73-532: The Kusasi , Kusaasi , or the Kusaal people , are an ethnic group in northern Ghana and southern Burkina Faso . They speak the Kusaal language , which is a Gur language . The Kusaasi celebrate the Samanpiid Festival . The festival is used to thank God for a bumper harvest during the farming season. The festival was first celebrated in 1987. Ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group
146-568: A goy gadol ("great nation"). There are two exceptions where a “Kingdom of Goyim” is mentioned. One is in Genesis 14:1 , where it states that the "King of Goyim" was Tidal . Bible commentaries suggest that the term may refer to Gutium . The other is in Joshua 12:23 , where a “King of Goyim in Gilgal ” is included in the list of kings slain by Joshua . In all other cases the meaning of goyim
219-729: A Hungarian antisemitic motorcycle association refers to themselves as the Goyim riders , and in 2020 Kyle Chapman tried to rename the far-right group the Proud Boys to the Proud Goys . In a similar vein, the far-right American Traditionalist Worker Party , in 2017, created the crowdfunding platform called GoyFundMe, a wordplay on the popular crowdfunding platform GoFundMe . The Goyim Defense League (GDL) and its website, GoyimTV, are another example. Europol 's 2021 report on Terrorism Situations and Trends discusses
292-504: A host of men, a band of comrades as well as a swarm or flock of animals. In Classical Greek , the word took on a meaning comparable to the concept now expressed by "ethnic group", mostly translated as " nation , tribe, a unique people group"; only in Hellenistic Greek did the term tend to become further narrowed to refer to "foreign" or " barbarous " nations in particular (whence the later meaning "heathen, pagan"). In
365-573: A Jewish wedding" and "goyishe kop" where the word is used in a pejorative sense. She admits that the word can have non-pejorative uses, such as "goyishe restaurant" - one that doesn't serve kosher food - but contends that the word is "neutral, at best, and extremely offensive, at worst." She advocates that the Jewish community stop using the word "goy." Andrew Silow Carroll writes: But the word "goy" has too much historical and linguistic baggage to be used as casually as "non-Jew" or "gentile." It starts with
438-709: A belief in conspiracy theories about Jews. The word goy means "nation" in Biblical Hebrew . In the Torah , goy and its variants appear 560 times in reference to both the Israelites and the non-Israelite nations. The first recorded usage of goyim occurs in Genesis 10:5 and applies to non-Israelite nations. The first mention of goy in relation to the Israelites comes in Genesis 12:2 , when God promises Abraham that his descendants will form
511-512: A derogatory manner. The Yiddish lexicographer Leo Rosten in The New Joys of Yiddish defines goy as someone who is non-Jewish or someone who is dull, insensitive, or heartless. Goy also occurs in many pejorative Yiddish expressions: Several authors have opined on whether the word is derogatory. Dan Friedman, executive director of The Forward in "What 'Goy' Means, And Why I Keep Using It" writes that it can be used as an insult but that
584-421: A focus on the interface between groups. "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries", therefore, is a focus on the interconnectedness of ethnic identities. Barth writes: "... categorical ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of mobility, contact, and information, but do entail social processes of exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained despite changing participation and membership in
657-653: A general category of human beings, into a central element of his thought... ...In the centuries that followed, both the Church and the Jewish sages evoked Paul's binary dichotomy." The Latin words gentes/gentilis – which also referred to peoples or nations – began to be used to describe non-Jews in parallel with the evolution of the word goy in Hebrew. Based on the Latin model, the English word "gentile" came to mean non-Jew from
730-503: A mercurial character. Ronald Cohen concluded that ethnicity is "a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness". He agrees with Joan Vincent's observation that (in Cohen's paraphrase) "Ethnicity ... can be narrowed or broadened in boundary terms in relation to the specific needs of political mobilization." This may be why descent is sometimes a marker of ethnicity, and sometimes not: which diacritic of ethnicity
803-519: A preoccupation with scientists, theologians, and the public. Religious institutions asked questions about whether there had been multiple creations of races (polygenesis) and whether God had created lesser races. Many of the foremost scientists of the time took up the idea of racial difference and found that white Europeans were superior. The ethnicity theory was based on the assimilation model. Park outlined four steps to assimilation: contact, conflict, accommodation, and assimilation. Instead of attributing
