American Social “Reminders” of Citizenship after September 11, 2001: Nativisms and the Retractability of American Identity

Authors

  • Jack Fong California State Polytechnic University, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.4.1.04

Keywords:

Racism, Nativism, Multiculturalism, Ethnocracy, Ethnicity, Identity, Citizenship

Abstract

My discussion considers how crisis dramatically changes social relationships and interaction patterns within a multicultural context. Specifically, I note the inherent social asymmetry of multicultural configurations, thus rendering it vulnerable for the dominant ethnic/racial group, the ethnocracy, to exact symbolically and materialistically punitive measures against minorities during periods of national crisis. I situate my discussion of dramatically changed social interactions in the post- September 11, 2001 period, when the attacks on the World Trade Center towers triggered nativism against Arab Americans, or any group phenotypically similar to the construction of “Arab.” I note how this nativism is not new but is a historical and consistent articulation of the ethnocratic stratum that retracts the American identity and notions of citizenship away from minorities during times of national crisis. The discussion concludes with how American multiculturalism is still full of unresolved ethnic and racial symbolisms that hark back to nineteenth century attempts by the White power structure to idealize, culturally and phenotypically, the constitution of an “ideal” American.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Jack Fong, California State Polytechnic University, USA

Jack Fong (PhD) is currently a new Assistant Professor of Sociology, in the Department of Psychology and Sociology, at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. Dr. Fong's interests as a political sociologist revolves around issues of ethnicity and race identities, ethnopolitics, and its material consequences. Dr. Fong's interest in ethnicity is derived from America's continuing efforts at redefining itself as different groups reshape the multicultural landscape of the country's rich identities, especially in the context of September 11, 2001. He has already published in Ethnic and Racial Studies. Moreover, his international orientation has also resulted in a historical ethnography based from his field research with the Karen people residing in their state Kawthoolei, and fighting the infamous military regime of Burma. This work will be released as a book via Universal Publishers, Boca Raton, Florida, USA, in mid-June 2008. It is titled Revolution as Development: The Karen Self-Determination Struggle against Ethnocracy from 1949-2004, and is currently entering the final stages of editing.

References

Ad Council (2004) Public Service Advertising that Changed a Nation. New York: The Advertising Council, Inc.
Google Scholar

Barth, Frederik (1969) Ethnic Group Boundaries. Long Grove: Waveland Press, Inc.
Google Scholar

Bourdieu, Pierre (1984) Distinction: a Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Google Scholar

Brettell, Caroline B. and James F. Hollifield (2000) Migration Theory: Talking Across Disciplines. New York: Routledge.
Google Scholar

Brown, David (1994) State and Ethnic Politics in South-East Asia. New York: Routledge.
Google Scholar

Carmichael, Stokely and Charles V. Hamilton (1967) Black power: The politics of liberation in America. New York: Vintage.
Google Scholar

Castells, Manuel (1997) The Power of Identity. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers.
Google Scholar

Castles, Stephen and Mark J. Miller (1998) The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World. New York: The Guilford Press.
Google Scholar

Chavez, Leo (2001) Covering Immigration: Popular Images and the Politics of the Nation. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520925250

Childs, John B. (2003) Transcommunality: From the Politics of Conversion to the Ethics of Respect. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Google Scholar

CNN News (2001) News report on hate crimes taped of television. September 18.
Google Scholar

Connor, Walker (1972) “Nation-building or Nation-destroying.” World Politics 24 (3): 319-55.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2009753

Cornelius, Wayne A., Philip L. Martin and James F. Hollifield (1994) Controlling Immigration: A Global Perspective. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Google Scholar

Geschwender, James A. (1978) Racial Stratification in America. Dubuque, Iowa: W. M. C. Brown Company Publishers.
Google Scholar

Giddens, Anthony (2007) “Doubting Diversity’s Value.” Foreign Policy 163 (November/December): 86-88.
Google Scholar

Gordon, Milton M. (1969) Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins. New York: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar

