Ethnic media are media produced for, and frequently by, immigrants, ethnic and linguistic minority groups, and indigenous populations. These media represent a sector of the broader media industry that has seen considerable growth globally, even while many mainstream, legacy media have struggled to survive or have ceased to exist, largely due to the emergence of new communication technologies. What is missing in the literature is a careful examination of ethnic media in the digital age. The original research, including case studies, in this book provides insight into (1) what new trends are emerging in ethnic media production and consumption; (2) how ethnic media are adapting to changing technologies in the media landscape of our times; and (3) what enduring roles ethnic media perform in local communities and in an increasingly globalized world. The ethnic media that contributors discuss in this book are produced for and distributed across a variety of platforms, ranging from broadcasting and print to online platforms. Additionally, these media serve numerous immigrant, ethnic, and indigenous communities who live in and trace their origins back to a variety of regions of the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, and Oceania.
This book focuses on ethnic journalism in the Global South, approaching it from two angles: as a professional area and as a social mission. The book discusses journalistic practices and ethnic media in the Global South, managerial and editorial strategies of ethnic media outlets, their content specifics, target audience, distribution channels, main challenges and trends of development in the digital age.
A landmark narrative history of American media that puts race at the center of the story. Here is a new, sweeping narrative history of American news media that puts race at the center of the story. From the earliest colonial newspapers to the Internet age, America’s racial divisions have played a central role in the creation of the country’s media system, just as the media has contributed to—and every so often, combated—racial oppression. News for All the People reveals how racial segregation distorted the information Americans received from the mainstream media. It unearths numerous examples of how publishers and broadcasters actually fomented racial violence and discrimination through their coverage. And it chronicles the influence federal media policies exerted in such conflicts. It depicts the struggle of Black, Latino, Asian, and Native American journalists who fought to create a vibrant yet little-known alternative, democratic press, and then, beginning in the 1970s, forced open the doors of the major media companies. The writing is fast-paced, story-driven, and replete with memorable portraits of individual journalists and media executives, both famous and obscure, heroes and villains. It weaves back and forth between the corporate and government leaders who built our segregated media system—such as Herbert Hoover, whose Federal Radio Commission eagerly awarded a license to a notorious Ku Klux Klan organization in the nation’s capital—and those who rebelled against that system, like Pittsburgh Courier publisher Robert L. Vann, who led a remarkable national campaign to get the black-face comedy Amos ’n’ Andy off the air. Based on years of original archival research and up-to-the-minute reporting and written by two veteran journalists and leading advocates for a more inclusive and democratic media system, News for All the People should become the standard history of American media.
A study of the racial-ethnic history of the United States and the perpetuation of racial hierarchy. Race is a known fiction—there is no genetic marker that indicates someone’s race—yet the social stigma of race endures. In the United States, ethnicity is often positioned as a counterweight to race, and we celebrate our various hyphenated-American identities. But Vilna Bashi Treitler argues that we do so at a high cost: ethnic thinking simply perpetuates an underlying racism. In The Ethnic Project, Bashi Treitler considers the ethnic history of the United States from the arrival of the English in North America through to the present day. Tracing the histories of immigrant and indigenous groups—Irish, Chinese, Italians, Jews, Native Americans, Mexicans, Afro-Caribbeans, and African Americans—she shows how each negotiates America’s racial hierarchy, aiming to distance themselves from the bottom and align with the groups already at the top. But in pursuing these “ethnic projects” these groups implicitly accept and perpetuate a racial hierarchy, shoring up rather than dismantling race and racism. Ultimately, The Ethnic Project shows how dangerous ethnic thinking can be in a society that has not let go of racial thinking. Praise for The Ethnic Project “An outstanding work that makes an important contribution to our understanding of the past and present racial history of the United States. The book is very well written (Bashi Treitler’s prose is a delight to read) and meticulously researched . . . . The Ethnic Project should definitely be part of the conversation as we press forward with the task of understanding race in the United States.” —Ashley “Woody” Doane, American Journal of Sociology “Treitler offers a succinct history and diagnosis of racial grouping in the U.S., from the nation’s origin to the contemporary moment . . . . The text has solid promise as an introductory ethnic studies course reading . . . . Highly recommended.” —N. B. Barnd, CHOICE “With her ingenious concept of ‘ethnic projects,’ Vilna Bashi Treitler brings a new optic to the study of race . . . . [and] provides an authoritative answer to those who ask the tired question, ‘We made it, why haven’t they?’” —Stephen Steinberg, author of Race Relations: A Critique “Treitler masterfully weaves race and ethnicity into a single historical narrative that reveals the ugly reality of exploitation and stratification that has always undergirded American society.” —Douglas S. Massey, Princeton University
The author examines the paths South Asian immigrants in Chicago take toward assimilation in the late 20th century United States. She examines two ethnic institutions to show how immigrant activism ironically abets these immigrants' assimilation.
