Theories of Americanization

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THEORIES OF ETHNIC ADJUSTMENT Introductory: The Jews?A Minority Ethnic Community In discussing the place of the Jewish group1 in America we are dealing with one particular kind of minority divergence. The question is not merely one of homogeneity vs. heterogeneity, as is often implicitly assumed...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THEORIES OF ETHNIC ADJUSTMENT Introductory: The Jews?A Minority Ethnic Community In discussing the place of the Jewish group1 in America we are dealing with one particular kind of minority divergence. The question is not merely one of homogeneity vs. heterogeneity, as is often implicitly assumed in such discussions, and our problem cannot be so easily disposed of by pointing out that divergences are necessary for progress. Even within the homogeneous nation differences of individual character and intelligence, of locality, of economic conditions, of political affiliation, of education, will lead to a diversified opinion in reference to the important political, industrial, educational, social and moral problems of the day. The question before us relates not to differentiation as such, but rather to the particular kind of differentiation due to the retention of ethnic loyalties. The problem that faces us is whether ethnic distinctions are to be tolerated in America. The supreme difference from our point of view between the ethnicgroup and the other classifications such as political parties, economic classes, geographic sections, mentioned in the previous paragraph, is that the former is foreign and the latter are indigenous. These ethnic distinctions?Jew, Italian, Pole?were formed under the conditions of other times and other places. Shall these associations made hi the past and in other territories persist to-day and into the future in the new geographic area and under the new governmental unity; or shall all groupings within the nation be the result of conditions in our own country and of the present period? Further, if these foreign groups are to persist, under what limitations may they do so? How shall we answer these questions in the light of the principle...