Chapter 4

1) Chapter 4 starts out by discussing increasing diversity in families in the United States. Next, the different types of races and ethnicities that are commonly found in the U.S. are presented. There are then in depth discussions about a few of the major different groups. First, African American families are talked about. Next, American Indian families, and the different types of them. Then, Latino families. And the last two are Asian American and Middle Eastern families. The last thing the book brings up is interracial and interethnic relationships and marriages, and how it is increasing in the U.S.

2) I found a few things to be interesting this chapter. One thing the book said early on was that there was no way to find out if people left after their visas expire. I thought this was strange because you would think they would probably have some way of keeping track of this, especially with all of the technology now. Another thing that was the “Am I Privileged?” box. It’s interesting how many things that people actually might be discriminated against for that a lot of people don’t even think about. When the book was talking about American Indian families, it was interesting how they said their language doesn’t have a difference between blood and marriage relatives. They just consider everyone to be one family. The last thing that caught my attention was how some Middle Eastern families will bring over relatives for extended periods of time, sometimes even several years. This was surprising to me that they would stay this long, and also, there wasn’t even any mention of anyone else putting that much effort into bringing family from their country to their new homes to visit.

3) I came up with two questions while reading. First, it stuck out that they made some sort of effort to define the American family in one single traditional way. But, when they started to discuss African American families, they said that there wasn’t anything that represented “the” African American family. Why is it that they attempted to define one group but not the other? Especially when it’s been made clear over and over that every family is different, but at the same time there are often many similarities?

My second question was dealing with Middle Eastern families. It seems that in this culture women are still expected to be very submissive to the men in their lives. What is it that makes this idea stick with this culture, while many others have changed their views?