At present, the picture of the ethnic media is an incomplete one: While there is significant material on the portrayal of ethnic minorities in the mainstream media (and on how these representations affect ethnic perceptions), there is very little material/research on how the media produced by ethnic communities, for ethnic communities affect (1) the perceptions of self and of the ethnic community and (2) how the production and consumption of ethnic media affects the character of the larger media landscape. Understanding Ethnic Media approaches the ethnic media from the consumers' point of view AND the producers' vantage point, as changes that occur in the ethnic community affect the media, and vice versa. This accessible textbook strives to bridge the gap between the consumer and the production-centered research as it examines the relationships (a) between the ethnic media available in particular markets and (b) between the ethnic and mainstream media.
"The main theme of this book is the interplay of Americanization and acculturation of the Japanese in the Hawaiian Islands. By acculturation the author refers to what the Nisei wanted and actually did achieve-their adaptation to American middle-class life" -- Preface.
"Mary Waters' admirable study of Americans' ethnic choices produces a rich social-scientific yield. Its theoretical interest derives from the American irony that while ethnicity is 'supposed to be' ascribed, many Americans are active in choosing and making their ethnic memberships and identities. The monograph is simultaneously objective and attentive to subjective meaning, simultaneously quantitative and qualitative, and simultaneously sociological and psychological. Her research problems are well-conceived, and her findings important and well-documented. As ethnicity and race continue in their high salience in American society and politics, sound social-scientific studies like this one are all the more valuable."—Neil Smelser, co-editor of The Social Importance of Self-Esteem "One of the most sensible and elegant books about ethnicity in the United States that has ever been my great pleasure to read."—Andrew M. Greeley, University of Chicago "Skilled in both demographic and interviewing methods, Mary Waters makes ethnicity in contemporary America come alive. We learn how people construct their identities, and why. This is sociological research at its very best, and will be of interest to policy makers and educated Americans as well as to students and scholars in several disciplines."—Theda Skocpol, Harvard University "Perhaps the most intriguing question in the study of the 'old (European) immigration" is how the 4th, 5th and later generations who are the offspring of several intermarriages are choosing their ethnic identities from the several available to them. Professor Waters' clever mix of quantitative and qualitative research has produced some thoughtful and eminently sensible answers to that question, making her book required reading for students of ethnicity. Her work should also interest general readers concerned with their or their children's ethnic identity—or just curious about this yet little known variety of American pluralism."—Herbert J. Gans, Columbia University "Waters has produced a work with broad theoretical implications. The title . . . may be regarded as one of the first serious attempts to understand the dynamics of postmodern societies. Waters shows that ethnicity becomes transformed from as ascriptive into an achieved status, a voluntary construction of individual identity and group solidarity. Waters also shows that, in America at least, this increased flexibility is unavailable to racial minorities."—Jeffrey C. Alexander, University of California, Los Angeles "A theoretically informed and theoretically driven fine-grained analysis pooling ideas and issues in both ethnography and demography."—Stanley Lieberson, Harvard University "Thanks to Ethnic Options we have a much better understanding of the social and cultural significance of responses to the ancestry question on the 1980 census. By combining in-depth interviews with analysis of census data, Mary Waters puts flesh on the demographic bare bones. Her findings suggest that ethnicity is becoming less an ascribed trait, fixed at birth, than an 'option' that depends on circumstance, whim, and increasingly, the ethnicity of one's spouse."—Stephen Steinberg, author of The Ethnic Myth
During the 1920s and 1930s, American minority artists and writers collaborated extensively with the Soviet avant-garde, seeking to build a revolutionary society that would end racial discrimination and advance progressive art. Making what Claude McKay called "the magic pilgrimage" to the Soviet Union, these intellectuals placed themselves at the forefront of modernism, using radical cultural and political experiments to reimagine identity and decenter the West. Shining rare light on these efforts, The Ethnic Avant-Garde makes a unique contribution to interwar literary, political, and art history, drawing extensively on Russian archives, travel narratives, and artistic exchanges to establish the parameters of an undervalued "ethnic avant-garde." These writers and artists cohered around distinct forms that mirrored Soviet techniques of montage, fragment, and interruption. They orbited interwar Moscow, where the international avant-garde converged with the Communist International. The book explores Vladimir Mayakovsky's 1925 visit to New York City via Cuba and Mexico, during which he wrote Russian-language poetry in an "Afro-Cuban" voice; Langston Hughes's translations of these poems while in Moscow, which he visited to assist on a Soviet film about African American life; a futurist play condemning Western imperialism in China, which became Broadway's first major production to feature a predominantly Asian American cast; and efforts to imagine the Bolshevik Revolution as Jewish messianic arrest, followed by the slow political disenchantment of the New York Intellectuals. Through an absorbing collage of cross-ethnic encounters that also include Herbert Biberman, Sergei Eisenstein, Paul Robeson, and Vladimir Tatlin, this work remaps global modernism along minority and Soviet-centered lines, further advancing the avant-garde project of seeing the world anew.