ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief overview of several major ethnic and racial groups that reside in rural America. In the evolvement of agricultural rural areas, people came together for some significant reason that served as a bond of commonality. As the agricultural areas matured, settlements and service areas were tailored to the needs and wants of the groups served. Although almost one-fourth of Black families in the United States reside outside a metropolitan area, research on the Black family in this country has been conducted for the most part in urban areas. The rural Black family can be viewed as a "cultural island," set in a region of the United States that is itself a cultural island in some ways. For the Filipino, the most important ties start from the family and kin group. The kin group relationship is embedded in a complex and complicated system of reciprocal rights and obligations.
