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Ethnocultural Political Analysis: A New Approach to American Ethnic Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Robert P. Swierenga
Affiliation:
Kent State University

Extract

At the seventy-ninth annual meeting of the American Historical Association in 1964, a panel of scholars enlivened one of the sessions with a heated debate over the effects of ethnic assimilation in American culture. The topic of debate, ‘Beyond the Melting Pot: Irish and Jewish Separateness in American Society’, focused on a recent controversial study of ethnic mixture in New York City by Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, both sociologists. Glazer and Moynihan in their book Beyond the Melting Pot traced the ‘role of ethnicity’ in the seaboard city. The melting pot ‘did not happen’, they concluded, ‘at least not in New York and, mutatis mutandis, in those parts of America which resemble New York’. This frontal assault on the concept of Americanization, long a cherished ideal in the United States, drew a sharp reaction from several panellists, especially William V. Shannon, editorial writer for die New York Times and author of The American Irish, and Irving Greenberg, professor of history at Yeshiva University. Both Shannon and Greenberg insisted that Irishmen and Jews had indeed been assimilated in American society, either for better or for worse. At this point, the discussion degenerated into the traditional moralistic debate on the merits and demerits of assimilation. Reflecting the divergent views of their colleagues in the history profession, Shannon praised assimilation and Greenberg condemned it.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

1 Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City (Cambridge, 1963).Google Scholar See also Glazer, Nathan, ‘Ethnic Groups in America: From National Culture to Ideology’, in Berger, Morroe et al. , Freedom and Control in Modern Society (New York, 1954), pp. 158–73.Google Scholar

2 Beyond the Melting Pot, p. v.Google Scholar Another important study rejecting the melting-pot idea is Gordon, Milton M., Assimilation in American Life (New York, 1964).Google Scholar A sociological analysis of 10 U.S. cities supporting the same conclusion is Lieberson, Stanley, Ethnic Patterns in American Cities (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

3 For a résumé of the opinions voiced at the AHA session, see New York Times, 31 12 1964Google Scholar; Washington Post, 31 12 1964Google Scholar; Washington Daily News, 31 12 1964.Google Scholar For a similar exchange in 1940, see Maurice R. Davie, ‘The Cultural “Syncretism” of Nationality Groups’, and Billington, Ray Allen, ‘Cultural Contribution versus Cultural Assimilation’, in Ware, Carolyn F. (ed.), The Cultural Approach to History (New York, 1940), pp. 7482.Google Scholar

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8 These categories find rough parallels in Milton M. Gordon's theoretical analysis of minority group assimilation ideologies of Anglo-conformity, the melting-pot, and cultural pluralism. Anglo-conformity can be equated with nationalism-nativism, the melting-pot with filiopietism and progressivism, and cultural pluralism with scientific and ethnocultural history. See Gordon, , ‘Assimilation in America: Theory and Reality’, Daedalus, 90 (Spring 1961), 263–85.Google Scholar Edgar Litt, in his important new book, Beyond Pluralism: Ethnic Politics in America (Glenview, Ill., 1970)Google Scholar, suggests a refinement of Gordon's Anglo-conformity category; namely, the ‘core-culture’ theory, which is an attempt to find a middle ground between pluralism and conformity. Over and above cultural pluralism, Litt argues, is a predominant WASP culture to which ethnics can identify and become acculturated, while concurrently maintaining quasi-autonomous cultures (pp. 8–15).

9 The phrase is that of Cole, Steward G. and Cole, Mildred W., Minorities and American Promise (New York, 1954), ch. 6.Google Scholar It signifies the desirability of maintaining Ang-American cultural patterns.

