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Explores racial and ethnic identities adopted by a sample of 83 adolescent second-generation West Indian and Haitian Americans in New York City. Subjective understandings of their ethnic identities are described and contrasted with the identities and reactions of first-generation immigrants from the same countries. (GR)

The article discusses the results of a study of discrimination in the U.S., which surveyed thousands of young adults in the New York City area who were children of immigrants. The subjects were interviewed regarding their personal experiences with discrimination. Eight different ethnic groups were studied, including Chinese Americans, Russian Jewish Americans, African Americans and white Americans. The results indicated that some members of every group had experienced what they perceived as discrimination based on their ethnic identity, but the rates for those with darker skin were significantly higher. Various types of discrimination are analyzed, involving settings such as school, work, shopping, and interactions with the police.

This article analyzes the pattern of reporting of ethnic ancestry in the U.S. by Whites through the 1980 census. The ethnic question introduced in the 1980 decennial census of the U.S. has generated surprising results. There is simplification, inconsistency, and instability in the ethnic origins reported. Simplification often occurs, for example, when we compare the origins of parents with the origins they. report for their children. Moreover, it is not uncommon for the ethnicity reported for one child in a family to be inconsistent with what is said about a sibling. Likewise, there is evidence of instability within a life span, particularly at the time of marriage and when leaving home. It is tempting to interpret these responses as merely reflecting enumeration errors; the new question that generates these results is not entirely clear in its verbal construction, its instructions to respondents, and its goals. This article has three main goals. First, after reviewing both the question and the surprising results reported thus far, we evaluate the competing interpretations for the inconsistent results obtained from the 1980 ethnic origins question.

The article focuses on the role of lineage in identity formation among Black Americans. If all of those defined racially as black in the United States have only one ancestry that is a meaningful part of their identity and that ancestry is African-American then for all intents and purposes race and ancestry are equivalent in terms of defining this population. The idea that race and ancestry are equivalent for blacks in the U.S. is made possible because the ancestral diversity among blacks has been consistently ignored in the United States in favor of a racial definition of the population, which defines individuals only in terms of their racial identities. The "one drop rule" of racial classification in the United States has operated historically to make the distinction between race and ethnicity for those defined as blacks unimportant. Thus the people defined as blacks for the most part have also been defined as only having African-American ancestries, regardless of the degree of variation in the ancestries of the individuals involved.

As whites become increasingly distant in generations and time from their immigrant ancestors, the tendency to distort, or remember selectively, one's ethnic origins increases. Distortions and inconsistencies in ethnic reporting are shown to vary with age, educational attainment, and marital status and even to exist within families when parents report the ethnic ancestry of their children. These examples of inconsistency, simplification, and systematic distortion all demonstrate the flux of the ethnic categories among white Americans. It is concluded that ethnic categories are social phenomena that over the long run are constantly being redefined and reformulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]