Ethnic Notions Quotes

Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?

I don’t understand this notion of ethnic pride. “Proud to be Irish,” “Puerto Rican pride,” “Black pride.” It seems to me that pride should be reserved for accomplishments; things you attain or achieve, not things that happen to you by chance. Being Irish isn’t a skill; it’s genetic. You wouldn’t say, “I’m proud to have brown hair,” or “I’m proud to be short and stocky.” So why the fuck should you say you’re proud to be Irish? I’m Irish, but I’m not particularly proud of it. Just glad! Goddamn glad to be Irish!

Whatever the variations by race, class, age, ethnicity, or sexual orientation, being a man means "not being like women." This notion of antifemininity lies at the heart of contemporary and historical conceptions of manhood, so that masculinity is defined more by what one is not rather than who one is.

One has to put aside the popular notion that language and culture are endlessly passed on from generation to generation, rather as if ‘Scottishness’ or ‘Englishness’ were essential constituents of some national genetic code. If this were so, it would never be possible to forge new nations – like the United States of America or Australia – from diverse ethnic elements.

[Author's Note:] When my grandmother came to the United States from Puerto Rico in the 1940s, she was a beautiful, glamorous woman from a wealthy family in the capital city, and the young bride of a dashing naval officer. She expected to be received as such. Instead, she found that people here had a very reductionist view of what it meant to be Puerto Rican, of what it meant to be Latinx. Everything about her confused her new neighbors: her skin tone, her hair, her accent, her notions. She wasn't what they expected a boricua to be. My grandmother spent much of her adult life in the States but didn't always feel welcome here. She resented the perpetual gringo misconceptions about her. She never got past that resentment, and the echoes of her indignation still have some peculiar manifestations in my family today. One of the symptoms is me. Always raging against a perceived slight, always fighting against ignorance in mainstream ideas about ethnicity and culture. I'm acutely aware that the people coming to our southern border are not one faceless brown mass but singular individuals, with stories and backgrounds and reasons for coming that are unique. I feel this awareness in my spine, in my DNA. So I hoped to present one of those unique personal stories - a work of fiction - as a way to honor the hundreds of thousands of stories we may never get to hear. And in so doing, I hope to create a pause where the reader may begin to individuate. When we see migrants on the news, we may remember: these people are people.

Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?

The notion that one’s culture is superior to all others solely because it represents the traditions of one’s ancestors, is regarded as chauvinism if claimed by a majority—but as “ethnic” pride if claimed by a minority.

The feeling of being marginalized, a stranger in one’s own land, is part of what makes many ethnics so responsive to any kind of media representation, sometimes even a derogatory one. A starving person will eat foul food.

Today, racism is regarded as a crime if practiced by a majority—but as an inalienable right if practiced by a minority. The notion that one’s culture is superior to all others solely because it represents the traditions of one’s ancestors, is regarded as chauvinism if claimed by a majority—but as 'ethnic' pride if claimed by a minority. Resistance to change and progress is regarded as reactionary if demonstrated by a majority—but retrogression to a Balkan village, to an Indian tepee or to the jungle is hailed if demonstrated by a minority.

The notion that the intense and unprecedented mixture of ethnic and religious groups in American life was soon to blend into a homogeneous end product has outlived its usefulness, and also its credibility. . . .The point about the melting pot. . . is that it did not happen.

The very notion of “natural rights” is a mere fiction, and the antitraditional and subversive use of that is well documented. There is no such thing as a nature that is “good” in itself and in which the inalienable rights of an individual, which are to be equally enjoyed by every human being, are preformed and rooted. Even when the ethnic substance appears to be somewhat ‘well defined,’.... These forms...do not have a spiritual value in and of themselves unless participating in a higher order, such as when they are assumed in the state or an analogous traditional organization, they are first consecrated as being from above.

So accustomed have male media leaders become to the wealth and decision-making power they command they just can't parse the notion of equality between the sexes. They have never understood the world feminists actually envision, in which women and men share equal educational, economic, and professional opportunities, live free of abuse, can be fully sexual without judgment or coercion, and where girls and boys alike can embrace their authentic selves because no one will be told that strength, tenderness, confidence, empathy, or aggression is "inappropriate" for their gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or physical ability.