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19 Saveth, American Historians, esp. ch. 1; Turner, , The Frontier in American History (New York, 1920), p. 23.Google Scholar Turner's contribution to immigrant history is a series of articles,‘Studies of American Immigration’, which appeared in the Chicago Record-Herald, 28 08, 4, 11, 18, 25 09, 16 10 1901.Google Scholar

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29 Handlin, ‘Immigration in American Life: A Reappraisal’, in Commager, , Immigration and American History, p. 25.Google ScholarRolle, Andrew described Handlin's view of the immigrant as ‘undeniably sentimental, stereotyped, and maudlin’, The Immigrant Upraised: Italian Adventurers and Colonists in an Expanding America (Norman, Okla., 1968), p. 336n.Google Scholar An earlier pioneering work to which Handlin admitted his indebtedness is Thomas, William I. and Znaniecki, Florian, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (2 vols., Chicago, 19181920).Google Scholar Maurice R. Davie and Ray Allen Billington in brief papers in Ware, Cultural Approach to History, pp. 7482Google Scholar, also urged historians to study immigrant ‘contributions’. Davie had in mind material achievements such as mechanical inventions, the arts, etc., while Billington preferred the more intangible factors, such as modes of thought, living habits, and intellectual and spiritual concepts (pp. 75, 81).

30 Levine, Edward M., The Irish and Irish Politicians: A Study of Cultural and Social Alienation (Notre Dame, Ind., 1966)Google Scholar; Gleason, Philip, The Conservative Reformers: German-American Catholics and the Social Order (Notre Dame, 1968), chs. I, 9Google Scholar; Brown, Thoman N., Irish-American Nationalism, 1870–1890 (New York, 1966)Google Scholar; Hoglund, A. William, Finnish Immigrants in America, 1880–1920 (Madison, 1960)Google Scholar; Kolehmainen, John I. and Hill, George W., Haven in the Woods: The Study of the Finns in Wisconsin (Madison, 1951).Google Scholar

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33 Daniels, George, ‘Immigrant Vote in the 1860 Election: The Case of Iowa’, Mid-America, 44 (07 1962), 146–62Google Scholar; Swierenga, Robert P., ‘The Ethnic Voter and the First Lincoln Election’, Civil War History, 11 (03 1965), 2743.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In lhese studies, which focus on the Lincoln election of 1860 in Iowa, German and Dutch ethnic leaders turned Republican with great fanfare and a pledge to carry along their particular groups, but the immigrant community ignored the leaders' advice and continued to vote against Republican prohibitionists and nativists.

34 Hays, , ‘Political Parties and the Community-Society Continuum’, loc. cit., p. 158.Google Scholar

35 Lubell, , The Future of American Politics, pp. 67.Google Scholar

36 The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case (Princeton, 1961), p. 165.Google Scholar

37 Formisano, Ronald P., ‘A Case Study of Party Formation: Michigan, 1835’, Mid-America, 50 (04 1968), 85.Google Scholar Formisano's full-length study is ‘The Social Bases of American Voting Behavior: Wayne County, Michigan, 1837–1852, As a Test Case’ (unpublished Ph.D. diss., Wayne State University, 1966).Google Scholar

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40 Holt, Michael F., Forging A Majority: The Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848–1860 (New Haven, 1969), p. 218.Google Scholar The quotation is from pp. 7, 9. For a broader study of Pennsylvania and other northern states along the same lines, see Roger Peterson, ‘The Reaction to a Heterogeneous Society: Voting in the Northern United States, 1848–1860’, paper read to the Conference in Political History, Cortland, New York, 16 October 1970.

41 Kleppner, Paul, ‘Lincoln and the Immigrant Vote: A Case of Religious Polarization’, Mid-America, 48 (07 1966), 176–95Google Scholar; Daniels, ‘Immigrant Vote in the 1860 Election’; and Swierenga, ‘The Ethnic Voter and the First Lincoln Election’. An excellent re-interpretation of the ante-bellum era which incorporates the ethnocultural approach is Silbey, Joel H., ‘The Civil War Synthesis in American Political History’, Civil War History, 10 (06 1964), 130–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Silbey, , ‘Politics and Society: The Process of Political Change’, in Silbey, (ed.), The Transformation of American Politics, 1840–1860 (Englewood Cliffs, 1967), pp. 134.Google Scholar

42 Kleppner, , ‘Lincoln and the Immigrant Vote’, loc. cit., p. 187.Google Scholar Kleppner also made effective use of the reference group idea. He points out that when German Lutherans lived in close proximity to German Catholics they were more likely to vote Republican. Conversely, when German Catholics were not available for negative reference, the German Lutherans tended more to vote Democratic.

