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Foreword
- State University of New York Press
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F Fo or re ew wo or rd d The human geography of the United States reflects both continuity and change due to a number of global, national, and local forces, one of the overarching themes of Race, Ethnicity, and Place in a Changing America. Some patterns, such as the black ghetto, have persisted due to unfortunate circumstances, while new places have taken on special meaning and purpose for groups, such as the Eden Center in northern Virginia for the Vietnamese. As ethnic groups relocate, they reshape inherited landscapes, remaking places to reflect their presence, such as Puerto Ricans and other Latinos. Also, for some native cultures, such as Hawaiians, place is an essential ingredient of cultural identity. Each of these examples reveals the complexity and breadth of issues associated with race, ethnicity and place. In a world where the media, telecommunications, and the Internet have drastically altered how individuals conceive of themselves and their place in the world, it is essential that scholars, politicians, journalists, and all citizens are aware of the many ways in which the place one lives, works, or visits affects and is affected by race and ethnicity. It is equally important to share research findings related to these topics with students and others . Race, Ethnicity, and Place in a Changing America was designed to achieve this goal. Although the concept of this text evolved from a national conference on Race, Ethnicity and Place convened at Howard University in 2004, co-sponsored by the Association of American Geographers (AAG), Howard University and Binghamton University, a substantial effort after the conference resulted in this volume. Editors John W. Frazier (founder of the REP Conferences) and Eugene L. Tettey-Fio requested that authors recast their conference presentations into a format suitable for undergraduates. The authors have met this challenge and the result is a strong text covering such important topics as migration, cultural conflicts over space, place-based identities, changing ethnic and racial landscapes, spatial dimensions of health inequalities, institutional roles in shaping human geography , and racial/ethnic relations. Because each of these issues is too large for any one scholar or institution to address alone, collaborations and partnerships are increasingly essential for continuing this research agenda. In nearly every case, the essays in this book have an interdisciplinary perspective, spanning disciplines from geography, economics, political science, communications, sociology, social work, history, business, law, and medicine. The research tools of multiple disciplines and their focal points require scholars and other leaders to form partnerships that allow them to address these questions in a holistic way. Just as disciplines cannot address these issues in isolation, neither can institutions. Higher education institutions , often because of their own location or place, have different missions, thus, the research foci they may bring to a project vary widely. It is essential that these different perspectives be brought together, so that institutions (and the scholars who work there) can share in the future development of these issues. For example, Howard University — one of the co-sponsors of the 2004 conference — is the nation’s largest producer of African American Ph.D. recipients in many of the social, behavioral and economic sciences, and a central component of its institutional mission commits addressing issues of African Americans and other groups historically marginalized in the United States. Although Howard does not currently have a geography department, its predominantly African American faculty includes individuals who have focused their careers on issues of race and ethnicity. On the other hand, Binghamton University’s geography department has made the study of race, ethnicity and place a special focus of inquiry and its faculty has published widely on this topic and sponsored the first national conference on this topic in 2002. Thus, Howard and Binghamton, because of institutional differences and strengths, can do things together that neither can do alone. Similarly, organizations like the Association of American Geographers play a critical role not only in organizing diverse individuals in an individual discipline, but also in bringing specific problems or questions to the forefront for national public and disciplinary discussion. Government at all levels, and corporate America as well, must be full partners in these efforts, since in many cases, the solutions to problems require governmental or corporate action. xii Foreword It would be a mistake to think that issues of race, ethnicity, and place can be confined to one nation, and thus, the partnerships that are necessary to address these issues must be global as well. Migration, for example, often involves...