(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best ethnic demographic studies

I agree with /u/keyilan that its not too late to go back to school in your 30s. I started my PhD at 33. I have a friend who started her MA (and is now in a PhD program) in her 50s. That being said, if you have a stable job you're happy with and want to avoid going into debt, and if you're not completely and totally sure you want to pursue a degree in anthropology, then it's probably better to be an autodidact.

Anyway, here's some suggestions for some stuff on sociocultural anthropology methodology (and historical descriptions of such things) that may be of interest to you.

Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches by H. Russel Bernard (he is the methods guy in sociocultural anthro--and this book is rather dry but super detailed and will teach you all the basics of anthro methodology.)

Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples by Linda Tuhiwai Smith (a classic text in indigenous methods.)

Participant Observation and The Ethnographic Interview by James Spradley

Fieldwork Is Not What It Used To Be edited by James Faubion and George Marcus (I have not read this, but have heard good things about it.)

Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment by Han Vermeulen (this is a history of ethnographic methods rather than a book about methodology, but it's super interesting.)

Read Thomas Sowell's book: Black Rednecks and White Liberals

"The notion that the ghetto black was the authentic black not only spread among both
white and black intellectuals, it had social repercussions far beyond the intellectual community.

Rooting black identity in a counterproductive culture not only reduced incentives to move
beyond that culture, it cut off those within that culture from other blacks who had advanced
beyond it, who might otherwise have been sources of examples, knowledge, and experience
that could have been useful to those less fortunate. But more successful blacks were
increasingly depicted as either irrelevant non-members of the black community or even as
traitors to it.

In turn, this meant that many blacks who had a wider cultural exposure and
greater socioeconomic success felt a need to conform, to some degree or another, to a more
narrow ghetto view of the world, perhaps using ghetto language, in order to prove their
“identity” with their own race. "

I would highly highly recommend you read the book, "Being White: Stories of Race and Racism" By Karyn D. McKinney. As a white, upper middle class, homosexual, male, reading this book helped me gain a lot of perspective on the role my race has played in shaping my opinions and life experiences. Here's the amazon page and this is the product description which briefly explains what the book is about...

> Karyn McKinney uses written autobiographies solicited from young white people to empirically analyze the contours of the white experience in U.S. society. This text offers a unique view of whiteness based on the rich data provided by whites themselves, writing about what it means to be white.

Check it out! It might help you understand what happened to your friend in class today.

EDIT: IT might help*

Great post, there is a lot of interesting and valuable stuff in here and I am very glad that you and the rest of the mods took a very explicit stance on the matter!

One thing that stood out to me is this part:

>To be absolutely clear, none of what I have written should be interpreted to mean that white people are inherently evil. It should also not read as a long-winded expression of hatred towards white people on my part.

Race is such a critical concept and a highly loaded topic and I applaud you for raising this issue, while on the other hand I couldn't help but feel a bit sad that this had to be said, though I competely understand. I found that with racism and sexism in white people and men, there is one pretty common reaction that eventually comes up in any discussion, which is that pointing out someone's privilege does not mean that this person has it easy and I think a lot of white and/or male fragility is exactly due to this reaction. I think the clearest explanation of privilege I came across was to define privilege as an absence of struggle in one domain. Being a white man does not mean you have an easy life - it means that on top of the struggles you may face, you don't face the struggle of being discriminated against because of your race (or gender in certain aspects) in most cases.

If I might make one suggestion, I'd highly suggest Robin DiAngelo's book What Does It Mean to Be White?: Developing White Racial Literacy to anyone interested in the topic of racism. While her book White Fragility focuses mostly on, well, white fragility and I can't recommend enough, I found What Does It Mean to Be White? to be a great introduction and basis for the topic. It is like a handbook that she developed through her years of leading antiracist workshops and covers nearly all aspects (though for the experienced reader it might be a bit reductive in some parts) of racism in a highly readable manner.

I know this is a "change my view" thread but... I was trying to read what others would say and I'm just seeing a lot of strong and hateful opinions based on skewed data and misinformation... I honestly think you're right and that so much of discrimination by race/class/gender is utter white supremacy, since the beginning of the US (assuming that you're talking about the United States). I've been reading this book called "Race, Class, and Gender in the United States" (https://www.amazon.com/Race-Class-Gender-United-States/dp/1429242175) and it helps explain a lot of how language and other things have been shaped to help keep certain people in power. You might find it's an interesting read of that's your thing.

