Short Reflection Essay - The Future of Identities

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Ethnic and Racial Studies

ISSN: 0141-9870 (Print) 1466-4356 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rers20

Ethnic identities in the future: the possible effects of mass immigration and genetic testing

Mary C. Waters

To cite this article: Mary C. Waters (2014) Ethnic identities in the future: the possible effects of mass immigration and genetic testing, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 37:5, 766-769, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2013.871054

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2013.871054

Published online: 18 Mar 2014.

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Ethnic identities in the future: the possible effects of mass immigration and genetic testing

Mary C. Waters

(Received 11 November 2013; accepted 18 November 2013)

Two important trends may influence the identities of the later-generation descendants of European immigrants in the USA: high levels of ongoing immigration to the USA from all over the world, and the growth of genetic testing for ancestry and ethnic origins. I suggest that these trends may modify Gans’s predictions of what will happen to later-generation ethnicity. Both trends might lead to the maintenance of some type of identity, even if it is very thin, or even unrelated to the European immigrants who originally came to the USA.

Keywords: identity; immigration; ethnicity; genetics; affiliative ethnicity; symbolic ethnicity

In his article Herbert Gans (1979) returns to a subject that he has dominated for decades. His analysis of later-generation ethnicity among Americans whose ancestors emigrated from Europe provided many researchers, myself included, with the very useful concept of symbolic ethnicity. The concept of an ethnicity so far enough removed from prejudice and discrimination that it could be enjoyable, voluntary and intermittent was an important advance in our understanding of how ethnicity evolved over time in the context of widespread post-war social mobility, intermarriage and the lack of ongoing immigration from Europe. Of course, as many scholars noted, these conditions held for those identified as white in a highly racialized society where discrimination and societal prejudice were focused on those identified as non-white, which no longer included those of European origin.

Gans revisits the issue of white ethnic identity in this contribution, almost thirty-five years later. Those third-generation descendants are now grandparents and great-grand- parents. He asks here: what kind of ethnicity will characterize their fourth- and fifth- generation offspring? How might ethnic practices, organizations and identities persist or disappear? How can researchers study this phenomenon? Have we entered the post- twilight dark age of European-origin ethnicity? In effect, he extends his earlier thinking about how an ethnicity formed in immigration functions when it is generations removed from the immigration experience. The concept of symbolic ethnicity was an accurate description of the ethnic identities and practices of the third- and fourth-generation white ethnics in the suburbs of San Francisco and Philadelphia that I examined in my book Ethnic Options (Waters 1990). Richard Alba (1990) found strikingly similar patterns in his study of white ethnics in the Albany, New York area.

I concluded my study by suggesting that whites had ethnic options and could enjoy a symbolic ethnicity, but those identified as non-white would not be allowed that same freedom. They would always face discrimination and strict boundaries around their

Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2014 Vol. 37, No. 5, 766–769, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2013.871054

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

identity choices. Alba concluded by suggesting that perhaps the whites he studied would develop an identity as European Americans. I remember a conference presentation in which I took issue with that conclusion, arguing that Irish and Italian Americans would never think of themselves as Europeans. I was wrong on both counts. Today, with the reality of the EU, the concept of a ‘European American’ identity is much more imaginable for Americans whose ancestors came from a number of different countries. And, we are finding many examples of symbolic ethnicity among Americans who are non-white (Jimenez 2010; Lacy 2007; Vallejo 2012).

In this piece, Gans has laid out a scenario for the future of the Europeanorigin ethnics that once again will prove very valuable to researchers, laying out possible ways to study these groups, and suggesting that while some identification with ethnic origins might persist, European ethnicity could disappear as it becomes thinner in its meanings, practices and even identifications. To complement Gans’s argument, I outline below two developments that will affect the future of this ethnicity. One is the ongoing effects of mass immigration from around the globe. This affects both the meaning of ethnicity and the meaning of what it is to be an American, as well as the demographics of American society and how it is measured. The second trend is the rise of genetics and biological tests of ancestry and their role in medicine and everyday life.

Gans predicted that symbolic ethnicity might survive, but that it would be an ethnicity of last resort. We are now almost fifty years into the current wave of immigration to the USA, which dates to the 1965 Immigration Act. This new wave of immigration is from all over the world, and has transformed the demographics of the USA. Gans predicts here that Asians and Latinos might follow the same trajectory of white ethnics in the decline in the salience of ethnicity, the rise of intermarriage and multiple identities, and the decreasing structures keeping ethnicity alive. Yet if intermarriage with whites grows, and if Latinos and Asians develop symbolic ethnicities, then Italians, Irish, Greeks and Welsh ancestries will coexist in the same individuals with Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexican and Dominican ancestries. Perhaps people will in the future see being Italian as not as interesting as being Chinese and they will choose to identify as Chinese, just as people had chosen to be Italian over English because it had more cachet. The most ‘ethnic’, which will also be the most recent, will trump the earlier ancestries, turning on its head scholars’ expectations about race and ethnicity and the difference between them. (One would expect a symbolic ethnicity to favour the white ethnic identities over the more stigmatized racial identities, just as earlier scholars would have expected southern and central European identities to lose out to northern and western European identities – the opposite of what Alba (1990) and I found (Waters 1990)).

