Gary McDonogh. Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture
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associated categories—inscribed on the
body
. Genealogy was imputed via an unbalanced
cultural model; “one drop” of
African American
blood determined race in many states.
This also precluded the construction of intermediate groups (mestizo) found in Latin
American societies; “half-breed” was an insult, not a category. In practical terms,
“looking”
b
lack or Indian or Chinese was the social determinant of racial categorization.
While the category “mulatto” might be recognized (or even sanctioned in
New Orleans
),
legally these people were defined as black—hence, the longstanding category of the
“tragic mulatto” and issues of “passing” (
b
lacks living as white) which haunt literature
and film.
These categories had further implications for policy and thought in the early Republic,
where the Constitution defined slaves as the equivalent of three-fifths of a human being.
Scientists also argued polygenetic versus monogenetic models of racial origin which
again made non-white races less than human. Even in areas like
medicine, education
and
the census, pseudo-
b
iological racial assumptions underpinned unequal treatment (as
sociological assumptions later would do).
The “clear-cut” categories of race were confounded by European
immigration
in the
nine-teenth century, which produced “white” populations that differed in
language
,
culture, class and strategy from the dominant Northern European populations. Hence, the
notion of ethnicity developed out of the category of race, mingling “visible” features with
other distinctions of race,
religion
and perceived behaviors. In the nineteenth century for
example, the Irish would have been classified as a race separated from the English, the
Scottish or the Germans; through much of the twentieth century the Irish were considered
an ethnic group, part of a so-called white race. This transformation is part and parcel o
f
the story of
assimilation,
made possible in effect by the reality that the Irish may have
been considered different from mainstream
WASP
s, but they were not as different as
African Americans, the Chinese, or Native Americans were deemed to be. For the Irish
themselves, and for other Southern and Eastern Europeans who faced hostility from
native-
b
orn Americans, considerable mileage could be gained from the process o
f
“whitening,” and by propagation of notions of ethnicity. At the same time, the idea of an
“Irish” race allowed the Irish to distinguish themselves from their British colonizers and
even to organize “racial” (
p
olitical) action in Ireland without appearing disloyal to their
new nation.
In the 1920s, immigration quotas reified certain categories of origin (older ethnics) as
legitimate populations, while proscribing others as racially inferior. Here, the limitations
on Asian immigration imposed between 1882 and 1943 are particularly striking. At the
same time, the Great Migration of African Americans from the
South
to Northern
cities
reaffirmed the presence, meanings and tensions of the fundamental racial divide.
Race and ethnicity became major questions in politics and the social sciences from the
turn of the century onward. Laws in the North and South sought to define race in terms o
f
rights, location and boundaries in such areas as
marriage
.
Anthropology,
under the
leadership of Franz Boas, developed a strong commitment to refuting race as a biological
category which has continued to the present; Boas and his followers also worked with
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 936
American ethnics, although this would be developed even more by
sociology
and
anthropology in subsequent years (for example, the University of Chicago school o
f
sociology). Many
foundations
were active in supporting this research and its
propagation; African Americans like W.E.B.
Du Bois
also challenged the preconceptions
of race on both intellectual and political grounds.
Political, demographic and cultural changes since the Second World War have further
complicated concepts and usage of race and ethnicity Continued migration of African
Americans to
Northeastern
and
Western
cities, places populated by large numbers o
f
descendants of immigrants, encouraged a competitive racism in which divisions among
European immigrant groups became increasingly blurred at the expense of increasingly
ghettoized and segregated black (and Asian or Hispanic) communities. That is, contact
and even marriage across religious or “ethnic” lines—e.g. Irish Catholic and German
Protestant—became more socially acceptable, even while laws of
miscegenation
forbade
marriages between “white” and “other” in many states.
The massive
migration
out of cities into the
suburbs
after the war, encouraged by the
GI Bill
and
highway
construction, further accentuated the racial divisions between white
suburbs and black de-industrialized
inner cities
. In addition, political changes occurred
from the emancipation of slaves in 1865 all the way through the
Civil Rights movement,
which both provided a strong racial caste to political discourse and then assaulted that
discourse in ways that would contribute to status anxiety of more marginal white
populations.
Within such a context the 1960s became a key period in the creation of what Steinberg
has called the “ethnic myth.” In the countercultural assault on corporate America, many
of the icons and mechanisms of assimilation came under attack, from the bland suburban
tract to the WASP-dominated college
campus
and military-industrial complex.
Expression of European ethnic heritages and sometimes the “invention of traditions”
b
ecame common at this time, further exaggerated once expressions of black cultural
identity (connected with
Black Power
) became seen as politically potent weapons.
