Social Services and the Ethnic Community

1996

Social Services and the Ethnic Community takes a hard look at the history and experience of several long established ethnic minority groups in the United States and critically assesses the majority lens through which they have been viewed thus far. Inglehart and Becerra have undertaken an extremely difficult task-to address the common and unique issues faced by each of several minority groups-and have handled it with insight and sensitivity. They present the history of each group in the United States, the response of the majority to it, the impact of the response on the minority group, the reaction of the social services delivery system and the effects of this system. They discuss the evolution of social work in this century and its relevance for the ethnic community and present a rationale for the development of ethnic social services. The book begins with a recognition that we have long moved from the concept of the "melting pot" to beginning to recognize that the United States is, in fact, a mosaic of different peoples and cultures. The experience that brought these people to this country (or their experience in this country when the early immigrants arrived, in the case of the Native Americans), their values, culture and tradition, in addition to their physical characteristics, set them apart from each other and not only is assimilation not often preferred, it is often not possible. Jnglehart and Becerra discuss the historical context of social work and the provision of services that were grounded in the social milieu of the times and suggest that the services delivered tended to be paternalistic and reinforce racist and isolationist practices. The latter part of the book is devoted to providing practical approaches to ethnic sensitive practice. After presenting a rationale for the book, chapters 2 and 3 discuss the White ethnic groups, African Americans, Native Americans, Mexicans, Japanese and Chinese. In addition to indicating the reasons most of these groups came to the United States the authors discuss the types of discrimination and racial violence each of these groups experienced and their further victimization by law enforcement and the judicial systems. Furthermore, they provide an interpretation of the experience of each of these groups and the response of the well-meaning dominant society, a response

Journal of Ethnic And Cultural Diversity in Social Work, 2012

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2007

Reviewed by Eric K. Yamamotot INTRODUCTION "I couldn't talk about it for over forty years. Not to my children. Not to friends. Not a word."l The sixty-year old woman, born and raised an American citizen, was speaking of the Japanese American internment: the U.S. government's World War II incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry in desolate concentration camps without charges, trial or, as ultimately shown, evidence of group-based disloyalty or military necessity.2 The woman lost her home, family business, relatives and, most important of all, her dignity and freedom. Racial vilification followed her Copyright <£i 2001 California Law Review, Inc. California Law Review, Inc. (CLR) is a California nonprofit corporation. CLR and the authors are solely responsible for the content of their publications.

Contemporary Sociology, 1982

These quarrels aside, this is an excellent and informative book on a critical social issue: the succession of groups to positions of real or potential power. This volume is an important contribution to the literature on ethnic succession in general, and is highly recommended to political sociologists, urban and community researchers, and specialists in race and ethnic relations.

The Blackwell Companion to Sociology, 2001

This course will focus on the various theoretical and political theories of race and ethnicity. Although the course will deal primarily with the development of race and ethnic relations in the United States, comparatively we will understand the global consequences of racism, prejudice and ethnocentrism. The first portion of the course will be dedicated to an overview of the major components of race and ethnic studies, to be then followed by a series of ethnic profiles through which such components will be given cultural and contextual embodiment. The final section of Race and Ethnic Relations will focus on the political and epistemological dimensions of race and ethnicity. In particular, some new positive as well as negative foci of race relations will be highlighted.

2000

The industrially advanced world has expressed a considerable concern over ethnicity, 'race,' and migration. In countries with a long colonial history such as Britain, France, the Netherlands, and in countries where the indigenous people were subjugated by a 'white majority' such as the United States, Australia and Canada, or even in countries where migrants have relatively recently come to attention such as Greece and Ireland, several social issues are intertwined with the issues of ethnicity, 'race,' and migration. The 9/11 bombing in New York and Washington, D.C., Madrid bombings in 2004 (also known as 3/11), and July 2005 bombings in London, fed debates about the relationship between minority ethnic groups and terrorism (see Wall, 2004). Meanwhile, the riots in Paris and other French cities, in the late 2005, brought abundant light onto the issue of integration of minority ethnic people in the 'mainstream' society (Graff, 2005; The Economist, 2005a). Similarly, Amnesty International has pointed out that since 9/11, 'racial profiling' has increased in the United States (Amnesty International, 2004). 1 For example, in response to an increase in the number of complaints from 'minority' groups, 2 a growing number of 1 Racial profiling refers to the discriminatory practice by member so of the criminal justice system: usually law enforcement officials, of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. 2 By the sociological term 'minority ethnic groups' we mean groups, who share common cultural, genealogical and ancestry characteristics and consider themselves as a distinct group (Smith, 1987). By 'racial' minorities we mean groups of people with shared, inherited physical features such as skin colour and by shared nationality, religious affiliation, language use, etc. (see Abizadeh, 2001). Wirth, L., "The Problem of Minority Groups," page 347 in Ralph Linton (ed.), The Science of Man in the World Crisis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1945. The political scientist and law professor, Gad Barzilai, has offered a theoretical definition of non-ruling communities that conceptualizes groups that don't rule and are excluded from resources of political power. Barzilai, G. Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities.

such as gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status that condition the exposure, experience, response, and impact of life stresses in stress-disease models. The three papers in this section expand current models of stress and disease by investigating several hypotheses about the roles that gender, ethnicity, discrimination, and acculturation play in accounting for group differences in psychological distress and dysfunction in subjective and objective indicators of health problems and depression, and in teen drug use.

The Journal of Economic History, 2005

From a country founded by settlers and slaves, the United States has grown into a nation of immigrants. The volume Not Just Black and White argues that the arrival of successive immigrant waves-from the not-quite-white ethnics from Southern and Eastern Europe at the turn of ...