A critique of symbolic ethnicity

Abstract

This article undertakes a critical analysis of symbolic ethnicity, an influential sociological paradigm of white ethnicity in the US. It highlights a fundamental contradiction that is present in the work of one of its most influential proponents, sociologist Mary Waters: the simultaneous affirmation and negation of the operation of choice in the making of ethnic identities, followed by the methodological neglect of the cultural production of identity. The article argues that this methodological oversight embeds symbolic ethnicity in a wider discourse on choice as a constitutive element of American identity. Also, it shows how the privileging of choice makes it possible to achieve a vision of American multiculturalism based on the dialectical synthesis of two historically competing ideologies: the concept of America as a melting pot and a cultural mosaic. Showing that symbolic ethnicity conflates culture, identity and ancestry, and noting that it undervalues the social valence of white ethnicity, the article concludes with a discussion of how to recover ethnic identity analytically as an enduring, politically significant disposition and practice.