Ironically, what started out as a radical critique of mainstream American society soon
turned into a white-ethnic
backlash
against civil-rights advances, the
War on Poverty
and
affirmative action
.
Boundaries between race and ethnicity, however, started to erode as the end of the
century approached. This is particularly the case since post-1965 immigrants arriving in
the United States have not fitted easily within the black-white model established in
p
olitical discourse. Asian Americans have never fitted within the system, while Hispanics
and immigrants from the
Caribbean
and Africa have brought their own concepts of race
with them that often incorporate (or conceal) racial distinctions and mixtures within the
ethnic group. Further, whereas in the nineteenth century nativeborn Americans and
European immigrants often came together at the expense of African Americans, in some
of the recent reactions to immigration African Americans and other native-
b
orn
Americans have moved closer together in their opposition to the newly arriving
immigrants. In both cases, we must be aware of ethnicity as a potential strategy to divide
Entries A-Z 937
class interests, as well as of the efforts of those divided by race and ethnicity to come
together in common causes. Sometimes, in fact, division and cohesion are closely
interwoven, as in the long history of Black-Jewish relations in the US.
Categories have also become neutralized in public (multicultural) discourse, where
“ethnicity” is sometimes used as a “softer” word than race to imply that all divisions are
epistemologically equal. “Ethnic studies” has become a major academic field in research
and teaching by both challenging and blurring categories of difference (see
literature,
race and ethnicity
). Moreover, demographics continue to complicate simple categories
of ascription or self-identification, as questions of the 2000 census already have revealed.
With the elimination of laws against miscegenation since the 1960s, as well as the
presence of new racial/ethnic groups, “multi-ethnic,” “bi-racial” or “hyphenated” families
and citizens, while not the norm, have a greater presence in everyday life. Others have
also identified American as their ethnic, racial or heritage category.
“Race” and “ethnicity” are used in more confusing and sometimes sinister ways in
popular culture. “Black” music, “black” audiences/consumers and “Hispanic television”
are all assumptions made in marketing and
mass media
. Asian Americans have both
gained and suffered from assumptions underpinning their categorization as the “model
minority,” while Native Americans have had to learn to reassert a complex of biological,
linguistic, historical and cultural features to claim tribal identities.
“Ethnic” can refer to established American
neighborhoods, food
and nostalgia, or lead
to the creation of “vaguely ethnic” characters in mass media, marked by clues of food,
accent or religion. Here, ethnicity sometimes stands in for other categories like class.
Ethnic is also used to refer to continual global borrowing—“ethnic chic” may take items
from Russia, Mayans, Nepal and Zulus, while “world music” mixes rhythms, instruments
and heritages. Race, by contrast, tends to be strongly marked in the same situations—no
television character is “sort of black” or “maybe Asian,” although light-skinned African
Americans often have been highlighted as models and actors (and white female actors
like Katharine
Hepburn
portrayed Chinese women on screen). Again, in reading these
characters, it is important to see where “race” is an issue and where these characters are
also used as vehicles for the discussion (or concealment) of issues of class, gender and
“otherness.”
Further reading
Churchill, W. (1998)
Fantasies of the Master Race,
San Francisco: City Lights.
Fine, M. (ed.) (1997)
Off White,
New York: Routledge.
Harris, M. (1968)
The Rise of Anthropological Theory,
New York: Crowell.
Ignatiev, N. (1995)
How the Irish Became White,
New York: Routledge.
McCarthy, C. (1998)
The Uses of Culture,
New York: Routledge.
Roediger, D. (1999)
The Wages of Whiteness,
London: Verso.
Steinberg, S. (1989)
The Ethnic Myth,
Boston: Beacon.
GARY McDONOGH
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 938
ROBERT GREGG
CINDY WONG
race riots
Race riots at the beginning of the twentieth century were generally
white
rampages
through black
neighborhoods,
shooting and burning. By the 1960s, they had become
uprisings within the black communities themselves.
Some historians argue that the increased black militancy led to disenchantment among
whites, to the white backlash and the demise of the
Democratic Party
’s consensus on
civil rights and eradicating racial discrimination. Others have argued that black militancy
increased because the kind of commitment made to real changes seemed so minimal, and
that militancy brought about change where none had been occurring.
Throughout the
civil-rights
era, while political changes were occurring in the
South,
things worsened for Northern urban
African Americans
. As blacks entered the
cities,
whites and businesses left for the
suburbs,
leaving impoverished segregated
neighborhoods with few employment opportunities.
