice than that of Americans from 1972 to 1999 (Tidewell, 2000). In comparison to ratio, it was 8.2 for blacks and 3.6 for whites.

Although where labor participation for African-Americans improved, their complaints of racial discriminations while at work were higher than any other minority group. On the average the number of complaints from this group is 28,000 per year (Stafford, 2001, p.26). 65% of the 800 African-American households believe that are treated unfairly irrespective of their employment status. Also, the labor force felt that they are paid fairly less than whites and there promotion in jobs is limited because of their ethnic background. This belief is supported by U.S. census data that shows African-Americans earn 30% less than non-Hispanic whites (Tidwell, 2000).

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People living together make a society. When another group belonging to another culture with different values than the people dwelling in that place comes to live with them, then they become the settlers. The cultural shock and identity issues are unavoidable. So to what extent does the U.S. community have on the identity of its ethnic groups?

Research on African-American identity has evolved massively in the past thirty years, producing a complex collection of empirical findings concerning to the different variables related to the black identity. Much of this data is evaluated from the first round of the National Survey of Black American (Jackson and Gurin 1987). The survey consisted of three sets of questions. The first set asked about how close the respondent felt to other communities of blacks; the second set of questions evaluated the positive and negative of blacks as a group; and the last set evaluated separatist sentiments.

Researchers then examined the connections between demographic, social and experimental variables and how they can be used to measure black identity. Researchers then came to a conclusion that factors like urbanicity, discrimination, occupation, social relationships, education, religiosity and interracial contact were huge dimensions of African-American identity. However, this substantial amount of quantitative data is not complete without a qualitative, in-depth research on the topic.

With a few exceptions, a lot of scholars have not used qualitative methods to research the various ways in which African-Americans understand their identity. This leaves an incomplete and shallow understanding of what black identity means to African-American adults. According to latest research social scientists until now have no reached a proper consensuses regarding the African-American identity in everyday life. The most frequently asked question is "whether race or class is more relevant?" The most prominent work on this subject is Feagin's (1991) interview study; it evaluates that even for middle class African-Americans racial identity is extremely relevant.

Very few if any studies identify variations within the African-American populations,.....

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