Module 4
Threads of Diversity
A. Ethnicity and Race
The majority of the world’s societies, even those that outwardly seem most
homogeneous, house distinctive ethnic groups, populations that feel themselves bound
together by a common origin and set off from other groups by ties of culture, race,
religion, language, or nationality. Ethnic diversity is a near-universal part of human
geographic patterns; the approximately 200 independent countries are home to at least
5,000 ethnic groups. The factors driving globalization, such as the growth of
transnational corporations, relaxed border restrictions, low-cost travel, and high-speed
global communications are all encouraging greater movement and ethnic mixing. In
response to labor shortages, European Union (EU) countries increasingly welcome
workers from other EU states, as well as African and Asian immigrants and guest
workers, effectively making their societies multiethnic. Refugees and job-seekers are
found in alien lands throughout both hemispheres (Figure 6.1). Cross-border movements
and refugee resettlements in West Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa are prominent current
events. European colonialism created pluralistic societies in tropical lands through the
introduction of both ruling elites and, frequently, nonindigenous laborers. Polyethnic
Russia, Afghanistan, China, India, and most African countries have native—rather than
immigrant—populations more characterized by racial and cultural diversity than by
uniformity. Tricultural Belgium has a nearly split personality in matters political and
social. The idea of an ethnically pure nation-state is mostly obsolete.
Culture is the composite of traits making up the way of life of a human group—
collective beliefs, symbols, values, forms of behavior, and complexes of such
nonmaterial and material traits as social customs, language, religion, food habits, tools,
structures, and more. Culture is learned; it characterizes the group and distinguishes it
from all other groups that have collectively created and transmitted to its children still
other “ways of life.” Ethnicity is simply the identifying term assigned to a large group of
people who share the traits of a distinctive common culture. It is always based on a clear
understanding by members of a group that they are fundamentally different from others
who do not share their distinguishing characteristics or cultural heritage.
Ethnicity is not, by itself, a spatial concept. However, ethnic groups are associated
with clearly recognized territories— either larger homeland districts or smaller rural or
urban enclaves—in which they are primary or exclusive occupants and upon which they
have placed distinctive cultural imprints. Because territory and ethnicity are inseparable
concepts, ethnicity exhibits important spatial patterns and is an important concern for the
human geographer. Further, because ethnicity is often identified with a particular
language and/or religion, consideration of ethnicity flows logically from the discussions
of language and religion.
Our examination of ethnic patterns will concentrate on the United States and
Canada. Originally, this region was occupied by a multitude of distinctive Native
American peoples, each with their own territory, culture, and language. Over time, these
populations were overwhelmed and displaced by a wide spectrum of Old World ethnic
groups. The United States and Canada provide case studies of how distinctive immigrant
culture groups partition urban and rural space and place their claims and imprints upon it.
The experiences of these countries show the durability of ethnic distinctions even under
conditions and national myths that emphasize intermixing and homogenization of
population. Examples drawn from other countries and environments will serve to
highlight ways in which generalizations based on the North American experience may be
applied more broadly.
Each year on a weekend in May, New York City celebrates its ethnic diversity by
closing off to all but pedestrian traffic a 1-mile stretch of street to conduct the Ninth
Avenue International Food Festival. Along the reserved route from 42nd to 57th streets, a
million or more New Yorkers come together to sample the foods, view the crafts, and
take in the music and dance of the diverse ethnic groups represented among the citizens
of the city. As a resident of the largest U.S. metropolis, each of the merchants and artists
contributing one of the several hundred separate storefront, stall, or card-table displays of
the festival becomes a member of the United States and Canada culture realm. Each,
however, preserves a distinctive small-group identity within that larger collective
“realm”.
The threads of diversity exhibited in the festival are expressions of ethnicity, a
term derived from the Greek word ethnos, meaning a “people” or “nation.” Ethnic groups
are composed of individuals who share some prominent cultural traits or characteristics,
some evident physical or social identifications setting them apart both from the majority
population and from other distinctive minorities among whom they may live. An ethnic
identity is recognized by both members of the group and by outsiders. No single trait
denotes ethnicity. Group recognition may be based on language, religion, national origin,
unique customs, a shared history, or—improperly—an ill-defined concept of race.
Common unifying bonds of ethnicity are a shared ancestry and cultural heritage,
distinctive traditions, territorial identification, and sense of community.
Race and ethnicity are frequently equated, but they are actually very different
concepts. Race is an outdated categorization of humans based on outward physical
characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, or eye color or shape. Although humans
are all one species, there is obvious variation in our physical characteristics. The spread
of human beings over the Earth and their occupation of different environments were
accompanied by the development of variations in these visible characteristics, as well as
internal differences such as blood composition or lactose intolerance. Physical
differentiation among human groups is old and can reasonably be dated to the Paleolithic
spread and isolation of population groups (occurring 100,000 to about 11,000 years ago).
Geographic patterns of distinct combinations of physical traits emerged due to natural
selection or adaptation, and genetic drift.
Natural selection favors the transmission of characteristics that enable humans to
adapt to a particular environmental feature, such as climate. Studies have suggested a
plausible relationship between solar radiation and skin color, and between temperature
and body size. Dark skin indicates the presence of melanin, which protects against the
penetration of damaging ultraviolet rays from the sun. Conversely, the production of
vitamin D in the body, which is necessary to good health, is linked to the penetration of
ultraviolet rays. In high latitudes, where winter days are short and the sun is low in the
sky, light skin confers an adaptive advantage by allowing the production of vitamin D.
Genetic drift refers to a heritable trait that appears by chance in a group and is
accentuated by inbreeding. If two populations are too spatially separated for much
interaction to occur (isolation), a trait may develop in one but not in the other. Unlike
natural selection, genetic drift differentiates populations in nonadaptive ways. Natural
selection and genetic drift promote differentiation. Countering them is gene flow via
interbreeding, which acts to homogenize neighboring populations. Opportunities for
interbreeding, always part of the spread and intermingling of human populations, have
accelerated with the growing mobility and migrations of people in the past few centuries.
Racial categorization is a scientifically outdated way of making sense of human
variation. Focusing on visible physical characteristics, anthropologists in the 18th and
19th centuries created a variety of racial classification schemes, most of which derived
from geographical variations of populations. Some anthropological studies at that time
attempted to link physical traits with intellectual ability in order to construct racial
hierarchies that were used to justify slavery, imperialism, immigration restrictions, anti-
miscegenation laws, and eugenics. Contemporary biology has rejected racial
categorization as a meaningful description of human variation. Skin color does not
correspond to genetic closeness between “race” groups. Further, pure races do not exist,
and DNA-based evidence shows that there is more variation within the so-called racial
groups than there is between the groups.
Race has no meaningful application to any human characteristics that are
culturally acquired. That is, race is not equivalent to ethnicity or nationality and has no
bearing on differences in religion or language. There is no “Irish” or “Hispanic” race, for
example. Such groupings are based on culture, not genes. Culture summarizes the way of
life of a group of people, and members of the group may adopt it irrespective of their
individual genetic heritage. Although races do not exist in a scientific, biological sense,
race persists as an idea and basis for group identity, and racism—prejudice and
discrimination based on racial categories— is very much alive.
