ETHNIC MARKERS

ETHNIC MARKERS
How is ethnocentrism socially reproduced? In the
case of the Rwandan massacres, media propaganda
was instrumental in increasing ethnic tension between
the Tutsi and Hutu. The social construction of in-
group identification is also commonly reinforced
through community rituals, holidays, education, reli-
gion, language, dress, and behavioral rewards and
sanctions. These ethnic markers are often exaggerated
to increase social cohesion and identification among
group members. Within multicultural societies, in
contrast, the dominant culture may seek the forced
assimilation of an ethnic minority population by
inhibiting (or even criminalizing) the use of tradi-
tional ethnic markers. In the United States, Canada,
and Australia, for example, indigenous children were
forcibly removed from their families to attend board-
ing schools where the use of native languages was
punished. Among White colonialist powers, such gov-
ernmental actions were justified on the grounds that
“civilizing the savage” was a social good that pre-
empted parental rights.
Associated with ethnocentrism is the assumption
that the modes of living, norms, values, and behaviors
of some members of a society are common to the expe-
rience of all members of a society. For example, within
the United States there has been a historical tendency to
identify the nuclear family system, in which a married,
heterosexual couple lived with their children in a single
dwelling, as normative. Within a normal nuclear family,
the male head of household was the sole wage earner.
The cultural bias for the male-headed nuclear family,
which cast other family systems as deviant, predomi-
nated in the social sciences until relatively recently.
However, in much of the non-Western world, there is a
diversity of family systems.
Ethnocentrism———205Within the extended family system common in
Asia, three or more generations of relatives live com-
munally in a single building or compound, and mem-
bers include grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, and
children. A female-headed family system occurring
throughout the Caribbean is made up of a multigenera-
tional, single-parent family, in which the grandmother
or a senior female is the designated matriarch. In
contrast, the practice of having more than one wife
(polygamy) remains a normative way to display male
status among many traditional Islamic and African
societies. Within contemporary American society, the
a priori assumption that the heterosexual nuclear family
is the universal standard has become increasingly chal-
lenged by political activists and social scientists, even
as structural social changes have increased the accept-
ability of nontraditional family systems, such as
blended families and same-sex families