Hoping for more understanding to come your way and less bullshit.

Disclaimer, I dislike Identity Politics and I think white Identity Politics is the most pernicious. I was kind of hesitant to share this as I didn't want people to think its some sort of nod of approval of Identity politics... But this bit of research is pretty interesting Hope you find it so as well.

>Ashley Jardina is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Duke University. Her research explores the nature of racial attitudes, the development of group identities, and the way in which these factors influence political preferences and behavior. She is primarily interested in how Americans are responding to increasing diversity, and her current project explores the conditions under which white racial identification and white consciousness among white Americans is a salient and significant predictor of policies, candidates, and attitudes toward racial and ethnic groups. She is also interested in the study of gender and politics. Her dissertation won the 2015 American Political Science Association award for the best dissertation in race and ethnic politics.
>
>Ashley recently published a new book, White Identity Politics, that “offers a landmark analysis of emerging patterns of white identity and collective political behavior, drawing on sweeping data.” In this episode Ashley speaks with Chris about her book, and how she found contrasting attitudes between white people in America who identify with their race and white people who don’t. She also explains how previous generations of political scientists have been mistaken in conflating the issue of racial prejudice and the issue of identity when explaining the politics of white Americans.
>
>Related Links
>
>White Identity Politics by Ashley Jardina
>
>Dangerous Frames: How Ideas about Race and Gender Shape Public Opinion by Nicholas Winter
>
>The Disturbing, Surprisingly Complex Relationship Between White Identity Politics and Racism, New Yorker Q&A with Isaac Chotiner
>
>Interview with Ashley Jardina on the New Books Network
>
>Transcript
>
>This is a transcript of the episode.

Thomas Sowell, a black Havard educated economist has an interesting theory he's written about in his book Black Rednecks and White Liberals. His main thesis is that the ghetto culture in the poor black community is actually white cracker Southern culture which originated in the Celtic borderlands, particularly the Ulster region of Scotland. It's pretty fascinating and incredibly well sourced. Most people simply do not realize the overlaps between Celtic culture and black culture. Gaelic was the first language many slaves learned, gospel music was based on Scottish music, a lot of the "ebonics" language patterns are actually rooted in antiquated borderland pronunciations. Anyway, Sowell traces some of the more destructive cultural values of poor, black communities to the values they learned from the Celtic fringe elements that immigrated to the US before the Anglicization of Scotland. He shows how these values were incredibly destructive to any group who adopted them regardless of race. He explains the success of black people from other countries in terms of the fact that they weren't exposed to the same destructive culture and didn't internalize the same values.

If anyone is interested you can hear the book on tape for free on Youtube. The first 3 hours or so is the part that most addresses these links.

Black Rednecks & White Liberals by Thomas Sowell -

Here is the audio version available on Youtube for free.

Read this book: White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812

Long, but amazing and totally worth it.

Also, In the Matter of Color: Race and the American Legal Process: The Colonial Period

This is the generally held scholarly view yes. Want to hear something really cool? Let's say a meteor hits earth, and the only human beings that survived were people in East Africa still in the places where humanity first evolved. That population still contains 99% of the human races genetic variation.


This is a good place to start. If you can find an online version go nuts.

Or you can just go searching for articles about the concept of race from an anthropological standpoint.

Thomas Sowell, probably the greatest black intellectual alive today has been saying as much for a long time. And of course I doubt whites have more sensible political opinions, the only difference is that blacks have an easier time asking for handouts and special treatment (even if in reality it harms them more than help), whites would do the same stupid things if they could.

Race and Culture: A World View and Black Rednecks and White Liberals are two great books by Thomas Sowell on the subject.

Of course, in the current climate of political correctness paranoia, anything that can in any way be interpreted as criticism of a 'minority' is not acceptable, whatever it is true or not.

