Ethnicity&identity

Ethnicity&identity

1. In the UK we tend to identify certain ethnic groups by their shared cultural characteristics, like religion, language and lifestyle. Though doing this is often problematic.

2. Ghunman(1999) researched British-Asian identities, they found that tradition, religion and family values played an important part in the upbringing of second-generation Asians in the UK. He found that Asian children tend to be socialised into the extended family with emphasis on duty, loyalty, honour and religious commitment.

3. Gilroy(1993) looked at the identity of young black people, arguing for the use of the term 'Black Atlantic' to describe an identity that was not specifically rooted in the UK or in their country of origin and was shared with young black people in the US. He argued that the shared experience of racisim and powerlessness in society can transcend differences in background and history to create a 'black' identity.

4. Derrington and Kendall(2004 have researched ethnic identity within the traveller community, and studies by Song(1997) and by Francis and Archer(2005) have looked at different aspects of identity in British-Chinese families. All these studies consider the challenges that these ethnic minorities face when growing up in the UK and the influence these challenges have on their identity.

5. Hewitt(2005) studied white British identity. They considered the white 'backlash' against multiculturalism. Policies designed to achieve equality have been senn as unfair to the white community and a white working class person under economic pressure has often reacted with anger at the injustice of 'positive discrimmination' in favour of ethnic minorities in society, feeling they needed to defend their ethnic identity.

6. Many migrants to the UK in contemporary society today are from a white ethnic background but are also Ukrainian or originate from Eastern Europe. They may face the same racism and discrimination that a Afro Caribbean does as they aren't the 'same' as us in society. Spencer et al(2007) suggest that Eastern European migrants spent relatively little time socialising with British people.

7. Dawney(2008) found evidence of racism against European migrants like Spencer et al. She found them in the rural community she studied. She found that the racism that they faced largely came from a perceived threat and fear of numbers that didn't necessarily have a bias in reality

8. Changing ethnic identities: Modood(1997) found a number of generational differences over the issue of identity, suggesting that second-generation ethnic minorities from both Afro-Caribbean and Asian backgrounds felt more British than their parents, while still seeing their ethnic origin as a big part of their identity. Postmodernists may argue that in a globalised and media-saturated society that we live in today that identity is about choice. Everyone can create their own identity meaing that ethnicity could be having less of an effect on people when creating their own identity. However, some people would disagree with this. They could argue that ethnicity and race are still sources of discrimination and hugely afect identity

9. There are many ethnic identities around in today society. There is Black Afro Caribbean and these people originate from west Indian countries, there are Brasian's and these are British people from a background froms southern India, there are also Chinese, who are from Taiwan, Mainland China and Hongkong and western European Migrants like Polish people.

10. Ethnic Idnetities are changeing, this is because of hybridity which is the fusion of things like music (Bhangra for Brasian) and taking other aspects of different identities to make the ethnic identities hybrids and globalisiation makes this easier becasue of our media saturated society.