CONCLUSION

The inclusion of a critical focus on race into the longstanding field of ethnic geography provides contemporary, fruitful inroads into understanding human diversity. Here, the five themes of cultural geography have provided new perspectives on ethnicity and race. Ethnicity and race help shape the pattern of rural homelands and islands as well as urban ethnic neighborhoods and ghettos. Immigration is actively reshaping the ethnic mosaic of many places, including the United States. Human mobility routes—whether voluntary or involuntary, undertaken in response to persecution in a home region or opportunities beckoning beyond one’s borders—shape the patterns that ethnicity and race assume in the new land. Sometimes similarities between home and host habitats direct migrants to certain places rather than others. Globalization appears to intensify age-old tendencies to distinguish, and discriminate, among groups. Racism seems particularly resistant to change. Certain natural habitats can protect ethnically distinct groups. Yet, environmental racism illustrates how minority peoples and the places they inhabit can become the targets of undesirable practices, such as pollution. On the flip side, ethnic pride and the active construction of ethnically and racially distinct landscapes are evident throughout the world.

By now, we hope you are beginning to think and see as geographers do. The world is patterned in terms of culture. What these patterns are, why they change, how they change, and how these changes affect people living in places are the basic focus of cultural geography. Ethnicity and race, along with language and religion, lie at the heart of many of today’s most pressing political geography questions.

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Match each of the terms on the left with its definition on the right. Click on the term first and then click on the matching definition. As you match them correctly they will move to the bottom of the activity.

Question

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You can learn more about ethnic geography and the geography of race on the Internet at the following web sites:

Airriess, Christopher. 2002. “Creating Vietnamese Landscapes and Place in New Orleans.” In Kate A. Berry and Martha L. Henderson (eds.), Geographical Identities of Ethnic America: Race, Space, and Place, pp. 228-254. Reno: University of Nevada Press.

Arreola, Daniel D. 2002. Tejano South Texas: A Mexican American Cultural Province. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Associated Press. 2006. “500,000 Rally Immigration Rights in Los Angeles.” MSNBC News, March 25. http://oceanpark.com/webmuseum/2006/500000_immigration_rights_rally_los_angeles_msnbc.

Bhatty, Ayesha. 2012. “Canada Prepares for an Asian Future.” BBC News, May 25. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-radio-and-tv-18149316.

Bullard, Robert D. (ed.). 1993. Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots. Boston: South End Press.

Carlson, Alvar W. 1990. The Spanish American Homeland: Four Centuries in New Mexico’s Río Arriba. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Catania, Sara. 2006. “From Fish Sauce to Salsa—New Orleans Vietnamese Adapt to Influx of Latinos.” New American Media, October 16. http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=3e0ffe22ee7a7bcbd9a2e1d4fb79f676.

Frey, William H. 2001. “Micro Melting Pots.” American Demographics (June): 20-23.

Grieco, Elizabeth M., and Edward N. Trevelyan. 2010. Place of Birth of the Foreign-Born Population: 2009. American Community Survey Briefs. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/acsbr09-15.pdf.

Hollinger, David. 1995. Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism. New York: Basic Books.

Hsieh, Chiao-min, and Jean Kan Hsieh. 1995. China: A Provincial Atlas. New York: Macmillan.

Massey, Doreen. 1994. Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Motzafi-Haller, Pnina. 1997. “Writing Birthright: On Native Anthropologists and the Politics of Representation.” In Deborah E. Reed-Danahay (ed.), Auto/Ethnography: Rewriting the Self and the Social, pp. 195-222. Oxford: Berg.

National Geographic. “Geno 2.0: The Greatest Journey Ever Told.” The Genographic Project. https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/.

Nostrand, Richard L., and Lawrence E. Estaville, Jr. (eds.). 2001. Homelands: A Geography of Culture and Place Across America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Oberle, Alex P., and Daniel D. Arreola. 2008. “Resurgent Mexican Phoenix.” Geographical Review 98(2): 171-196.

O’Loughlin, John, Frank Witmer, Thomas Dickinson, Nancy Thorwardson, and Edward Holland. 2007. “Preface and Map Supplement.” Special Issue: The Caucasus: Political, Population, and Economic Geographies. Eurasian Geography and Economics 48(2): 127-134.

