Race And Ethnicity Essay

Ethnicity & race are distinct from nationality, another term commonly used to describe a group of people with shared traits. Nationality is identity with a group of people who share legal attachment & personal allegiance to a particular country.

RISE OF NATIONALITIES
A nation or nationality is a group of people tied together to a particular place through legal status & cultural tradition. In principle, the cultural values shared with others of the same ethnicity derive from religion, language, & material culture, whereas those shared with others of the same nationality derive from voting, obtaining a passport, & performing civic duties. In the United States, the term nationality is generally kept reasonably distinct from ethnicity & race
in common usage. Ethnicity identifies groups with distinct ancestry & cultural traditions, such as African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Chinese Americans, or Polish Americans. Race distinguishes blacks & other persons of color from whites. Outside North America, distinctions between ethnicity & nationality are even muddier. We have already seen that confusion between ethnicity & race can lead to discrimination & segregation. Confusion between ethnicity & nationality can lead to violent conflicts.

NATION-STATES
Ethnic groups have been transformed into nationalities because desire for self-rule is a very important shared attitude for many of them. To preserve & enhance distinctive cultural characteristics, ethnicities seek to govern themselves without interference. The concept that ethnicities have the right to govern themselves is known as self-determination. During the nineteenth & twentieth centuries, political leaders have generally supported the right of self-determination for many ethnicities & have attempted to organize Earth's surface into a collection of nation-states. A nation-state is a state whose territory corresponds to that occupied by a particular ethnicity that has been transformed into a nationality. Yet despite continuing attempts to create nation-states, the territory of a state rarely corresponds precisely to the territory occupied by an ethnicity.

Nation-States in Europe
Ethnicities were transformed into nationalities throughout Europe during the nineteenth century. Most of Western Europe was made up of nation-states by 1900. They disagreed over their boundaries & competed to control territory in Africa & Asia. During the 1930s, German National Socialists (Nazis) claimed that all German-speaking parts of Europe constituted one nationality & should be unified into one state. They pursued this goal forcefully. Not until the Germans invaded Poland (clearly not a German-speaking country) in 1939 did England & France try to stop them, marking the start of World War II.
Denmark: There are no Perfect Nation-States
Denmark is a fairly good example of a European nation-state, because the territory occupied by the Danish ethnicity closely corresponds to the state of Denmark. But even Denmark is not a perfect example of a nation-state. The country's 80-kilometer southern boundary with Germany does not divide Danish & German nationalities precisely. Some German speakers live in Denmark, & some Danish speakers live in Germany after the German defeat in World War I.

NATIONALISM
A nationality, once established, must hold the loyalty of its citizens to survive.
Politicians & governments try to instill loyalty through nationalism, which is loyalty & devotion to a nationality. Nationalism typically promotes a sense of national consciousness that exalts one nation above all others & emphasizes its culture & interests as opposed to those of other nations. People display nationalism by supporting a state that preserves & enhances the culture & attitudes of their nationality. For many states, the mass media are the most effective means of fostering nationalism. States foster nationalism by promoting symbols of the nation-state, such as flags & songs. One of the strongest forms of political protest is to burn a state's flag, & there is wide support in the United States for laws to make burning the Stars & Stripes illegal. Nationalism can have a negative impact. The sense of unity within a nation-state is sometimes achieved through the creation of negative images of other nation-states. Nationalism is an important example of a centripetal force, which is an attitude that tends to unify people & enhance support for a state. (The word centripetal means "directed toward the center"; it is the opposite of centrifugal, which means to spread out from the center.) Most nation-states find that the best way to achieve citizen support is to emphasize shared attitudes that unify the
people.

MULTINATIONAL STATES
A state that contains more than one ethnicity is a multi-ethnic state. In some multi-ethnic states, ethnicities all contribute cultural features to the formation of a single nationality. Belgium is a good example of a multi-ethnic state. Belgium is divided among the Dutch-speaking Flemish & the French-speaking Walloons. Both groups consider themselves as belonging to the Belgian nationality. Other multi-ethnic states, known as multinational states, contain two ethnic groups with traditions of self-determination that agree to coexist peacefully by recognizing each other as distinct nationalities. A multinational state contains two or more nationalities with traditions of self-determination. The main element of distinct national identity comes from sports. England, Scotland, Wales, & Northern Ireland (all examples of multinational states) field their own national soccer teams.

FORMER SOVIET UNION: THE LARGEST MULTINATIONAL STATE
The Soviet Union was an especially prominent example of a multinational state until its collapse in the early 1900s. The 15 republics that once constituted the Soviet Union are now independent countries. These 15 newly independent states consist of five groups:
 Three Baltic: Estonia, Latvia, & Lithuania
 Three European: Belarus, Moldova, & Ukraine
 Five Central Asian: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, & Uzbekistan
 Three Caucasus: Azerbaijan, Armenia, & Georgia
 Russia
Reasonably good examples of nation-states have been carved out of the Baltic, European, & some Central Asian states. Russia is an especially prominent example of a state with major difficulties in keeping all of its ethnicities contented.
New Baltic Nation-States
Estonia, Latvia, & Lithuania are known as the Baltic states for their location on the Baltic Sea. Of the three Baltic states, Lithuania most closely fits the definition of a nation-state, because ethnic Lithuanians comprise 83 percent of its population. These three small neighboring Baltic countries have clear cultural differences & distinct historical traditions.
New European Nation-States
To some extent, the former Soviet republics of Belarus, Moldova, & Ukraine now qualify as nation-states. Belarusians comprise 81 percent of the population of Belarus, Moldovans comprise 78 percent of the population of Moldova, & Ukrainians comprise 78 percent of the population of Ukraine. The ethnic distinctions among Belarusians, Ukrainians, & Russians are somewhat blurred. The three groups speak similar East Slavic languages, & all are predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christians (some western Ukrainians are Roman Catholics).
New Central Asian States
The five states in Central Asia carved out of the former Soviet Union display varying degrees of conformance to the principles of nation-state. Together the five provide an important reminder that multinational states can be more peaceful than nation-states.