Ethnic Groups in Flux: The Changing Ethnic Responses of American Whites
- 1 September 1986
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
- Vol. 487 (1) , 79-91
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716286487001004
Abstract
As whites become increasingly distant in generations and time from their immigrant ancestors, the tendency to distort, or remember selectively, one's ethnic origins increases. Distortions and inconsistencies in ethnic reporting are shown to vary with age, educational attainment, and marital status and even to exist within families when parents report the ethnic ancestry of their children. These examples of inconsistency, simplification, and systematic distortion all demonstrate the flux of the ethnic categories among white Americans. It is concluded that ethnic categories are social phenomena that over the long run are constantly being redefined and reformulated.Keywords
This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
- Unhyphenated whites in the United States *Published by Taylor & Francis ,2022
- Unhyphenated whites in the United States*Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1985
- The Varieties of Ethnic ExperiencePublished by Cornell University Press ,1984