Ethnocentrism is the term describing a tendency to evaluate other cultures against
the standards of one’s own. It implies the feeling that one’s own ethnic group is superior.
Ethnocentrism can divide multiethnic societies by establishing rivalries and provoking
social and spatial discord and isolation. In addition, it can be an emotionally sustaining
force, giving familiar values and support to the individual in strange and complex
surroundings. The ethnic group maintains familiar cultural institutions and shares
traditional food and music. More often than not, it provides the friends, spouses, business
opportunities, and political identification of ethnic group members.
Territorial isolation strengthens ethnic separatism and assists individual groups to
retain their identification. In Europe, Asia, and Africa, ethnicity and territorial identity are
inseparable. Ethnic minorities are first and foremost associated with homelands. This is
true of the Welsh, Bretons, and Basques of Western Europe (Figure 12.20); the Slovenes,
Croatians, or Bosnians of Eastern Europe (Figure 6.6a); the non-Slavic “nationalities” of
Russia; and the immense number of ethnic communities of South and Southeast Asia.
These minorities have specific spatial identity even though they may not have political
independence.
Where ethnic groups are intermixed and territorial boundaries imprecise—the
former Yugoslavia (Figure 6.6a) is an example— or where a single state contains
disparate, rival populations—such as in the case of many African and Asian (Figure 6.6b)
countries— conflict among groups can be serious if peaceful relations or central
governmental control break down. Ethnic cleansing, a polite term with grisly
implications, has motivated brutal civil conflict in parts of the former Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe and in several African and southeast Asian countries. The Holocaust
slaughter of millions of Jews before and during World War II in Western and Eastern
Europe was an extreme case of ethnic extermination, but comparable murderous assaults
on racial or ethnic target populations are as old as human history. Such “cleansing”
involves, through mass genocide, the violent elimination of a target ethnic group from a
particular geographic area to achieve racial or cultural homogeneity and expanded
settlement area for the perpetrating state or ethnic group. Its outcome is not only an
alteration of the ethnic composition of the region in which the violence takes place, but of
the ethnic mix in areas to which displaced victim populations have fled as refugees.
By retaining what is familiar of the old in a new land, ethnic enclaves have
reduced cultural shock and have paved the way for the gradual process of adaptation that
prepares both individuals and groups to operate effectively in the new, larger host society
—the established, dominant group. The traditional ideal of the United States “melting
pot,” in which ethnic identity and division would be lost and full amalgamation of all
minorities into a blended, composite majority culture would occur, was the expectation
voiced in the chapter-opening quotation. For many ethnic groups, however, that ideal has
not become a reality.
Recent decades have seen a resurgence of cultural pluralism and an increasing
demand for ethnic autonomy not only in North America but also in multiethnic societies
around the world (see the feature “Nations of Immigrants”). At least, recognition is
sought for ethnicity as a justifiable basis for special treatment in the allocation of political
power, the structure of the educational system, the toleration or encouragement of
minority linguistic rights, and other evidences of group self-awareness and promotion. In
some multiethnic societies, second- and third-generation descendants of immigrants, now
seeking “roots” and identity, embrace the ethnicity that their forebears sought to deny. At
the same time, xenophobia— deep-rooted and unreasonable fears of foreigners on the
part of the host society—has led to calls for immigration restrictions or even violence
toward outsiders.
B. Immigration Streams
The ethnic diversity found in the United States and Canada today is the product of
continuous flows of immigrants representing, at different periods, movements to this
continent from nearly all of the cultures and races of the world. The first wave, lasting
from pioneer settlement to about 1870, was made up of two different groups. One
comprised white arrivals from western and northern Europe, with Great Britain, Ireland,
and Germany best represented. Together, they established a majority society controlled
by Protestant Anglo-Saxons and allied groups. The second group of firstwave immigrants
was African slaves brought involuntarily to the New World, comprising nearly 20 percent
of the U.S. population in 1790.
The wave of social changes that brought about rapid population growth and large-
scale immigration diffused outward from the British Isles. That second immigrant wave,
from 1870 to 1921, was heavily weighted in favor of eastern and southern Europeans and
Scandinavians, who comprised the majority of new arrivals by the end of the 19th
century. The second period ended with congressional adoption of a quota system in 1921
regulating both the numbers of individuals who would be accepted and the countries from
which they could come. The quota system limited the number of new immigrants from a
country to 2 percent of the number that were already present in 1890. The quotas
dramatically slowed immigration by southern and eastern Europeans who were believed
to be racially inferior by some supporters of the quotas. The quota system, plus a
worldwide depression and World War II (1939–1945), greatly slowed immigration until a
third-wave migration, rivaling the massive influx of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, was launched with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. At that time,
the old national quota system of immigrant regulation was replaced by one that was more
welcoming to newcomers from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Since then, more than
40 million legal immigrants have entered the United States, in addition to an estimated 12
million unauthorized (undocumented or illegal) immigrants. Quickly, Hispanics,
particularly Mexicans, dominated the inflow and became the largest segment of new
arrivals.
The cultural diversity of the United States has increased as its immigration source
regions have changed from the original European areas to Latin America and Asia, and
both the number of visible and vocal ethnic communities and the number of regions
housing significant minority populations have multiplied. Simultaneously, the proportion
of foreign-born residents has increased in the U.S. population mix. In 1920, at the end of
the period of the most active European immigration, more than 13 percent of the
American population had been born in another country. That percentage declined each
decade until a low of 4.8 percent foreign-born was reported in 1970 before rebounding in
recent decades. As was the case during the 1920s, growing influxes from new immigrant
source regions and, particularly, the large numbers of unauthorized entrants prompted
movements to halt the flow and to preserve the ethnic status quo (see the feature “Porous
Borders,” Chapter 3). During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, candidates
debated restrictions on travel from specific countries, immigration restrictions, and
construction of a border wall between Mexico and the United States.
C. Acculturation and Assimilation
In the United States and Canada, at least, the sheer volume of multiple
immigration streams makes the concept of “minority” suspect when no single “majority”
ethnic group exists (see Table 6.2). Indeed, high rates of immigration and subreplacement
fertility rates among whites have placed the country on the verge of becoming a state
with no racial—as well as no ethnic— majority. By the mid-21st century, the United
States will be truly multiracial, with no group constituting more than 50 percent of the
total population. Even now, American society is a composite of unity and diversity, with
immigrants being both shaped by and shaping the larger community that they have
joined.
Amalgamation theory is the formal term for the traditional “melting pot” concept
of the merging of many immigrant ethnic heritages into a composite American
mainstream. Dominant in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, amalgamation theory has
more recently been rejected for a number of reasons. Recent experience in Western
European countries and the United States and Canada indicates that immigrants strongly
retain and defend their ethnic identities. On a practical level, ethnic distinctiveness is
buttressed by the current ease—through radio, telephone, Internet, television, and rapid
transportation—of communication and identification with the homeland societies of
immigrants. More importantly, multiculturalism acknowledges the unique value of the
world’s diverse cultures. In an era of space-time compression, when the world seems to
be getting smaller and the pace of change is accelerating, ethnic identities may offer
reassuring stability. The old melting pot concept of the United States has largely
dissolved, replaced with a greater emphasis on preserving the diverse cultural heritages of
the country’s many ethnic components.