The militants of ethnicity contend that a main objective of public education should be the protection, strengthening, celebration, and perpetuation of ethnic origins and identities. Separatism, however, nourishes prejudices, magnifies differences, and stirs antagonisms. The consequent increase in ethnic and racial conflict lies behind the hullabaloo over "multiculturalism" and "political correctness", over the inequities of the "Eurocentric" curriculum, and over the notion that history and literature should be taught not as intellectual disciplines but as therapies whose function is to raise minority self-esteem.

Consider again that pale blue dot...imagine that you take a good long look at it, imagine that you are starring at it for any length of time, and then try to convinve yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the ten million or so species of life, that inhabit that speck of dust -Now take it one step further, imagine that it everything was created for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this does not strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by another form of life. Tehy too cherish the notion of a god who has created everything for their benefit...how seriously do you take their claim?

Europe is forgetting the heritage of its ancestors and the official defence of our cultural ‘patrimony’ disguises an initiative of museification, but not creation. For a cultural identity, like a biological identity, is fundamentally Archeofuturist:[103] it proceeds by a permanent rebirth of forms and generations, which begins with an original germen.[104] Permanent biological and cultural renewal and the constant maintenance of the will-to-power is the law of long-lived peoples. Identity cannot be conceived without the complementary notion of continuity. The war against ethnic and cultural identity is the key watchword of the reigning egalitarian ideology. It is a question of simultaneously abolishing our memory and our origins. The academic curricula bear witness to this. The schools now teach African fairy tales instead of our old French songs.

Canadian official multiculturalism has developed through the 1970s and '80s, and has become in the '90s a major part of Canadian political discourse in Canada rather than in the United States, which is also a multi-ethnic country, may be due to the lack of an assimilationist discourse so pervasive in the U.S. The melting pot thesis has not been popular in Canada, where the notion of a social and cultural mosaic has had a greater influence among liberal critics. This mosaic approach has not been compensated with an integrative politics of antiracism or of class struggle which is sensitive to the racialization involved in Canadian class formation. The organized labour movement in Canada has repeatedly displayed anti-immigrant sentiments. For any inspiration for an antiracist theorization and practice of class struggle Canadians have looked to the United States or the Caribbean.

It Was Never Stolen Land. It Was Bought and Paid For. Now the Indians Are Trying to Renege.” By James Fulford, December 4, 2020, VDARE [Fulford is quoting Felix S. Cohen:] Fortunately for the security of American real estate titles, the business of securing cessions of Indian titles has been, on the whole, conscientiously pursued by the Federal Government, as long as there has been a Federal Government. The notion that America was stolen from the Indians is one of the myths by which we Americans are prone to hide our real virtues and make our idealism look as hard-boiled as possible. We are probably the one great nation in the world that has consistently sought to deal with an aboriginal population on fair and equitable terms. We have not always succeeded in this effort but our deviations have not been typical. It is, in fact, difficult to understand the decisions on Indian title or to appreciate their scope and their limitations if one views the history of American land settlement as a history of wholesale robbery." The quotation is from The Legal Conscience: Selected Papers Of Felix S Cohen,1960.

People often view racism as social division based on race; that is, racism occurs when people align and separate themselves based on their affinity for people of the same race and their hostility toward people of other races. A popular way to put this has been to define racism as “prejudice plus power,” that is, it is having the personal power to act on one’s feelings about racial difference. This understanding reduces racism to the level of affect and interpersonal relationships: racism occurs because of how we as individuals feel about other ethnic groups; reconciliation occurs when we eliminate our negative feelings about other racial groups and establish relationships across race. But racism is not about our feelings. Nor is it about the attitudes, intentions, or behavior of individuals. Racism is an interlocking system of oppression that is designed to promote and maintain White supremacy, the notion that White people—including their bodies, aesthetics, beliefs, values, customs, and culture—are inherently superior to all other races and therefore should wield dominion over the rest of creation, including other people groups, the animal kingdom, and the earth itself.

