Georgia Persons - Race and Ethnicity in Comparative Perspective

RACE AND ETHNICITY
IN COMPARATIVE
PERSPECTIVE

The National Political Science Review

Volume 7

EDITOR
Georgia A. Persons
Georgia Institute of Technology

ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Robert C. Smith
San Francisco State University
Cheryl M. Miller
University of Maryland-Baltimore County

BOOK REVIEW EDITOR
Paula D. McClain
University of Virginia

Nolan Jones
National Governors
Association

William Daniels
Rochester Institute
of Technology

Charles Hamilton1
Columbia University

Lenneal Henderson
University of Baltimore

Mack Jones
Clark Atlanta
University

Edmund Keller
University of California
Los Angeles

Mamie Locke
Hampton University

Susan MacManus
University of South Florida

Lois Moreland
Spelman College

William Nelson
Ohio State University
College Park

David Covin
Sacramento State University

Charles E. Jones
Georgia State
University

Michael Preston
University of Southern
California

Wilbur Rich
Wellesley College

Joseph Stewart, Jr.
University of New Mexico

Linda Williams
University of Maryland

Volume 7

First published 1999 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

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Copyright 1999 by Taylor & Francis.

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ISSN: 0896-629-X

ISBN: ISBN 13: 978-0-7658-0435-8 (pbk)

William E. Nelson, Jr., and Gideon Ben-Tovim

Book Forum

The Editor offers special thanks to Lenneal Henderson who, under an arrangement with the previous Editor, Matthew Holden, assisted in obtaining several of the manuscripts included in the symposium featured in this volume. Thanks also to Celia Grams, Georgia Institute of Technology for clerical and administrative support for this volume.

The Editor offers special thanks to Associate Editors Robert C. Smith and Cheryl M. Miller, and to numerous colleagues in the discipline who served as reviewers.

In this issue of the National Political Science Review we engage the twin phenomena of race and ethnicity. In many parts of the world these two identity constructs are among the most powerful components of human and individual identity Race and ethnicity frequently overlap with other major identity constructs such as religion and nationalism but generally surpass these constructs in influencing the social, economic, and political context of most societies and consequently structuring the life course of affected individuals. Although race and ethnicity are social constructs, they are frequently manifest in such pervasive and profound characteristics such that at times they appear to be immutably primordial. The articles in this volume engage the debates about the nature of ethnic identity and the dynamics that structure and alter its varied manifestations in different locales.

It is both analytically and practically useful to examine the issue of race and African-American identity within the context of comparative analyses of race and ethnicity. Doing so forces us to raise questions that are rarely if ever examined by scholars of African American politics, namely, whether African American racial/ethnic identity is ultimately a transitory phenomenon, and what are the consequences of its possible, or likely, transitory nature? These are the kinds of questions that emerge when we examine the African American experience in the United States as merely one variant of global ethno-racial conflicts A symposium focusing on race and ethnicity in comparative perspective is particularly timely given the approach of a new millennium which is universally defined as the age of high technology and globalization. This appellation invokes varied images of advanced modernity, while ongoing experiences of racial and ethnic oppression and genocide stand in interesting juxtaposition. Globalization in its generic sense is not a new phenomenon. There have always been transnational explorations, trade and commerce, and migrations resulting in mixing and remixing of racial and ethnic demographics worldwide. What distinguishes the newer globalization is the cumulating impact of advanced technologies on this age old process, and the resulting gnawing intimacy of that which we now call the global village that is transforming and redefining the full range of human interactions. Underlying many of the articles in this volume are echoes of questions concerning the consequences of this new globalization for the identity constructs of race and ethnicity. It is hoped that questions provoked by this symposium will facilitate new paths of scholarly inquiry.

This volume also contains a collection of articles that add issues of race that are exclusive to the American context and the African American struggle for equality. Collectively, this set of articles reflects both the advances in the utility of racial identity as a political resource and the constraints imposed by race as a seemingly immutable discriminatory marker. It is hoped that this contradictory situation of constancy and change in regard to the African American predicament will also provoke new paths of scholarly inquiry.