The Ethnic Project: Transforming Racial Fiction into Ethnic Factions

Stanford Studies in Comparative Race and Ethnicity

by Vilna Bashi Treitler

Race is a known fiction―there is no genetic marker that indicates someone's race―yet the social stigma of race endures. In the United States, ethnicity is often positioned as a counterweight to race, and we celebrate our various hyphenated-American identities. But Vilna Bashi Treitler argues that we do so at a high ethnic thinking simply perpetuates an underlying racism. In The Ethnic Project , Bashi Treitler considers the ethnic history of the United States from the arrival of the English in North America through to the present day. Tracing the histories of immigrant and indigenous groups―Irish, Chinese, Italians, Jews, Native Americans, Mexicans, Afro-Caribbeans, and African Americans―she shows how each negotiates America's racial hierarchy, aiming to distance themselves from the bottom and align with the groups already at the top. But in pursuing these "ethnic projects" these groups implicitly accept and perpetuate a racial hierarchy, shoring up rather than dismantling race and racism. Ultimately, The Ethnic Project shows how dangerous ethnic thinking can be in a society that has not let go of racial thinking.

Genres: Race, Nonfiction, History, Sociology, Social Justice, The United States Of America, Anti Racist

240 pages, Paperback

First published August 14, 2013

Reviews

[Isaiah · Rating 4 out of 5]

A top down exploration of racial myths and ethnic histories,
reveals how both newly arrived and long-standing groups in America have perpetuated the denigration of African Americans to vie for a leveled position in the racial hierarchy. However, even that description is far too simplistic as it examines the efforts and campaigns taken by these groups and reviews their success and failure in these efforts. Chinese immigrants in the Mississippi Delta, Mexicans in Texas, Afro-Caribbeans, and the Irish. All in quest for increased racial status, a far more fruitful endeavor than to challenge the legitimacy of racialized thinking.

“…ethnicity and race are so related that a racially black person identifying himself as German, for example, will be treated as if his or her listeners had misheard.”

“The entire system of ethnic projects in specific, and race as a system in general, both work to ensure that “black” remains the bottom rung of the ladder that all others in society are told they can and should climb.”

[Zody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Treitler offers a non-traditional approach, or perhaps a second layer, to race and ethnicity in a way that I haven't read in academic journals or articles in the past. It does not delineate from the larger problem of the majority versus minority, which is America's systemic racism, but produces new knowledge on how the system then socially conditions this dichotomy between minorities thus perpetuating or reinforcing systemic racism.

[Marissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curious and fantastic histories, but dry. Would have been great to include more illustrations or first hand accounts, but a must read for Polish, Italian, Jewish, and Irish Americans (and everyone else).

[Bailey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read for SOC-275

[Ricki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating thesis on how and why some ethnic groups rose to the top while others stayed at the bottom.

[Julia Benkendorf · Rating 4 out of 5]

got to take dr bashi’s sociology class last quarter and she is a super impressive and interesting professor

[max · Rating 5 out of 5]

foundational in understanding race in america !!

[Alison Labbate]

Recommended by keynote Safiya Noble at SSP 2018