The central premise of racism, which distinguishes it from ethnic prejudice, is the notion of an ordered hierarchy of races in which some are superior to others. The superior race is assumed to enjoy the right to rule others because of its inherent qualities. Besides superiority, racism also connotes the idea of immutability, thought once to reside in the blood and now in the genes. Racists are concerned about intermarriage (“the purity of the blood”) lest it erode the basis of their race’s superiority. Since quality is seen as biologically inherent, the racist’s higher status can never be challenged, and inferior races can never redeem themselves. The notion of inherent superiority, which is generally absent from mere ethnic prejudice, is held to justify unlimited abuse of races held to be inferior, from social discrimination to annihilation. “The essence of racism is that it regards individuals as superior or inferior because they are imagined to share physical, mental and moral attributes with the group to which they are deemed to belong, and it is assumed that they cannot change these traits individually,” writes the historian Benjamin Isaac.2 It’s not surprising that the notion of racial superiority emerged in the 19th century, after European nations had established colonies in much of the world and sought a theoretical justification of their dominion over others.

In the Metro, one evening, I looked closely around me: everyone had come from somewhere else . . . Among us, though, two or three faces from here, embarrassed silhouettes that seemed to be apologising for their presence. The same spectacle in London. Today’s migrations are no longer made by compact displacements but by successive infiltrations: little by little, individuals insinuate themselves among the “natives,” to anaemic and too distinguished to stoop to the notion of a “territory.” After a thousand years of vigilance, we open the gates . . . When one thinks of the long rivalries between the French and the English, then between the French and the Germans, it seems as if each nation, by weakening one another, had as its task to speed the hour of the common downfall so that other specimens of humanity may relay them. Like its predecessor, the new Völkerwanderung will provoke an ethnic confusion whose phases cannot be distinctly foreseen. Confronted with these disparate profiles, the notion of a community homogeneous to whatever degree is inconceivable. The very possibility of so heteroclite a crowd suggests that in the space it occupies there no longer existed, among the indigenous, any desire to safeguard even the shadow of an identity. At Rome, in the third century of our era, out of a million inhabitants, only sixty thousand were of Latin stock. Once a people has fulfilled the historical idea which was its mission to incarnate, it no longer has any excuse to preserve its difference, to cherish its singularity, to safeguard its features amidst a chaos of faces.

Prevalence of preconceived notions and judgments are rampant in a mono cultural society

In the Metro, one evening, I looked closely around me: everyone had come from somewhere else . . . Among us, though, two or three faces from here, embarrassed silhouettes that seemed to be apologising for their presence. The same spectacle in London. Today’s migrations are no longer made by compact displacements but by successive infiltrations: little by little, individuals insinuate themselves among the “natives,” too anaemic and too distinguished to stoop to the notion of a “territory.” After a thousand years of vigilance, we open the gates . . . When one thinks of the long rivalries between the French and the English, then between the French and the Germans, it seems as if each nation, by weakening one another, had as its task to speed the hour of the common downfall so that other specimens of humanity may relay them. Like its predecessor, the new Völkerwanderung will provoke an ethnic confusion whose phases cannot be distinctly foreseen. Confronted with these disparate profiles, the notion of a community homogeneous to whatever degree is inconceivable. The very possibility of so heteroclite a crowd suggests that in the space it occupies there no longer existed, among the indigenous, any desire to safeguard even the shadow of an identity. At Rome, in the third century of our era, out of a million inhabitants, only sixty thousand were of Latin stock. Once a people has fulfilled the historical idea which was its mission to incarnate, it no longer has any excuse to preserve its difference, to cherish its singularity, to safeguard its features amidst a chaos of faces.

his theory that all of the world’s problems were caused by notions of ethnic virtue and that if marriages were limited to interracial lovers there would be peace on earth. There

…popular and populist writers, journalists, and on-air personalities do not so much engage in meaningful examination of controversial issues as reproduce simplistic and long-cherished notions about social and cultural evolution, biological determinism, the timelessness of traditional society, and the intractable character of ethnic and religious animosities… Seemingly outside this process, well-known pundits and public intellectuals – agents of political, economic, and cultural establishments – are mythmakers who persuade by providing their positions with the veneer of scientism: an elite discourse in which readers are invited to participate and which offers sure cognitive “satisfaction” by virtue of its paint-by-numbers explanations.

