Page 87 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

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Ethnicity

Ethnic cultures are some of the richest and most interesting in the world.
The forms of culture – oral narrative, drama, song, music, visual image,
and so on – are universal, but the specific content and the particular way

the universal form is realized in any one situation, place, or time is highly
varied and differentiated. And many of those differentiations can be attrib-
uted to the fact that people cluster together in communities often for
reason of ethnic affi liation and identity.
Ethnicity is both a physical fact and a cultural creation. An ethnicity
comes into being when a group of people intermarry and form a large
extended family that lasts usually for centuries, if not millennia. An ethnic-
ity in this sense is a group that shares certain genetic traits, and that sharing
lasts so long as the pattern of intermarriage lasts. Ethnicity usually mani-
fests itself as physical differences such as eye shape or skin color. And it is
doubtful it is more than that. Conservative racist thinkers believe that
external traits signify internal mental differences. In this way of thinking,
groups like Asians are more industrious “ by nature. ” Africans, in contrast,

lack initiative for the same inevitable genetic reason. Liberal thinkers
respond by noting that were this account of the world true, all Africans
would be lacking in initiative and all Asians would be industrious. But that
is not the case. They note as well that what economic class people grow up
in, what educational resources are available to them, and what family
culture they are born into makes a much greater difference for success in
life than ethnicity. When cultural differences are removed from considera-
tion, ethnic differences become negligible. No group is more industrious
than another for reasons that can be said to be genetic or ethnic. Indeed,
it is more likely the case that the particular culture of an economic class
plays a greater role in determining what an ethnic group seems to be

capable of or not, and such class cultural influence is simply a matter of