








, the media gi' assistance to those of "white ethnic" back! wish to obey the Socratic maxim: "Know thy the greatest and most dramatic migration history brought more than thirty million in this land between 1874 and 1924. Despite t dramatic materials involved in this migratk major American film records it: Elia Kazs America! That film ends with the hero's am ica. The tragic and costly experience of Am has scarcely yet been touched. How man; many were morally and psychologically des many still carry the marks of changing the "killing" their mother tongue and renounci mer identity, in order to become "new m women" these are motifs of violence, sei joy, and irony. The inner history of this mi; come to be understood, if we are ever to un aspirations and fears of some seventy milhoi
When this part of the population consciousness and begins to claims whether these are claims
gregated individuals or claims that are cor are regularly confronted with the accusation fog divisive". ("Divisive" is a code word ethnics and Jews, is it not? It is seldom us< white Southerners, Appalachians, Chicanos five Americans, prep-school British America w o maintain their own identity and instil Raab writes eloquently of this phenomenon ary (May, 1974): "Modem Europe . .   nev cepted the legitimacy of the corporate Jew-a* its best willing to grant full civil i individual Jew. That, for the Jews, was ar
37. New Ethnicity
The fact of American cultural power is that a more or less upper-class, Northeastern Protestant sensibility sets the tone, and that a fairly aggressive British American ethnocentricity, and even Anglophilia, govern the instruments of education and public life.
paradox, a secular vision of Christian demands to convert.. . [And] it is precisely this willingness to allow the Jews their separate identity as a group which is now coining into question in America." Individual diversity, yes; group identity, not for all.
The Christian white ethnic, like the Jew, actually has few group demands to make: positively, for educational resources to keep values and perceptions alive, articulate, and critical; negatively, for an equal access to power, status, and the definition of the general American purpose and symbolic world. Part of the strategic function of the cry "divisive!" is to limit access to these things. Only those individuals will be advanced who define themselves as individuals and who operate according to the symbols of the established. The emotional meaning is: Become like us." This is an understandable strategy, but a nation as pluralistic as the United States, it is shortsighted. The nation's hopes, purposes, and symbols need to be defined inclusively rather than exclusively; all must become "new men" and "new women." All the burden ought not to fall upon the newcomers.
There is much that is attractive about the British American, upper-class, northeastern culture that has established for the entire nation a model of behavior and Perception. This model is composed of economic power; status; cultural tone; important institutional rituals and Procedures; and the acceptable patterns of style, sensibility/ and rationality. The terse phrase "Ivy League" suggests all these factors. The nation would be infinitely Poorer than it is without the Ivy League. All of us who came to this land including the many lower-class British ericans, Scotch-Irish, Scandinavians, and Germans  are much in the debt of the Ivy League, deeply, substantially so.
j ^1' ^e Ivy League is not the nation. The culture of the League is not the culture of America (not even of I?bestant America).
Who are we, then, we who do not particularly reverbe-ae to the literature of New England, whose interior ( i8 n * Puritan, whose social class is not Brahmin g1. er m reality or in pretense), whose ethnicity is not n rsh American, or even Nordic? Where in American
institutions, American literature, American education is our identity mirrored, objectified, rendered accessible to intelligent criticism, and confirmed? We are still, I think, persons without a public symbolic world, persons without a publicly verified culture to sustain us and our children.
It is not that we lack culture; it is not that we lack strength of ego and a certain internal peace. As Jean-Paul Sartre remarks in one of his later works, there is a distinction between one's identity in one's own eyes and one's identity in the eyes of others. In the United States, many who have internal dignity cannot avoid noticing that others regard them as less than equals, with a sense that they are different, with uncertainty, and with a lack of commonality. It is entirely possible that the "melting pot" would indeed have melted everyone, if those who were the models into which the molten metal was to be poured had not found the process excessively demanding. A sense of separate identity is, in part, induced from outside-in. I am made aware of being Catholic and Slovak by the actions of others. I would be sufficiently content were my identity to be so taken for granted, so utterly normal and real, that it would never have to be selfconscious.
The fact of American cultural power is that a more or less upper-class, Northeastern Protestant sensibility sets the tone, and that a fairly aggressive British American ethnocentricity, and even Anglophilia, govern the instruments of education and public life. Moreover, it is somehow emotionally important not to challenge this dominant ethnocentridty. It is quite proper to talk of other sorts of sodal difference income, dass, sex, even religion. To speak affirmatively of ethnidty, however, makes many uneasy. Some important truth must lie hidden underneath this uneasiness. A Niebuhrian analysis of social power suggests that a critical instrument of sodal control in the United States is, indeed, the one that dares not be spoken of.