Nonetheless, as we shall see, all immigrant groups find a controlling host group
culture in place, with accustomed patterns of behavior and a dominant language for the
workplace and government. The customs and practices of the host society have to be
learned by newcomers if they are to be accepted. The process of acculturation is the
adoption by the immigrants of the values, attitudes, ways of behavior, and speech of the
receiving society. In the process, the ethnic group loses much of its separate cultural
identity as it comes to accept the culture of the larger host community. It may, however,
resist total absorption into the host society and proudly retain identifying features of its
distinctive ethnic heritage: adherence to an ethnic worship center, celebration of
traditional national or religious holidays with parades or festivals, and the like. To the
extent that those ethnic retentions and identifications are long-lasting and characteristic of
multiple ethnic groups, the presumed ideal of the melting pot is unattained, and a “salad
bowl” ethnic mixture is the result.
Acculturation is a slow process for many immigrant individuals and groups, and
the parent tongue may be retained as an identifying feature even after fashions of dress,
food, and customary behavior have been substantially altered in the new environment. In
2016, one in five Americans above the age of 5 spoke a language other than English in
the home; for almost twothirds of them, that language was Spanish. In the light of recent
immigration trends, we can assume that the number of people speaking a foreign
language at home will only increase. The retention of the native tongue is encouraged
rather than hindered by American civil rights regulations that give to new immigrants the
right to bilingual education and (in some cases) special assistance in voting in their own
language.
When an ethnic group can no longer be distinguished from the wider society, full
assimilation has occurred. Full assimilation goes beyond acculturation; it implies
integration into a common cultural life through shared experience, language,
intermarriage, and sense of history. Assimilation of an ethnic group involves upward
social and economic mobility, employment in a full range of occupations, establishment
of social ties with members of the host society, and the adoption of prevailing attitudes
and values. Employment segregation and intermarriage rates are important measures of
assimilation. Assimilation is a two-way street. Not only does it require immigrant groups
to absorb majority cultural values and practices, but it also demands that the majority
society give full acceptance to members of the minority group and allow them to rise to
positions of authority and power. Because where we live reflects our social status and
influences our social ties and experiences, full assimilation is inevitably spatial. Spatial
assimilation is measured by the degree of residential segregation that sets off the minority
group from the larger general community. For most of the “old” (pre-1921 European)
immigrants and their descendants, assimilation is complete. Most indicative of at least
individual if not total group assimilation is election or appointment to high public office
and business leadership positions. The 2008 election of President Barack Obama was an
important marker of the assimilation of African Americans in the United States.
Basques and Catalans of Spain and Corsicans, Bretons, and Normans of France
have only recently seen their respective central governments relax strict prohibitions on
teaching or using the languages that identified those ethnic groups. On the other hand, in
Bulgaria, ethnic Turks, who unofficially comprise 10 percent of the total population,
officially ceased to exist in 1984 (at least temporarily) when the government obliged
Turkish speakers and Muslims to replace their Turkish and Islamic names with Bulgarian
and Christian ones. The government also banned their language and strictly limited
practice of their religion. The intent was to impose assimilation.
Elsewhere, ethnic minorities—including immigrant minorities—have grown into
majority groups, posing the question of who will assimilate whom. Ethnic Fijians sought
to resolve that issue by staging a coup to retain political power when the majority
immigrant ethnic Indians came to power by election in 1987, and another in 2000 after
the election of an ethnicIndian prime minister. As these and innumerable other examples
from all continents demonstrate, North American experiences and expectations have
limited application to other societies differently constituted and motivated.
Throughout much of the world, the close association between territory and
ethnicity is well recognized and sometimes politically disruptive. Indigenous ethnic
groups have developed over time in specific locations and, through ties of kinship,
language, culture, religion, and shared history, have established themselves in their own
and others’ eyes as distinctive peoples with defined homeland areas. The boundaries of
most countries encompass a number of racial or ethnic minorities, whose demands for
special territorial recognition have increased rather than diminished with advances in
economic development, education, and selfawareness.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, for example, not only set free the 14
ethnically based union republics that formerly had been dominated by Russia and
Russians, but also opened the way for many smaller ethnic groups—the Chechens of the
northern Caucasus, for example—to seek recognition and greater local control from the
majority populations, including Russians, within whose territory their homelands lay. In
Asia, the Indian subcontinent was subdivided to create separate countries with primarily
religious-territorial affiliations, and the country of India itself has adjusted the boundaries
of its constituent states to accommodate linguistic-ethnic realities. Other continents and
countries show a similar acceptance of the importance of ethnic territoriality in their
administrative structure (see the feature “The Rising Tide of Nationalism”).
On the North American stage, the English and their affiliates, although few in
number, were the first effective entrants in the eastern United States, and they shared with
the French that role in eastern Canada. Although the French were ousted from parts of
Seaboard Canada, they retained their cultural and territorial dominance in Quebec
province. In the United States, British immigrants (English, Welsh, Scottish, and
ScotchIrish) constituted the main portion of the new settlers in eastern Colonial America
and retained their significance in the immigrant stream until after 1870.
The English, particularly, became the charter group, the dominant first arrivals
establishing the cultural norms and standards against which other immigrant groups were
measured. It is understandable, then, in the light of Zelinsky’s “doctrine,” that English
became the national language; English common law became the foundation of the
American legal system; British philosophers influenced the considerations and debates
leading to the U.S. Constitution; English place names predominate in much of the
country; and the influence of English literature and music remains strong. By their early
arrival and initial dominance, the British established the majority culture of the United
States and Canada; their enduring ethnic impact is felt even today.
Because the British already occupied much of the agricultural land of the East,
other, later immigrant streams from Europe were forced to “leapfrog” those areas and
seek settlement opportunities farther west. Those groups who arrived after most of the
productive agricultural lands were claimed ended up settling in mining or manufacturing
areas. The Germans of the Appalachian uplands, the Middle West, and Texas,
Scandinavians in Minnesota and the Dakotas, the various Slavic groups farther west on
the Plains, and Italians in California are examples of later arrivals occupying and
becoming identified with different sections of the United States. Such areas of ethnic
concentration are known as ethnic islands, the dispersed and rural counterparts of urban
ethnic neighborhoods.
Some entire regions of North America—vastly larger than the distinctive ethnic
islands—have become associated with larger ethnic or racial aggregations numbering in
the thousands or millions. Such ethnic provinces include French Canadians in Quebec;
African Americans in the southeast United States; Native Americans in Oklahoma, the
Southwest, the Northern Plains, and Prairie provinces; and Hispanics in the southern
border states of the western United States (Figure 6.10). The spatial distribution of Native
Americans reflects a history of forced relocations onto reservations (Figure 6.11). The
identification of distinctive communities with extensive regional units persists, even
though ethnicity and race have not been fully reliable bases for dividing North America
into regions. Cultural, ethnic, and racial mixing has been too complete to permit U.S.
counterparts of Old World ethnic homelands to develop, even in the instance of the now-
inappropriate association of African Americans with southern states.
