








e), Ralph Perrotta (New York), 5 ubado (Newark), Otto Feinstein (Detroit), Stan (Buffalo), Kenneth Kovach (Cleveland), Edward (Chicago), and others have given ample proc concern for the rights and opportunities of bla cans. Many got their start in the new ethnicit  their work among blacks. The overriding politic tion among those concerned with the new e1 that the harshness of life in the cities must be r1 whites and blacks together, especially in woi neighborhoods. Present social policies punish hoods that integrate. Such neighborhoods f
rewarded and strengthened and guaranteed a long-range stability.	.
But fears about ethnicity require a further two-part response. Racism does not need ethnicity in order to be legitimated in America. It was quite well legitimated by Anglo-American culture, well before white ethnics arrived here in significant numbers, well before many white ethnics had ever met blacks. Indeed, there is some reason to believe that, while racism is an international phenomenon and found in all cultures, the British American and other Nordic peoples have a special emotional response to colored races. Not all European peoples respond to intermarriage, for example, with quite the emotional quality of the Anglo-Saxons. The French, the Spanish, the Italians, and the Slavs are not without their own forms of racism. But the felt quality of racism is different in different cultures. (It seems different among the North End Italians and the South Boston Irish of Boston, for example.)
In America, racism did not wait until the immigrants of 1880 and after began to arrive. Indeed, it is in precisely those parts of the country solely populated by British Americans that the conditions of blacks have been legally and institutionally least humane. In those parts of the country most heavily populated by white ethnics, the cultural symbols and the political muscle that have led to civil-rights and other legislation have received wide support. liberal senators and congressmen elected by white ethnics including the Kennedys led the way. Even in 1972, both Hamtramck and Buffalo went for George McGovern. McGovern's share of the Slavic vote was fifty-two per cent. Nixon won the white Protestant vote by sixty-eight per cent.
It will be objected that white ethnic leaders like Frank  zzo of Philadelphia, Ralph Perk of Cleveland, and others are signs of a new racism on the part of white ethnics in the Northern cities, of a retreat from support orblacks, and of a rising tide of anti-"crime" and anti-using sentiment. The proponents of the new ethnicity perceive such developments as a product of liberal ne-Ipect and liberal divisiveness. The proponents of the new P  tics talk well of civil rights, equal opportunity, eco-  ic justice, and other beautiful themes. But the new Pi ties, in distinguishing "legitimate" minorities (blacks, itieT S/ native Americans) from "less favored" minor-puI?^'aris' ^avs' Orthodox Jews, Irish, etc.), has set up has ai>d ^'defeating mechanisms. The new politics in^eedless'y divided working-class blacks from work-militanS W^es' 'n Part by a romance (on television) with ^nin? and ^amboyance, in part by racial discrimina-butk avor sorne against others, not because of need   ^ause of color.
Ibis resPonse *s that the politics of e constituency of conscience" (as Michael Har-He Eu ene McCarthy, and others have called P itics of the liberal, the educated, the enlight
37. New Ethnicity
ened-is less advantageous to blacks than is the politics ol 6 u 1116 new politics is less advantageous to blacks because it is obsessed with racial differences, and approaches these through the ineffectual lenses of guilt and moralism. Second, it is blind to cultural differences among blacks, as well as to cultural differences among whites; and sometimes these are significant. Third, it unconsciously but effectively keeps blacks in the position of a small racial minority outnumbered in the population ten to one.
By contrast, the new ethnicity notes many other significant differences besides those based upon race, and defines political and social problems in ways that unite diverse groups around common objectives. In Chicago, for example, neither Poles nor Italians are represented on the boards or in the executive suites of Chicago's top 105 corporations in a higher proportion than blacks or Latinos all are of one per cent or less.* In Boston, neither white ethnics nor blacks desire busing, but this highly ideological instrument of social change is supported most by just those affluent liberals in such suburbs as Brookline and Newton whose children will not be involved.
The new ethnic politics would propose a strategy of social rewards better garbage pickup, more heavily financed and orderly schools, long-range guarantees on home mortgages, easier access to federally insured home improvement loans, and other services for neighborhoods that integrate. As a neighborhood moves from, say, a ten per cent population of blacks to twenty per-cent or more, integration should be regulated so that long-range community stability is guaranteed. It is better long-range policy to have a large number of neighborhoods integrated up to twenty or thirty per-cent than to encourage even by inadvertence a series of sudden flights and virtually total migrations. Institutional racism is a reality; the massive migration of blacks into a neighborhood does not bring with it social rewards but, almost exclusively, punishments.