Dude. I'm trying to help you and provide some information but you seem really dug into the "I'm not a racist" knee-jerk defensiveness. I might suggest a couple of books if you really care about learning about this stuff. These should get you started.

https://www.amazon.com/You-Want-Talk-About-Race/dp/1580056776

https://www.amazon.com/White-Fragility-People-About-Racism/dp/B07D6XQQRY

http://www.amazon.com/Bengali-Harlem-Histories-South-America/dp/0674066669

http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/04/28/the-bengali-villagers-who-migrated-to-america/

http://inamerica.blogs.cnn.com/2013/02/15/bengali-harlem-author-documents-a-lost-history-of-immigration-in-america/

One of the best books I read was about the Indians who went on a ship 100 years ago and settled in Central California. Below are some links about it:

Here are some neat links regarding the diaspora:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YhiO3QcP0A

http://www.sikhpioneers.org/cpma.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punjabi_Mexican_American

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/punjabi-sikh-mexican-american-community-fading-into-history/2012/08/13/cc6b7b98-e26b-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_story.html

http://www.amazon.com/Making-Ethnic-Choices-Californias-Americans/dp/1566392020

Here.
Are.
Some.
Books.

Some.
More.
Books.

Would you like a link to my amazon wishlist to see all the books? There are a lot of non-Islamic stuff there to that you might like.

The first example that comes to mind to me is Aphrodite. Aphrodite is generally believed to be adopted to Greek religion from the Phoenician fertility goddess Astarte, after the co-colonization of Cyprus. A quick look at this reveals that of all the major greek dieties, Aphrodite is the only one not mentioned in Mycenaean records. Source

Also, the Romans went as far as to replace their god's original "meanings" with those of their sort-of counterpart Greek gods. Indeed, if you look up Roman "Mystery Religions" these usually were cults attributed to borrowed gods from other religions, such as Sol Invictus (Persian sun god I think?). There's even the belief among some scholars the Christianity itself, or Jesus Worship, likely began as a Roman Mystery Religion.

Interestingly enough, there are those who advance the idea that "black culture" is derived from redneck culture.

Thomas Sowell's Black Rednecks and White Liberals might interest you.

Ah, sorry to misunderstand that aspect of your question.

To me personally (opinion here), having more cultures to study helps devise theories that apply to all, much like biologist studying 100 trees and comparing them. The mechanisms with which cultures are formed are universal: a culture is a manifestation of those mechanisms. Cultures, subcultures, and language are always in flux: they develop, they evolve, they merge, they splinter, they intersect, they change. It's part of being human, and I would say this is something that is impossible to stop.

Here are some resources:

An overview of anthropology theories: http://www.ijhssnet.com/journals/Vol_4_No_10_1_August_2014/19.pdf

Cross culture research journal : http://journals.sagepub.com/home/ccr

Atlas of world cultures (murdock): https://www.amazon.com/Atlas-World-Cultures-George-Murdock/dp/0822984857/ref=sr_1_1

Cultural Anthropology Through Film: https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Anthropology-Cultural-Through-Ethnographic/dp/0205512666/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0


List of anthropology films to watch: https://www.uregina.ca/arts/anthropology/film-list.html


Also search on subcultures as well as reference groups as it relates to sociological theory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference_group

Another point of interest would be the various alternatives to the GDP: https://theconversation.com/beyond-gdp-are-there-better-ways-to-measure-well-being-33414.

Research methods: https://revisesociology.com/2016/01/03/research-methods-sociology/

There's an entire volume of responses to Okin that is truly worth the read. Being something of a modern liberal myself, Nussbaum's response to Okin and Okin's response to many of the critics are outstanding.

If we are to take seriously the separateness and equality of persons then the concept of ethnicity almost becomes immoral in itself, because it can be construed as an attempt to undermine both separateness by construing all people of a certain ethnicity as being morally tied to each other, and equality by construing certain ethnic groups (an accident of birth) as having more or less value. The project of modern liberalism and arguably modernity and the Enlightenment in general is an attempt to ground morality in universal truths or meta-moral truths that transcend the division created by nationalism, tribalism and racism. The rational and reasonable individual is the unit by which a moral or political system is to deal with and be judged by.

The best book on the subject is R. Halliburton Jr.'s Red Over Black: Black Slavery Among the Cherokee Indians. It's well-researched and very even-handed, and including many primary sources.

The WPA Slave Narratives are absolutely fascinating. The Oklahoma Volume has numerous accounts of Native-Black interactions.

East Coast tribes have much more interactions with African-Americans than other tribes, but it's interesting that Pueblo peoples had contact with an African before they ever encountered a European. His name was Esteban and he was killed in 1539.

The first Native American artist to achieve success in the international art world was Edmonia Lewis, Ojibwe-Haitian-African, who maintained a studio in Rome, Italy in the 1870s.