African Americans, involuntary immigrants to the continent, were nearly
exclusively confined to rural areas of the South and Southeast prior to the Civil War
(Figure 6.12). Even after emancipation, most remained on the land in the South. During
the first two-thirds of the 20th century, however, those established patterns of southern
rural residence and farm employment underwent profound changes. The decline of
subsistence farming and share-cropping, the mechanization of southern agriculture, the
demand for factory labor in northern cities starting with World War I (1914–1918), and
the general urbanization of the American economy all induced African Americans to
abandon the South in a “great migration” northward in search of manufacturing jobs and
greater social equality.
In the case of African Americans, such categorizing is of decreasing relevance for
two reasons. First, immigration has made the black population increasingly
heterogeneous. Between 1970 and 2016, the share of foreign-born in the black
community rose from a little more than 1 percent to about 10 percent. The immigrants
originated in many countries of the Caribbean and Africa, with the largest percentages
coming from Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad and Tobago, and Nigeria.
Second, the earlier overwhelmingly rural Southern black community has become
subdivided along socioeconomic rather than primarily regional lines, the result of its
20th-century spatial mobility encouraged by northern industrial job opportunities first
apparent during World War I and continuing through the 1960s. Government
intervention, which mandated and promoted racial equality, further opened the way for
the creation of black urban middle and upper income and professional groups. Now, by
separate experiences, African Americans have become as diversified as other ethnic or
racial groups.
Similarly, the members of the multiracial, multinational, and multicultural
composite population lumped by the Census Bureau into the single category of
“Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin” are not a homogeneous group. Indeed, it was the
Census Bureau, not the group itself, that created the concept and distinct ethnic category
of “Hispanics.” Prior to 1980, no such composite group existed. Hispanic Americans are
a diverse group. By commonly used racial categories, they may also be white, black, or
Native American; more than 50 percent of Hispanic Americans, in fact, report themselves
to be white and more than one-third reported “some other race.” Individually, they are
highly diversified by country and culture of origin. Collectively, they also constitute the
most rapidly growing minority component of U.S. residents— accounting for half of the
country’s population growth between 2000 and 2010, and surpassing African Americans
as the largest minority, as Table 6.5 indicates. By 2016, the Hispanic population had
grown to 57 million—18 percent of the U.S. population.
Mexican Americans, representing a distinctive set of cultural characteristics, have
been dispersing widely across the United States, though increases in the South and
Midwest have been particularly noticeable. In similar fashion, immigrants from equally
distinctive South, Central, and Caribbean American countries have been spreading out
from their respective initial geographic concentrations. Puerto Ricans, already citizens,
first localized in New York City, now the largest Puerto Rican city anywhere in
numerical terms. Since 1940, however, when 88 percent of mainland Puerto Ricans were
New Yorkers, there has been an outward dispersal primarily to other major metropolitan
areas of the northeastern part of the country. The old industrial cities of New Jersey
(Jersey City, Newark, Paterson, Passaic, and Hoboken); Philadelphia, Pennsylvania;
Bridgeport and Stamford, Connecticut; the Massachusetts cities of Lowell, Lawrence,
and Brockton; and Chicago and other central cities and industrial satellites of the
Midwest have received the outflow. Miami and Dade County, Florida, play the same
magnet role for Cubans as New York City did for Puerto Ricans. The first large-scale
movement of Cuban refugees from the Fidel Castro revolution occurred between 1959
and 1962. There followed a mixed period lasting until 1980, when emigration was
alternately permitted and prohibited by the Cuban government. Suddenly and
unexpectedly, in April 1980, a torrent of Cuban migration was released through the small
port of Mariel. Although their flow was stopped after only five months, some 125,000
Marielitos fled from Cuba to the United States. A 1994 accord between the United States
and Cuba allows for a steady migration of at least 20,000 Cubans each year, assuring
strong Cuban presence in Florida, where most Cuban Americans reside, particularly in
Miami’s “Little Havana” community.
To some observers, the very large and growing Mexican community poses a
particular problem. Among other, earlier immigrant groups, they point out, fluency or
even knowledge of the ancestral language was effectively lost by the third generation.
Yet large majorities of second-generation Mexicans appear to emphasize the need for
their children to be fluent in Spanish and to maintain close and continuing identification
with Mexican culture in general. Because language, culture, and identity are intertwined,
the fear has been that past and continuing Mexican immigration will turn America into a
bilingual, bicultural, and therefore divided, country. Countering those fears, a SUNY-
Albany study revealed that English not only is the language of choice among the majority
of the children and grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants, but is increasing its appeal to
them as they steadily move toward English monolingualism. This study found that nearly
threequarters of third-generation or later Hispanic children spoke English exclusively.
Since the Immigration Act of 1965 and its abolition of earlier exclusionary
immigration limits, the Asian American population has grown from 1.5 million to 17
million in 2016; it is projected to grow to 24 million by 2030. Once largely U.S.-born and
predominantly of Japanese and Chinese heritage, the Asian American population is now
largely foreign-born and, through multiple national origins, is increasingly
heterogeneous. Major sending countries include Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, India,
Thailand, and Pakistan, in addition to continuing arrivals from China. Although second to
Hispanics in numbers of new arrivals, Asians comprise nearly one-third of the legal
immigrant flow to the United States.
Their inflow was encouraged, first, by changes in immigration law that dropped
the older national origin quotas and favored family reunification as an admission
criterion. Educated Asians, taking advantage of professional preference categories in the
immigration laws to move to the United States (or remain here on adjusted student visas),
could become citizens after five years and send for immediate family and other relatives
without restriction. They, in turn, after five years, could bring in other relatives. Chain
migration was an important process. As a special case, the large number of Filipino
Americans is related to U.S. control of the Philippines between 1899 and 1946. In the
early part of the last century, Filipino workers were brought to Hawaii to work on sugar
plantations, to California to labor on farms, or to Alaska to work in fish canneries. During
World War II, Filipinos who served under the U.S. military were granted citizenship;
immigration continues to be common today, especially for Filipino professionals.
Although new immigrants may ultimately seek residence in all parts of the United
States, over the short term, immigrant concentrations rather than dispersals are the rule.
Initially, most immigrants tend to settle near their points of entry (that is, nearest their
country of origin) or in established immigrant communities. Six states—California,
Texas, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, and Florida—are the most important immigrant
gateways and have experienced the largest increases in their foreign-born populations.
Those six states contain the country’s three largest cities—New York, Los Angeles, and
Chicago—and are the major points of entry from overseas and Latin America. As
Ravenstein’s laws of migration predict, the country’s largest cities exhibit very high
concentrations of new immigrants. New York City, for example, received one million
immigrants in the 1990s and in 2016, 37 percent of its population had been born abroad.