43 Earlier studies of German voting in the Midwest in 1860 are thoroughly confusing because of inadequate methodology. Most support a German switch to the Republicans in 1860, except for Schafer, Joseph, ‘Who Elected Lincoln?’, American Historical Review, 47 (10 1941), 5163CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Dorpalen, Andreas, ‘The German Element and the Issues of the Civil War’, Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 29 (06 1942), 5576.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the traditional view, see Donnal V. Smith, ‘The Influence of the Foreign-Born of the Northwest in the Election of 1860’, ibid., 19 (September 1932), 192–203; Dodd, William F., ‘The Fight for the Northwest, 1860’, American Historical Review, 16 (07 1911), 774–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Monaghan, Jay, ‘Did Abraham Lincoln Receive the Illinois German Vote?’, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 35 (06 1942), 133–9Google Scholar; and Emery, Charles Wilson, ‘The Iowa Germans in the Election of 1860’, Annals of Iowa, Third Series, 22 (10 1940), 421–53.Google Scholar Much of the literature on this subject is collected in an anthology by Luebke, Frederick C. (ed.), Ethnic Voters and the Election of Lincoln (Lincoln, forthcoming, 1971).Google Scholar The only earlier studies to take account of the religious division between German Catholics and Lutherans, as did Kleppner, are Schafer, ‘Who Elected Lincoln?’ and Johnson, Hildegard Binder, ‘The Election of 1860 and the Germans of Minnesota’, Minnesota History, 28 (03 1947), 2036.Google Scholar

44 Parsons, Stanley B., ‘Who Were the Nebraska Populists?’, Nebraska History, 44 (06 1963), 8399.Google Scholar Parsons' larger study is ‘The Populist Context: Nebraska Farmers and their Antagonists, 1882–1895’ (unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1964).Google Scholar For the Kansas story, see Nugent, Walter T. K., The Tolerant Populists (Chicago, 1963).Google Scholar

45 Wyman, Roger E., ‘Wisconsin Ethnic Groups and the Election of 1890’, Wisconsin Magazine of History, 51 (Summer 1968), 269–93Google Scholar; reprinted in Swierenga, Quantification in American History, pp. 239–66.Google Scholar

46 Luebke, Frederick C., Immigrants and Politics: The Germans of Nebraska, 1880–1900 (Lincoln, 1969).Google Scholar

47 Ibid., pp. 181–4. It is only fair to note the tenuous basis for the generalizations on German voting after 1900, since the research has yet to be done.

48 Ibid., p. 179. The essay cited is Cherny, Robert W., ‘The 1940 Election in Nebraska with Special Attention to Isolationist Voting Among Nonurban German Stock Voters of the State’ (unpublished M.A. thesis, Columbia University, 1967).Google Scholar

49 Kleppner, Paul, The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics: 1850–1900 (New York, 1970).Google Scholar A companion study of the impact of religious values on political behaviour in the five states of the Old Northwest (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin) plus Iowa, from 1888 through 1896 is Richard Jensen's The Winning of the Midwest: 1888–1896, being published by the University of Chicago Press. A preliminary summary is ‘The Historical Roots of Party Identification’, paper read to the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., September 1969, to be published in Civil War History in 1971. Jensen's religious analysis, which distinguishes between pietists and liturgicals. lacks the sophistication and sensitivity displayed in Kleppner's work but his treatment of the economic dimension is more thorough.

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51 Ibid., pp. 316–68.

