








 are  the stones of a wall against which we will all smash ourselves.  Many walls must come down in today s Germany. Even among feminists.
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Understanding Cultural Pluralism
The increase in racial violence and hatred on campuses across the country is manifested in acts ranging from hateful speech to physical violence. Strategies for dealing with this problem on a campus include increased awareness through mandatory ethnic studies classes, the empowerment of targets of violence, and fostering social and cultural interaction in festivals, folk-arts fairs, and literary and political forums. Systematic knowledge about ethnic groups has not been a central scholarly concern In fact mainstream literacy, humanistic, and historical disciplines have only recently begun to displace sociological attention to the pathologies of urban ethnicity as the primary
contact and source of information and in ethnic traditions. The historic role that vo have played in the reduction of bias an needs to be understood and revitalized, ciations can take part in a host of state an that can improve intergroup relations, ents can help children understand co differences among and within ethnic groups. The incorporation of everyday families and a formal pedagogy roOt    locally relevant resources are essential understanding diversity.
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Educational efforts are necessary and productive, but it would be foolish to neglect the enormity of the issues of ethnocentrism and group hatred and prejudice that infect opportunities for better cultural understanding. Philosophical reflection on these dimensions of conflict, as well as. recognition of the role of mass media in the social construction of cultures throughout the world, reveal the longterm need for attention to the nature of ethnically charged conflict.
There are many ways of measuring the development of wholesome relations among persons and ethnic groups. The evidence cited by various authorities in this chapter indicates contradictions that are probably caused by differences in assumptions and models of social processes used to frame the issues of group development. Important in this discussion is the role of government in the process of ethnic group relations. Progress in civil rights promoted changes in attitudes toward affirming the equality of all people. The development of this principle has been tracked by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) from the 1960s to the 1980s. NORC findings include increased levels of acceptance for blacks and a decreased desire for segregated schools and neighborhoods and for laws prohibiting interracial marriage. Nonetheless, attitudes regarding frustration, powerless-ness, racial distrust, and hostility reveal striking disparities in attitudes between blacks and whites.
Ethnic communities are also frequently in conflict with large-scale corporate powers and the media. What avenues of resolve are available to ensure that authentic cultural resources are preserved and presented in ways that enrich the overall legacy and endowment of America's multiethnic traditions? Can the promotion of pluralism and the enhancement of positive prototypes of ethnicity assist the shaping of our national self-image? Dialogue among conflicting parties about dilemmas that confront us all in a society driven by technological and economic changes is an essential feature of our freedom and of our responsibility to share and shape the burden of s cial change.
Although significant strides have been made in combat-lf19 discrimination and defamation against Americans of various ethnic groups, much still remains to be done, ^flattering and often distorted stereotypes of ethnic
Americans continue to appear in the media. In the national and local media in America, ethnic Americans still remain substantially underrepresented. Efforts to inform our fellow countrymen and women and our children of the history and culture of American ethnic groups through educational programs have suffered serious setbacks. Many of the institutions and foundations that were in the forefront of the struggle to create a genuine multicultural pluralism, to promote better understanding between various groups of Americans, and to end discrimination have adopted other agendas. Advocates of multicultural development, however, argue that to secure rights and justice for all Americans, we must address such tasks as:
1.	Fairness and equal treatment under the law;
2.	Compilation of full and accurate data on the ethnic composition of the American people; and
3.	The promotion of corporate leaders and the appointment of public officials who are representative of and sensitive to America s ethnic diversity.
Looking Ahead: Challenge Questions
Have you seen signs of an increase in racist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, and antiminority group acts that recent studies apparently confirm?
What explains the fact that large population studies confirm that in the areas of ethnic, racial, and religious differences, Americans are more tolerant than ever?
Why do teenagers commit eighty percent of all bias related acts?
The public s reluctance to support programs for singlt groups is forcing ethnic advocates to adopt coalitions approaches to solving problems. As a result, coalition building has been transformed from a crusade by utopiai reformers, who once regarded ethnic advocacy as ques tionable, to a movement of rooted leaders and servic providers who work together to meet the needs of divers groups. Should ethnic communities formally train the leaders in the art and science of coalition-building?
Should ethnic groups meet regularly with other ethni groups and engage in friendly  what s your agends meetings?
Does anyone benefit from the persistence of ethn tension and conflict?
