Customer Reviews

Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America

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Mary Waters provides a provoking analysis and presentation of ethnic identity in American society. How people come to "choose" to identify in terms of ethnicity through influences of surnames, cultural practices and even diet are essential to understanding race/ethnicity. While the focus of the book is on Caucasians, I would consider Ethnic Options as a valid source for those looking to explore issues of ethnic identity.

Mary Waters provides a provoking analysis and presentation of ethnic identity in American society. How people come to "choose" to identify in terms of ethnicity through influences of surnames, cultural practices and even diet are essential to understanding race/ethnicity. While the focus of the book is on Caucasians, I would consider Ethnic Options as a valid source for those looking to explore issues of ethnic identity.

While I found the book to be an interesting study of suburban Catholics I did not find its conclusions to be valid.

Mary C. Waters did a study of 60 suburban Catholics and applied her findings to every white American. She was trying to remove religion as a factor in her study which is a laudable goal. She forgot to take into account that the Catholic church is a very traditional/conservative institution. People attracted to the Catholic church are more likely to be concerned about family history and values and therefore their ethnic background. At no point did the book discuss this flaw in the study.

The last chapter of the book has a discussion on racial issues that are not covered in other chapters. The discussion seems out of place for a book on the ethnicity of white europeans. At one point in the last chapter she uses a Dear Abby column to prove Asian ethnicity is not equivalent to Irish ethnicity.

The book seems to be a product of academic curiosity combined with academic laziness.