Gurr, Ted Robert (1993) Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflict. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press.
Google Scholar

Havens, A. Eugene and William L. Flinn (1970) Internal Colonialism and Structural Change in Columbia. New York: Praeger Publishers.
Google Scholar

Hechter, Michael (1975) Internal Colonialism. The Celtic Fringe in British National Development. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Google Scholar

Hechter, Michael (1978) “Group Formation and the Cultural Division of Labor.” The American Journal of Sociology 84 (2): 293 – 318.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/226785

Higham, John (1963) Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860-1925. New York: Atheneum.
Google Scholar

Hornblower, Margot (1998) “The Man Behind prop 227: Meet Ron Unz the Tycoon Who Waged a Campaign to all but Outlaw Bilingual Education in California.” Time, June 8
Google Scholar

Kitano, Harry H. L. (1997) Race Relations. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Google Scholar

LeMay, Michael (2005) The Perennial Struggle: Race Ethnicity, and Minority Group Relations in the United States. Upper Saddle, New Jersey: Pearson, Prentice Hall.
Google Scholar

Moore, Wendy Leo and Jennifer Pierce (2007) “Still Killing Mockingbirds: Narratives of Race and Innocence in Hollywood’s Depiction of the White Messiah Lawyer.” Qualitative Sociology Review 3(2): 171-187.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.3.2.09

MSNBC News (2001) Voice-over report on hate crimes. September 18. New York: General Electric.
Google Scholar

Portes, Alejandro (1995) The Economic Sociology of Immigration: Essays on Networks, Ethnicity, and Entrepreneurship. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Google Scholar

Portes, Alejandro, Robert Nash Parker and Jose A. Cobas (1980) “Assimilation or Consciousness: Perceptions of U.S. Society Among recent Latin American Immigrants to the United States.” Social Forces 59 (1): 200-224.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2577841

Putnam, Robert (2007) “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twentyfirst Century, The 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture.” Scandinavian Political Studies 30 (2): 137-174.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2007.00176.x

Rumbaut, Ruben G. (1997) “Paradoxes (and Orthodoxies) of Assimilation.” Sociological Perspectives 40 (3): 483-512.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/1389453

Sanchez, George J. (1997) “Face the Nation: Race, Immigration, and the Rise of Nativism in Late Twentieth Century America (Special Issue: Immigrant Adaptation and Native Born Responses in the Making of Americans).” International Migration Review 31(4): 1009-22.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2547422

Sassen, Saskia (1998) Globalization and its Discontents. New York: The New Press.
Google Scholar

Sen, Amartya (2006) Identity and Violence: the Illusion of Destiny. New York: W.W. Norton.
Google Scholar

Sen, Amartya (1999) Development as Freedom: New York, NY: Random House.
Google Scholar

Stavenhagen, Rodolfo (1996) Ethnic Conflicts and the Nation-state New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Google Scholar DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25014-1

Stavenhagen, Rodolfo (1986) “Ethnodevelopment: A Neglected Dimension in Development Thinking.” Pp. 71-94 in Development Studies: Critique and Renewal, edited by R. A. Krahl. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Google Scholar

Thayil, Jeet and Onkar Singh (2003) “I Don’t Know Why God Picked My Family to Suffer so Much.” Rediff News .Retrieved March 2008 http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/jun/19spec.htm
Google Scholar

Van Den Berghe, Pierre (1996) “Does Race Matter?” Pp. 57-62 in Ethnicity, edited by John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Google Scholar

Weiner, Myron (1987) “Political Change: Asia, Africa and the Middle East.” Pp. 33-64 in Understanding Political Development, edited by Myron Weiner and S. P. Huntington. Boston: Little Brown.
Google Scholar

Downloads

Published

2008-04-30

How to Cite

Fong, J. (2008). American Social “Reminders” of Citizenship after September 11, 2001: Nativisms and the Retractability of American Identity. Qualitative Sociology Review, 4(1), 69–91. https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.4.1.04

Issue

Section

Articles