War in the Tribal Zone. Excellent book.

a terrible image by all accounts. I recommend you read up on actual arab and arab american feminisms. This book was taught last semester to me and it would help images like this never reach this site. https://www.amazon.com/Arab-American-Feminisms-Violence-Belonging/dp/0815633866

So a long time ago, before I started college, an anthropologist friend of mine gave me this book and I think it might be a good place to start digging into the actual literature on the subject. But it's just a starting point. I've read this one and a few others, but I'd still consider my understanding infantile.

This is illogical, it likely has everything to do with learned behavior and culture, not genetics. This is all post-hoc explanation, there is no science and the article should not be treated as such. For a better explanations of the cultural origins of the behavior discussed please read Black rednecks and White liberals, by Thomas Sowell.

>It's the same reason the market solves the problem of discrimination, surely?

Actually, Thomas Sowell has written at length about how superior the market is in terms of discrimination to minorities than the State: "The competitiveness of the market puts a price on discrimination, thereby reducing but not necessarily eliminating it"

• Markets and Minorities
  
• The Economics and Politics of Race

Wow, there is a lot that can be said about this. We need a few hours though. Heres some light reading though,

Howard Zinn

Jabari Asim

Thomas Sowell

All good reads and lends a little perspective on "why so neurotic" about race in America. They did their damnedest to place a system that would make sure this would remain a white man's society. We are still dealing with the fallout.

EDIT FOR BUTTHURTEDNESS: Why downvotes and no comments. Have you guys read these books? Economic weirdness led to a lot of the race problems we have in this country and these books point out some of those. Chris Rock made a joke about it. It's unfortunate that a lot of the weird laws and rules that made distinctions between the races really came into stride after 1776, but they did. Not Only that! That is a nice well rounded list of books. Howard Zinn (Nice harsh look at forgotten history) to Thomas Sowell (Thats as conservative you can get about race without falling into Stormfront territory).

These are a must-read for all PoCs

https://www.amazon.com/Longer-Talking-White-People-About/dp/140887055X

https://www.amazon.com/White-Fragility-People-About-Racism/dp/B07D6XQQRY/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1540937009&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=white+fragility

Hmm...

Read Black Rednecks and White Liberals and then tell me if you still believe that.

Susan Miller Okin

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Multiculturalism-Women-Susan-Moller-Okin/dp/0691004323

> The definitions that I am referencing are from “The Social Construction of Difference and Inequality: Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality” with Tracey E. Ore describing race as “a group of people who perceive themselves and are perceived by others as possessing distinctive hereditary traits.”

That's the definition in what you linked which is different from what you're saying.

In a book called "black rednecks and white liberals"

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Rednecks-Liberals-Thomas-Sowell/dp/1594030863

They talk about middleman minorities. Jews are the middleman minority in the US, which is why they go through envy and racism etc.

If you notice though, it's only a few people on Reddit that actually talk about "the jews". Then again, you also have a few people who think the Chinese government purposely put lead in the paint, and that minorities just don't know what hard work is.

I am not comparing apples to oranges by comparing the people who support the killing of police officers in New York, who "burn this bitch down" or "tear it down" with the murderers of matt Shepard, for both are the groups creating the tension in the situation. The reason the government can use force and you cannot is that we have given the government that discretion as part of the social contract. If you would rather live a life that is brutish, nasty, and short, you are free to leave the contract, you just can't stay here after. But you will

Just keep pretending you are being oppressed by the system. Assume everyone who disagrees with you is a white cis middle class male who pays his taxes and you're in the clear. Surprisingly enough the country works; you've just seen all these great movies and hear about the few instances where something goes wrong that make national news because of their rarity and you want to rebel against something. What do you think is going to happen when you've pissed enough people off? When a majority of the public hates your movement?

As for your "systemic racism" here's a Dr. Thomas Sowell book that may interest you. There is also a free audio copy on YouTube the last few essays deal with the lingering effects of slavery, of education in minority communities, and the civil rights movement. (don't worry Dr. Sowell is black).

You don't like the government, or even the concept of government do you then? But you want the government to change for you and your small group, well at least your belief in the death of democracy is consistent.

You're trying to light a fire and blame the fire department when the house burns down, you are living in the republic Gracchis, and you want to provoke a Caesar.