1. Racial and Ethnic Families: Strengths and Stresses
Marriages and Families: Changes, Choices, and Constraints Seventh Edition
Nijole V. Benokraitis
Chapter Four
Racial and Ethnic Families:
Strengths and Stresses

2. Race and Ethnicity
The United States and Canada are relatively small as far as countries go, but they receive more than half of the world’s immigrants.

3. Assimilation and Cultural Pluralism
Assimilation is when an ethnic group totally conforms to their new culture, including interracial marriage. They hold on to almost nothing from their original culture.
Cultural pluralism is when cultures maintain many of their original cultural aspects, including language and marrying within their own group, while living peacefully within their new culture.

4. Changes in Immigration
In 1900 almost 85% of immigrants came from Europe. In 2006 Europeans made up about 13% of the immigrant population.
Today most immigrants come from Asia (mostly China and the Philippines) and Latin America (mostly Mexico).

6. Misconceptions about Illegal Immigrants
Many Americans hold misgivings about incoming illegal immigrants—they see these people as “moochers.” However,
More than 90% pay payroll and sales taxes.
They are not eligible for Medicare and food stamps, Welfare, or most other public-assistance programs.

7. Misconceptions about Illegal Immigrants
Fewer than 10% of Mexican immigrants, both documented and undocumented, have used an emergency room, compared with about 20% of native-born Americans and Mexican Americans.
Undocumented immigrants pay on average $80 per capita more in taxes than they will use in government services over their lifetime.

8. Undocumented Immigrants
The U.S. admits more than 1 million immigrants every year—more than any other country, however, another 12 million come into the country illegally, 59% from Mexico.

10. Attitudes about Immigrants
It really depends on the time in history that we are talking about as to what American’s think about immigration.
When the economy is booming and we have an overabundance of jobs, we welcome immigrants. However, when it is a down economy, most Americans see immigrants as taking much-needed jobs.

11. Is Immigration Harmful or Beneficial?
Some immigration critics allege that low-skilled workers reduce the standard of living and overload schools and welfare systems. Others note that because immigrants are younger, poorer, and less well-educated, they use more government services and pay less in taxes.

12. Is Immigration Harmful or Beneficial?
Immigrants themselves also experience costs. Employment recruiters promise good jobs and training but immigrants at the low end of the pay scale often find themselves living in abject poverty because they don’t receive the promised wages.

13. Is Immigration Harmful or Beneficial?
Immigrants also have fought in the Iraq war and have been honorably discharged, but they have not had their citizenship applications processed as they were promised.
Many immigrants provide work at low wages and are more likely to take jobs that other Americans are less willing to take.

14. Is There Balance?
Many scholars argue that on balance and in the long run, immigrants provide more benefits than costs.

15. Race and Ethnicity Still Matter
A minority group is a group of people who may be treated differently from the dominant group because of their physical or cultural characteristics such as skin color, gender, sexual orientation, or other characteristics.
Even in countries or states where minority groups outnumber the majority group, they usually have less political power.

16. Race
A racial group is a group of people who are different from the majority-category people because of physical characteristics. Racial traits like skin color, eye shape, and hair texture are inborn. As few as 6 of the body’s inherited 35,0000 genes determine the color of a person’s skin.

17. Ethnicity
An ethnic group is a set of people who identify with particular national origin or cultural heritage. Race can sometimes be seen—it is about biology. Ethnicity cannot be seen—it is about culture.

18. Social or Biological?
The idea of race and ethnicity are both social and biological issues. Race is really only skin deep and is only important because a society believes it is important. Ethnicity is important because it gives people their traditions and their cultural identity.

19. What’s in a Name?
Some racial or ethnic groups prefer certain labels over other labels. Much of the controversy has to do with where the original ancestors have come from. Racial and ethnic labels can be hurtful or helpful, depending on the group’s internal identity and how they prefer to be named.

20. Racism, Discrimination, and Prejudice
Racism is the belief that one’s own racial group is inherently superior to others. Prejudice is an attitude that prejudges people, usually in a negative way, who are different from us in race, religion, ethnicity, or some other social characteristic. Discrimination is the behavior that goes along with being prejudiced. It treats people unfairly and encompasses many areas.

22. African American Families
Like families of all ethnic or racial groups, there are many differences between African American families. African American families are often stetereotyped as matriarchal, but the most common family is that of men and women where there is equality in the relationship.

23. Absent Fathers
Across all families, black children are most likely to be raised by one parent, usually by a mother. As we will see in future chapters, fathers play an important role in their children’s lives.