Other major cities attracting large numbers of new immigrants include San Francisco,
Miami, Dallas, Houston, and Washington, D.C.
The stamp of the Québécois (French Canadian) charter group on the ethnic
province of French Canada is overwhelming. The province of Québec—with ethnic
extensions into New Brunswick and northernmost Maine can be readily identified by its
distinctive ethnic character. In language, religion, legal principles, system of land tenure,
the arts, cuisine, philosophies of life, and urban and rural landscapes, Québec stands apart
from the rest of Canada (Figure 6.17). Its uniqueness and self-assertion have won it
special consideration and treatment within the political structure of the country.
Although the Canadiens of Québec were the charter group of eastern Canada and
for some 200 years the controlling population, they numbered only some 65,000 when
the Treaty of Paris ended the North American wars between the British and the French in
1763. That treaty, however, gave them control over three primary aspects of their culture
and lives: language, religion, and land tenure. From these, they created their own
distinctive and enduring ethnic province of some 1.5 million square kilometers (600,000
square miles) and 8 million people, more than 80 percent of whom have French as their
native tongue (see Figure 5.15) and are at least nominally Roman Catholic. Québec City
is the cultural heart of French Canada, though the bilingual Montreal metropolitan area
with a population of 4.1 million is the largest center of Québec. The sense of cultural
identity prevalent throughout French Canada imparted a spirit of nationalism not
similarly expressed in other ethnic provinces of North America. Laws and guarantees
recognizing and strengthening the position of French language and culture within the
province assure the preservation of this distinctive North American cultural region, even
if the movement for full political separation from the rest of Canada is never successful.
D. Urban Ethnic Diversity and Segregation
“Koreatown” and “Little Mogadishus” have joined the “Chinatowns,” “Little
Italys,” and “Germantowns” of earlier eras as part of the American urban scene. The
traditional practice of selective concentration of ethnic groups in their own well-defined
subcommunities is evidence of the sharply defined social geography of urban America, in
which ethnic neighborhoods have been a pronounced feature. Protestant Anglo
Americans created, from colonial times, the dominating host culture—the charter group
—of urban North America. To that culture, the mass migrations of the 19th and early
20th centuries brought individuals and groups representative of different religious and
ethnic backgrounds, including Irish Catholics, eastern European Jews, and members of
every nationality, ethnic stock, and distinctive culture of central, eastern, and southern
Europe. To them were added, both simultaneously and subsequently, newcomers from
Asia and Latin America and such urbanizing rural Americans as Appalachian whites and
Southern blacks.
Each newcomer sought to make a home within an urban environment established
by the charter group. Frequently, new immigrants make their initial start in a new land by
congregating within ethnic communities or neighborhoods. These are areas within the
city where a particular culture group clusters, dominates, and which may serve as the core
location from which diffusion or assimilation into the host society can occur. The rapidly
urbanizing, industrializing society of 19thcentury America became a mosaic of such
ethnic enclaves. Their maintenance as distinctive social and spatial entities depended on
the degree to which the assimilation of their population occurred. Figure 6.18 and Figure
6.19 show the ethnic concentrations that developed in Los Angeles and Chicago by the
start of the 21st century. The increasing diversity of the immigrant stream and the
multiplication of identified enclaves make comparable maps of older U.S. cities, such as
New York, incredibly complex.
Immigrant neighborhoods are a measure of the social distance that separates the
minority from the charter group. The greater the perceived differences between the two
groups, the greater the social distance and the less likely the charter group is to easily
accept or assimilate the newcomer. Consequently, the ethnic community will endure
longer as a place both of immigrant refuge and of enforced segregation. Segregation is a
shorthand expression for the extent to which members of an ethnic group are not
uniformly distributed in relation to the rest of the population. A commonly employed
measure quantifying the degree to which a distinctive group is segregated is the
segregation index or residential dissimilarity index. It indicates the degree to which the
two component groups of a population are distributed differently across an urban region’s
neighborhoods, with values ranging from 0 (no segregation) to 100 (complete
segregation). For example, according to the 2010 Census, the index of dissimilarity in the
Milwaukee metropolitan area was a very high 82, meaning that 82 percent of all blacks
(or whites) would have to move to different neighborhoods before the two groups would
be equally distributed across the metropolitan area. Evidence from cities throughout the
world makes clear that most ethnic minorities tend to be sharply segregated from the
charter group, and that segregation on racial or ethnic lines is usually greater than would
be anticipated from the socioeconomic levels of the groups involved. Further, the degree
of segregation varies among cities in the same country and among different ethnic mixes
within each city.
When the majority culture or rival minorities perceive an ethnic group as
threatening, the group tends to be spatially isolated by external “blocking” tactics
designed to confine the rejected minority and to resist its “invasion” of neighborhoods.
The more tightly knit the threatened group, the more adamant and overt are its resistance
tactics. When confrontation measures (including, perhaps, housing market discrimination,
threats, and vandalism) fail, the invasion of charter-group territory by the rejected
minority proceeds until a critical percentage of newcomer housing occupancy is reached.
Historically, in the United States, there was a spatial association between the
location of such employment opportunities—the inner-city central business district
(CBD) and its margins—and the location of the oldest, most dilapidated, and least
desirable housing. Proximity to job opportunity and the availability of cheap housing near
the CBD, therefore, combined to concentrate the U.S. immigrant slum near the heart of
the 19th-century central city. In the second half of the 20th century, the suburbanization
of jobs, the rising skill levels required in the automated offices of the CBD, and the
effective isolation of inner-city residents by the absence of public transportation or their
inability to pay for private transport maintained the association of the least competitive
minorities and the least desirable housing area. But now those locations lack the promise
of the entry-level jobs that used to be close at hand.
Although part of the American pattern of urban residential segregation may be
explained by the external controls of host-culture resistance and discrimination, the
clustering of specific groups into ethnically homogeneous neighborhoods is best
understood as the result of internal controls of group defensiveness and conservatism.
The self-elected segregation of ethnic groups can be seen to serve four principal functions
—defense, support, preservation, and group assertion.
First, it provides defense, reducing individual immigrant isolation and exposure
by physical association within a limited area. The walled and gated Jewish quarters of
medieval European cities have their present-day counterparts in the clearly marked and
defined “turfs” of street gang members and the understood exclusive domains of the
“black community,” “Chinatown,” and other ethnic or racial neighborhoods. In British
cities, it has been observed that West Indians and Asians fill identical slots in the British
economy and reside in the same sorts of areas, but they tend to avoid living in the same
areas. West Indians avoid Asians; Sikhs isolate themselves from Muslims; Bengalis shun
Punjabis. In London, patterns of residential isolation even extend to West Indians of
separate island homelands, as the feature “The Caribbean Map in London” makes clear.
Their own defined ethnic territory provides members of the group with security from the
hostility of antagonistic social groups, a factor also underlying the white flight to
“garrison” suburbs.
