An ethnic group is a collectivity within a larger society having common ancestry, memories of a shared historical past, and a cultural focus on one or more symbolic elements defined as the epitome of their peoplehood. (Schermerhorn, 1978)

• An ethnic group cannot exist in isolation
• The ethnic category is externally defined, the ethnic group is internally defined

A racial group is defined by itself or others as distinct by virtue of perceived common physical characteristics that are held to be inherent. A race is a group of human beings socially defined on the basis of physical characteristics. In technical terms, a race can be thought of as a genetically distinct subpopulation of a given species. (Cornell, 1998)

• In practice, "racial" categories correspond to major skin color groups. Human racial differentiation is only skin deep (Geneticist R. Lewontin, 1984)
• Most contemporary scholars dismiss the idea of race as a meaningful biological category that can be applied to separate groups of human beings
• Races are not established by natural forces but are products of human perception and classification. Along with Black, Asian, Latino, and Native Americans, both Jews and Irish, among others, have been perceived as non-whites. Both struggled to alter the perception

Perspectives of Race and Ethnicity:
Primordialism is the idea that ethnicity is fixed, fundamental, and rooted in the unchangeable circumstances of birth. Ethnic roots on occasion go very deep indeed. The great strength of the primordialist vision is that it zeroes in on this peculiar power. Ethnicity survives because it is fixed and basic to human life (Cornell, 1998)

Circumstancialism claims that ethnicities survive because they are fluid, superficial, and changeable, a product of the circumstances of the moment and therefore useful. Individuals and groups emphasize their own ethnic or racial identities when such identities are in some way advantageous to them.

Constructionism sees ethnic and racial identities contingent on products of an ongoing interaction between the circumstances groups encounter--including the conceptions and actions of outsiders--and on the actions and conceptions of group members--of insiders.

• Ethnic groups are active agents in the making and remaking of their own identities
• Construction is continuous and historical
• Construction has no end, except the disappearance of the identity

Assimilation:

• The process in which individuals or groups adopt the culture of another group, losing their original identity. (text)
• Accepting, either voluntary or by force, among the duties of citizenship, an obligation of amnesia, of becoming oblivious of oneself, of erasing one's memories, one's past, one's intimate group relationships. (Greenberg)
• Evaporation…dissolution. (Zangwill)
• An act of social emancipation. (Mehring)
• Loss of identity. (Schechter)
• Estrangement from self. (Weinberger)

Is the end of assimilation harmony and equality?

• Improve economic conditions
• Uphold Human rights

Racial and Ethnic Conflicts Stem from Inequality:

• Conflict erupts when there are not equal rights and access to resources.
• Affirmative Action programs encourage the perception of group boundaries as enduring and appropriate bases of identity and action, thereby reinforcing them
• Conflict erupts most always along ethnic lines--security in familiarity, same language, solidarity. Ethnic lines are stronger than political lines or ideology--for 75 years the Soviets tried to introduce a different ideology, when collapsed people asserted their ethnicity
• Karl Marx's radical historical vision saw capitalism as the hammer that eventually would pulverize ties of nationality or tribe, and link people by their position in the process of economic production.
• Modernity was supposed to bring an end to ethnicity. The predictions did not come true. Ethnicity and race are among the fundamental organizing concepts of the contemporary world