Hat tip to the construct of whiteness for erasing heritage!
Wasn’t he the editor of Ethnic Groups and Boundaries? No matter.
Race - as a concept - started being problematic in the aftermath of WWII. In 1952 UNESCO published The Race Concept: Results of an Inquiry 1 which I think was the first thing that made an impact on the discourse in general.
FWIW, nGram shows a slow and steady increase of ethnicity starting in the 50’s and really gaining momentum in the 90’s.
Another problem is that 'ethnicity* seems to have different connotations in different countries
The term “ethnic” popularly connotes “race” in Britain, only less precisely, and with a lighter value load. In North America, by contrast, “race” most commonly means color, and “ethnics” are the descendants of relatively recent immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. “Ethnic” is not a noun in Britain. In effect there are no “ethnics”; there are only “ethnic relations”.2
However, I think ethnicity/ethnic is rapidly losing its usefulness, as it seems that “polite” racists and bigots have hi-jacked the term. This in turn may correspond with the rise of use in media and academia, prompting bigots to adapt their language.
1 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000073351
2 Wallman, S. “Ethnicity research in Britain”, Current Anthropology , v. 18, n. 3, 1977, pp. 531–532. (from Wiki)
Yes. The essay is his introduction chapter to that work.
I still greatly prefer it to the common alternatives, race or nation. Not sure which of those is worse, actually.
At least on this board, the “polite” racists of yore didn’t really use the term much, IIRC.
I have no real clue, but a few months ago I asserted that “ethnicity” = genes. And got a lot of pushback from possibly more expert folks who said “No; ethnicity is just culture, not genes”. See here and the few subsequent posts for the back-and-forth.
I think the most useful outcome of the dialog was learning that these terms probably mean different things in different countries / cultures. Or at least do in the popular usage; academic usage may be more fully standardized.
Those people were also wrong. Ethnicity can be any or all of a combination of culture, shared ancestry, religion, language, physical appearance, group history, etc.
For instance, my ethnicity encompasses multiple different genetic populations, different languages, different religions, different cultures, highly variable physical appearance. But a shared group history where initially disparate groups were pushed together for being not Black and not White. Now it’s very much its own thing, independent of that outside force.
That seems a very well-informed, thoughtful, and enlightened approach. The folks who live in a mostly monoculture and would wish to enforce that monoculture on any outliers certainly take a less nuanced POV.
And yes, I agree with you that they are wrong. But when one is listening to the noise coming out of their faces, one needs to use their definitions of their words, not your, my, or academia’s definitions.
In other words, it’s idjits all the way down. 
Exactly right. The entire system was based on white supremacy, any subdivision by ethnicities undermined this core concept that whites were superior and had the right and duty to rule over darker races.
Most of the whole world has racism in their past or present, and America is not exceptional in this. The UK had brexit due to racism, and that was only a few years ago.
Mind you, American history is no more based on racism than it is on any number of things. Capitalism, individualism, Christianity, etc etc etc.
My random opinions
Colonialism was not perpetrated by “Europeans” or “Caucasians” .
This evil eas committed specifically by Western Europe: britain france Spain portugal holland belgium with italy and germany joining in late.
The atlantic slave trade was also western.
Poles and Bulgarians arent responsible.
Furthermore, the white privilege that bulgarian-americans may enjoy in the USA does not transfer any special responsibility back to Hristo back in Plovdiv.
The UK did not ‘have Brexit due to racism’. There were several contributing factors, of which racism was arguably one. And per the distinction in the OP, it wasn’t racism in the American sense, since the immigration that people were objecting to was from other European countries.
Clearly one cause- xenophobia.
There’s just one problem: This narrative isn’t actually true. Data shows that Britain wasn’t suffering harmful economic effects from too many new migrants.
What Britain was suffering from too much of, however, was xenophobia — fear and hatred of immigrants. Bigotry on the basis of national origin.
That’s not something you give into and close the borders. It’s something you fight.
British xenophobia is not rational
When the 2016 Brexit referendum unleashed a nasty tide of xenophobia, racism and bigotry in the UK, in a way that I had never imagined possible in the country I had adopted…
Now, was that the only reason? No, but it was the reason Brexit passed in the referendum.
It’s not an irrational fear to dislike mass immigration in an already crowded country, especially when the government does nothing to deal with the increased demand for housing and services. It’s not irrational or immoral to want your culture and local area to remain the same. If people want to prioritise that over the supposed economic benefits, that’s a perfectly valid decision. What’s not rational is Boris Johnsonesque ‘cakeism’, telling people they could have whatever they want without compromise.
Tell that to the Lithuanians. Or the Greenland Inuit.
Actually a lot of campaigning for Brexit, such as the infamous “breaking point” posters, very much played on fear / dislike of brown people. It was never rational, but that’s just the way it was.
https://images.app.goo.gl/Y7qztzHHtEPG9VaJ7
(and yes, I know if you look closely at the poster many of the people may well be caucasian, but collectively it’s brownish people wearing scary clothes)
And now, sadly, the UK is in a similar spiral where the government is very much leaning in on the racist rhetoric because they can’t campaign on their record. We’re a few years behind the US though, and the rhetoric is in dog whistles about a need to “preserve british culture”.
I’d never seen that poster before your link.
There might be a bunch of Caucasians in that pic, but there are no Whites. Except Farage.
That was a naked an appeal to racism / culturism as can be. In US terms that’s the polar opposite of Mom & Apple Pie. In UK terms I see no pasty white plump older ladies, no teapots, no orderly queuing. I don’t even see any Polish plumbers or Russian tycoons. I just see a sea of Middle Eastern, Asian, or African Others wanting to stampede over / past brave Mr. Farage holding them back.
Yep, that was the idea.
The picture was of course also cherry-picked to not show many women and children, and also was taken in Slovenia. Farage continues to defend the poster, saying that refugees were free to move from Slovenia to the UK (no actual data on that though).
The saddest thing for me is the general pushing of the idea of immigrants, including refugees, just being hungry mouths. e.g. They get blamed for long NHS waiting lists.
The reality is that many of them do the jobs that Brits can’t or won’t, including a large proportion of NHS staff.
I had forgotten about that poster. Very likely that the refugee crisis in Europe contributed to Brexit: Merkel’s action showed that one country could unilaterally choose to break the rules, and the others could do nothing to stop them, despite suffering some of the consequences. And the sexual assault gangs in Cologne certainly reduced my enthusiasm for taking in asylum seekers, especially large numbers of young men from countries with infamously misogynistic cultures.
I’m very much in favor of accepting asylum seekers but Germany probably took too many in one go.
It’s not easy, but Britain’s approach of not processing claims, not having safe routes and relying on hotels and other expensive temporary accommodation to house asylum seekers certainly shows how not to do it. And I honestly think it’s deliberate: asylum seekers have been a talking point for at least as long as I can remember, it has to remain a problem to bring out their core vote.
Our current government is basically a cautionary example of how not to do things. And it isn’t helping them at all; they’re on track for a massacre at the next election. It’s hardly a vote winner to talk about lowering immigration when your party is responsible for raising it to the highest level in history. Pretty hard to blame anyone else when you’ve been in power for 13 straight years.
One of the reasons I voted Remain is that however corrupt and incompetent the EU, there was zero chance UK politicians were going to rise to the occasion and do a better job. And so far my judgement has been amply confirmed.
I kinda tend to think it is, actually.
Cultures change, trying to pretend that you can maintain them in amber is irrational. Trying to keep people out specifically because you believe they will cause change is arguably immoral.