Pastor, Jr., Manuel, Rachel Morello-Frosch, and James Sadd. 2010. Air Pollution and Environmental Justice: Integrating Indicators of Cumulative Impact and Socio-Economic Vulnerability into Regulatory Decision-Making. California Air Resources Board. http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/apr/past/04-308.pdf.

Pillsbury, Richard. 1998. No Foreign Food: American Diet in Time and Place. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.

Portes, Alejandro, and Rubén G. Rumbaut. 2006. Immigrant America: A Portrait. 3rd ed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Rehder, John B. 2004. Appalachian Folkways. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Scott, James C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

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Shortridge, Barbara G., and James R. Shortridge (eds.). 1998. The Taste of American Place: A Reader on Regional and Ethnic Foods. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield.

Sivanandan, A. 2001. “Poverty Is the New Black.” The Guardian, August 17. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/aug/17/globalisation.race. Tsuda, Takeyuki. 2006. “When Minorities Migrate: The Racialization of Japanese Brazilians in Brazil and Japan.” In Lola Romanucci, George De Vos, and Takeyuki Tsuda (eds.), Ethnic Identity: Problems and Prospects for the Twenty-first Century, pp. 208-232. Latham, Md.: AltaMira Press.

U.S. EPA. 1996. Toxic Release Inventory. http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/auto/mapofla.html.

Valentino, Benjamin A. 2005. Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

(For additional suggested readings, see the Contemporary Human Geography LaunchPad: http://www.macmillanhighered.com/launchpad/DomoshCHG1e.)

Alkon, Alison Hope. 2012. Black, White, and Green: Farmers Markets, Race, and the Green Economy. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press. Often discussed as progressive sites for advancing environmentally progressive food agendas, farmers markets also incorporate problematic politics of race, class, and social justice.

Berry, Kate A., and Martha L. Henderson (eds.). 2002. Geographical Identities of Ethnic America: Race, Space, and Place. Reno: University of Nevada Press. Eighteen different experts give their views on American ethnic geography, explaining how place shapes ethnic/racial identities and, in turn, how these groups create distinctive spatial patterns and ethnic landscapes.

Conzen, Michael P. (ed.) 2010. The Making of the American Landscape. 2nd ed. New York and London: Routledge. A sweeping account of the last 500 years of human and environmental intersections that have shaped the look and feel of America’s cultural landscapes today, with heavy emphasis on ethnicity.

Frazier, John W., Florence Margai, and Eugene Tetty-fio. 2003. Race and Place: Equity Issues in Urban America. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press. Explores how the cultural landscapes of U.S. cities express geographies of racial and ethnic discrimination.

Lee, Jennifer 8. 2008. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. New York: Twelve. Many “ethnic” cuisines common in the United States are, in fact, largely invented and popularized, rather than in the home country of the immigrants in question. Such is the case with American “Chinese food” favorites, such as fortune cookies, General Tsao chicken, chop suey, and other dishes. Lee traces the fascinating cultural, nutritional, migratory, interethnic, and economic histories at work behind this American tradition.

Miyares, Ines M., and Christopher A. Airriess. 2007. Contemporary Ethnic Geographies in America. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield. An edited collection featuring chapters authored by renowned contemporary ethnic geographers on a variety of topics ranging from Central American soccer leagues to Muslim immigrants from Lebanon and Iran; also includes a geographer’s view of the ethnic festivals with which we began this chapter.

Nostrand, Richard L., and Lawrence E. Estaville, Jr. (eds.). 2001. Homelands: A Geography of Culture and Place Across America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. A collection of essays on an array of North American ethnic homelands, together with in-depth treatment of the geographical concept of homeland.

Pulido, Laura. 2006. Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press. Analyzes radical activism by African Americans, Chicanos, and Japanese Americans in Southern California.

Rehder, John B. 2004. Appalachian Folkways. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. An exploration of the folk culture of the Appalachian region of the United States, including its distinctive settlement history, folk architecture, cuisine, speech, and belief systems.

Schein, Richard (ed.). 2006. Landscape and Race in the United States. London and New York: Routledge. Contributions by leading geographers studying the cultural geographies of race provide an updated and critical insight into this growing subfield.