24. Strengths of African American Families
Strong family kinship bonds
An ability to adapt family roles to outside pressures
A strong work ethic
Determination to succeed in education
Numerous self-help groups

25. African American Families
Parents and children—most African American families play a huge role in the lives of their children. Many black fathers make a conscious effort to be involved in their children’s lives. The close relationship between African American children and their parents can be very beneficial to the children being raised in these families.

26. African American Families
More than 33% of black low-income working families, and 20% of low- income working Hispanics, live in high- poverty neighborhoods, while only 3% of their white counterparts do.

27. Native American Families
American Indians and Alaska Natives only make up about 1.5% of the total population. Family Structure—about 62% of the nation's Native American children live with both parents, compared with 40% of the total population. They are also much more likely to live in extended family situations than most of the American population.

28. Gender Roles
Research on contemporary American Indian families and gender roles is virtually nonexistent. One exception is a study of 28 off-reservation Navajo families. Compared with other families, the Navajo fathers spent significantly more time in day-to-day child rearing activities.

29. Parents and Children
Children are important members of American tribes. Parents spend considerable time and effort in making items for children to play with or use in activities and ceremonies. Adults teach children to respect their elders.

30. Elders and Grandparents
Elders are important to a child’s care, upbringing, and development. They contribute to a family’s cohesiveness and stability. Many grandparents care for their grandchildren as it has become more financially stable for both parents to work outside the home.

31. Strengths of Native American Families
Strengths include relational bonding, a core that is built on widely-shared values and beliefs such as respect, generosity, and sharing across the tribe, band, and clan group. Some Native American cultures have spent generations building tribal self-sufficient businesses that can be passed down to the next generation.

33. Latino Families
Latino families are very diverse. About 70% of Latino children live in two-parent families. That is much higher than the national average. Gender Roles and Parenting—these vary on factors such as how long a family has lived in the U.S. and whether the wife or mother works outside the home. As with other groups, Latino parents encourage their children to be successful.

35. Parenting
Like most other parents, Latino parents are caring and loving toward their children. Even when both must work full-time, they spend as much time as possible with their children. Women place much value on being wives and mothers. For many Latino families, extended families meet needs of child care when families are working.

36. Strengths of Latino Families
Many Latino families are very resilient. They have adapted to hard economic times and language barriers to accomplish “The American Dream.”

37. Asian American Families
The term “Asian American” encompasses a wide range of cultures. They are from many different countries. Asian American families vary widely depending on country of origin, time of arrival in the U.S., past and current immigration policies, and whether the family are immigrants or refugees.

38. Family Structure
Asian American families are likely to be extended rather than nuclear and might include parents, children, grandparents, and unmarried siblings. Many Asian Americans follow Confucianism, which endorses a patriarchal social structure that instructs women to obey their husbands. Gender-role socialization tends to be very traditional.

39. Parents and Children
In many Asian American families the strongest ties are between parents and their children, rather than between spouses. Parents often sacrifice their personal needs to make sure the needs of their children are met. In turn, one is expected to obey one’s parents.

40. The Model Minority?
Is it fact or fiction? Many Asian families typify the “model minority,” but as with all human beings, this can be misleading.

41. The Model Minority?
There are three major factors why Asian American families have become so successful in the U.S.:
Many who immigrate have college degrees.
The Buddhist and Confucian values and traditions of many Asian American families follow closely the prerequisites for the American dream—hard work, education, and achievement.
They are usually harder working than any other group—majority or minority.

42. Middle Eastern Families
Middle Eastern family structures vary. Wealth and children are the “ornaments of life” for some of these cultures. Most Middle Eastern children live with both parents—84%. Middle Eastern families tend to frown on divorce.

43. Marriage and Gender Roles
The family is the center of everything, thus the family is the center of marriage. People don’t marry out of romantic “love,” they marry out of family obligation. Marriages tend to be endogamous. Middle Eastern culture mandates strict gender-role expectations. A wife should always act honorably and do nothing that would humiliate her husband or family. Gender roles are changing.

44. Parents and Children
Parents and children usually have very strong bonds. In one study of Arab Canadian teenagers, for example, nine out of ten said that they would prefer to talk to their parent—mostly Mom—about personal problems or issues. There are, however, double standards in the lives of many young teenagers and their relationships with siblings and parents. Boys are respected over girls.

45. Strengths of the Middle Eastern Families
They cope well with discrimination because they have a strong ethnic identity. Most have extended kin networks as well.

46. Interracial and Interethnic Relationships
More and more people are choosing partners who are not the same as they are in one way or another. In a recent report in the U.S., 4% of children were identified as multiracial. Of the three million intermarriages, the out-marriage rates of blacks and whites are much less than the rates for Asians, Latinos, and other racial and ethnic groups.

48. Interracial and Interethnic Relationships
The racial and ethnic composition of American families is changing. These changes are expected to continue in the future as more and more people immigrate to the United States.