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#1732802180611876-412: A process known as ethnogenesis, a period of several generations of endogamy resulting in common ancestry (which is then sometimes cast in terms of a mythological narrative of a founding figure ); ethnic identity is reinforced by reference to "boundary markers" – characteristics said to be unique to the group which set it apart from other groups. Ethnicity theory argues that race
949-742: A shared cultural heritage , ancestry, origin myth , history , homeland , language , dialect , religion, mythology , folklore , ritual , cuisine , dressing style , art , or physical appearance . Ethnic groups may share a narrow or broad spectrum of genetic ancestry, depending on group identification, with some groups having mixed genetic ancestry. By way of assimilation , acculturation , amalgamation , language shift , intermarriage , adoption , and religious conversion , individuals or groups may over time shift from one ethnic group to another. Ethnic groups may be divided into subgroups or tribes , which over time may become separate ethnic groups themselves due to endogamy or physical isolation from
1022-528: A slur — seldom used as a compliment, and never used in the presence of a non-Jew. adding That's a good litmus test: if you wouldn't use a word in the presence of someone you're describing, [there is a] good chance it's offensive. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center , white supremacists have ironically used the term "goy" in reference to themselves as a signal of their belief in conspiracy theories about Jews . For example,
1095-519: A stand-in for "paganism" in the 18th century, but now came to express the meaning of an "ethnic character" (first recorded 1953). The term ethnic group was first recorded in 1935 and entered the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972. Depending on context, the term nationality may be used either synonymously with ethnicity or synonymously with citizenship (in a sovereign state). The process that results in emergence of an ethnicity
1168-548: A word principally used by Jews to describe non-Jews, it is a term for the ethnic out-group . The Biblical Hebrew word goy has been commonly translated into English as nation , meaning a group of persons of the same ethnic family who speak the same language (rather than the more common modern meaning of a political unit). In the Bible, goy is used to describe both the Nation of Israel and other nations. The meaning of
1241-494: Is 'nations.' In Exodus 19:6 , the Israelites are referred to as a goy kadosh , a "holy nation". One of the more poetic descriptions of the chosen people in the Hebrew Bible, and popular among Jewish scholars is goy ehad b'aretz , or "a unique nation upon the earth" ( 2 Samuel 7:23 and 1 Chronicles 17:21 ) In English language Christian bibles, nation has been used as the principal translation for goy in
1314-548: Is a group of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include a people of a common language , culture , common sets of ancestry , traditions , society, religion , history, or social treatment. The term ethnicity is sometimes used interchangeably with the term nation , particularly in cases of ethnic nationalism . Ethnicity may be construed as an inherited or societally imposed construct. Ethnic membership tends to be defined by
1387-443: Is a social category and is only one of several factors in determining ethnicity. Other criteria include "religion, language, 'customs', nationality, and political identification". This theory was put forward by sociologist Robert E. Park in the 1920s. It is based on the notion of "culture". This theory was preceded by more than 100 years during which biological essentialism was the dominant paradigm on race. Biological essentialism
1460-423: Is called ethnogenesis , a term in use in ethnological literature since about 1950. The term may also be used with the connotation of something unique and unusually exotic (cf. "an ethnic restaurant", etc.), generally related to cultures of more recent immigrants, who arrived after the dominant population of an area was established. Depending on which source of group identity is emphasized to define membership,
1533-420: Is called ethnogenesis. Members of an ethnic group, on the whole, claim cultural continuities over time, although historians and cultural anthropologists have documented that many of the values, practices, and norms that imply continuity with the past are of relatively recent invention. Ethnic groups can form a cultural mosaic in a society. That could be in a city like New York City or Trieste , but also
