Ethnic America/The Ethnic Myth:
Berube, Maurice R
Books: TWO THESES ON ETHNICITY THE REDISCOVERY of ethnicity in the late 1960s was part result and part reaction to the emphasis on identity in the black civil rights movement. New ethnic writers...
...That, he says, rather than racism and discrimination, accounts for their status of being on the bottom...
...Equally important, the quasi-Marxist view Steinberg espouses consistently neglects race...
...Surely, Jews had a head start in the economic race because they were urbanized and highly skilled...
...The debate over ethnic mobility is by no means exhausted...
...More reliable would have been statistics indicating incomes of Jews...
...As Nathan Glazer observed recently, the three explanations for ethnic mobility are culture, class, and racial and ethnic discrimination...
...Economic considerations, he argues, are why blacks have been unable to move out of poverty...
...The Ethnic Myth is a provocative, lucid and well-reasoned book...
...Steinberg's argument is that economic necessity and historical accident converged to move ethnic groups up or down the economic ladder...
...Reagan and his advisors would do well to seriously consider Steinberg's The Ethnic Myth...
...In this instance, Steinberg (like Sowell) perceives race as incidental...
...Both Jews and Japanese sought out colleges as a way to further improve their lot...
...In Nathan Glazer's famed declaration, social policy is limited because it cannot deal with major areas of American life...
...Thomas Sowell is a prominent black neoconservative economist...
...The speaking of foreign languages is on the wane among the young of the older ethnic groups...
...He significantly undermines the thesis that certain ethnic groups succeed because they possess innately superior cultural values...
...Steinberg is also effective in tracing the decline of ethnicity...
...Some have done better than others, but all, given time, will obtain a modicum of success...
...Suffice it to say that both Steinberg and Sowell rely on recent studies which show that the majoiity of Jews had become white collar by the 1920s...
...Steinberg advances a macrceconomic theory that the Southern economy needed black agricultural workers whereas the Northern economy required immigrant industrial workers...
...the cause of poverty and other social problems ultimately lies in the cultural heritage that has formed each individual, and governmental policy, they claim, cannot reasonably affect such problems...
...At present one out of three Jews marries outside his or her ethnic group and a large majority of Catholics marry outside their ethnic groups...
...In 1860 the Irish ranked below blacks in Boston's occupational structure...
...a century later a majority of blacks held unskilled jobs at the bottom...
...Steinberg may have done better to consider the Jewish cultural passion for education partly as a response to discriminatory patterns in American society that instilled in Jews the necessity of higher education for economic advancement...
...He notes that the Jews and the Japanese suffered discrimination and racism and climbed the economic ladder without help from government...
...But how does one account for the spectacular rise of the Irish, who were peasants and unskilled...
...New ethnic writers proclaimed what Andrew Greeley called "the ethnic miracle...
...These new ethnics overlook or downplay class issues and concentrate on ethnic and familial concerns...
...Steinberg has ably presented the class interpretation and Sowell has added to the cultural view...
...Moreover, he is suspicious of social policy...
...He is at his best when he depicts the interplay of these forces...
...However, historian Stephen Thernstrom in The Other Bostonians reveals how white ethnics displaced black workers...
...They disputed the melting pot theory and projected an America that was a collection of sub-cultures...
...They also argued that certain ethnic groups were able to succeed because of superior cultural values...
...Maurice R. Berube of circumstances" - a position that would place him close to Steinberg...
...It is a sophisticated, history that acknowledges recent scholarship...
...Although Sowell points out that he discards the notion of superiority and inferiority, he equivocates...
...Steinberg's analysis however, raises as many questions as it answers...
...The implication is that if these groups can do it, why can't others...
...He believes that governmental policy of the past two generations - welfare, minimum wages and affirmative action - impedes the progress of the ethnic poor, (especially blacks, Puerto Ricans and Mexicans) by reducing opportunity and creating dependency...
...Yet, blacks were among the first "immigrants...
...Ethnic America is a readable, serviceable account of nine ethnic groups: Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians, Chinese, Japanese, Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Mexicans...
...It deserves to be read by those concerned with ethnicity and class in America...
...For the new ethnics and their belief in the supremacy of cultural values, self-improvement, rather than governmental aid, is the answer...
...But the thrust of his various histories gives strong support to the view that cultural values, in the long run, prevail...
...The trouble with that myth is that it is an extension of a neoconservative vision of American life...
...My only reservation with The Ethnic Myth is that in attempting to show the crucial importance of class Steinberg gives too little credence to the role culture and racism have played...
...For example, Steinberg gives us the plausible explanation that Irish women became domestics not because of inferior cultural values but simply because they immigrated singly whereas Italian and Jewish women came over with families intact...
...Ethnic food is proving to be the last bastion of ethnicity in America...
...The argument that Jews moved out of poverty with little aid of education (accepted also by Sowell) is not sufficiently mented...
...Most important, discussing his own group, the blacks, he subscribes to the neoconservative tenet that blacks constitute the newest urban immigrants...
...Indeed, Steinberg's own school, Queens College, is comprised mostly of Jewish students from lower working class families, 45 percent of whom earned less than $16,000 in 1979 - not exactly "economic security.'' Jews took advantage of a free city university in New York mostly in the thirties - a time when it is probable that many Jewish families suffered some economic hardship...
...If the book has a thesis it is that America has done well, and continues to do well, with its immigrants...
...Although each plays a significant role, what one considers decisive influences one's perception of social policy...
...What would be enlightening would be future studies delineating the effects of racism and discrimination on ethnic groups in America...
...THE ETHNIC MYTH Stephen Steinberg Atheneum, $14.95, 277 pp...
...Steinberg's is the more important of the two books...
...He states that certain groups succeed because "they are better or worse adapted to a particular set ETHNIC AMERICA Thomas Sowell Basic Books, $16.95, 353 pp...
...Unfortunately, that is the reigning philosophy in the White House...
...It is not accidental that the major new ethnic writers - the Greeleys, Glazers, and Novaks - are prominent among that band of intellectuals known as "neoconservative" - conservatives who were former liberals and leftists...
...That is because he confronts the larger questions concerning ethnic mobility and ventures a bold analysis...
...That, according to Stephen Steinberg, comprises the essence of the ethnic myth...
Vol. 108 • August 1981 • No. 15