Of more angst to drivers are the customer ratings systems imposed by the app companies. While most drivers do not have a problem with the notion of being rated, they are concerned that they will receive poor marks for circumstances beyond their control. Customers can give even the most earnest drivers bad ratings for any reason such as bumpy rides over pothole strewn roads, traffic congestion and passengers underestimating how much time they need to reach their destinations. Miscommunication between passengers and drivers can occur because passengers cannot speak the local language, are drunk, or fall asleep and cannot direct the driver to their remote destinations. Perhaps some passengers just do not like the ethnic group to which some drivers appear to belong. Circumstances such as these are clearly the fault of passengers who may rate drivers poorly nonetheless. Drivers with low ratings can be expelled from on-demand taxi services. This unfairness is compounded to the extent that drivers make large investments in their cars, insurance and fuel. Making drivers, who basically invested in a franchise, vulnerable to expulsion from a system because of unfair ratings seems to me to be a potential source of dissention or even litigation. Another concern associated with the taxi app business model is that drivers only have 15 seconds to respond to notices of pick up opportunities. Drivers that fail to respond in such tight windows lose the business. Repeat failures to make timely responses can result in temporary suspensions. This pressure, and related distractions associated with interacting with handsets, is applied simultaneously with all of the challenges of navigating traffic in a variety of weather conditions. Foremost, this is a driving hazard that imperils everyone in the vicinity. It also ties in with the ratings systems because drivers are only rated on the rides they complete. Drivers who claim rides but abandon the customer if it looks like the pickup will be delayed have no ratings risk. Paradoxically, no ratings result in the worst customer service as passengers end up stranded.

The postmodern notion of "appropriation" is not a good fit. In New Mexico, the "indigenous" is a syncretic fusion of Native American and Hispano American. Just as Pueblo people who are Catholics embrace their traditional religions, Nuevo Mexicanos who wear Metallica T-shirts also attend mass and clean the ditches. The fact that both good and bad aspects of the larger pop culture are welcomed with open arms in New Mexican villages and pueblos does not belie the passion with which local ethnic culture is embraced.

The translation of these European notions of racial superiority into the Israeli context became evident as soon as the interviewer asked him about the government’s plans for the remaining Palestinian leaders. Interviewer and interviewee giggled as they agreed that the policy should involve the assassination or expulsion of the entire current leadership, that is all the members of the Palestinian Authority—about 40,000 people.

Challenging Smooha’s views, Azmi Bishara argues that the very depiction of Israel as an “Ethnic Democracy” accepts a notion that is the antithesis of democracy: “Since there is no liberal democratic model which can include within it the state of Israel, Professor Smooha turned Israel into a model. It is simply unbelievable. Here comes a scholar and turns what is happening in Israel into a model instead of suggesting a theory which criticizes this reality. You can’t turn a unique case into theory.”25

The notion of an exclusive Jewish state is essentially incongruous with liberal democracy, in which equal citizenship rights are granted on a territorial basis to all citizens regardless of their ethnic or national origin.

Page 147: As nation and state are two radically distinct notions, it is clearly not redundant to treat the growth processes of the modern state and of modern nationalism separately in discussing the causes of revolution. That the development of the state sometimes parallels the growth of nationalism is beyond doubt, but that the term “nation-state” in most cases grossly simplifies the actual complexity of the population of most states is just as certain. The most blatant consequence of this latter confusion is that what many modern social scientists call “nation building” is rather “state building,” which often turns out to be “nation destroying” instead. The strengthening of the state under the guise of “nation building” occurs at the expense of groups whose claim to nationhood is quite valid. The attempt to merge already existing nations or near-nations into a novel state-sponsored supernation is patently artificial. Terror is the usual means used to prevent such weak structures from tottering to the ground. The growth of true nationalism then is the growth of that sentiment of belonging together and differentiation from others which is such a salient feature of the modern world. Not surprisingly, whether or not the potentially explosive elements of nationalism will reach revolutionary dimensions is determined by the historical context. However, one general conclusion is warranted: nationalism in some manifestation is always involved in modern revolutions.