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#17328021806111606-655: Is not a noun in Britain. In effect there are no "ethnics"; there are only "ethnic relations". In the U.S., the OMB says the definition of race as used for the purposes of the US Census is not "scientific or anthropological" and takes into account "social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry", using "appropriate scientific methodologies" that are not "primarily biological or genetic in reference". Sometimes ethnic groups are subject to prejudicial attitudes and actions by
1679-442: Is salient depends on whether people are scaling ethnic boundaries up or down, and whether they are scaling them up or down depends generally on the political situation. Kanchan Chandra rejects the expansive definitions of ethnic identity (such as those that include common culture, common language, common history and common territory), choosing instead to define ethnic identity narrowly as a subset of identity categories determined by
1752-431: Is the belief that some races, specifically white Europeans in western versions of the paradigm, are biologically superior and other races, specifically non-white races in western debates, are inherently inferior. This view arose as a way to justify enslavement of African Americans and genocide of Native Americans in a society that was officially founded on freedom for all. This was a notion that developed slowly and came to be
1825-463: The Caribbean and South Asia . Max Weber maintained that ethnic groups were künstlich (artificial, i.e. a social construct ) because they were based on a subjective belief in shared Gemeinschaft (community). Secondly, this belief in shared Gemeinschaft did not create the group; the group created the belief. Third, group formation resulted from the drive to monopolize power and status. This
1898-651: The Hebrew Bible , from the earliest English language bibles such as the 1530 Tyndale Bible and the 1611 King James Version . The King James Version of the Bible translates the word goy / goyim as "nation" 374 times, "heathen" 143 times, "Gentile" 30 times (see Evolution of the Term below) and "people" 11 times. The New American Standard Bible translation uses the following words: "every nation" (2 times) Gentiles (1) Goiim (1), Harosheth-hagoyim* (3), herds (1), nation (120), nations (425), people (4). While
1971-455: The New World were multi-ethnic from the onset, as they were formed as colonies imposed on existing indigenous populations. In recent decades, feminist scholars (most notably Nira Yuval-Davis) have drawn attention to the fundamental ways in which women participate in the creation and reproduction of ethnic and national categories. Though these categories are usually discussed as belonging to
2044-584: The "speaker" assumes the role of a "panicking Jew " who reacts to an event that would reveal Jewish "manipulations" or Jewish "deceitfulness". According to the Anti-Defamation League , the antisemitic meme first appeared on 4chan in 2013. Einstein Schorr called the meme an instance of " linguistic appropriation " whereby Neo-Nazis cynically incorporated "pseudo- Yiddish phrases" into their vocabulary to ridicule Jews . Schorr describes that as
2117-569: The 19th century, the term came to be used in the sense of "peculiar to a tribe, race, people or nation", in a return to the original Greek meaning. The sense of "different cultural groups", and in American English "tribal, racial, cultural or national minority group " arises in the 1930s to 1940s, serving as a replacement of the term race which had earlier taken this sense but was now becoming deprecated due to its association with ideological racism . The abstract ethnicity had been used as
2190-487: The German Goyim Partei Deutschland ('Goyim Party Germany'), "a right-wing extremist organisation" founded in 2016 which "used its website to publish antisemitic and racist texts, pictures and videos." The slur is also featured in the far-right catchphrase or meme The Goyim Know, Shut It Down associated with Neo-Nazis on online forums like the 4chan and 8chan . In this context,
2263-610: The Greeks. Herodotus (8.144.2) gave a famous account of what defined Greek (Hellenic) ethnic identity in his day, enumerating Whether ethnicity qualifies as a cultural universal is to some extent dependent on the exact definition used. Many social scientists, such as anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf , do not consider ethnic identity to be universal. They regard ethnicity as a product of specific kinds of inter-group interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to human groups. According to Thomas Hylland Eriksen ,
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2336-525: The United States that the ethnicity theory was exclusively based on the immigration patterns of the white population and did take into account the unique experiences of non-whites in the United States. While Park's theory identified different stages in the immigration process – contact, conflict, struggle, and as the last and best response, assimilation – it did so only for white communities. The ethnicity paradigm neglected
