Race, Ethnicity and Politics

In order to collect the data you actually want in a way that is perceived as respectful by the participants, you will probably have to collect much more data than you are actually going to use.

From my observations working in major public sector organisations, The closer the accents are to the host environment - people are perceived to have 'made the effort to integrate' and are perceived more favourably than other people with 'difficult to understand' accents are often perceived as not being 'able to speak English very well', have not made enough effort to integrate or make themselves understood. When I am delivering training on Intergroup Relations - looking at the impact of Equality legislation on the behaviour of those in the majority and those in the minority. One of the major changes legislation gives - is that it give the minority an equality of opportunity of having the power to speak, challenge and make their needs know. This is often difficult for those in the historical majority to come to terms with this new use of power and there can be resistance, resentment and a feeling that the minorities are now being advantages. Some minorities will often use this power to determine what terms they will or will not tolerate - that can be the words used in banter in the workplace. In a paper published with a colleague - we described the culture of the organisation, or community as' the default position' - it it s the unspoken, expected way things are done - the way the language is spoken - the unconscious expectations of the pitch, tone, gaps, pauses. It is this unconscious bias that often inform how we perceive accents or voices or actions. These are a reflection of the language conventions that we all learn and adjust to as we travel or encounter others. We learn to adjust and make allowances for certain conventions that are broken. Sometime we have key conventions which, when they are broken, may irritate or annoy us and we make judgements of competence and skill.

In my opinion, race is a concept that pretends to indicate biological characteristics of a human group but, as Rafael says, has no sense from a scientific point of view; it is a concept that was applied to human beings by racist political movements (nazism and fascism) with the aim of asserting the superiority of ona "race" upon others. A Chinese and an Indian have not more genetic difference then me and my neighbour! Ethnicity is a similar concept, but politically correct! It integrates cultural elements but still refers to physiognomy. For instance, if a white woman from the US goes to Nigeria, decides to live there and adopts local costums, would you say that her "ethnicity" is, for instance, Yoruba? Furthermore, which are the frontiers of one "ethnic group"? If I was born in Barcelona, what would my ethnicity be? Catalan? Spanish? European? White? It is very subjective, it depends on the observer's perspective; for instance, if the observer is Black, I can just bedefined White. If she's from America, she sees me as European. If she's Spanish, she surely wants to know if I speak Catalan or Spanish as a mother tongue in order to identify my ethnicity.... Religion and ethnicity can be connected, but not necessarily: for instance, for Jewish people, religion is a criterion to identify a person as a Jew; so it was, theoretically, also for Nazists and it is for Israeli government. But then, some Israeli people are ateist, even if their mother is Jewess.... Another exemple: in Senegal most of people are Muslim, no matter which "ethnicity" they belong to (Mandinga, Serer, Wolof....), so that in this case, religion is not relevant... I agree with Angela: we are all mixed! Human groups have travelled, encountered and loved each other across history, and that's the fantastic result! About categorizing ethnicity, I recommend this article: Rogers Brubaker (2002), Ethnicity Without Groups, Available at: http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=wrb&sei-redir=1&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fscholar.google.es%2Fscholar%3Fq%3Dethnicity%2Bwithout%2Bgroups%26hl%3Dit%26as_sdt%3D0%26as_vis%3D1%26oi%3Dscholart%26sa%3DX%26ei%3DzV1LUcnJNqWg7Abf_IGICw%26ved%3D0CCoQgQMwAA#search=%22ethnicity%20without%20groups%22 Goog luck!

Two books by Marc Auge: "In the Metro" and - very important - Non places.

Thank you all for your comments. I should have been more precise and asked for information concerning minorities in countries other than the USA where there is ample data.