In New York State, for example, in 1974 the four Democratic candidates for the office of lieutenant governor (not, however, for governor) were named Olivieri, Cuomo, La Falce, and Krupsak. It was the year, the pundits say, for "ethnic balance" on the ticket. But all four candidates insisted that their ethnidty was not significant. Two boasted of being from upstate, one of being a woman, one of being for "the little guy. " It is publidy legitimate to be different on any other account except ethnicity, even where the importance of ethnic diversity is tadtly agreed upon.
If I say, as I sometimes have, that I would love to organize an "ethnic caucus" within both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, the common reaction is one of anxiety, distaste, and strained silence. But if I say, as I am learning to, that I would love to organize a "caucus of workingmen and women" in both parties, heads quickly nod in approval. Sodal dass is, apparently,
193
7. ETHNIC LEGACY
rational. Cultural background is, apparently, counter-rational.	,
Yet the odd political reality is that most Americans do not identify themselves in class terms. They respond to cultural symbols intimate to their ethnic history in America. Ethnicity is a "gut issue," even though it cannot be mentioned. A wise political candidate does not, of course, speak to a longshoreman's local by calling its members Italian American and appealing to some supposed cultural solidarity. That would be a mistake. But if he speaks about those themes in the cultural tradition that confirm their own identity themes like family, children, home, neighborhood, specific social aspirations, and grievances  they know he is with them: he does represent them. In order to be able to represent many constituencies, a representative has to be able to "pass over" into many cultural histories. He may never once make ethnicity explicit as a public theme; but, implicitly, he will be recognizing the daily realities of ethnicity and ethnic experience in the complex fabric of American social power.
According to one social myth, America is a "melting pot," and this myth is intended by many to be not merely descriptive but normative: the faster Americans especially white ethnic Americans "melt" into the British American pattern, the better. There is even a certain ranking according to the supposed degree of assimilation: Scotch Irish, Norwegians, Swedes, Germans, Swiss, Dutch, liberal or universalist Jews, the Irish, and on down the line to the less assimilated: Greeks, Yugoslavs, Hungarians, Central and East Europeans, Italians, Orthodox Jews, French Canadians, Portuguese, Latins and Spanishspeaking. . . . (The pattern almost exactly reflects the history and literature of England.).
Now it was one thing to be afraid of ethnicity in 1924, in confronting a first and second generation of immigrants. It is another thing to be afraid, in 1974, in confronting a third and fourth generation. Indeed, fears about a revival of ethnicity seem to be incompatible with conviction about how successful the "melting pot" has been. Fears about a "revival" of ethnicity confirm the fact that ethnicity is still a powerful reality in American life.
What, then, are the advantages and disadvantages in making this dangerous subject, this subterranean subject
The new ethnicity notes many significant differences besides those based upon race, and defines political and social problems in ways that unite diverse groups around common objectives.
The disadvantages seem to be three. The everyone's mind is that emphasis on ethnicit to the disadvantage of blacks. It may, it is sail legitimization of racism. It may "polarize" blacks. Nothing could be further from the t who are concerned about the new ethnicity ( (Washington), Irving Levine (New York), Bai ski (Baltimore), Ralph Perrotta (New York), ubado (Newark), Otto Feinstein (Detroit), St< (Buffalo), Kenneth Kovach (Cleveland), Edwai (Chicago), and others have given ample pi concern for the rights and opportunities of I cans. Many got their start in the new ethnic their work among blacks. The overriding poli tion among those concerned with the new that the harshness of life in the cities must be whites and blacks together, especially in w neighborhoods. Present social policies punis hoods that integrate. Such neighborhoods rewarded and strengthened and guaranteed; stability.
But fears about ethnicity require a furtf response. Racism does not need ethnicity in legitimated in America. It was quite well le$ Anglo-American culture, well before white rived here in significant numbers, well before ethnics had ever met blacks. Indeed, there is i to believe that, while racism is an internation non and found in all cultures, the British Ai other Nordic peoples have a special emotioi to colored races. Not all European peoples intermarriage, for example, with quite th< quality of the Anglo-Saxons. The French, t the Italians, and the Slavs are not withou forms of racism. But the felt quality of racisn in different cultures. (It seems different amor End Italians and the South Boston Irish of example.)
In America, racism did not wait until the in 1880 and after began to arrive. Indeed, it is those parts of the country solely populate* Americans that the conditions of blacks have and institutionally least humane. In those country most heavily populated by white culturd symbols and the political muscle tha civil-rights and other legislation have receive port. Liberal senators and congressmen eled ethnics including the Kennedys led the v 1972, both Hamtramck and Buffalo went McGovern. McGovern's share of the Slavic vc two per cent. Nixon won the white Protest sixty-eight per cent.
It will be objected that white ethnic leadei Rizzo of Philadelphia, Ralph Perk of Cie others are signs of a new racism on the p ethnics in the Northern cities, of a retreat fi for blacks, and of a rising tide of anti-"crim
jusing sentiment. The proponents of the new ethnicity perceive such developments as a product of liberal ne-Ject and liberal divisivenes
