Symbolic ethnicity

Symbolic ethnicity is a sociological term that describes a nostalgic allegiance to, love for, and pride in a cultural tradition that can be felt and lived without having to be incorporated to the person's everyday behavior; as such, a symbolic ethnic identity usually is composed of images from mass communications media. In the U.S., symbolic ethnicity is an important component of American cultural identity, assumed as "a voluntary, personally chosen identity marker, rather than the totally ascribed characteristic" determined by physical appearance. As a sociological phenomenon, symbolic ethnicity is attributed to Americans of European ancestry, most of whom either are influenced by or assimilated to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) community, who initially dominated U.S. politics since the establishment of the country.

The term symbolic ethnicity was introduced in the article "Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America" (1979), by Herbert J. Gans, in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies.

The development of symbolic ethnicity, as a sociological phenomenon, is attributed to ethnic European immigrants, because "Black, Hispanic, Asian and Indian Americans do not have the option of a symbolic ethnicity, at present, in the United States"; a socio-economic circumstance "in which ethnicity does not matter for white Americans, [yet] it does matter for non-whites."

As such, symbolic ethnicity is the process of social identity whereby the person's "ethnic identity is solely associated with iconic elements of the culture" from which he or she originated. Gans's investigations concentrated on the latter generations of Roman Catholic and Jewish Americans who had "begun to re-associate themselves with their ethnic culture", noting that "the ethnic associations were mainly symbolic, and that the traditional community interactions were lost." Those Catholic and Jewish Americans identified "their ethnic race in a personal perspective, as opposed to a communal" perspective, which actions produced an "outward ethnic identity that uses superficial symbols and icons to label and categorize a certain race." That is to say, people identify their ethnicity by way of images from the mass communications media, as accepted through past associations derived from social and historical judgements.

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