Chapter 4

Summary:

Chapter 4 mainly focuses on racial and ethnic families and the stresses and strengths that they experience. This chapter starts out describing how immigration has had a huge impact on our society. In this section it also establishes the different arguments for whether immigration is harmful or beneficial. On the one side, some believe that low-skilled workers reduce the standard of living and overloads our public schools and welfare systems, whereas the others view it as since immigrants are younger, poorer, and less well educated than the native population that they use more government services and pay less taxes allowing them to not share an equal burden of the expenses they acquire. After this section, the chapter discusses how race and ethnicity still matters and how in our current society there is racism, prejudice, and discrimination, and defines each of these terms too. Chapter 4 then continues to talk about African American families and highlights the family structure, gender roles, the roles the parents and children play, health and economic well-being of these families and the strengths that these families have. One of the more specific things mentioned in this section was absent fathers. This topic was brought up because across all families, black children are the most likely to be raised by one parent and most times the mother. Following this section, Benokraitis talks about American Indian families. Similar to the African American family section, she goes into depth with family structure, the gender and parent and children roles, health and economic well-being, and the roles that elders and grandparents play. Chapter 4 also talks highlights three other ethnic and racial family types including the Latino families, Asian American families, and Middle Eastern families. The last major section of this chapter is interracial and interethnic relationships and marriages. Within this section they highlight the prevalence of racial-ethnic intermarriages and explain how the rates have overall increased and how that affects how society’s attitudes have begun to change.

What was interesting/what did I learn:

As I read the section about the interracial and interethnic relationships and marriages, I found it shocking that 48 percent of Americans say they have dated someone from a different racial or ethnic group. I have constantly heard people my parents age look down upon those who do date people of other races and ethnicity, and thought that the percentage for this would be lower due to that. This made me think of the movie Save the Last Dance with Julia Stiles and Sean Patrick Thomas and their relationship. When they sat on the bus together an older woman shot nasty glances and made her disapproval quite obvious. Considering when this movie was filmed, and that lady’s reaction, I honestly would have thought that less than 48 percent of Americans would have dated someone from a different background.

Question:

I can’t help but wondering what brought on the changing attitudes between interracial and interethnic marriages. I know I personally don’t care what the older generations, or even some of my friends might say about them, but how did we begin to stop caring? Our parents, relatives, and elders have a huge impact on how we grow up and influence our thoughts and how we should act in society. Where is the turning point where we begin to stop caring what they have to say and do what we feel is right? What is making us younger generation so much more accepting than those who preceded us?