Evolving Social Constructions

Race, ethnicity, gender, culture: social constructions, legal definitions, applied laws, customs, self-choice. All of this shifts with time. Back in library school, we had to learn the basic rules of cataloging records, including subject fields and tags. By doing this alone, one could discern these shifts. The terms Latino and Hispanic go back in time quite a little ways; Latina comes on board in the early 20th century.  As terms and social identities, Chicano and Chicana spring into heavy textual action in the 1960s, reflecting "conciousness raising" in the middle of civil rights / human rights activities in the USA and worldwide. Above: Google Books Ngram Viewer as one trend indicator. Text/graph generator is at: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/  

 

This graph gives some indication of shifts in terminology regarding "black" or African American" population in the USA: I keyed in Negro, negro, Colored, Afro (for Afro-American, a term widely used in library cataloging in the 1970s, coinciding with the emergence of the Afro hairstyle), and African American. The most recent term picks up steam circa 1990.

Here I keyed in the terms American Indian, Native American and First Nation (Canadian terminology). One can add all sorts of other terms to all of the above: Mestizo, Mulatto, Creole, Métis, Amerindian, biracial, multiracial, mixed-race, multiethnic, Eskimo, Inuit, people of color and many other terms. Shifts in their usage would seem to mirror societal shifts in awareness, rights and cultural conciousness.  What amuses me is noisy grousing over "political correctness," itself a social construction appropriated and developed by social conservatives in the 1980s and 1990s entirely for berating perceived societal changes -- but that's for another post.  

Today's Rune: Separation (Reversed).