Article 46
America: Still a Melting Pot*
Tom Morganthau
Few Americans remember Israel Zangwill, but he was a transatlantic celebrity in the years before World War I. Poet, novelist, dramatist and political activist, Zangwill was a founding father of the Zionist movement and an ardent suffragist. He knew Theodore Roosevelt, Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, and he was a prolific, if preachy, writer. Here is a bit of dialogue from Zangwill s greatest hit, a four-act melodrama that opened in Washington in 1908. The speaker is David, a young composer:
America is God s Crucible, the great Melting-Pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming. . . Germans and Frenchmen, Irishmen and Englishmen, Jews and Russians  into the Crucible with you all! God is making the American!
The imagery comes from steelmaking which was state-of-the-art technology then. The play is  The Melting-Pot,  a phrase that has lived ever since Zangwill, despondent at the eclipse of many of his political ideals, suffered a nervous breakdown and died in England in 1926. America had already turned its back on his optimism and, in an orgy of blatant racism, virtually cut off immigration. Two generations later, immigration is running full blast-and Americans once again are asking fundamental questions about the desirability of accepting so and the very id<* Of the Melting Pot. They believe, with some justice, that the nation has lost control  f its borders. They are frightened about the long-term prospects8for   k e^n my and worried about their jobs. They think, erroneously, that immigrants are flooding the welfare rolls and are heavily involved in crime. And
210
From Newsweek, August 9,1993,
they are clearly uncomfortable with the fact that almost all the New Immigrants come from Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia.
The latest Newsweek Poll reveals the public s sharply shifting attitudes. Fully 60 percent of all Americans see current levels of immigration as bad; 59 percent think immigration in the past was good. Fifty-nine percent also say  many  immigrants wind up on welfare, and only 20 percent think America is still a melting pot.
All this an incendiary mixture of fact, fear and myth is now making its way into politics. The trend is most obvious in California, where immigration is already a hot-button issue, and it is surfacing in Washington. Recent events like the World Trade Center bombing, the arrest of Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman and the grounding of the
1600-1776
Seeking greater fortune and religious freedom, Europeans braved the Atlantic to settle in America before the Revolution
Golden Venture, an alien-smuggline shin ig ^ 300 Ch nese em contrSe^^^ *e 10-year-old  We must not-we ti^^ our borders	. not~surrender
our historv of c Wh  wish t0 exPloit  172 5 propX  T!"''" 8 
"" 9 ,993.............................
visa fraud and phony asylun Capitol Hill, the revival of; many had thought dead is s political parties, and Democ Sen. Dianne Feinstein of C; scrambling to neutralize nt lash.  Some of the people v me totally 10 years ago are :  What s happening to our c gotta do something!    said Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoi rennial advocate of tougher i enforcement.  It s ironic be; Attitudes have shifted dram; it s coming from the citizens
This is not the 1920s a most Americans regarded d people as inherently inferioi Ku Klux Klan marched thr< ington in a brazen display of when the president of the Ui could tell an Italian-America man. in writing, that II  predominantly our murderet leggers . . . foreign spawn [v appreciate this country.  (Th was Herbert Hoover and th< man was Fiorello La Gua civil-rights revolution chan; thing: it gradually made ov sions of any ethnic prejud cultural taboo. Almost accid moral awakening of the I960 the nation an immigration k opened the Golden Door. Th sed in 1965 with the firm   Robert Kennedy, Edward Ke Lyndon Johnson, has slowly le of sustained immigration that as large as that of 1900-1920. tently but totally reversed the law toward immigration ft01 and it created a policy so 0 that almost no one understan policy, in fact, is a mess, w thinks of the desperate Chtn<
46. America: Still A
Melting Pot'
Immigration has ranked with com and cars as a mainstay of American economic growth. The traditional theory is simple: energetic workers increase the supply of goods and services with their labor, and increase the demand for other goods and services by spending then-wages. A benign circle of growth uncurls as a widening variety of workers create rising riches for each other. Two hundred years of U.S. history seem to confirm this theory. Yet the perception today is that immigration is a drag on the economy, not a lift. In truth, it s both.  The short-term costs of immigration today are much higher,  says Michael Boskin, formerly chief economist to George Bush,  but in the long run, immigrants are still great news for our economy. 
The Newsweek Poll shows that 62 percent of those surveyed worry that immigrants take jobs away from native-born workers. That can be true in times of high unemployment. In California, where the jobless rate is 9 percent, immigration is soaring and native-born Americans are actually leaving to find work in other states, some temporar
