William Petersen (born 1912) is an American sociologist and demographer.

Life

Petersen gained a PhD from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in 1954. He taught in the Sociology Department at the

University of California at Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

from 1953 to 1956 and 1959 to 1966. During his time there, he became influential in the use and perpetuation of the term "

model minority A model minority is a minority demographic (whether based on ethnicity, race or religion) whose members are perceived as achieving a higher degree of socioeconomic success than the population average, thus serving as a reference group to outgro ...

," typecasting East Asian Americans (specifically Japanese Americans) as "successful." He attributed this "success" to

Japanese Americans are Americans of Japanese people, Japanese ancestry. Japanese Americans were among the three largest Asian Americans, Asian American ethnic communities during the 20th century; but, according to the 2000 United States census, 2000 census, they ...

' obedience and their ability to overcome the "self-defeating apathy or self-hatred" that other racial minorities, specifically Black Americans, that cause them to "react negatively" to new opportunities and equal opportunities. From 1966 to 1967, Petersen was professor of sociology at

Boston College Boston College (BC) is a private Jesuit research university in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1863, the university has more than 9,300 full-time undergraduates and nearly 5,000 graduate students. Although Boston College is classified ...

, and from 1967 to 1978 he was the Robert Lazarus Professor of Social Demography at

Ohio State University The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best pub ...

Works

* ''Planned Migration: The Social Determinants of the Dutch-Canadian Movement'', 1955. * (ed.) ''American Social Patterns: Studies of Race Relations, Popular Heroes, Voting, Union Democracy and Government Bureaucracy'', 1956 * ''Population'', 1961. Second edition, 1969. Third edition, 1975. * (ed.) ''The realities of world communism'', 1963 * (ed. with David Matza) ''Social controversy'', 1963 * ''The Politics of Population'', 1964 * 'Success Story: Japanese-American Style', ''New York Times Magazine'', 9 January 1966, pp.20ff * 'Migration: Social Aspects', ''

International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences The ''International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences'' was first published in 1968 and was edited by David L. Sills and Robert K. Merton. It contains seventeen volumes and thousands of entries written by scholars around the world. The 2nd editi ...

'', New York: Macmillan & The Free Press, 1968, Vol. 10, pp.286-292 * ''Japanese Americans: Oppression and Success'', 1971 * (ed.) ''Readings in Population'', 1972 * ''Malthus'', 1979 * (with Rene Peterson) ''Dictionary of Demography: Biographies'', 1985 * 'Politics and the Measurement of Ethnicity', in William Alonso & Paul Starr, eds., ''The Politics of Numbers'', New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1986 * ''Ethnicity counts'', 1997 * ''From Persons to People: Further Studies in the Politics of Population'', 2003 * ''Against the Stream: Reflections of an Unconventional Demographer'', 2004

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Petersen, William 1912 births Possibly living people American demographers American sociologists Ohio State University faculty Columbia University alumni University of California, Berkeley faculty