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FROM SHARED DEMOGRAPHIC CATEGORIES TO COMMON POLITICAL DESTINIES
Immigration and the Link from Racial Identity to Group Politics1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 June 2008
Abstract
Little controversy remains about the profound shifts in the demographic landscape of the United States since the mid-1960s. Far more controversial is whether this transformation will bring about a new politics of race. This paper argues that a key to settling this debate is a clearer specification of the “identity-to-politics” link: the nexus between a population defined by shared racial and ethnic labels and a collective group politics based on those definitions. The paper articulates some potential pitfalls in how this nexus is commonly specified in empirical research and proposes an approach that distinguishes five key processes that are typically lumped together in linking shared demographic categories to common political destinies: definition, identification, consciousness, venue selection, and choice. The paper describes an example of this approach (the case of ethnoracial classification and the empirical measurement of race) and concludes by discussing its potential utility and limitations.
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- Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2007
Footnotes
Substantial portions of this essay are also contained in Lee (2008a).
References
REFERENCES
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