Panethnicity

Panethnicityis a politicalneologismused to group variousethnic groupstogether based on their related cultural origins; geographic, linguistic, religious, or 'racial' (i.e.phenotypic) similarities are often used alone or in combination to draw panethnic boundaries. The term panethnic was used extensively during mid-twentieth century anti-colonial/national liberation movements. In the United States,Yen Le Espiritupopularized the term and coined the nominal term panethnicity in reference toAsian Americans,a racial category composed of disparate peoples having in common only their origin in the continent ofAsia.^[1]^[2]

It has since seen some use as a replacement of the termrace;for example, the aforementionedAsian Americanscan be described as "a panethnicity" of various unrelatedpeoples of Asia,which are nevertheless perceived as a distinguishable group within the largermultiracialNorth American society.

More recently^{[year needed]}the term has also come to be used in contexts outside multiculturalism in US society, as a general replacement for terms likeethnolinguistic groupor racial group.^{[clarification needed]}

The concept is to be distinguished from "pan-nationalism",which similarly groups related ethnicities but in the context of eitherethnic nationalism(e.g.Pan-Arabism,Pan-Celticism,Pan-Germanism,Pan-Indianism,Pan-Iranism,Pan-Slavism,Pan-Turkism), orcivic nationalism(e.g.Pan-Africanism).

United States

Panethnicity has allowedAsian Americansto unite based on similar historical relations with the US (such as - in some cases - US military presence in their native countries). The Asian American panethnic identity has evolved to become a means for immigrant groups such as Asian Americans to unite in order to gain political strength in numbers. Similarly, one can speak of a "panethnic European American category".^[3]

The term "American" has become one of the more widespread panethnic concepts.^[4]

Mainstream institutions and political policies often^[quantify]play a big role in the labeling of panethnic groups. They often^[quantify]enact policies that deal with specific groups of people, and panethnic groups are one way to group large numbers of people. Public policy might dole out resources or make deals with multiple groups, viewing them all as one large entity.^[5]

Panethnic labels are often, though not always, created and employed by outsiders of the group that is being defined panethnically. In the case of theAsian American Movementof the 1960s and 1970s, the panethnic label "Asian American" was not created by outsiders; rather, it was coined by professorYuji Ichiokaand his spouse,Emma Gee,in order to consolidate Asian activists that they had seen at various political demonstrations of the time.^[6]The manner in which the two garnered support for the alliance sheds light on the expressly panethnic approach that was at the core of this new Asian American identity: they went through the roster of the Peace and Freedom Party, a majority white anti-war organization that was protesting the Vietnam War at the time, and telephoned all the individuals they could find with “Asian” surnames.^[6]Though theAsian Americanidentity was initially not inclusive of many Asian ethnicities, new waves of Asian immigrants since the1965 Immigration and Nationality Acthave accelerated the expansion of the identity. At the time of the U.S. Census of 2000, 88% of Asian America was made up of six Asian ethnicities: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Indian, and Vietnamese.^[7]

Criticism

The use of "Asian American" as a panethnic racial label is often criticized, due to the term only encompassing some of the diverse peoples of Asia, and for grouping together the racially and culturally different South Asians with East Asians as the same “race”. Americans of West Asian descent, such as Iranian, Israeli, Armenian, and many Arab nationalities, are notably excluded from the term despiteWestern Asiabeing geographically part of Asia.^[8]As well as West Asians having racial and cultural similarities with South Asians. The common justification for grouping together South and East Asians is because of Buddhism's origins in India, but the religion has "practically died out" in South Asia.^[8]

Although the panethnic term refers to Americans of East, Southeast and South Asian ancestry, "Asian American" is usually synonymous for people of East Asian ancestry and or appearance, which has caused some to highlight the general exclusion of Southeast Asians and South Asians.^[9]