2409-994: The added value of being able to describe the commonalities between systems of group identity in both tribal and modern societies. Cohen also suggested that claims concerning "ethnic" identity (like earlier claims concerning "tribal" identity) are often colonialist practices and effects of the relations between colonized peoples and nation-states. According to Paul James , formations of identity were often changed and distorted by colonization, but identities are not made out of nothing: Categorizations about identity, even when codified and hardened into clear typologies by processes of colonization, state formation or general modernizing processes, are always full of tensions and contradictions. Sometimes these contradictions are destructive, but they can also be creative and positive. Social scientists have thus focused on how, when, and why different markers of ethnic identity become salient. Thus, anthropologist Joan Vincent observed that ethnic boundaries often have
2482-449: The belief of common descent. Jóhanna Birnir similarly defines ethnicity as "group self-identification around a characteristic that is very difficult or even impossible to change, such as language, race, or location." Different approaches to understanding ethnicity have been used by different social scientists when trying to understand the nature of ethnicity as a factor in human life and society. As Jonathan M. Hall observes, World War II
2555-604: The books of the Hebrew Bible often use goy to describe the Israelites, the later Jewish writings of the Hellenistic Period (from approximately 300 BCE to 30 BCE) tended to apply the term to other nations. Goy acquired the meaning of someone who is not Jewish in the first and second century CE. Before that time, academics Adi Ophir and Ishay Rosen-Zvi have argued, no crystallized dichotomy between Jew and non-Jew existed in Judaism. Ophir and Rosen-Zvi state that
2628-408: The boundaries of the nation-state. Goyim In modern Hebrew and Yiddish , goy ( / ɡ ɔɪ / ; גוי , pl. : goyim / ˈ ɡ ɔɪ . ɪ m / , גוים or גויים ) is a term for a gentile , a non- Jew . Through Yiddish, the word has been adopted into English ( pl. : goyim or goys ) also to mean "gentile", sometimes in a pejorative sense. As
2701-573: The context of European colonial expansion, when mercantilism and capitalism were promoting global movements of populations at the same time that state boundaries were being more clearly and rigidly defined. In the 19th century, modern states generally sought legitimacy through their claim to represent "nations". Nation-states , however, invariably include populations who have been excluded from national life for one reason or another. Members of excluded groups, consequently, will either demand inclusion based on equality or seek autonomy, sometimes even to
2774-422: The course of individual life histories." In 1978, anthropologist Ronald Cohen claimed that the identification of "ethnic groups" in the usage of social scientists often reflected inaccurate labels more than indigenous realities: ... the named ethnic identities we accept, often unthinkingly, as basic givens in the literature are often arbitrarily, or even worse inaccurately, imposed. In this way, he pointed to
2847-526: The cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated genetic connection with racial traits. Because serious errors of this kind are habitually committed when the term "race" is used in popular parlance, it would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term "race" altogether and speak of "ethnic groups". In 1982, anthropologist David Craig Griffith summed up forty years of ethnographic research, arguing that racial and ethnic categories are symbolic markers for different ways people from different parts of
2920-451: The distant past. Perspectives that developed after the 1960s increasingly viewed ethnic groups as social constructs , with identity assigned by societal rules. The term ethnic is ultimately derived from the Greek ethnos , through its adjectival form ethnikos , loaned into Latin as ethnicus . The inherited English language term for this concept is folk , used alongside
2993-452: The distinctions of ethnicity and race that function to set off categories of workers from one another. It is, nevertheless, the process of labor mobilization under capitalism that imparts to these distinctions their effective values. According to Wolf, racial categories were constructed and incorporated during the period of European mercantile expansion , and ethnic groupings during the period of capitalist expansion . Writing in 1977 about
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3066-464: The early Jewish convert to Christianity, Paul , was key in developing the concept of "goy" to mean non-Jew: "This brilliant Hellenist Jew [Paul] considered himself the apostle of the Christian gospel "to the gentiles," and precisely because of this he needed to define that category more thoroughly and carefully than his predecessors. Paul made the conception that "goyim" are not "peoples," but rather