Between 1964 and 1968, a large number of cities witnessed major rioting. The first riot
occurred in
Harlem, NY
after a policeman shot a black criminal suspect. In August riots
broke out in
Newark, NJ, Philadelphia, PA
and
Chicago, IL
. But the riot that had the
most symbolic impact broke out in Watts
(Los Angeles)
in 1965, also sparked following
a case of police brutality. Thirty-four African Americans died in this riot in a section o
f
the city where 60 percent of the adult population was on welfare relief. Coming five days
after President
Johnson
passed the
Voting Rights Act,
the riot seemed to highlight the
limited effectiveness of the Civil Rights movement.
The worst summer of rioting happened in 1967. Twenty-two cities witnessed riots that
July and August. Forty-three people were killed in
Detroit, MI
(site of the infamous
Algiers Motel incident
), nearly all of them black, and at least a quarter of the city was
b
urned, with $50 million worth of property destroyed. Federal paratroopers, some just
back from the
Vietnam War,
were sent in to restore order.
The riots provoked a response from the federal government, most notably the
Kerner
Commission,
which reported in March of 1968, and urged more development of
inner
cities,
which President Johnson incorporated into his
War on Poverty
. Within a few
days of the report’s release, on May 4, Martin Luther
King,
Jr. was assassinated, leading
to further rioting.
A
p
art from obvious conditions of deprivation that have been smoldering in the inner
cities for decades, a major reason for this rioting has been
police
brutality. In this regard,
the more recent events in 1992, in South Central Los Angeles, were typical. Rodney
King,
stopped for a traffic violation, was beaten senseless by white policemen from the
Entries A-Z 939
notorious LAPD, and the incident was captured in graphic detail on video. When the
p
olicemen were acquitted of any wrong doing, the city erupted in a day of looting,
burning and interracial
violence
that spread across the country. The riots were followed
b
y tours from presidential candidates and by promises, still largely unfulfilled, of funding
for redevelopment.
ROBERT GREGG
racial profiling
Use of phenotypical characteristics to determine
police
intervention, loosely based on
potential associations with likely criminal behavior. The overwhelming tendency of
state
troopers in New Jersey and other areas to stop
African American
motorists in
disproportionate numbers for questioning in the 1990s led to nationwide reform of this
systematic discrimination. Such abuse has given rise to the ironic label DWB (Driving
While Black) to protest such stops.
GARY McDONOGH
radio
American radio has played a prominent role in both utilitarian applications and in the
transmission of American
news
and
popular culture
. The proliferation of programming
options and technological development since its early days is staggering.
From those early days, radio has served for utilitarian purposes of ship-to-shore
communication and military uses, as well as entertaining the nation with
game shows,
children’s story hours, mysteries,
soap operas, science fiction, operas,
news and sports.
The golden age of radio is generally considered to be the period between the mid-1930s
and 1950. Radio provided “free” entertainment during the Great Depression of the 1930s,
and brought the war into the living rooms of the American public.
As
television
asserted its emerging role in the late 1940s and early 1950s, radio had to
re-define itself. As programming once only heard on radio moved into the new medium,
the FM band emerged, public broadcasting developed, and new opportunities for
programming arose.
FM stations account for 75 percent of radio listeners today and about 60 percent o
f
advertising
dollars. Stations live or die by the ratings they receive from the Arbitron
company which produces a “book” on each major market for advertisers. The advertisers
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 940
see the demographic breakdown of each station’s listeners, and purchase the time and
format most likely to reach their target audience.
The most popular formats for radio programming in the late 1990s are (in order o
f
decreasing popularity) country, adult contemporary, news/ talk/business/sports,
religion,
rock
and
oldies
. More than half of US radio stations play country music, particularly in
the Deep
South and West
. Its standing as the number one program format attests to its
grassroots popularity.
Adult contemporary integrates soft rock with what used to be considered “middle o
f
the road” or “chicken rock” from the 1950s.
Talk radio/
news/business/sports provides
local stations, especially AM stations, a niche for attracting listeners and revenues. While
satellite delivers pre-
p
ackaged talk programming, such as Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon
Liddy, a community’s individual personalities can host talk and interview programs that
meet the interests and needs of a station’s hometown.
Public radio provides programming that might not be commercially viable and also
that is educational, to some extent.
National Public Radio
and
Public Radio
International
disburse government and private funds to non-commercial radio stations.
Their content includes
All Things Considered, Morning Edition
and
Prairie Home
Companion
.
Important legislation regarding radio includes the Radio Act of 1927, the Federal
Communications Act of 1934, which replaced it, and the Telecommunications Act o
f
1996. The 1934 Act provides the legislative foundation governing broadcast and radio
transmission in the United States. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 has affected
ownership restrictions and technological requirements, among other issues related to
radio.
