Relations, and the Second Generation AMONG THE MANY THEMES RUNNING THROUGH THE WORK OF

Aristide Zolberg is the contingent and dynamic nature of ethnic and racial groups (Zolberg and Woon 1999). The questions of how groups are created and crystalized, how boundaries are established, main-tained, and how they sometimes shift; and the role of politics and the state in the making and unmaking of ethnic gi'oups, can be seen from Zolberg's early work on postcolonial Africa up to his recent analysis of American immigration policy. (Zolberg 1969, 2006). In this paper we will take up this theme as it relates to the children of immigrants— the "second generation"—in the contemporary United States. We will examine the experience of race—and specifically the experience of racial discrimination—as it contributes to the making and unmaking of ethnic gioups in the United States. Discrimination, we will argue, has too often been discussed as if it is a singular experience. Ideas about the effects of discrimination that come from the experience of some groups are often applied uncritically to others. In an increasingly divers