THE STRATEGIC CONSEQUENCES OF CHINESE RACISM: A Strategic Asymmetry for the United States Draft Report Submitted 7 January 2013 Project Number: HQ006721370003000 Since our genus Homo first evolved in the Pliocene, humans have favored those who are biologically related. In general, the closer the relationship, the greater the preferential treatment. The vast majority of animals behave in this way, and humans are no different. In a world of scarce resources and many threats, the evolutionary process would select nepotism, thus promoting the survival of the next generation. However, this process is relative. Parents are more willing to provide for their own children than for the children of relatives, or rarely for those of strangers. The essence of an inclusive fitness explanation of ethnocentrism, then, is that individuals generally should be more willing to support, privilege, and sacrifice for their own family, then their more distant kin, their ethnic group, and then others, such as a global community, in decreasing order of importance. ... The in-group/out-group division is also important for explaining ethnocentrism and individual readiness to kill outsiders before in-group members. Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt draws on psychologist Erik Erikson’s concept of “cultural pseudo speciation,” and says that in almost all cultures humans form subgroups usually based on kinship; these “eventually distinguish themselves from others by dialect and other subgroup characteristics and go on to form new cultures.” ... When an individual considers whether to support a larger group, several metrics are available. One of these ... is ethnocentrism, a continuation of one’s willingness to sacrifice for one’s family because of the notion of common kinship. As I discussed above, the ways humans determine their relations with unrelated individuals are complex, but the key factors are physical resemblance, as well as environmental causes like shared culture, history, and language. ... I have shown that in-group/out-group distinctions like ethnocentrism and xenophobia are not quirks of human behavior in certain settings. Instead, they are systematic and consistent behavioral strategies, or traits. They apply to all humans... They are widespread because they increased survival and reproductive success and were thus favored by natural selection over evolutionary history. ... Chinese racism ... is a strategic asset that makes a formidable adversary. ... The government educates the people to be proud of being Han and of China. In turn, the Chinese people are proud and fiercely patriotic as well as ethnocentric, racist, and xenophobic. This aids the government and permits them to maintain high levels of popular support. ...

The very notion that the external world had an existence independent of its observer was challenged. Moreover, the scientific view was usually said to be exploitative and designed to keep the poor, the disenfranchised, ethnic minorities, and women in subordinate social positions... Increasingly numbers of American cultural anthropologists-and many academics in other disciplines-began to view their role in the academy as one of advocacy of various causes

Laden with all the emotive language that belonged to the German notions of 'Volk' (ethnic people) and 'Gemeinschaft' (community), the aim of a 'national community' which would overcome class divisions seemed a highly positive one. That the notion of 'national community' gained its definition by those it excluded from it, and that social harmony was to be established through racial purity and homogeneity, was taken for granted if not explicitly lauded. It would become clear, once the Third Reich was established, that discriminatory policies directed at those groups to be excluded were easier to bring about than was the reality of a harmonious 'national community'.

The notion seems to be that the more diverse we become, the more silencing we need for diverse views, even and especially ones with which we disagree. Hence the expansion of hate-speech laws, first in Europe and then in the US, which will increasingly entangle the church because already in Europe any Roman Catholic opposition to abortion is prima facie “hate speech.” But more diversity of culture, religion, and ethnicity ought to lead to more expressions of cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity in all aspects of life. In other words, more diversity of opinion, not less diversity of speech.

And I will explain that our colossal failure to achieve anything resembling health equity is the inevitable by-product of our general lack of understanding of this fact: Race is not rooted in any meaningful biological categories. Race is a biological fiction, an invention that keeps some people, those deemed by those in power to fall on the “wrong” side of an arbitrary color line (or a religious, class, ethnic, gender, sexual-orientation, or gender-identity line), in their place. If we limit our ideas to reigning folk notions about race, we will never truly get to the roots of the problem, and such discovery is a prerequisite to promoting health equity. To understand

Arnold’s normative public concept of culture as “the best that has been thought and said,” and from the anthropological use of the word culture to mean the habits and customs of any distinct social or ethnic group. The essentially individualistic inwardness of personal culture may owe something to the eighteenth-century revival of Stoic thought. As a recent commentator notes, “The notion of stoical self-respect, of inner freedom, the ‘No man need say “I must”’ of Lessing, was of course one of the central ideas of the German Enlightenment.”1

For liberals, the idea that America could turn its back on people running from dictatorships, women escaping abuse, or racial and ethnic minorities fleeing persecution was morally outrageous. It not only contradicted core political values stemming from our notions of democracy, but our very conception of self.

Seminars on racism and mandatory college courses in ethnic studies are precisely what we do not need. Their ostensible purpose is to “sensitize” whites to the needs of minorities, but their real effect is to hammer at the old theme that whites are responsible for everything that goes wrong for blacks. This does nothing to help blacks, and whites have been so thoroughly “sensitized” that they are sick of it. College-age whites, especially, who have had no hand in shaping society, are increasingly confused and angry about constant harping on guilt they do not feel. What are they to make of the preposterous idea, propounded with the blessings of the university, that the Ivy League may be a subtle form of genocide? Ultimately, the very notion that Americans must be “sensitized” to race flies in the face of what we are presumably trying to achieve: a society in which race does not matter. Moreover, there are limits to the patience with which whites will listen to appeals to a guilt they no longer feel. In the past, the best way to get whites to help blacks may have been to try to make them feel guilty. Increasingly, that will only make them angry. Blacks who seek the help and genuine goodwill of whites will not get it by dwelling on white racism and white guilt.