Further reading
Agee, W.K., Ault, P.H. and Emery, E. (1994)
Introduction to Mass Communications,
New York: HarperCollins.
B
roadcasting & Cable Yearbook 1997,
New Providence: R.R.Bowker.
DeFleur, M. and Dennis, E. (1996)
Understanding Mass Communication,
Boston:
Houghton Mifflin.
GAIL HENSON
radio chains
Radio chains or groups represent an increasing portion of American radio ownership.
Group ownership affects a market’s programming,
advertising
revenues, technological
Entries A-Z 941
capabilities and hiring, both with positive and negative effects on a market. The FCC
rules limit the number of radio and
television
stations a group can own in any one market
in order to prevent a market monopoly Major players in the mid-1990s were CBS,
Evergeen, American Radio Systems, ABC
(Disney),
Chancellor (the Hicks-Muse
companies), Jacor and Clear Channel Communication.
Further reading
B
roadcasting & Cable Yearbook 1997,
vol. 1, New Providence: R.R.Bowker.
National Association of Broadcasters (1998)
Wall Street Journal Almanac 1998,
edited
by Ronald J. Alsop, New York: Ballantine Books.
GAIL HENSON
railroads
s
ee
trains
ranching
Ranching is the grazing of livestock over grasslands where animals may roam or feed;
cattle ranching is the dominant range industry in the US. Ranching is associated with the
sparsely populated
West
and Midwestern Plains states. Old World cultural stock
p
ractices were adapted to diverse environments to create Texan, Californian and
Midwestern ranching practices. Modern ranches in these regions continue to
accommodate constantly changing politics, technologies and markets.
Westward expansion introduced ranching as a frontier pursuit on the western fringe o
f
settlement, displacing the native buffalo with beef cattle. The range cattle industry grew
when post-Civil War cattle drives moved huge herds of untended cattle from
Texas
to
railheads and markets. English breeds of cattle were introduced to the East and
Midwest,
and industrialization and eastern urbanization led to increased market demand for corn-
fed beef. Refrigerated transport facilities, industrialized meatpacking plants, and large
feedyards enabled stockmen to respond to increased beef demand. While ranching was
less affected by government intervention than farming, governmental influence in
agricultural policy encouraged the larger, specialized, high-output land tract over the
smaller, diversified family farm.
Native ranchers, those with work experience and background in livestock, share their
trade with many outside investors though the economic gain is limited. The attraction for
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 942
many outside capital investors continues to be an American fascination with the prestige
and mythology surrounding the Romantic West, the American
cowboy,
and land
ownership. Ranching encapsulates deeply American values embracing
individualism,
independence,
freedom,
and open space. The cowboy ranch-hand’s dress continues to
influence fashion and marketing trends. Suburban sprawl and “ranchettes,” small tracts
p
rimarily used for hobby ranching or status leisure retreats, actually threaten ranching
cultures as land prices are driven above cattle business profits.
Corporatization of agriculture brought change to agribusiness in the 1970s. Vertical
integration in animal production, confined growing from birth to finish, is not conducive
to cattle-growing as it has been for swine and poultry production. Therefore, the rancher
continues to supply cows grown on range grasses to the huge feeder and packer facilities.
Industrial scales of efficiency presently inhibit specialized beef production such as highly
marbled, organic, grass-fed or hormone-free beef, though there is increasing consumer
interest. Cattle producers are forming cooperatives to purchase interests in these facilities
to increase their control over beef marketing and pricing.
Land-use controversies are of growing concern to ranchers as development encroaches
on agricultural land and outside interests affect formerly local politics. Private
landowners are affected by rural zoning and environmental and wildlife legislation.
Volatile disputes surrounding some ranchers who maintain grazing contracts with the
federal government have brought widespread attention to public domain land use. As
cattle grazing produces beef utilizing large land tracts while inhibiting many forms o
f
development, controversies will likely increase.
Further reading
Jordan, T. (1993)
North American Cattle-Ranching Frontiers,
Albuquerque: University
of New Mexico.
PAULA ADAMS
Randolph, A.Philip
b. 1889; d. 1979
Born in
Florida,
Randolph migrated to
New York
City in 1911, where he attended
City College, becoming a socialist. In 1917 he established the radical
Harlem, NY
j
ournal,
The Messenger,
and made his name as a writer and orator. Recruited by the
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the
union
of the Pullman Company’s
African
American
porters, he fought from 1925 to 1937 to gain recognition for the Brotherhood
from both the American Federation of Labor and from Pullman. Following his success,
Entries A-Z 943
Randolph, abandoning socialism, became a national spokesperson for
civil rights
. He
organized a March on Washington in 1940, which he called off after President
Roosevelt
agreed to end discrimination within the government and in industries with federal
contracts. He later helped persuade
Truman
to issue an executive order barring
discrimination in the military. Later, he issued the call for the March on Washington for
j
obs and freedom in 1963, bringing together over 250,000 marchers to back President
Kennedy
’s civil-rights legislation.