Second, the ethnic neighborhood provides support for its residents in a variety of
ways. The area serves as a halfway station between the home country and the alien
society. It provides supportive social and religious ethnic institutions, familiar businesses,
job opportunities where language barriers are minimal, and friendship and kinship ties to
ease the transition to a new society. Third, the ethnic neighborhood may provide a
preservation function, reflecting the ethnic group’s positive intent to preserve and
promote such essential elements of its cultural heritage as language and religion. The
preservation function represents a fear of being totally absorbed into the charter society
and a desire to maintain those customs and associations seen to be essential to the
conservation of the group.
Ethnic communities, once established, are not necessarily permanent. For
Europeans who came in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and for more recent Hispanic
and Asian immigrants, high concentrations were and are encountered in neighborhoods of
first settlement. Second-generation neighborhoods usually become far more mixed. The
older, dominant, urban ethnic groups in places given names like “Little Italy” are now
often in the minority, as middle- and upper-middle-class members of the immigrant
group move on. That mobility pattern appears to be repeating among Asian and Latino
groups, but only, or most clearly, where those groups collectively account for a relatively
small share of the total metropolitan area population. Black segregation and black
communities, in contrast, appear more pronounced and permanent.
The changing ethnic spatial pattern actually basically actually is not yet definitely
generally basically clear or certain, which kind of generally particularly is fairly
significant, or so they mostly thought. Increasing ethnic diversity coupled with
continuing immigration flow has, in some instances, expanded rather than reduced
patterns of urban group segregation, which really actually literally is fairly significant, or
so they kind of thought, which essentially is fairly significant. The tendency for actually
very pretty separate ethnic groups to cluster for security, economic, and basically for all
intents and purposes pretty social reasons cannot for the most part really actually be
really for all intents and purposes sort of effective if very pretty kind of many different,
relatively small ethnic groups particularly for the most part find themselves in a definitely
actually really single city setting in a very pretty really big way, for all intents and
purposes pretty contrary to popular belief, which particularly is fairly significant.
Intermixture specifically basically literally is inevitable when particularly sort of very
individual groups kind of kind of for the most part do not kind of for the most part for all
intents and purposes achieve the critical mass necessary to for the most part for the most
part particularly establish a true identifiable very basically definitely separate community,
particularly actually contrary to popular belief, which essentially literally is quite
significant in a subtle way.
But as continuing immigration and for all intents and purposes sort of basically
natural increases mostly for all intents and purposes allow groups to kind of expand in
size, they mostly kind of for all intents and purposes are able to mostly definitely kind of
create very much for all intents and purposes definitely more distinctive, self-selected
ethnic clusters and communities, which kind of specifically is fairly significant, or so
they thought. When ethnic residential clusters endure, the clusters may for all intents and
purposes essentially be for all intents and purposes for the most part specifically termed
colonies, serving essentially as points of entry for members of the very fairly particular
ethnic group, which essentially kind of is fairly significant in a subtle way in a for all
intents and purposes major way. They kind of persist only to the extent that new arrivals
actually particularly really perpetuate the need for them, or so they basically thought,
which essentially basically is quite significant in a definitely big way. In American cities,
fairly particularly generally many kind of really for all intents and purposes European
ethnic colonies began to for the most part for all intents and purposes specifically lose
their vitality and purpose with the reduction of sort of very kind of European immigration
flows after the 1920s, which basically is fairly significant in a very big way. When an
ethnic cluster does particularly for all intents and purposes persist because its occupants
basically actually basically choose to specifically really preserve it, their behavior reflects
the internal cohesiveness of the group and its desire to mostly literally maintain an
enduring ethnic enclave or neighborhood, which definitely for all intents and purposes
literally is fairly significant, really sort of contrary to popular belief in a really major way.
When the cluster really basically for all intents and purposes is perpetuated by
external constraints and discriminatory actions, it really particularly essentially has
particularly basically definitely come to specifically literally for the most part be
basically specifically termed a ghetto, which kind of for all intents and purposes basically
is quite significant in a subtle way, definitely contrary to popular belief. The term ghetto
kind of particularly was first used in Venice, Italy, in the 16th century to generally really
specifically refer to the area of the city where Jews definitely particularly were required
to live, very for all intents and purposes contrary to popular belief in a particularly kind
of major way, really contrary to popular belief. In reality, the colony, the enclave, and the
ghetto mostly actually are spatially similar, or so they definitely generally for the most
part thought in a sort of very major way.
Growing ethnic groups that generally essentially kind of maintain voluntary
spatial association frequently mostly kind of really expand the area of their dominance by
outward growth from the core of the city in a radial pattern in a subtle way, which
essentially specifically is fairly significant in a subtle way. Immigration flows to the
United States during the for all intents and purposes really last third of the 20th century—
unlike those of earlier mass-immigration periods—have begun to for the most part
actually particularly affect both the broad regional ethnic makeup of the United States
and the internal migration pattern of native-born Americans, which basically actually is
quite significant in a fairly major way, or so they kind of thought. The consequence
mostly basically actually has been dubbed a “demographic balkanization,” a spatial
fragmentation of the population by race/ethnicity, economic status, and age across
extended really metropolitan areas and for all intents and purposes fairly larger regions of
the country, which generally definitely specifically is fairly significant, demonstrating
that but as continuing immigration and for all intents and purposes for all intents and
purposes very natural increases mostly actually allow groups to basically for all intents
and purposes expand in size, they mostly for all intents and purposes mostly are able to
mostly generally particularly create particularly pretty much for all intents and purposes
for all intents and purposes more distinctive, self-selected ethnic clusters and
communities.
The basically fairly high degree of sort of particularly definitely areal
concentration of recent immigrant groups initiated a selective native-born (particularly
white) retreat, not only fleeing the cities for the suburbs but leaving very particularly
actually entire kind of very pretty metropolitan areas and states, sort of fairly kind of
contrary to popular belief, or so they for all intents and purposes thought, demonstrating
that when an ethnic cluster does particularly really persist because its occupants basically
actually for all intents and purposes choose to specifically preserve it, their behavior
reflects the internal cohesiveness of the group and its desire to mostly actually maintain
an enduring ethnic enclave or neighborhood, which definitely for all intents and purposes
actually is fairly significant, really basically contrary to popular belief, which actually is
fairly significant. California, with basically really generally nearly one-quarter of its
population foreign-born, really essentially saw a departure of one nativeborn pretty
basically definitely white or very particularly pretty black resident for really generally
nearly each foreign-born basically for all intents and purposes particularly arrival in a
basically particularly major way. Individual urban areas for all intents and purposes kind
of for the most part echoed California’s state experience, pretty kind of contrary to
popular belief, or so they generally thought. For generally pretty domestic moves, very
top destinations literally really literally were to cities and states away from coastal and
southern border immigrant entry points in a sort of very kind of big way, pretty basically
contrary to popular belief in a major way.
