Summary:
Chapter 4 discusses the strengths and stresses that face racial and ethnic families. The book mentions that by the year 2050, only half of America will be considered by the category “white,” with minority households increasing. This change of ethnicity is partly due to immigration and opportunity for “lower-income” jobs. To be clear, this immigration and job seeking in American by minorities might be due partly to the fact that minority groups are labeled as having less economic and political power in comparison to the dominant group (majority). The book discusses many factors regarding why American Indian, Latino, and Asian American families are very diverse, based on family origin, SES of these families’ parents, and degrees of acculturation. Mentioning the increasing multiracial American population, most of this group consists of people at age 18 or younger, which is interesting to note about the changing ethnic dynamic in the United States.
New Material Learned:
In Chapter 4, I learned a little more about exactly what “acculturation” is. Also, I learned about the terminology miscegenation, which is the marriage between a man and a woman of different races; never actually heard the term before.
Questions:
An idea that raised concern and question to me was about how the United States is changing so rapidly since the 20th century. Now that the country is becoming more diverse by population, and with the changing ideas and practices of marriage, I now want to know about the homosexual nation within America; with the projection that whites will be a minority around 2050, what will the landscape look like for homosexual relations and marriage? Will there be a huge increase?
-Matthew Sniscak
I agree that it would be interesting to see more thought on how these demographic changes would affect the gay population's relationship with families and marriage. My personal theory is that, like the assimilation of the Irish and Eastern Europeans, eventually, most minority cultures will become integrated with the dominant culture. I think that during this kind of large-scale demographic change, there might be some room for the homosexual community to find acceptance.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a sociology reading on the 'matrix of domination' which claims that individuals have different experiences based on their identification not only with a racial-ethnic group, but also with their sexuality. If we were to take such claims seriously with regards to the family, we might have separate sections in our text not only for each racial-ethnic group, but also pertaining to ones sexuality (i.e. we would have separate gay African-American and straight African-American sections)
ReplyDeleteI think there will be an increase and I think youll see relationships displaying all different types of races and ethnicities. I think families become more non-traditional as time progresses and more states will probably make same sex marriages legal. If minorities become majority they're bound to gain more power.
ReplyDelete