3139-530: The extent of complete political separation in their nation-state. Under these conditions when people moved from one state to another, or one state conquered or colonized peoples beyond its national boundaries – ethnic groups were formed by people who identified with one nation but lived in another state. In the 1920s, Estonia introduced a flexible system of ethnicity/nationality self-choice for its citizens, which included Estonians Russians, Baltic Germans and Jews. Multi-ethnic states can be
3212-414: The fact that identification of an ethnic group by outsiders, e.g. anthropologists, may not coincide with the self-identification of the members of that group. He also described that in the first decades of usage, the term ethnicity had often been used in lieu of older terms such as "cultural" or "tribal" when referring to smaller groups with shared cultural systems and shared heritage, but that "ethnicity" had
3285-528: The fallen monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire or the United States. Current topics are in particular social and cultural differentiation, multilingualism, competing identity offers, multiple cultural identities and the formation of Salad bowl and melting pot . Ethnic groups differ from other social groups, such as subcultures , interest groups or social classes , because they emerge and change over historical periods (centuries) in
3358-596: The following types of (often mutually overlapping) groups can be identified: In many cases, more than one aspect determines membership: for instance, Armenian ethnicity can be defined by Armenian citizenship, having Armenian heritage, native use of the Armenian language , or membership of the Armenian Apostolic Church . Ethnography begins in classical antiquity ; after early authors like Anaximander and Hecataeus of Miletus , Herodotus laid
3431-672: The foundation of both historiography and ethnography of the ancient world c. 480 BC . The Greeks had developed a concept of their own ethnicity, which they grouped under the name of Hellenes . Although there were exceptions, such as Macedonia, which was ruled by nobility in a way that was not typically Greek, and Sparta, which had an unusual ruling class, the ancient Greeks generally enslaved only non-Greeks due to their strong belief in ethnonationalism. The Greeks sometimes believed that even their lowest citizens were superior to any barbarian. In his Politics 1.2–7; 3.14, Aristotle even described barbarians as natural slaves in contrast to
3504-558: The genes. Examples of various approaches are primordialism, essentialism, perennialism, constructivism, modernism, and instrumentalism. Ethnicity is an important means by which people may identify with a larger group. Many social scientists, such as anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf , do not consider ethnic identity to be universal. They regard ethnicity as a product of specific kinds of inter-group interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to human groups. The process that results in emergence of such identification
3577-433: The kernel of a nation which must be defended in times of conflict, or in iconic figures such as Britannia or Marianne . Ethnicity is used as a matter of cultural identity of a group, often based on shared ancestry, language, and cultural traditions, while race is applied as a taxonomic grouping, based on physical similarities among groups. Race is a more controversial subject than ethnicity, due to common political use of
3650-544: The latinate people since the late Middle English period. In Early Modern English and until the mid-19th century, ethnic was used to mean heathen or pagan (in the sense of disparate "nations" which did not yet participate in the Christian ecumene ), as the Septuagint used ta ethne 'the nations' to translate the Hebrew goyim "the foreign nations, non-Hebrews, non-Jews". The Greek term in early antiquity ( Homeric Greek ) could refer to any large group,
3723-485: The marginalized status of people of color in the United States to their inherent biological inferiority, he attributed it to their failure to assimilate into American culture. They could become equal if they abandoned their inferior cultures. Michael Omi and Howard Winant 's theory of racial formation directly confronts both the premises and the practices of ethnicity theory. They argue in Racial Formation in
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#17328021806113796-483: The modernist understanding of ethnicity as proposed by Ernest Gellner and Benedict Anderson see nations and nationalism as developing with the rise of the modern state system in the 17th century. They culminated in the rise of "nation-states" in which the presumptive boundaries of the nation coincided (or ideally coincided) with state boundaries. Thus, in the West, the notion of ethnicity, like race and nation , developed in
