Unmeltable Ethnics
Unmeltable Ethnics

Author: Michael Novak

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-04-27

Total Pages: 613

ISBN-13: 1351300660

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This new, enlarged edition of an influential book originally published in 1972 as The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnicsextends the author's wise and generous view of ethnicity. Its aim "is to raise consciousness about a crucial part of the American experience: to involve each reader in self-inquiry. Who, after all, are you? What history brought you to where you are? Why are you different from others?" But the point of such inquiry is civility: "The new ethnic consciousness embodied in this book delights in recognition of subtle differences in the movements of the soul. It is not a call to separatism but to self-consciousness. It does not seek division but rather accurate, mutual appreciation." This new edition contains six new essays by the author, including the acclaimed "Pluralism: A Humanistic Perspective." New, too, is Novak's comprehensive introduction, bringing the argument up to date. Novak describes how and why ethnicity has become a prominent issue in American politics. He also sharply denounces the current ideology of "multiculturalism" as a disfiguration of genuine ethnicity. "Multiculturalism is moved by the eros of Narcissus" Novak writes, "the new ethnicity is driven by the eros of unrestricted understanding." When the book first appeared, Time said that "Novak has attacked the American Dream in order to open up a possible second chapter for it." Newsweek called it "a tough-minded, provocative book which could well signal an important change in American politics." This new edition adds crucial distinctions for those seeking an intelligent path through such current-day mystifications as "multiculturalism" and "diversity." Twenty-five years ago, Novak's argument led the way in focusing on families, neighborhoods, and other "mediating institutions" of civil society. It is an argument critical to a realistic sense of national community.

Transnational America
Transnational America

Author: Everett Helmut Akam

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780742521988

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The "melting pot" is one of the most cherished images in US culture, but does it really tell the whole story? Too often there is tension between the sense of American community and the demands of American diversity. The uniqueness of the many American ethnicities provides the roots of identity, yet recognizing those differences often makes Americans feel isolated from the whole. In this discussion, Everett Akam relies on the neglected tradition of cultural pluralism to argue that unity and individuality are not mutually exclusive. In fact, each is a vital source of American identity. He demonstrates that Americans need to acknowledge that they share much in common as Americans, while never forgetting that what sets them apart forms as great a part of who they are.

Creating the New Right Ethnic in 1970s America
Creating the New Right Ethnic in 1970s America

Author: Richard Moss

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2017-03-15

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 1611479363

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This work analyzes the "New Ethnicity" of the 1970s as a way of understanding America's political turn to the right in that decade. An upsurge of vocal ethnic consciousness among second-, third-, and fourth-generation Southern and Eastern Europeans, the New Ethnicity simultaneously challenged and emulated earlier identity movements such as Black Power. The movement was more complex than the historical memory of racist, reactionary white ethnic leaders suggests. The movement began with a significant grassroots effort to gain more social welfare assistance for "near poor" white ethnic neighborhoods and ease tensions between the working-class African Americans and whites who lived in close proximity to one another in urban neighborhoods. At the same time, a more militant strain of white ethnicity was created by urban leaders who sought conflict with minorities and liberals. The reassertion of ethnicity necessarily involved the invention of myths, symbols, and traditions, and this process actually served to retard the progressive strain of New Ethnicity and strengthen the position of reactionary leaders and New Right politicians who hoped to encourage racial discord and dismantle social welfare programs. Public intellectuals created a mythical white ethnic who shunned welfare, valued the family, and provided an antidote to liberal elitism and neighborhood breakdown. Corporations and publishers embraced this invented ethnic identity and codified it through consumption. Finally, politicians appropriated the rhetoric of the New Ethnicity while ignoring its demands. The image of hard-working, self-sufficient ethnics who took care of their own neighborhood problems became powerful currency in their effort to create racial division and dismantle New Deal and Great Society protections.

From Paesani to White Ethnics
From Paesani to White Ethnics

Author: Stefano Luconi

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 2001-02-01

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 9780791448571

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Examines the transformations of Italian American ethnic identity in twentieth-century Philadelphia.

