Race and Ethnic Consciousness

Abstract

Racial and ethnic consciousness refers to the awareness of membership in a racial or ethnic group that is displayed by both group members and the larger society in which they reside. The concept embodies both popular and social scientific understandings of classification and membership. Popular perceptions often attribute race and ethnicity to biological origins. In contrast, social scientists insist that these categories are the consequence of a social construction process. Despite the social basis of race and ethnicity, social scientists acknowledge that these categories are real in their consequences. Race and ethnicity shape social stratification, underlie individual and group identities, determine patterns of social conflict, and condition life chances. In fact, so important is the notion of consciousness to the comprehension of race, that the eminent scholar George Fredrickson (1988: 3) defines race as “consciousness of status and identity based on ancestry and color” (emphasis added).

Does Acculturation Matter? End-of-Life Care Planning and Preference of Foreign-born Older Immigrants in the United States

“…Racial/ethnic differences in ACP behaviors can be understood through a lens of ethnicity-oriented race theories. According to the theories, race and ethnicity shape one’s social identity within certain social and cultural boundaries, on the one hand; while on the other hand, it is also socially constructed through interactions with other people and institutions (Gold & Miller, 2015; Perez & Hirschman, 2009; Winant, 2000). People who are considered racial/ethnical minorities in a given society tend to experience more challenges and discrimination in integrating with the society and interacting with larger systems (Gold & Miller, 2015).…”

“…According to the theories, race and ethnicity shape one’s social identity within certain social and cultural boundaries, on the one hand; while on the other hand, it is also socially constructed through interactions with other people and institutions (Gold & Miller, 2015; Perez & Hirschman, 2009; Winant, 2000). People who are considered racial/ethnical minorities in a given society tend to experience more challenges and discrimination in integrating with the society and interacting with larger systems (Gold & Miller, 2015). These accumulated everyday experiences result in limited information about and access to social and health resources among older minority populations (e.g., Gary, 2005); thus, leading to unique, and sometimes negative, health behaviors, and outcomes (Pascoe & Smart Richman, 2009).…”

Cultural Socialization and Ethnic Consciousness

“…Neoliberal globalization seems to thus produce both reductive, essentialist, and violent tendencies in cultural material and ethnic consciousness and expansive, diversified, and empowering potentials of ethnic belonging. Related to Gidden's argument about how in the post-traditional context, self-identity is reflexive (Giddens 1991), neoliberal globalization seems to have created a context in which one is apparently free to choose, not only one's own self-identity but what cultural material one can utilize and how one interprets it to be who they want to be and who they choose to identify with; in fact, it seems to become almost necessary to be entrepreneurial with one's cultural heritage. How do these entrepreneurial choices of culture impact on both the content and the process of how cultural socialization of ethnicity occurs among our contemporaries and future generations?…”

Diaspora

“…As Gold (2007) has shown, collective identification is stronger where populations are clearly differentiated by unequal participation in resources. This question concerns the issue of identification.…”