| Chapter 1: | Reconsiderations of Race, Ethnicity, and Identity: Transnational Migrants in Post–World War II Global Society |
then Ghanaians created their ties to Obama through ethnicity, while Obama did so through racial identity. But if we focus on race as a negative concept and ethnicity as a positive one, we could then say that both Ghanaians and Obama created their connections through ethnicity. It is ambiguous. If we say both Obama and the Ghanaians used elements of race to create their relationships, then race would not be a negative public perspective in this case. Not only wouldn't it be a negative perspective, but Ghanaians even used the often “negative” factor of physical classification to create strong social solidarity.
In the Japanese case, things are equally complicated. Perhaps because of postwar economic growth, Japanese have often been categorized as “white” by others because of their relative affluence (as seen, for example, in South Africa under the old apartheid regulations). Also, in the United States, Japanese—as other East Asians, too, for that matter—sometimes seem to occupy a middle-ground between the often contentious Black-White dichotomies. However, usually Japanese people themselves do think in such polar racial terms. They do not think of themselves as “Yellow” in the way that European Americans, say, think of themselves as “White.” Japanese actually distinguish themselves from other East Asians, such as Chinese or Koreans. Again, clearly the phenotypical/biological is being conflated with the ethnic/cultural.
What Is the Essence of Ethnicity?
There are two major theories of ethnicity I consider in this volume: the primordial perspective and the social mobilizationist perspective. The primordial perspective emphasizes as the basis of ethnicity pre-migrant, primordial group ties associated with physical affinity, common language, common religion, and other cultural and historical commonalities. On the other hand, the social mobilizationist perspective sees ethnicity as an emergent concept where ethnic connections are created and re-created in the context of adjustment in the host society (cf. Min and Kim 1999, 17).
In chapter 3 in this volume, I argue that ethnicity results from people's relationships, which are established and based upon common