Making Americans
Making Americans

Author: Desmond S. King

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2002-06-15

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0674039629

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In the nineteenth century, virtually anyone could get into the United States. But by the 1920s, U.S. immigration policy had become a finely filtered regime of selection. Desmond King looks at this dramatic shift, and the debates behind it, for what they reveal about the construction of an American identity. Specifically, the debates in the three decades leading up to 1929 were conceived in terms of desirable versus undesirable immigrants. This not only cemented judgments about specific European groups but reinforced prevailing biases against groups already present in the United States, particularly African Americans, whose inferior status and second-class citizenship--enshrined in Jim Crow laws and embedded in pseudo-scientific arguments about racial classifications--appear to have been consolidated in these decades. Although the values of different groups have always been recognized in the United States, King gives the most thorough account yet of how eugenic arguments were used to establish barriers and to favor an Anglo-Saxon conception of American identity, rejecting claims of other traditions. Thus the immigration controversy emerges here as a significant precursor to recent multicultural debates. Making Americans shows how the choices made about immigration policy in the 1920s played a fundamental role in shaping democracy and ideas about group rights in America.

Special Sorrows
Special Sorrows

Author: Matthew Frye Jacobson

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2002-05-21

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 9780520233423

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Special Sorrows carefully delineates the centrality of Jewish, Polish and Irish supporters in the United States to national liberation movements abroad and details how such movements shaped immigrant life in the United States.

Concepts of Ethnicity
Concepts of Ethnicity

Author: William Petersen

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1982

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 9780674157262

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The monumental Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups is the most authoritative single source available on the history, culture, and distinctive characteristics of ethnic groups in the United States. The Dimensions of Ethnicity series is designed to make this landmark scholarship available to everyone in a series of handy paperbound student editions. Selections in this series will include outstanding articles that illuminate the social dynamics of a pluralistic nation or masterfully summarize the experience of key groups. Written by the best-qualified scholars in each field, Dimensions of Ethnicity titles will reflect the complex interplay between assimilation and pluralism that is a central theme of the American experience. The tightening and loosening of ethnic identity under changing definitions of "Americanism" is emphasized in this volume.

Handbook of Identity Theory and Research
Handbook of Identity Theory and Research

Author: Seth J. Schwartz

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2011-06-22

Total Pages: 983

ISBN-13: 1441979883

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Identity is one of the most extensively studied constructs in the social sciences. Yet, despite the wealth of findings across many disciplines, identity researchers remain divided over such enduring fundamental questions as: What exactly is identity, and how do identity processes function? Do people have a single identity or multiple identities? Is identity individually or collectively oriented? Personally or socially constructed? Stable or constantly in flux? The Handbook of Identity Theory and Research offers the rare opportunity to address the questions and reconcile these seeming contradictions, bringing unity and clarity to a diverse and fragmented literature. This exhaustive reference work emphasizes the depth and complexity of identity processes and domains and presents perspectives from many different theoretical schools and empirical approaches. Contributing authors provide perspectives from psychology (e.g., narrative, social identity theory, neo-Eriksonian) and from other disciplines (e.g., sociology, political science, ethnic studies); and the editors highlight the links between chapters that provide complementary insights on related subjects. In addition to covering identity processes and categories that are well-known to the field, the Handbook tackles many emerging issues, including: - Identity development among adopted persons. - Identity processes in interpersonal relationships. - Effects of globalization on cultural identity. - Transgender experience and identity. - Consumer identity and shopping behavior. - Social identity processes in xenophobia and genocide. The Handbook of Identity Theory and Research lends itself to a wealth of uses by scholars, clinicians, and graduate students across many disciplines, including social, developmental, and child/school psychology; human development and family studies; sociology; cultural anthropology; gender, ethnic, and communication studies; education; and counseling.

A Nation of Neighborhoods
A Nation of Neighborhoods

Author: Benjamin Looker

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2015-10-22

Total Pages: 442

ISBN-13: 022629045X

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Despite the pundits who have written its epitaph and the latter-day refugees who have fled its confines for the half-acre suburban estate, the city neighborhood has endured as an idea central to American culture. In A Nation of Neighborhoods, Benjamin Looker presents us with the city neighborhood as both an endless problem and a possibility. Looker investigates the cultural, social, and political complexities of the idea of “neighborhood” in postwar America and how Americans grappled with vast changes in their urban spaces from World War II to the Reagan era. In the face of urban decline, competing visions of the city neighborhood’s significance and purpose became proxies for broader debates over the meaning and limits of American democracy. By studying the way these contests unfolded across a startling variety of genres—Broadway shows, radio plays, urban ethnographies, real estate documents, and even children’s programming—Looker shows that the neighborhood ideal has functioned as a central symbolic site for advancing and debating theories about American national identity and democratic practice.