52 Ibid., pp. 37–51.

53 Michael Paul Rogin discovered the same Republican trend in California in foreign-stock counties in 1896, largely because Populism in California also displayed nativist overtones. See California Populism and the “System of 1896”’, Western Political Quarterly, 22 (03 1969), 179–96, esp. 192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

54 The pioneering works are Lubell, , Future of American Politics, pp. 129–57Google Scholar; and Key, V. O. Jr, and Munger, Frank, ‘Social Determinism and Electoral Decision: The Case of Indiana’, in Burdick, Eugene and Brodbeck, Arthur J. (eds.), American Voting Behavior (Glencoe, 1959), pp. 281–99.Google Scholar

55 This is the meaning of assimilation as it is analyzed theoretically in Dahl, Robert A., Who Governs? (New Haven, 1961), pp. 34–6.Google Scholar An excellent theoretical article which questions Dahl's ‘three-stage’ model of assimilation and instead distinguishes acculturation from assimilation is Parenti, Michael, ‘Ethnic Politics and the Persistence of Ethnic Identification’, American Political Science Review, 61 (09 1967), 717–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar European scholars have made this distinction for some years already. See, for example, Zubrzycki, Jerzy, Polish Immigration in Britain: A Study of Adjustment (The Hague, 1956), esp. chs. 610CrossRefGoogle Scholar, in which the author presents a typology of immigrant adjustment to a host society.

56 Wolfinger, Raymond E., ‘The Development and Persistence of Ethnic Voting’, American Political Science Review, 59 (12 1965), 896908CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pomper, Gerald,‘Ethnic and Group Voting in Nonpartisan Municipal Elections’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 30 (Spring 1966), 7997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Homer, Dorothy T., ‘The Rockford Swedish Community’, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 57 (Summer 1964), 149–55.Google Scholar

58 Allswang, John M., A House For All Peoples: Ethnic Politics in Chicago, 1890–1936 (Lexington, Ky., 1970)Google Scholar; The Chicago Negro Voter and the Democratic Consensus: A Case Study, 1918–1936’, Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 60 (Summer 1967), 145–75.Google Scholar Allswang's book is an outgrowth of his dissertation at the University of Pittsburgh under Samuel Hays.

59 Hamilton County is studied by Howard W. Allen, ‘Isolationism and German-Americans’, Ibid., 57 (Summer 1964), 143–9. Chicago and Perry County attitudes are discussed in Lorinskas, Robert A. et al. , ‘The Persistence of Ethnic Voting in Urban and Rural Areas: Results from the Controlled Election Method’, Social Science Quarterly, 49 (03 1969), 891–9.Google Scholar

60 Greer, Scott, ‘Catholic Voters and the Democratic Party’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 25 (Winter 1961), 611–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 Huthmacher, J. Joseph, Massachusetts: People and Politics,1919–1933 (Cambridge, Mass., 1959).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 Rogin, Michael P., The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), esp. chs. 35.Google Scholar

63 For Elmira, New York, see Berelson, Bernard R. et al. , Voting (Chicago, 1954), pp. 6175.Google Scholar For New York City see Gorenstein, Arthur, ‘A Portrait of Ethnic Politics; The Socialists in the 1908 and 1910 Congressional Elections on the East Side’, Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society, 50 (03 1961), 202–38.Google Scholar Richard K. Lieberman, a graduate student in history at New York University, is completing a computerized analysis of New York ethnic voting behaviour in the early 1900s.

64 Wolfinger, , ‘Development and Persistence of Ethnic Voting’, loc. cit., pp. 901–3.Google Scholar

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66 Allen, , ‘Isolationism and German-Americans’, loc. cit., pp. 143–9.Google Scholar

