Race and Ethnicity

Two views of it

Primordialism treats ethnic attachment as deep, given and enduring, rooted in early socialisation and in ties of kinship and religion.

Instrumentalism treats ethnic identity as a resource mobilised for political or economic ends, so that group boundaries are asserted, redrawn and sometimes created when there is something to be gained by it.

Constructivism is the position most sociologists now hold, and it takes something from both: ethnic identities are real and deeply felt, and they are also made, changed and reshaped by history, by administration and by political competition. Fredrik Barth's contribution is the useful one: what matters is not the cultural content of a group but the maintenance of the boundary between it and others, since the content can change entirely while the boundary persists.

Race and ethnicity compared

In the Indian context

MU includes race and ethnicity in an Indian syllabus, so the answer must address India rather than only the international literature.

Race as a category has a colonial history in India. Colonial administration classified the population in racial terms, and Risley's racial theory of caste, mentioned in [Caste], attempted to derive the caste system from the subordination of one population by another. Both the theory and the classification are rejected, but they had lasting effects, since categories used for administration became categories people used about themselves.

Ethnicity is the more useful concept here, and it operates along the axes described in [The Pluralistic Nature of Indian Society]: language, region, religion and tribe.

The tribal dimension. The Constitution provides for the specification of Scheduled Tribes, returned in the 2011 Census at a little over eight per cent of the population, with protective provisions including the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, restrictions on the alienation of tribal land, reservation, and the recognition of forest rights by the Act of 2006. The sociological questions here are contested and should be presented as such: whether tribe is a distinct social category or a position on a continuum with caste, and whether protection has secured or restricted the communities concerned.

The North East. A region of very many distinct communities within a small population, where ethnicity is the principal axis of political organisation, and where the Sixth Schedule provides autonomous district councils in place of the ordinary pattern.

Discrimination on the basis of appearance. Students and workers from the North East living in other Indian cities have reported discrimination and harassment based on physical appearance, which is racial discrimination in the sociological sense operating within one country, and it has been the subject of official attention and of specific advisories and legal measures.

The international dimension. Whether caste discrimination should be treated as a form of racial discrimination for the purposes of international instruments has been argued at length, with the Government of India taking the position that caste is not race. The debate should be presented as a debate, since it is one, and the sociological point is that both are ascribed statuses producing hereditary disadvantage, whatever their different origins.

Race, ethnicity and stratification

Both function as bases of stratification in exactly the manner set out in [Social Stratification]: they are ascribed, they rank groups, they distribute rewards and life chances unequally, they are supported by justifying beliefs, and they are transmitted across generations. Where they operate, they cut across class, so that a person's position must be located on both dimensions at once.

The mechanisms are worth naming: residential segregation, which produces unequal schooling and unequal networks; occupational segregation; discrimination in hiring and in access to credit and housing; differential treatment by the police and the courts; and stereotyping, which supplies the justification.

A worked example

A family from Manipur moves to a Mumbai suburb.

Ethnic content is visible at first: language at home, food, festivals, dress on occasions.

The boundary is maintained by both sides. The family associates chiefly with others from the region, because that is where language and familiarity are; and neighbours identify them as outsiders on sight, which is a racial classification in the sociological sense, since it rests on appearance rather than on any cultural knowledge.

In the second generation the content changes almost entirely: the children speak Marathi and English, eat what their classmates eat and follow local music. The boundary does not dissolve with it, because the classification by appearance continues to be applied by others.

That is Barth's point exactly: the cultural content of an ethnic group can change completely while the boundary persists, because the boundary is maintained by interaction and classification rather than by culture. It is also the sharpest illustration of the difference between the two concepts in this chapter: the ethnic content assimilated, and the racial ascription did not.

Quick revision

1. Race is not a valid biological classification: variation is continuous, within-group variation exceeds between-group variation, and the categories differ between societies. It is a social construct with real consequences.
2. Racism: individual (acts and attitudes) and institutional (arrangements producing unequal outcomes without anyone's intent).
3. Ethnicity: shared descent believed in, shared culture, a boundary, and recognition by others.
4. Primordialism, instrumentalism, and the constructivist position most sociologists hold. Barth: the boundary matters more than the content.
5. Race is ascribed by others on sight; ethnicity involves self-identification and cultural content.
6. India: colonial racial classification and Risley's rejected theory; ethnicity along language, region, religion and tribe; Scheduled Tribes a little over eight per cent in 2011, with the Fifth and Sixth Schedules and the Forest Rights Act 2006; discrimination against people from the North East on grounds of appearance; and the contested question whether caste discrimination is racial discrimination.
7. Both stratify through segregation, occupational concentration, discrimination in hiring, credit and housing, differential policing, and stereotyping.

Test yourself

1. Is race a biological category? Explain. No. Human genetic variation is continuous rather than clustered, and different traits vary independently, so a boundary drawn by skin colour coincides with no other; variation within any so-called racial group exceeds the variation between groups; and the same person may be classified differently in different societies, which no biological fact could produce. Race is a social classification that people treat as biological, and it has entirely real social consequences notwithstanding its lack of biological content.

2. Distinguish race from ethnicity. Race is assigned by others on the basis of visible physical characteristics believed to correspond to biological divisions, is difficult to escape because it is ascribed and visible, and carries no necessary cultural content. Ethnicity rests on a believed common descent together with shared language, religion, custom or history, involves self-identification as well as recognition by others, has culture at its centre, and is more fluid, since it may be emphasised, adopted or set aside.

3. Distinguish individual from institutional racism. Individual racism consists of the beliefs and acts of particular persons who regard others as inferior on racial grounds and treat them accordingly. Institutional racism consists of the arrangements, criteria and routine practices of organisations which produce systematically unequal outcomes for racial groups whether or not any individual involved holds a prejudiced belief. The second is harder to identify and to remedy, since no act of intentional discrimination need be found.

4. What did Barth contribute to the study of ethnicity? The insight that what constitutes an ethnic group is not its cultural content but the maintenance of the boundary between it and others. The content, language, dress, food, practice, may change entirely across a generation while the group persists as a group, because the boundary is sustained by interaction and by mutual classification. It follows that assimilation of cultural content does not by itself dissolve an ethnic distinction.

5. How do race and ethnicity operate in the Indian context? Race as a category entered Indian social classification through colonial administration and through theories such as Risley's derivation of caste from racial subordination, both now rejected though their categories persisted. Ethnicity is the more useful concept, operating along language, region, religion and tribe: Scheduled Tribes were returned at a little over eight per cent in 2011, with protective provisions including the Fifth and Sixth Schedules and the recognition of forest rights, and the North East is organised politically along ethnic lines. Discrimination on grounds of appearance against people from the North East in other Indian cities is racial discrimination in the sociological sense operating within a single country.