3869-494: The obvious slurs – like "goyishe kopf," or gentile brains, which suggests (generously) a dullard, or "shikker iz a goy," a gentile is a drunkard. "Goyishe naches" describes the kinds of things that a Jew mockingly presumes only a gentile would enjoy, like hunting, sailing and eating white bread. Nahma Nadich, deputy director of the Jewish Community Relations of Greater Boston writes: I definitely see goy as
3942-551: The parent group. Conversely, formerly separate ethnicities can merge to form a panethnicity and may eventually merge into one single ethnicity . Whether through division or amalgamation, the formation of a separate ethnic identity is referred to as ethnogenesis . Although both organic and performative criteria characterise ethnic groups, debate in the past has dichotomised between primordialism and constructivism. Earlier 20th-century "Primordialists" viewed ethnic groups as real phenomena whose distinct characteristics have endured since
4015-450: The problem of racism became the sole responsibility of already disadvantaged communities. It was assumed that if a Black or Latino community was not "making it" by the standards that had been set by whites, it was because that community did not hold the right values or beliefs, or were stubbornly resisting dominant norms because they did not want to fit in. Omi and Winant's critique of ethnicity theory explains how looking to cultural defect as
4088-433: The public, political sphere, they are upheld within the private, family sphere to a great extent. It is here that women act not just as biological reproducers but also as "cultural carriers", transmitting knowledge and enforcing behaviors that belong to a specific collectivity. Women also often play a significant symbolic role in conceptions of nation or ethnicity, for example in the notion that "women and children" constitute
4161-571: The result of inherited traits and tendencies. With Weber's introduction of the idea of ethnicity as a social construct, race and ethnicity became more divided from each other. In 1950, the UNESCO statement " The Race Question ", signed by some of the internationally renowned scholars of the time (including Ashley Montagu , Claude Lévi-Strauss , Gunnar Myrdal , Julian Huxley , etc.), said: National, religious, geographic, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups: and
4234-488: The result of two opposite events, either the recent creation of state borders at variance with traditional tribal territories, or the recent immigration of ethnic minorities into a former nation-state. Examples for the first case are found throughout Africa , where countries created during decolonization inherited arbitrary colonial borders, but also in European countries such as Belgium or United Kingdom . Examples for
4307-588: The second case are countries such as Netherlands , which were relatively ethnically homogeneous when they attained statehood but have received significant immigration in the 17th century and even more so in the second half of the 20th century. States such as the United Kingdom , France and Switzerland comprised distinct ethnic groups from their formation and have likewise experienced substantial immigration, resulting in what has been termed " multicultural " societies, especially in large cities. The states of
4380-420: The source of inequality ignores the "concrete sociopolitical dynamics within which racial phenomena operate in the U.S." It prevents critical examination of the structural components of racism and encourages a "benign neglect" of social inequality. In some cases, especially those involving transnational migration or colonial expansion, ethnicity is linked to nationality. Anthropologists and historians, following
4453-407: The state or its constituents. In the 20th century, people began to argue that conflicts among ethnic groups or between members of an ethnic group and the state can and should be resolved in one of two ways. Some, like Jürgen Habermas and Bruce Barry, have argued that the legitimacy of modern states must be based on a notion of political rights of autonomous individual subjects. According to this view,
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#17328021806114526-441: The state should not acknowledge ethnic, national or racial identity but rather instead enforce political and legal equality of all individuals. Others, like Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka , argue that the notion of the autonomous individual is itself a cultural construct. According to this view, states must recognize ethnic identity and develop processes through which the particular needs of ethnic groups can be accommodated within
