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Ethnic Succession

Ethnic succession refers to the process by which one racial/ethnic group displaces another ethnic/racial group from an established residential, occupational, or political niche. This entry describes the model and offers examples of how it can be used to understand changes in neighborhoods, workplaces, and political power, as well as competition and conflict among different groups.

Development of the Model

The concept of ethnic succession is an integral part of the ecological perspective on urban group relations first developed by a group of sociologists at the University of Chicago in the early to mid-1900s. This group of scholars, collectively known as the Chicago School and led by Robert Ezra Park, proposed that racial and ethnic groups were territorial entities, analogous to plant and animal species, who compete for the resources in the urban environment. Park and his colleagues proposed that much as plant and animal species contend for food, water, and space and dominate certain places with the natural environment, human groups seek to establish a secure place for themselves within the urban landscape, carving out residential niches where their group constitutes the majority of the population and where their dominance of local institutions (e.g., religious institutions and businesses) is established.

Once established, these niches may become subject to “invasion” by other groups migrating from other places or seeking to expand their territory. Eventually, if these invasions are not repelled, the newcomers displace the former population, which relocates to other neighborhoods and workplaces and cedes control of the political apparatus to the newcomers. In the process, some groups are displaced into other neighborhoods and occupations with the arrival of another wave of newcomers who come to occupy that portion of the residential, occupational, or political spectrum. These newcomers may then compete with those groups directly above them in the status hierarchy, which can lead to conflict among groups.

The ethnic succession model stands in stark contrast to the classic assimilation model described by Gordon, which proposes that individual members of ethnic/racial groups gradually blend in, integrate, and intermarry with the dominant population group—for example, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants—without experiencing much tension or conflict. Rather, as Waldinger noted, U.S. society features a collective mobility as one immigrant group after another arrives, ensuring an ongoing competition for resources.

Changing Neighborhoods

From a residential standpoint, ethnic succession first takes place with the arrival of a few “pioneers”—members of a racial/ethnic group who decide to settle in the midst of another group's established enclave. These newcomers at best may be tolerated, but they are often perceived as a potential threat, particularly if they practice a different religion or adhere to different set of cultural customs than does the group that is dominant in the area. From a historical perspective, the movement of Black people into formerly White urban communities provoked a particularly visceral reaction from the White population, who often employed intimidation and, in some cases, outright violence to prevent the “incursion” of Black people into “their” space.

For example, in 1925, a Black physician named Ossian Sweet moved from an African American enclave in Detroit to a White neighborhood in that city and was met with an angry mob who threatened his family and sought to break into his home to do bodily harm to the Sweets. While defending his property, Dr. Sweet fired a gun from within the house, killing one of the members of the mob who had gathered outside. As a result, he was charged with murder but was later acquitted by reason of self-defense. In Chicago, near the beginning of the 20th century, African Americans who sought to move outside the segregated Black belt along State Street in Chicago met with stiff resistance from residents of the adjacent Irish and Polish communities, who beat up Black people passing through the neighborhoods and firebombed the homes of the newcomers. Such violence culminated in the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 in which thirty-eight people perished, twenty-three of whom were Black. In 1943, thirty-four people, twenty-six of whom were Black, lost their lives in pitched battles that began over access to a beach and spread to the borders of White and Black communities in the heart of Detroit.

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