Assimilation: The Ideal and the Reality By B. A. Nelson, Ph.D Milton M. Gordon, in his Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins, has defined three discrete stages in the development of this concept. The ideal of “Anglo-conformity,” which “demanded the complete renunciation of the immigrant’s ancestral culture in favor of the behavior and values of the Anglo-Saxon core group” prevailed almost until the end of the nineteenth century. It was superseded in the following two decades by the “melting pot” ideal, which heralded “a biological merger of the Anglo-Saxon peoples with other immigrant groups and a blending of their respective cultures into a new indigenous American type.” During the 1920s, the ideal of ”cultural pluralism” came into vogue, postulating “the preservation of the communal life and significant portions of the culture of the later immigrant groups within the context of American citizenship and political and economic integration into American society.” … total and widespread acceptance of “Anglo-conformity” would be an impossible anachronism in the 1980s, when the majority of the nation’s immigrants come from Third World nations. Despite the glaring contradiction between the ideal of “Anglo-conformity” and the reality of contemporary immigration, one aspect of “Anglo-conformity” does, however, linger on as a phantom “residue,” much like the whiff of scent which remains in a long-emptied bottle. Although both leaders and the led know that “Anglo-conformity” has become an impossible ideal, both retain this one notion that has become a perennial source of solace whenever anyone dares to suggest that future immigration might challenge and deny the national premise of e pluribus unum. … This notion assures those who believe in it that, even if the “Anglo-Saxon core group” dwindles in numbers and power to the point of becoming marginal, the Anglo-Saxon political heritage will yet survive. … This last “residue” of belief in Anglo-Saxon superiority would be simply an innocuous illusion were there not indications that official public policy is moving in a direction directly contrary to the Anglo-Saxon political tradition. ,,, The new American dilemma, as fateful as the one once addressed by Gunnar Myrdal, is the nation’s drift away from its tradition of “liberal pluralism,” in which “government gives no formal recognition to categories of people based on race or ethnicity,” and towards a new, “corporate pluralism,” which “envisages a nation where its racial and ethnic entities are formally recognized as such -- are given formal standing as groups in the national polity -- and where patterns of political power and economic reward are based on a distributive formula which postulates group rights and which defines group membership as an important factor in the outcome for individuals.” … Corporate pluralism is, in fact, the opposite of the popular notion of assimilation as the disappearance of alien characteristics in an all-transforming native culture. Since corporate pluralism replaces “individual meritocracy” with “group rewards,” it strongly discourages assimilation…

Race has traditionally referred to groups that are biologically distinguishable by physical, mental, and genetic traits.9 Indeed, this notion remains widely held among the public.

But most social scientists today do not believe that racial differences have a deep biological or genetic origin; rather, most differences (such as skin pigmentation) are superficial and can’t come close to explaining broad social inequalities. Instead, most accept the notion that race is in large part socially constructed. As the historian Matthew Jacobson asks, “Why is it that in the United States a white woman can have black children but a black woman cannot have white children? Doesn’t this bespeak a degree of arbitrariness in this business of affixing racial labels?”11

As to the distinction between race and ethnicity, ethnicity refers to a group of people who are differentiated by culture rather than by perceived physical or genetic differences central to notions of race. Nevertheless, the terms race and ethnicity are often used interchangeably in public conversations today, especially given the growing diversity of the U.S. population, increasing intermarriage, and the changing meaning and importance of group differences. There is also some ambiguity about whether some groups, such as Hispanics or Middle Easterners, are distinct races or ethnicities, and this debate is far from settled.20

Whilst acknowledging that 'good literature reaches across cultural and ethnic borders to touch us all as human', she (Rudine Sims Biship) argues that books can act as both mirrors and windows for children. 'Windows' offer us a chance to look closely at a view of the world we may not have previously seen. Those windows might take us out to escapist fantasy or provide a view of lives we have not previously seen. These are notions familiar and vital to writers, teachers and those of us who care about stories. But Sims Bishop adds that books might also mirror our lives in some aspects and that children from the dominant culture tend to have books as mirrors whilst children who have been historically 'ignored - or worse ridiculed' do not, and this communicates important messages about the extent in which they are growing up'. Recognising that a window can be a barrier, Sims Bishop later added the idea of the sliding glass door as 'a way to suggest that a book can offer.. a lived experience for a reader'.

