Analysis Of George M. Fredrickson's Four Models Of Ethnic Relations

George M. Fredrickson’s four models of ethnic relations, ethnic hierarchy, one- way assimilation, cultural pluralism, and group separatism, are discussed in his text,

Models of American Ethnic Relations: A Historical Perspective. Ethnic hierarchy and one-way assimilation are two of the four models that can clearly be seen in author David

Treuer’s novel From Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life and screenwriter Paul Haggis’ 2004 film Crash.

Fredrickson describes ethnic hierarchy to occur when a dominant group “has claimed rights and privileges” that is “not to be fully shared with outsiders” that are labeled as unqualified for “equal rights and full citizenship” (Fredrickson, 634). This type of exclusion based on racial qualification

This single incident causes Jean to believe her prejudice assumptions are now valid - not just against the entire African American race but all races that are unlike her own. She has become a victim not only of carjacking but to ethnic hierarchy, believing that “hierarchy [is] now exclusively based on color” (Fredrickson, 635) after racially accusing a Mexican locksmith as “a gang member” with “prison tattoos” who

will “sell [their] keys to one of his gang banger friends the moment he is out [their] door”

(Crash, 11:08). Ethnic hierarchy is also apparent in From Rez Life: An Indian's Journey

Through Reservation Life on page 587 when author David Treuer writes of the Trail of

Tears. Native Americans in the 1820s and 1830s were removed from their land “in

Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, and South Carolina” (Treuer, 587) because falsely entitled American men who believed the American soil, as Fredrickson stated, was “not to be fully shared with outsiders” (Fredrickson, 634). On page 587, Treuer goes on to describe the Trail of Tears to be a symbol of “American injustice,

One-way assimilation is another evident model of Fredrickson’s ethnic relations that can be found in both the 2004 film Crash and the novel From Rez Life: An Indian's

Journey Through Reservation Life. In Models of American Ethnic Relations: A Historical

Perspective, George M. Fredrickson describes one-way assimilation as the expectation forced on minorities “to conform as the price of admission to full and equal participation in the society” (Fredrickson, 635). The goal of one-way assimilation is unity “but on terms that presume the superiority, purity, and unchanging character of the dominant culture” (Fredrickson, 635), or in more common terms - forced to “in every possible way act and look like white people” (Fredrickson, 637). In the 2004 film Crash, the Persian shop-owner father of Dorri, played by Bahar Soomekh, is hit with the pressure to assimilate after receiving racial attacks. At 41:33 in the film Crash, Dorri’s mother says,

“Look what they wrote… They think we’re Arab… When did Persian become Arab?”

while scrubbing away at the racial Arab slurs written across their store walls.