References

^Espiritu, Yen (2011).Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities.Temple University Press.ISBN 978-1-4399-0556-2.Project MUSE book 45909.^{[page needed]}
^Yamamoto, Eric K. (1995). "Rethinking Alliances: Agency, Responsibility and Interracial Justice".UCLA Asian Pacific American Law Journal.3:33–74.hdl:10125/35346.
^Emigh, Rebecca Jean; Riley, Dylan; Ahmed, Patricia (2016).Changes in Censuses from Imperialist to Welfare States.doi:10.1057/9781137485069.ISBN 978-1-349-55556-7.^{[page needed]}
^Jay, Gregory S. (2018).American Literature and the Culture Wars.Cornell University Press. p. 27.ISBN 978-1-5017-3127-3.'American,' after all, originated as a panethnic term to unite Northern European whites who had moved to the United States. The endorsement of the panethnic strategy lay behind the acceptance of the notion of the 'melting pot.' [...] 'American' is such a successful panethnic construction that its members have naturalized its contours and ceased to se it as a historical configuration that has changed in the past and will change in the future.
^Okamoto, Dina G. (4 October 2006). "Institutional Panethnicity: Boundary Formation in Asian-American Organizing".Social Forces.85(1): 1–25.doi:10.1353/sof.2006.0136.JSTOR 3844403.S2CID 143501855.Project MUSE 204029.
^^a ^bMaeda, Daryl (2012).Rethinking the Asian American Movement.doi:10.4324/9780203357484.ISBN 978-1-136-59926-2.^{[page needed]}
^Park, Jerry Z. (September 2008). "Second-Generation Asian American Pan-Ethnic Identity: Pluralized Meanings of a Racial Label".Sociological Perspectives.51(3): 541–561.doi:10.1525/sop.2008.51.3.541.S2CID 146327919.
^^a ^bSailer, Steve (July 11, 2002)."Feature: Who exactly is Asian American?".UPI.Los Angeles.Archivedfrom the original on September 5, 2018.RetrievedJuly 8,2021.
^Kambhampaty, Anna Purna (March 12, 2020)."At Census Time, Asian Americans Again Confront the Question of Who 'Counts' as Asian. Here's How the Answer Got So Complicated".Time.RetrievedJuly 9,2021.But American culture tends not to think of all regions in Asia as equally Asian. A quick Google search of 'Asian food nearby' is likely to call up Chinese or Japanese restaurants, but not Indian or Filipino. Years after someone posted a thread on College Confidential, a popular college admissions forum, titled 'Do Indians count as Asians?' the SAT in 2016 tweaked its race categories, explaining to test-takers that 'Asian' did include Indian subcontinent and Philippines origin.

Sources

Okamoto, Dina G. (2003)."Towards a Theory of Panethnicity: Explaining Asian American Collective Action".American Sociological Review.68(6): 811–842.doi:10.2307/1519747.JSTOR 1519747.
Schaefer, Richard (2008).Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Society.doi:10.4135/9781412963879.ISBN 978-1-4129-2694-2.
Okamoto, Dina G.; Mora, Cristina (2014). "Panethnicity".Annual Review of Sociology.40:219–239.doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-071913-043201.

[1] Espiritu, Yen (2011).Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities.Temple University Press.ISBN 978-1-4399-0556-2.Project MUSE book 45909.^{[page needed]}

[2] Yamamoto, Eric K. (1995). "Rethinking Alliances: Agency, Responsibility and Interracial Justice".UCLA Asian Pacific American Law Journal.3:33–74.hdl:10125/35346.

[3] Emigh, Rebecca Jean; Riley, Dylan; Ahmed, Patricia (2016).Changes in Censuses from Imperialist to Welfare States.doi:10.1057/9781137485069.ISBN 978-1-349-55556-7.^{[page needed]}

[4] Jay, Gregory S. (2018).American Literature and the Culture Wars.Cornell University Press. p. 27.ISBN 978-1-5017-3127-3.'American,' after all, originated as a panethnic term to unite Northern European whites who had moved to the United States. The endorsement of the panethnic strategy lay behind the acceptance of the notion of the 'melting pot.' [...] 'American' is such a successful panethnic construction that its members have naturalized its contours and ceased to se it as a historical configuration that has changed in the past and will change in the future.

[okamoto-5] Okamoto, Dina G. (4 October 2006). "Institutional Panethnicity: Boundary Formation in Asian-American Organizing".Social Forces.85(1): 1–25.doi:10.1353/sof.2006.0136.JSTOR 3844403.S2CID 143501855.Project MUSE 204029.

