My study compares white young women and African-Caribbean young women in relation to cigarette smoking and therefore addresses some of the complexities of conducting research on ‘race’ and ethnicity. Early health research on black and minority ethnic communities was based upon a biomedical notion of ‘race’ which had its historical roots in an assumption that ‘race’ was based on fixed biological differences, leading in turn to variations in patterns of health and illness between different ethnic or racial groups. Sociologists have challenged this theorisation and conceptualisation of ‘race’ and have suggested that ‘race’ is socially constructed and highly contested, that it is a non-scientific category and should be rejected (Miles, 1993). Others accept that while ‘race’ is socially constructed, it has very real effects and hence can be viewed as a stigmatised form of identity that is forced on individuals (Cashmore and Troyna, 1983). Ethnicity is a concept drawn from anthropology which has become more commonly used recently. Ethnic groups are groups that broadly share a common language, religion and/or culture. While ‘race’ is an identity that to some extent is imposed on particular groups and individuals, ethnicity may be a category that is chosen. A new sociology of
ethnicities has developed which is influenced by postmodern and post-structural critiques of the essentialisation of ‘race’ and racial categories. The distinction between ‘race’ and ethnicity has been critiqued by Hall (2000: 223).
Biological racism privileges markers like skin colour, but those signifiers have always also been used, by discursive extension, to connote social and cultural differences…The biological referent is therefore never wholly absent from discourses of ethnicity, though it is more indirect. The more ‘ethnicity’ matters, the more its characteristics are represented as relatively fixed, inherent within a group, transmitted from generation to generation, not just by culture and education, but by biological inheritance, stabilized above all by kinship and endogamous marriage rules that ensure that the ethnic group remains genetically, and therefore culturally ‘pure’. (Hall, 2000: 223)
contemporary diasporic ways of life. Thus the culture/biological distinction between ethnicity and ‘race’ is challenged and it is clear that there is some overlap between ‘race’ and ethnicity. Indeed, the two categories are at times used interchangeably. This poses a dilemma for researchers wishing to explore ethnic or racial
differences. On the one hand there is a need to explore differences between ethnic groups, yet this can involve homogenising and essentialising racial groups and categories. Yet, if we acknowledge the heterogeneity within ‘ethnic’ groups then this makes it very difficult to compare different ethnic groups. Gunaratnam (2003) refers to this as the ‘treacherous bind’ in researching questions of ‘race’ and ethnicity and argues that researchers need to work both with and against racial and ethnic categories to ensure that they are not reproducing dominant conceptions of ‘race’ and ethnicity (Smith, 2002; Stanfield, 1993). The aim of my research is not to essentialise or homogenise African-Caribbean young women as they are diverse in terms of geographical origin, sexuality and social class.
However, this group has also been largely excluded from research on cigarette smoking and my aim, in this study, is to document and analyse their reported patterns of smoking and attitudes and views on cigarette smoking.
One of the difficulties with early studies on the health of black and minority ethnic groups was the ‘racial’ or ethnic categorisation used. Definitions of ethnicity were unclear and comparative epidemiological studies have usually employed very crude categories with subject populations divided into Asian, African-
Caribbean/African and white groups (Douglas, 1992). Hence studies referring to people from the Indian subcontinent or Asia did not identify which particular ethnic groups – Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi – were involved in the study. Similarly, African-Caribbean and African groups were often combined, with little attention paid to the differences between people from Africa and the Caribbean. Mortality data, for instance, are classified by country of birth so that black people born in Britain are not identifiable as members of ethnic minority groups, making it difficult to assess the impact of ‘race’ on causes of death. This has changed with the development of ethnic categories in the census since 2001.
Ethnic categories have changed over time. But ethnic groups are not
homogenous, so that individuals who may be assigned to particular ethnic groups may be very diverse in relation to country of origin, area of residence, socio- economic status, gender and length of residence in Britain. Moreover, categorisations of this kind usually ignore the increasing number of people of
‘mixed parentage’ in the UK (Tizard and Phoenix, 1993; Camper, 1994; Modood et al, 1997). Hence the homogenisation of groups that are, in reality, diverse may well obscure some of the important issues under investigation. Some researchers have attempted to define ethnic groups more precisely and to recognise their heterogeneity. The category ‘South Asian’ for example, is increasingly being subdivided into Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian subgroups. There is also a growing interest in mapping the social class and gender inequalities within what are defined as the same ethnic groups (Nazroo, 1997). However, there are still major weaknesses in the categories used to collect and classify data on the relationship between health, ‘race’ and ethnicity in the UK. It is with this proviso that I review the literature on cigarette smoking and ethnicity, recognising the difficulties and dilemmas associated with trying to categorise or define racial and ethnic groups.