ROBERT GREGG
rap/hip hop
Once derided as a flash in the pan, rap emerged as the dominant popular musical style at
the end of the twentieth century. Many people call it rap, but the later coinage “hip hop”
better catches its essence—the beat. Possibly the most amazing thing about rap is the
ability of new practitioners constantly to refashion and revitalize the genre by
incorporating new musical influences and inspirations. While the basics have remained—
a strippeddown funk beat with talky vocals—rap has fused with
rock, jazz,
reggae and
every other contemporary
popular music
form.
Rap developed in the 1970s on the streets of
New York
City, where DJ Kool Here, DJ
Hollywood and others set up turntables, sound systems and speakers on a corner and
b
lasted out a sound collage, starting with a big, fat, booming bass, overlaying samples
and scratches, topped off by a call-and-response chant. Indebted to the Last Poets, Gil
Scott-Heron, Jamaican reggae toasters and James
Brown,
as well as deeper rooted
African American
rhythmic and lyrical traditions, rap brought black popular culture
back to the street.
Since the first recorded rap song, the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” (1979),
which many critics dismissed as a novelty, rap has continued to rejuvenate itself just
when it seemed to have reached a dead end. When the boastful rappings of early MCs
like Kurtis Blow began to sound tired, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five brought a
social conscience with their astounding 1982 single, “The Message.” Run DMC added
hard rock guitar for 1984’s “Rock Box” and the crossover hit “Walk This Way” a 1986
remake of an Aerosmith tune. The Beastie Boys began to fuse punk, metal and rap
beginning in the mid-1980s. Their
License to Ill
(1986) was the first no. 1 hip-hop album
and the bestselling rap album of the 1980s.
At the same time “gangsta rap” was emerging on the West Coast. NWA (Niggaz With
Attitude) and Ice-T rapped and rocked hard, spewing incendiary lyrics, mostly about
hurting and killing people, particularly women and cops. Their first-
p
erson narratives
about the harsh and violent realities of
ghetto
life shot them to the top of the hip-hop
charts and excited much social comment and media-driven controversy. In New York,
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 944
Boogie Down Productions and Public Enemy took a more directly political stance. Led
b
y Queen Latifah, female rappers began to combat the rampant misogyny of much
gangsta rap, with women emerging as more than novelties for the first time on the hip-
hop scene.
By the 1990s, rap was part of mainstream American culture, from the streets of the
ghettos to sitcom theme songs and advertising jingles. Still, hip-hop culture continued to
assemble and deconstruct new forms of popular and unpopular music.
Further reading
Kelley, R.D.G. (1994) “Kickin’ Reality Kickin’ Ballistics: ‘Gangsta Rap’ and
Postindustrial Los Angeles,”
Race Rebels,
New York: The Free Press.
Rose, T. (1994)
Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America,
Middletown: Wesleyan.
DEWAR MACLEOD
ratings, movies
Ratings provide a form of self
-censorship
that the media industries apply after pressure
from the public and the government. The Hollywood Production Code of the 1930s was
negotiated to handle issues from sex and violence to
religion
for mainstream cinema.
With the break up of studio control and cultural changes of the 1960s, the Motion Picture
Association of America switched from self-control to consumer advising, instituting a
four-part system that tended to exclude children on the basis of
language,
sexual content
and occasionally onscreen brutality but also left open the negotiation of parental control
and responsibility. While the G rating (associated with
Disney
or family films) was
suitable for all, other categories sought parental guidance and parental responsibility to
attend with a child (R, and, after 1984, PG-13 as well). The X rating (eagerly extended in
p
ornographic film advertising to double and triple X) proved most troubling, leading
eventually to an NC-17 rating that sought to distinguish big-
b
udget films with sexual
content from pornography. Still, the NC-17 rating greatly diminishes the number of
Eyes
Wide Shut
(1999), digitally inserted figures screens available for a movie. Hence, in
Kubrick’s blocked key actions from American audiences to obtain an R.
This rating was flagged of course as an immediate temptation for adolescents,
especially as video rentals imposed controls on parents rather than theaters. Nonetheless,
it remains a model for similar systems to rate television, records and
computer
products,
where sex and language still dominate issues of
violence,
although the latter has become
more critical in music and computer
games
. Other rating systems have been devised that
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