There are other supposed disadvantages to emphasis upon ethnicity. Ethnicity, it is said, is a fundamentally counter-rational, primordial, uncontrollable social force; it leads to hatred and violence; it is the very enemy of enlightenment, rationality, and liberal politics. But this is to confuse nationalism or tribalism with cultural heritage. Because a man's name is Russell, or Ayer, or Flew, we would not wish to accuse him of tribalism on the ground that he found the Britons a uniquely civilized and clearheaded people, thought the Germans ponderoi^ and mystic, the French philosophically romantic, etc. A bttl 25 we might conclude, but harmlessly ethnocentac And if'it is not necessarily tribalistic or unenlightened^tc read English literature in American schools, just possib j
  820 Nt ,h Mkhl8  Av  e
Chicago, Illinois 60611.
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7. THE ETHNIC LEGACY
it would be even more enlightened and even less tribalis-tic to make other literatures, germane to the heritage of other Americans, more accessible than they are.
The United States is, potentially, a multiculturally attuned society. The greatest number of immigrants in recent years arrives from Spanish-speaking and Asian nations. But the nation's cultural life, and its institutions of culture, are far from being sensitive to the varieties of the American people. Why should a cultural heritage not their own be imposed unilaterally upon newcomers? Would not genuine multicultural adaptation on the part of all be more cosmopolitan and humanistic? It would be quite significant in international affairs. The Americans would truly be a kind of prototype of planetary diversity.
Some claim that cultural institutions will be fragmented if every ethnic group in America clamors for attention. But the experience of the Illinois curriculum in ethnic studies suggests that no one school represents more than four or five ethnic groups (sometimes fewer) in significant density. With even modest adjustments in courses in history, literature, and the social sciences, material can be introduced that illuminates inherited patterns of family life, valuer and preferences. The purpose for introducing multicultural materials is neither chauvinistic nor propagandistic but realistic. Education ought to illuminate what is happening in the self of each child.
What about the child of the mixed marriage, the child of no ethnic heritage the child of the melting pot? So much in the present curriculum already supports such a child that the only possible shock to arise from multicultural materials would appear to be a beneficial one: not all others in America are like him (her), and that diversity, as well as homogenization, has a place in America.
The practical agenda that faces proponents of the new ethnicity is vast, indeed. At the heights of American economic and social power, there is not yet much of a
melting pot. Significant ethnic diversity is manih the proportion of each group studying in univers faculties, in the professions, on boards of di among the creators of public social symbols, and 1 In patterns of home ownership, family incom< patterns, care for the aged, political activism, au1 ianism, individualism, and matters of ultimate c group differences are remarkable. About all these more information is surely needed. Appropriat policies need to be hypothesized, tried, and ev;
Ethnic diversity in the United States persists consciousness of individuals, in their perceptions, ences, behavior, even while mass production ar communications homogenize our outward appei Some regard such persistence as a personal failu would prefer to "transcend" their origins, or j they believe that they have. Here two questior What cultural connection do they have wit brothers and sisters still back in Montgomery, or ing, or Skokie, or Pawtucket? Second, has their j assimilation introduced into the great American si ture fresh streams of image, myth, symbol, and intellectual life? Has anything distinctively theii formed in them by a history longer than a tl years been added to the common wisdom?
The new ethnicity does not stand for the Balka: of America. It stands for a true, real, multicultural politanism. It points toward a common cultu altered by each new infusion of diversity. Until i common culture has been relatively resistant to transformation; it has not so much arisen from th of all as been imposed; the melting pot has hac single recipe. That is why at present the common seems to have become discredited, shattered, un able. Its cocoon has broken. Struggling to be b creature of multicultural beauty, dazzling, free, < and richer form of life. It was fashioned in the darkness of the melting pot and now, at the ap time, it awakens.
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Article 38
Irish-Americans Attack Beer-Ad Images
Joanne Lipman
On the eve of St. Patrick's Day, some infuriated Irish-American groups are lashing out at America's beer marketers for ads they say perpetuate the worst stereotypes about the Irish and they are demanding that the ads be pulled.
just in time for the holiday, the country's top beer marketers have been unrolling ad campaigns tying their brands to party-down leprechauns and three-leaf clovers. But a number of Irish-American groups Me mobilizing to declare that the mage of the Irish as excessive drinkers is nonsense. The ads sling ethnic slurs against the Irish, the critics say, reinforcing damaging stereotypes.
The groups are especially furious w  a Budweiser spot starring Kathy ^ d, the bikini-clad model who graces the cover of Sports Illustrated's  w swi