4599-512: The study of ethnicity was dominated by two distinct debates until recently. According to Eriksen , these debates have been superseded, especially in anthropology , by scholars' attempts to respond to increasingly politicized forms of self-representation by members of different ethnic groups and nations. This is in the context of debates over multiculturalism in countries, such as the United States and Canada, which have large immigrant populations from many different cultures, and post-colonialism in
4672-524: The term in social studies in the 1980s and 1990s. Barth went further than Weber in stressing the constructed nature of ethnicity. To Barth, ethnicity was perpetually negotiated and renegotiated by both external ascription and internal self-identification. Barth's view is that ethnic groups are not discontinuous cultural isolates or logical a priori to which people naturally belong. He wanted to part with anthropological notions of cultures as bounded entities, and ethnicity as primordialist bonds, replacing it with
4745-446: The term. Ramón Grosfoguel (University of California, Berkeley) argues that "racial/ethnic identity" is one concept and concepts of race and ethnicity cannot be used as separate and autonomous categories. Before Weber (1864–1920), race and ethnicity were primarily seen as two aspects of the same thing. Around 1900 and before, the primordialist understanding of ethnicity predominated: cultural differences between peoples were seen as being
4818-546: The time of the first English-language Bible translations in the 1500s (see Gentile ). The twelfth century Jewish scholar Maimonides defines goy in his Mishneh Torah as a worshipper of idolatry, as he explains, "Whenever we refer to a gentile [goy] without any further description, we mean one who worships false deities". Maimonides saw Christians as idolators (because of concepts like the Trinity ) but not Muslims who he saw as more strictly monotheistic. Goy can be used in
4891-468: The usage of the term "ethnic" in the ordinary language of Great Britain and the United States , Wallman noted The term "ethnic" popularly connotes "[race]" in Britain, only less precisely, and with a lighter value load. In North America, by contrast, "[race]" most commonly means color, and "ethnics" are the descendants of relatively recent immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. "[Ethnic]"
4964-448: The ways in which race can complicate a community's interactions with social and political structures, especially upon contact. Assimilation – shedding the particular qualities of a native culture for the purpose of blending in with a host culture – did not work for some groups as a response to racism and discrimination, though it did for others. Once the legal barriers to achieving equality had been dismantled,
5037-517: The word goy in Hebrew evolved to mean "non-Jew" in the Hellenistic (300 BCE to 30 BCE) and Roman periods , as both Rabbinical texts and then Christian theology placed increasing emphasis on a binary division between Jews and non-Jews. In modern usage in English, the extent to which goy is derogatory is a point of discussion in the Jewish community. The word "goy" is sometimes used by white supremacists to refer to themselves when signaling
5110-471: The word is not offensive. He compares it to the word "foreigners" which Americans can use dismissively but which isn't a derogatory word. Similarly, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) has stated that "goy" is "Not an insult, just kinda sounds like it." Rebecca Einstein Schorr argues that the word has an established pejorative overtone. She refers to the observation "the goyishe groomsmen were all drunk and bawdy; of course, you'd never see that at
5183-442: The world have been incorporated into a global economy: The opposing interests that divide the working classes are further reinforced through appeals to "racial" and "ethnic" distinctions. Such appeals serve to allocate different categories of workers to rungs on the scale of labor markets, relegating stigmatized populations to the lower levels and insulating the higher echelons from competition from below. Capitalism did not create all
5256-483: Was a turning point in ethnic studies. The consequences of Nazi racism discouraged essentialist interpretations of ethnic groups and race. Ethnic groups came to be defined as social rather than biological entities. Their coherence was attributed to shared myths, descent, kinship , a common place of origin, language, religion, customs, and national character. So, ethnic groups are conceived as mutable rather than stable, constructed in discursive practices rather than written in
5329-407: Was contrary to the prevailing naturalist belief of the time, which held that socio-cultural and behavioral differences between peoples stemmed from inherited traits and tendencies derived from common descent, then called "race". Another influential theoretician of ethnicity was Fredrik Barth , whose "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries" from 1969 has been described as instrumental in spreading the usage of
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