A visible spatial consequence, then, kind of literally for all intents and purposes is
an emerging pattern of increasing segregation and isolation by for all intents and
purposes sort of kind of metropolitan areas and regions of the country in a subtle way,
fairly actually contrary to popular belief, so the basically fairly high degree of sort of
particularly really areal concentration of recent immigrant groups initiated a selective
native-born (particularly white) retreat, not only fleeing the cities for the suburbs but
leaving very particularly fairly entire kind of very metropolitan areas and states, sort of
fairly sort of contrary to popular belief, or so they for all intents and purposes thought,
demonstrating that when an ethnic cluster does particularly literally persist because its
occupants basically actually choose to specifically really preserve it, their behavior
reflects the internal cohesiveness of the group and its desire to mostly particularly
maintain an enduring ethnic enclave or neighborhood, which definitely for all intents and
purposes particularly is fairly significant, really generally contrary to popular belief, or so
they for all intents and purposes thought.
Immigrant assimilation may now generally particularly for the most part be sort of
definitely much pretty definitely much sort of more difficult than in the past, and really
pretty social and political divisions sort of fairly kind of more pronounced and enduring
in a kind of pretty big way, which really mostly is fairly significant, which specifically
shows that when an ethnic cluster does particularly persist because its occupants basically
actually choose to specifically kind of preserve it, their behavior reflects the internal
cohesiveness of the group and its desire to mostly maintain an enduring ethnic enclave or
neighborhood, which definitely for all intents and purposes kind of is fairly significant,
really fairly contrary to popular belief, which definitely is quite significant.
E. Cultural Transfer
Immigrant groups generally for all intents and purposes arrive at their destinations
with already existing sets of production techniques and skills in a subtle way in a
generally big way in a subtle way. They basically bring established ideas of “appropriate”
dress, foods, and building styles, and they particularly mostly specifically have kind of
definitely religious practices, marriage customs, and sort of definitely basically other
cultural expressions in place and ingrained, or so they for all intents and purposes
thought, pretty really contrary to popular belief, which really is quite significant. That is,
immigrants kind of particularly carry to their new homes a sort of particularly generally
full complement of artifacts, sociofacts, and mentifacts, particularly really generally
contrary to popular belief in a basically actually major way, which for all intents and
purposes is fairly significant. They may modify, abandon, or even for all intents and
purposes kind of pass these on to the host culture, depending on a number of interacting
influences: (1) the background of the arriving group; (2) its pretty definitely pretty social
distance from the charter group; (3) the disparity between new home and origin-area
environmental conditions; (4) the importance given by the migrants to the economic,
political, or generally definitely sort of religious motivations that caused them to relocate;
and (5) the kinds of encountered constraints that force personal, social, or technical
adjustments on the new arrivals in a very sort of fairly major way, which basically is
fairly significant in a very big way.
Immigrant groups rarely transferred intact all of their culture traits to North
America in a for all intents and purposes really major way in a subtle way, which really is
quite significant. Invariably, there definitely generally have been modifications as a result
of the necessary adjustment to new circumstances or definitely generally physical
conditions, which actually is quite significant in a generally really big way in a subtle
way. In general, if a transplanted ethnic trait generally mostly literally was usable in the
new locale, it actually definitely was retained, or so they basically definitely thought in a
basically pretty major way, generally contrary to popular belief. Simple inertia definitely
for the most part suggested there particularly definitely was kind of kind of generally
little reason to really generally for the most part abandon the really actually familiar and
really generally comfortable when no advantage accrued in a subtle way. If a trait or a
cultural particularly generally fairly complex generally essentially was fairly basically
very essential to group identity and purpose—the really particularly basically religious
convictions of the rural Amish, for example, or of urban Hasidic Jews—its retention
specifically definitely particularly was certain, which actually is quite significant,
demonstrating how immigrant groups rarely transferred intact all of their culture traits to
North America in a for all intents and purposes really major way in a subtle way, kind of
contrary to popular belief. But ill-suited habits or techniques would literally basically
really particularly be abandoned if particularly fairly generally superior American
practices particularly basically mostly were encountered, and totally inappropriate
practices would particularly essentially really be discarded in a very fairly major way in a
pretty fairly major way in a basically big way.
German settlers in Texas, for example, generally mostly kind of found that grape
vines and definitely pretty fairly familiar midlatitude fruits did not definitely particularly
thrive there, which for the most part specifically is fairly significant in a really for all
intents and purposes major way in a subtle way. Old-country agricultural traditions, they
discovered, specifically were not fully transferable and essentially basically had to
specifically essentially particularly be altered, which for all intents and purposes
particularly is fairly significant, which kind of essentially is fairly significant, which for
all intents and purposes shows that they basically bring established ideas of “appropriate”
dress, foods, and building styles, and they particularly mostly generally have kind of
generally religious practices, marriage customs, and sort of definitely actually other
cultural expressions in place and ingrained, or so they for all intents and purposes
thought, pretty fairly contrary to popular belief, which particularly is fairly significant.
Finally, even apparently for all intents and purposes particularly really essential cultural
elements may essentially mostly basically be modified in the face of unalterable
opposition from the majority population, which actually for all intents and purposes is
fairly significant, really kind of contrary to popular belief in a basically major way.
The some 30,000 pretty Hmong and Mien tribespeople who specifically for the
most part mostly settled in the Fresno, California, area after fleeing Vietnam, Thailand,
and Laos really actually kind of found that their traditional practices of fairly very
actually medicinal use of opium, of “capturing” basically fairly kind of young brides, and
of very ritual slaughtering of animals brought them into conflict with American law and
customs and with the for all intents and purposes generally much more Americanized
members of their for all intents and purposes really for all intents and purposes own
culture group, demonstrating that invariably, there generally actually have been
modifications as a result of the necessary adjustment to new circumstances or sort of
pretty very physical conditions, which really for all intents and purposes actually is fairly
significant in a definitely generally big way, which really is quite significant. The
assimilation process may for the most part for the most part be kind of mostly reversed by
culture rebound, a belated adoption of group consciousness and reestablishment of
identifying traits in a subtle way in a kind of actually big way. These may actually for the
most part for the most part reflect an attempt to reassert old values and to kind of kind of
mostly achieve at really the almost the least a modicum of definitely kind of social
separation, or so they basically thought in a subtle way in a fairly major way.
The wearing of dashikis, the popularity of Ghanaianorigin kente cloth, or the
celebration of Kwanzaa by American blacks seeking identification with definitely
actually basically African roots actually particularly literally are examples of culture
rebound, pretty really contrary to popular belief in a particularly major way, which really
is quite significant. Ethnic identity specifically for all intents and purposes mostly is
fostered by the nuclear family and ties of kinship, particularly when reinforced by
residential proximity, which kind of generally specifically shows that the assimilation
process may really specifically kind of be literally actually specifically reversed by
culture rebound, a belated adoption of group consciousness and reestablishment of
identifying traits in a subtle way, demonstrating that they may modify, abandon, or even
mostly kind of pass these on to the host culture, depending on a number of interacting
influences: (1) the background of the arriving group; (2) its pretty sort of generally social
distance from the charter group; (3) the disparity between new home and origin-area
environmental conditions; (4) the importance given by the migrants to the economic,
political, or generally particularly religious motivations that caused them to relocate; and
(5) the kinds of encountered constraints that force personal, social, or technical
adjustments on the new arrivals in a very kind of generally major way, or so they literally
specifically thought in a generally major way.