[:0-6] Maeda, Daryl (2012).Rethinking the Asian American Movement.doi:10.4324/9780203357484.ISBN 978-1-136-59926-2.^{[page needed]}

[7] Park, Jerry Z. (September 2008). "Second-Generation Asian American Pan-Ethnic Identity: Pluralized Meanings of a Racial Label".Sociological Perspectives.51(3): 541–561.doi:10.1525/sop.2008.51.3.541.S2CID 146327919.

[Sailer2002-8] Sailer, Steve (July 11, 2002)."Feature: Who exactly is Asian American?".UPI.Los Angeles.Archivedfrom the original on September 5, 2018.RetrievedJuly 8,2021.

[9] Kambhampaty, Anna Purna (March 12, 2020)."At Census Time, Asian Americans Again Confront the Question of Who 'Counts' as Asian. Here's How the Answer Got So Complicated".Time.RetrievedJuly 9,2021.But American culture tends not to think of all regions in Asia as equally Asian. A quick Google search of 'Asian food nearby' is likely to call up Chinese or Japanese restaurants, but not Indian or Filipino. Years after someone posted a thread on College Confidential, a popular college admissions forum, titled 'Do Indians count as Asians?' the SAT in 2016 tweaked its race categories, explaining to test-takers that 'Asian' did include Indian subcontinent and Philippines origin.

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v t e Ethnicity
Concepts	Clan Ethnic group Ethnographic group Ethnolinguistic group Ethnonational group Ethnoreligious group Ethnographic realism Hyphenated ethnicity Indigenous peoples In-group and out-groups Meta-ethnicity Metroethnicity Minority group Influence Monoethnicity Nation Nationality Panethnicity Polyethnicity Population Race Supraethnicity Symbolic ethnicity Tribe
Ethnology	Anthropology Ethnic studies Ethnoarchaeology Ethnobiology Ethnobotany Ethnoecology Ethnomycology Ethnozoology Ethnocinema Ethnogeology Ethnography Autoethnography Clinical Critical Institutional Netnography Online Person-centered Salvage Transidioethnography Video Ethnohistory Ethnolinguistics Ethnology Ethnomathematics Ethnostatistics Ethnomedicine Ethnomethodology Ethnomuseology Ethnomusicology Ethnophilosophy Ethnopoetics Ethnopsychopharmacology Ethnoscience Ethnosemiotics Ethnotaxonomy
Groups by region	World Contemporary ethnic groups Countries by ethnic groups Africa Americas Indigenous Canada Greenland Mexico United States Caribbean Central America South America Asia Central Asia East Asia Northern Asia South Asia Southeast Asia West Asia Australia Aboriginal groups Torres Strait Islanders Europe Oceania Indigenous European
Identityand ethnogenesis	Cross-race effect Cultural assimilation Cultural identity Demonym Development Endonym Ethnarch Ethnic flag Ethnic option Ethnic origin Ethnic religion Ethnicity in censuses Ethnofiction Ethnonym Folk religion Historical Imagined community Kinship Legendary progenitor Linguistic homeland Mores Mythomoteur Nation-building Nation state National language National myth Origin myth Pantribal sodality Statistext Tribal name Tribalism Detribalization Neotribalism White ethnic
Multiethnic society	Consociationalism Cultural appropriation Diaspora politics Dominant minority Ethnic democracy Ethnic enclave Ethnic interest group Ethnic majority Ethnic media Ethnic nationalism Ethnic pornography Ethnic theme park Ethnoburb Ethnocracy Ethnographic film Ethnographic village Ethnopluralism Indigenous rights Middleman minority Minority rights Model minority Model minority myth Multinational state
Ideology and ethnic conflict	Allophilia Ethnic bioweapon Ethnic cleansing Ethnic hatred Ethnic joke Ethnic party Ethnic penalty Ethnic slurs Ethnic stereotype Ethnic violence Ethnic riots Ethnocentrism Ethnocide Ethnosymbolism Indigenism Indigenization Nativism Separatist movements Xenocentrism Xenophilia Xenophobia
Related	Minzu (anthropology)

United States

Criticism

See also

References

Sources