This is just a twist on what Gans is arguing, but perhaps instead of a fade to European or white in the later generations, high levels of intermarriage will just produce more ethnic options. Just as Hout and Goldstein (1994) found an excess in the numbers of Irish due to intermarriage and identity choices, we might find an excess of Mexicans or Chinese in the future. Indeed, Jimenez (2010) outlines the concept of ‘affiliative ethnicity’–where people adopt an ethnic culture knowing it is not part of their ancestry but feeling a close link to it for some other reason. The ongoing prevalence of immigration together with diversity and multiculturalism means that more than ever, to be an American is defined as being an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant and this reinforces people’s links with their immigrant pasts.

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The recently elected mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, is a case in point. De Blasio was born Warren Wilhelm, but took his mother’s name informally, changing his name legally to William de Blasio in 2002. He married an African American woman and has two children. Running against an African American candidate in the primary, his campaign featured his interracial family, and an advertisement starring his young son discussing racial discrimination and his father’s pledge to stop police from stopping young black men on the street turned the tide in the election. De Blasio’s affiliative identity as black, as well as his exercised ethnic option as Italian, follows the path of ethnic change outlined above, with the most recent and most salient identities trumping earlier ones.

The growth of genetic testing for ancestry is another factor that might influence ethnicity in the future. Companies such as Ancestry.com,1 23andMe2 and many others offer genetic testing that tells people about their ancestral origins. Ancestry.com offers a test for $99 that will tell you your ‘genetic ethnicity’. The website advertises that the test will tell you if you are ‘part Irish, native American or maybe Cameroonian’. The results of these tests are increasingly giving information on the subparts of Europe that a test subjects’ DNA links to. The website Family Tree DNA3 reports on northeast Europe (Finnish, Russian), southeast European (Romanian), southern European (Italian, Sardin- ian, Tuscan) and western European (Basque, French, Orcadian, Spanish). The Census Bureau continues to ask an ancestry question, now on the American Community Survey like other questions from the census long form. Will Americans get tested for genealogical or medical reasons and then adjust their census identities to take into account this new genetic testing? Many researchers have noted the explosive growth of American Indian identities in the past few decades as Americans ‘rediscover’ their lost ancestries. This could happen as designer genetic medicine leads to greater testing and more correlations between different ethnic origins and susceptibility to different diseases or syndromes.

There is really no end to where this could go. The website 23andMe features its test for ‘deep ancestry’ offering to trace your lineage back for 10,000 years and beyond. It promises a bar graph showing your own individual Neanderthal ancestry compared to that of the average user from your part of the world. In the example on the website, an individual is told that they have 2.9% Neanderthal DNA. Will people begin identifying with their inner Neanderthal? Will someone who learns about their Neanderthal DNA try to create a Neanderthal symbolic ethnicity, perhaps specializing in creating great campfires or working on accentuating their eyebrows? Will support groups arise on the internet for people wanting to share their Neanderthal identities and will some people begin to report their identities to the census on the ancestry question? While it may seem absurd to many of us, there are people who really want an ethnic identity and can seize on the knowledge given to them by genetics to construct an identity and to explore a culture even one we have thought of us a prehistoric.

The micro-choices that people make about their ancestries and their ethnic identities reflect macro-changes in our society. The growth of genetic testing and the linking of diseases and drugs to racial and ethnic variation is bound to have some effect on people’s identities. So too, the ongoing importance of immigration and the large demographic changes that the USA is undergoing mean that the meaning of having an immigrant ancestor and the societal pressure to identify ethnically can persist for the descendants of European immigrants. To what extent the menu of choices for people will include recent

768 M.C. Waters

immigrants and their descendants is an open question and depends on whether the mainstream will be open to the descendants of Asian, Latino and black immigrants to the USA and their offspring. Herbert Gans has outlined some important areas of enquiry for researchers to pursue. Let us hope that a new generation of researchers takes up the challenges.

Notes 1. http://www.ancestry.com 2. http://www.23andme.com 3. http://www.familytreedna.com

References Alba, R. 1990. Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Gans, H. J. 1979. “Symbolic Ethnicity: Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 2 (1): 1–20. doi:10.1080/01419870.1979.9993248.

Hout, M., and J. Goldstein. 1994. “How 4.5 Million Irish Immigrants Came to Be 41 Million Irish Americans: Demographic, Social and Subjective Components of the Ethnic Composition of the White Population of the United States.” American Sociological Review 59: 64–82. doi:10.2307/ 2096133.

Jimenez, T. 2010a. “Affiliative Ethnic Identity: A More Elastic Link between Ethnic Ancestry and Culture.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 33 (10): 1756–1775. doi:10.1080/01419871003678551.

Jimenez, T. 2010b. Replenished Ethnicity: Mexican Americans, Immigration and Identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Lacy, K. 2007. Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class and Status in the New Black Middle Class. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Vallejo, J. A. 2012. Barrios to Burbs: The Making of the Mexican American Middle Class. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Waters, M. C. 1990. Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

MARY C. WATERS is M. E. Zukerman Professor of Sociology at Harvard University ADDRESS: Department of Sociology, 540 William James, 33 Kirkland Street, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. Email: [email protected]

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