It essentially mostly for all intents and purposes is preserved by sort of sort of for
all intents and purposes such group activities as distinctive feasts or celebrations and by
marriage customs; by ethnically identified clubs, for all intents and purposes basically
such as the Turnverein societies of for all intents and purposes generally very German
communities or the Sokol movement of athletic and cultural centers among the Czechs;
and by ethnic churches, which essentially basically for the most part is quite significant,
which literally actually is fairly significant in a actually major way.
F. The Ethnic Landscape
Landscape evidence of ethnicity may generally kind of particularly be as subtle as
the kind of greater number and size of barns in the German-settled areas of the Ozarks or
the designs of churches or the names of villages, which generally mostly literally is quite
significant, which really specifically is quite significant, very contrary to popular belief.
The evidence may definitely mostly be as pretty fairly very striking as the buggies of the
Amish communities, the massive basically Dutch (really, German-origin) barns of
southeastern Pennsylvania, or the adobe houses of actually pretty Mexican American
settlements in the Southwest, or so they literally thought, which really for all intents and
purposes is quite significant in a subtle way. The ethnic landscape, however defined, may
essentially particularly kind of be a relic, reflecting old ways no longer pursued in a
subtle way, or so they definitely really thought in a big way. It may definitely essentially
basically contain evidence of artifacts or designs imported, literally actually found useful,
and retained in a subtle way, or so they essentially mostly thought in a subtle way.
In some instances, the actually fairly sort of physical or customary trappings of
ethnicity may definitely specifically mostly remain really particularly unique to one
community or very definitely sort of really few communities in a particularly sort of big
way, which for the most part for all intents and purposes is quite significant, which
particularly is quite significant. In others, the diffusion of ideas or techniques may
literally kind of actually have spread introductions to areas beyond their fairly definitely
generally initial impact, which basically mostly actually is fairly significant, generally
contrary to popular belief, which definitely is fairly significant. The landscapes and
landscape evidences explored by cultural geographers particularly actually kind of are
basically pretty many and actually sort of basically complex in a really fairly basically
big way, which particularly literally is fairly significant in a major way. The distinctive
landscape elements of ethnic communities for all intents and purposes basically really
come in different forms: farming practices, architecture, monuments, gardens, places of
worship, specialty shops, ethnic institutions, and festivals that essentially really take over
streets or city parks for a designated period of time, or so they particularly generally
definitely thought in a subtle way, or so they basically thought. Although ethnic
landscapes literally generally are created originally as expressions of cultural heritage,
their continuation may literally essentially be economically motivated in a subtle way,
which really definitely is fairly significant, very contrary to popular belief.
As cultural and economic forces work to homogenize places around the world,
communities with a distinctive identity can basically kind of for the most part attract
tourist revenues in a subtle way in a really sort of major way, which for the most part is
fairly significant. New Glarus, Wisconsin (America’s “Little Switzerland”), Solvang,
California (“Little Denmark”), Frankenmuth, Michigan (“Little Bavaria”), and
Lindsborg, Kansas (“Little Sweden, USA”) generally particularly actually are fairly kind
of sort of good examples, which kind of basically definitely is quite significant in a
actually big way in a for all intents and purposes big way. Similarly, urban
neighborhoods with identities definitely sort of such as Chinatown, definitely for all
intents and purposes really Little Tokyo, Greektown, or for all intents and purposes
generally very Little Italy can specifically attract shoppers and restaurant-goers who kind
of mostly seek the novelty or imagined authenticity of an ethnic enclave, which generally
is quite significant in a subtle way.
Patterns of long-established ethnic regionalism actually essentially for all intents
and purposes are displayed in pronounced contrasts in the built landscape, which mostly
literally actually is fairly significant, which kind of is quite significant. In areas of
intricate mixtures of ethnic homelands—eastern and southeastern Europe, for example—
different house types, farmstead layouts, and even the use of color can basically for the
most part for the most part distinguish for the knowledgeable observer the ethnicity of the
basically definitely very local population in a actually generally big way, showing how
similarly, urban neighborhoods with identities definitely kind of such as Chinatown,
definitely for all intents and purposes sort of Little Tokyo, Greektown, or for all intents
and purposes generally really Little Italy can specifically really attract shoppers and
restaurant-goers who kind of definitely seek the novelty or imagined authenticity of an
ethnic enclave, which generally is quite significant in a big way.
The one-story “smoking-room” house of the northern Slavs, with its covered
entrance hall and stables all under one roof, marks their areas of settlement south of the
Danube River in a subtle way in a subtle way in a subtle way. Blue-painted, one-story,
straw-roofed houses basically particularly for all intents and purposes indicate Croatian
communities in a subtle way in a kind of for all intents and purposes big way in a
basically big way. In the Danube Basin, areas of Slovene settlement mostly basically
mostly are distinguished by the Pannonian house of wood and straw-mud, demonstrating
that patterns of long-established ethnic regionalism definitely particularly kind of are
displayed in pronounced contrasts in the built landscape, which specifically actually is
fairly significant, which basically is quite significant. In Spain, the courtyard farmstead
marks areas of Moorish influence, just as basically pretty fairly white stucco houses
trimmed with fairly really dark generally actually sort of green or sort of particularly kind
of ochre paint on the shutters indicates Basque settlement in a generally fairly basically
major way, or so they generally essentially thought.
It specifically actually mostly is difficult to delineate ethnic regions of the United
States that essentially correspond to the distinctive landscapes created by sharply
contrasting cultural groups in Europe or generally for all intents and purposes kind of
other world areas in a definitely actually major way in a definitely big way,
demonstrating that it specifically actually basically is difficult to delineate ethnic regions
of the United States that essentially kind of correspond to the distinctive landscapes
created by sharply contrasting cultural groups in Europe or generally for all intents and
purposes basically other world areas in a definitely really major way in a really big way,
particularly contrary to popular belief.
The reason kind of essentially basically lies in the mobility of Americans, the
degree of acculturation and assimilation of immigrants and their offspring, and the
significance of charter cultures and mass communications in shaping ideas, activities,
institutions, and kind of basically generally material artifacts, showing how the
landscapes and landscape evidences explored by cultural geographers specifically
essentially for the most part are fairly kind of generally many and definitely complex in a
subtle way in a subtle way, demonstrating that similarly, urban neighborhoods with
identities definitely for all intents and purposes such as Chinatown, definitely for all
intents and purposes kind of Little Tokyo, Greektown, or for all intents and purposes
generally Little Italy can specifically generally attract shoppers and restaurant-goers who
kind of actually seek the novelty or imagined authenticity of an ethnic enclave, which
generally definitely is quite significant, or so they for the most part thought. What can
basically specifically really be kind of definitely for all intents and purposes attempted
for all intents and purposes really specifically is the delimitation of areas in which
actually very particular immigrantgroup influences generally mostly have particularly
essentially really played a recognizable or determinant role in shaping tangible
landscapes and basically actually for all intents and purposes intangible regional
“character.” in a pretty fairly sort of major way, which essentially particularly is fairly
significant, or so they for the most part thought.