One study, for example, published in 2000 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse reported that white students use cocaine at seven times the rate of black students, use crack cocaine at eight times the rate of black students, and use heroin at seven times the rate of black students.12 That same survey revealed that nearly identical percentages of white and black high school seniors use marijuana. The National Household Survey on Drug Abuse reported in 2000 that white youth aged 12–17 are more than a third more likely to have sold illegal drugs than African American youth.13 Thus the very same year Human Rights Watch was reporting that African Americans were being arrested and imprisoned at unprecedented rates, government data revealed that blacks were no more likely to be guilty of drug crimes than whites and that white youth were actually the most likely of any racial or ethnic group to be guilty of illegal drug possession and sales. Any notion that drug use among blacks is more severe or dangerous is belied by the data; white youth have about three times the number of drug-related emergency room visits as their African American counterparts.14

Further, when markers of race, gender, gender fluidity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, religion and other factors are the only criteria considered in hiring or admissions, students are cheated, as are those chosen to meet diversity measures on the basis of identity alone. Nothing is more essentialist or constraining than diversity understood strictly in terms of identity. Such a notion of diversity reduces 'diverse' people to the status of token bearers of identity markers and relegates them to the status of token bearers of identity markers and relegates them to an impenetrable and largely inescapable identity chrysalis, implicitly eliding their individuality. (p. 104)

To end its march of folly, Pakistan needs to reassess its core beliefs about a religion-based polity, reconsider the notion of permanent conflict with its larger neighbour, recreate political institutions to reflect its ethnic diversity and rebuild its economy without reliance on the largesse of others. Only then would it be able to reliably get rid of the spectre of failure or fragility and low international standing by all non-military benchmarks.

Moral stains are wiped clean with the passing of the transgressor. They do not pass down to their descendants or others of the same faith or ethnicity through osmosis. Those using the very notion of inherited guilt as a stick to beat others with are revealing more about their problematic natures than anyone bearing their accusations.

What is often lost in the critiques of the Federal Acknowledgement Process is the fact the leaders of the Five Tribes and other Indian nations do not see it as an entirely foreign, nonaboriginal regimen. They were actively engaged in its creation during the 1970s, and they continue to support the process because they view it as the best method available to determine which groups are viable indigenous nations today. By supporting the government process, Five Tribes leaders are engaging in an ongoing Native project that seeks new ways to define their peoples using both precontact, “traditional” measures and criteria borrowed from the dominant, Euro-American society. Ventures that seek to delineate and measure “Indianness” and “tribes” are no less troublesome from the tribal persepective. However, how native leaders perceive unrecognized individuals and groups is important to understanding modern Indian identity. The Five Tribes and related groups have exerted their sovereignty by extending government relations to formerly unrecognized tribes in the Southeast. They have also chosen to withhold recognition to groups they feel are inauthentic. While they support the process of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, tribal leaders us their own definitions and “ways of seeing” when making these decisions. Their criteria generally represent a complex mixture of indigenous and non-Indian notions of ethnicity and authenticity. The Five Tribes and other long-recognized Native nations have always been actively engaged in tribal acknowledgement debates. Today they have important reasons for remaining involved. Recognition politics involving established tribes, unrecognized communities, and non-Indians exposes the fundamental truth about ethnic and racial identities: they are constantly evolving and negotiated.

As Sunil Khilnani demonstrates in The Idea of India, the notion of India as a nation-state was something that was invented under British rule.4 Prior to Britain’s arrival, the subcontinent was a hodgepodge of princely states, languages, ethnic groups, and religions, with the Mogul Empire’s writ limited only to parts of northern India. Under the British, India got a sense of itself as a single, unified political space (even if that space was carved into Muslim and Hindu areas at Partition) and acquired a common language, a civil service and bureaucratic tradition, an army, and other institutions that would be critical to the emergence of a democratic India in 1947.5