67 Homer, , ‘Rockford Swedish Community’, loc. cit., pp. 149–55.Google Scholar

68 Allswang, A House For All Peoples.

69 Lorinskas, et al. , ‘Persistence of Ethnic Voting’, loc. cit., pp. 891–9.Google Scholar

70 Huthmacher, , Massachusetts: People and Politics, pp. 182–3, 260–79.Google Scholar

71 Greer, , ‘Catholic Voters and the Democratic Party’, loc. cit., p. 624.Google Scholar

72 Rogin, , The Intellectuals and McCarthy, p. 64.Google Scholar

73 Rogin, ch. 3.

74 Rogin, chs. 4–5.

75 Rogin, , pp. 118–9, 131.Google Scholar The quotation is from p. 118.

76 Parenti, , ‘Ethnic Politics and the Persistence of Ethnic Identification’, loc. cit., p. 719.Google Scholar Parenti also cites the pertinent sociological literature. A more general essay on the political consequences of immigration is Parenti's ‘Immigration and Political Life’, in Jaher, Frederick C., The Age of Industrialism in America: Essays in Social Structure and Cultural Values (New York, 1968), pp. 7999.Google Scholar

77 Gerson, Louis L., The Hyphenate in Recent American Politics and Diplomacy (Lawrence, Ka., 1964), p. 258.Google Scholar Gerson deplores the significant influence of hyphenates (due to persistent ethnic bloc voting) in American diplomacy and foreign policy, 1890–1956, a fact which he myopically attributes to the ‘manipulations’ of ‘susceptible’ people by party strategists who seek ‘to hyphenize the American people for political purposes’ (viii, pp. 258–9).

78 Smith, Timothy, ‘New Approaches to the History of Immigration in Twentieth Century America’, American Historical Review, 71 (07 1966), 1265.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

79 Recent works in the traditional vein are Rolle, Andrew F., The Immigrant Upraised (Norman, Okla., 1968)Google Scholar; Ander, O. Fritiof (ed.), In the Trek, of the Immigrants: Essays Presented to Carl Wittke (Rock Island, Ill., 1964)Google Scholar; Saloutos, Theodore, The Greeks in the United States (Cambridge, 1964)Google Scholar; Wittke, Carl, The Irish in America (Baton Rouge, 1956)Google Scholar; Shannon, William V., The American Irish (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Pisani, Lawrence F., The Italian in America: A Social Study and History (New York, 1957)Google Scholar; Scott, Franklin D., Emigration and Immigration [A Publication of the American Historical Association's Service Center for Teachers of History, No. 51] (New York, 1963)Google Scholar; Pochmann, Henry A., German Culture in America: Philosophical and Literary Influences (Madison, 1957)Google Scholar, and Pochmann's earlier but important Bibliography of German Culture in America to 1940 (Madison, 1952)Google Scholar; and Lucas, , The Netherlanders in America (Ann Arbor, 1955).Google Scholar

80 Smith, , ‘New Approaches to the History of Immigration’, loc. cit., p. 1279.Google Scholar Smith's former colleague, Rudolph J. Vecoli, who is director of the Center for Immigration Studies at the University of Minnesota, apparently dissents from Smith's advice. In a recent article, Vecoli condemned the Anglo-American parochialism inherent in the melting-pot notion and urged students of immigration history to study ethnic differences. Vecoli cites Glazer and Moynihan's Beyond the Melting Pot approvingly. See Vecoli, , ‘The Immigrant Studies Collection of the University of Minnesota’, American Archivist, 32 (04 1969), 140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

81 Strangers in the Land, x. In an earlier essay, Higham traced the sordid tale of anti-semitism in the Gilded Age, but likewise concluded that ‘the genial and democratic norms of American life remained basically undisturbed’. Higham, , ‘Anti-Semitism in the Gilded Age: A Reinterpretation’, Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 43 (03 1957), 578.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In a similar vein, Professor Smith suggests that ‘assimilation is a more useful perspective than alienation from which to approach the history of twentieth-century immigration’. Smith, , ‘New Approaches to the History of Immigration’, loc. cit., pp. 1274, 1279.Google Scholar

82 I am indebted to Frederick C. Luebke of the University of Nebraska and Henry Leonard and lohn T. Hubbell of Kent State University for substantive and editorial advice.