The Life of White Ethnics
Levine, Irving M. & Herman, Judith
Categorical thought is rarely avoided even among those who know better. Thus, social analysis has characteristically been concerned with "the Negro," then "the poor," now "the working...
...People tend to live near one another according to ethnic background, even "unto the fourth generation...
...of the individual's attitudes and economic level, one's strategy for winning votes would differ and probably be more effective...
...Bureau of the Census, Characteristics of the Population by Ethnic Origin (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1970...
...The ethnic group's history and experience bears directly, though not always consciously, on feelings about other groups, government, war, sex, money, work, the future...
...The most recent indication that differences in behavior and attitude persist along ethnic lines within the working class comes from a preliminary study done in four Connecticut central cities by Harold Abramson.' With a large enough sample and current data, Abramson was able to control socioeconomic factors and examine ethnicity in some degree of isolation...
...But there have been few, if any, studies of the impact of ethnicity on mental health services...
...When teachers in New York City feel they are under attack, their interpretation of the conflict is likely to (indeed, did in 1968) take on an ethnic overlay...
...How, in fact, can people learn to recognize real problems, when, as Barbara Mikulski observes, "Women in my neighborhood say they have `bad nerves' when they're probably in terrific need of help, and all they do is take milk of magnesia for it...
...If one were aware of the cultural component of resistance as well as 9 James Q. Wilson and Edward Banfield, "PublicRegardingness as a Value Premise in Voting Behavior," American Political Science Review, December 1964, pp...
...Are they the same as young workers who are rejecting union contracts and leading wildcat strikes...
...Then they [new black workers] come along and question everything, dress differently, don't follow rules...
...Young blacks, young college students, and young professionals, influenced by the popularization of Erik Erikson, are asking "who am I?"—but what of the young worker...
...Featherman was looking for evidence of economic discrimination, and he found little...
...More important, upward mobility patterns vary, so that a look at the working class of tomorrow must take account of mobility rates that relate to ethnic background...
...THE LIFE OF WHITE ETHNICS 293 and how to deal with the ethnic factor in his personal and communal life...
...If this pattern varies, and is more important for some ethnic groups than for others, as indeed it is, it is crucial for urban planning and urban development...
...October 18, 1969, p. 6W...
...Is there something about growing up third-generation ethnic that makes it more difficult for a young worker to discover who he is...
...Abramson again has interesting findings...
...She has learned the skills needed to "find a man" and she married early...
...11 In this highly cosmopolitan, highly mobile area, Kantrowitz found a remarkably high degree of "segregation...
...Overall, the foreignborn median income for all ethnic groups was only $6,273—for the second generation that median was a higher $7,163...
...Some hints might be found in such speculative new work as that of Konrad Lorenz and Lionel Tiger,8 who find anal 7 David L. Featherman, "The Socio-EconomicAchievement of White Religio-Ethnic Subgroups," American Sociological Review, April 1971, p. 211...
...Under these conditions, the Ukrainian and Pole simply continued their ancient feuds, although they might work in the same mine atthe same kind of job and together were abusedby their fellow workers...
...Recently, the Census Bureau released a report titled "Characteristics of the Population by Ethnic Origin," 2 which drew on a special sample survey done in 1969...
...When does one's neighborhood's desire for a certain kind of street culture and life-style have to lend itself to equal opportunity in scarce housing...
...Diversity and Unionism The extent and function of ethnic diversity within the American labor movement may be intuitively understood by candidates for union election, but is seldom openly discussed...
...A more gradualist approach might be most effective in communities where traditions are strong, where men are not dealt with by mere assertions on the part of women, and where generations of women have learned to "get what they want" from their husbands "without their knowing it...
...No doubt, some spokesmen for "the new ethnicity" are the `old" ethnics who have been waiting in the conservative wings, ready with their neoreactionary politics laced with antiSemitic and antiblack components...
...For instance, Long Beach, a Long Island town, has been described as "three worlds," Italian, black, and Jewish—though to the outsider it may seem a "typical lower income suburban community...
...perhaps it should have had different signs in the window, or a different name, or a traditionalist ceremony announcing its existence, or perhaps a festival celebrating its arrival...
...76-94, based on an originally confidential report, "The Problems of the Blue CollarWorker," submitted to the White House by aCabinet-level task force...
...John Goering interviewed Italians and Irish in Providence in 1966, and found the third generation to be consistently more conscious than their fathers and grandfathers of their ethnicity and consistently less positive about America as a land of equal opportunity...
...Abortion on demand is a legitimate issue, but in 1972 it might not be the slogan under which a majority of workingclass Catholic women of ethnic origins could be expected to march, nor might "equal power...
...4 Since approximately half of New York's whites earn between $5,000 and $10,000 annually, it is safe to assume that an overwhelming proportion of that income group is made up of "ethnics...
...Is an Italian community more likely to need a suicide prevention program than a Jewish one...
...Glazer and Moynihan point out that it has always been difficult to have a truly t4 Dennis Clark, "Toward Assimilation or Ethnic Identity...
...5 Again, the figures describe only those born of foreign parents or the immigrants themselves, leaving aside the large third generation...
...The chief weakness of the study is that self-identification was the only criterion of ethnicity...
...Each time it seems the same: an initial period of gross generalization is followed, sometimes painfully, by the process of refinement...
...There are complex reasons for such ethnic political expression...
...Another source for increased ethnic expression is a growing unwillingness to be "just American...
...In New York City 2 U.S...
...The proportions of respondents 'Harold J. Abramson, "Ethnic Pluralism in the Central City" (Storrs, Conn.: Institute for Urban Research of the University of Connecticut, 1970...
...The worker in his family and his community has received least attention...
...16 John M. Goering, "The Emergence of EthnicInterests," Social Forces, March 1971, pp...
...He says: "The socioeconomic order was not considered illegitimate...
...At this point in American social and political history, one can no longer wish ethnicity were not a force...
...How Ethnic Is America's Working Class...
...The generalities of this huge group, not its particularities, are the concerns of those who "rediscover" it...
...6 . . Two years ago, the National Project on Ethnic America convened a small group of trade unionists to discuss ethnicity within the labor movement...
...Furthermore, there is no cross-classification between even foreign-born/ foreign stock and occupation or income, so one cannot be sure what proportion of ethnics are blue-collar workers...
...On a less conscious level, ethnic background has an influence on political behavior within income groups...
...In trying to explain these differences, Banfield and Wilson suggest that cultural history and socialization patterns produce varying conceptions of the meaning of "public interest...
...they all have the same problems...
...Now, her own daughter is picking up cues just as she did—only everything is changing...
...New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971), pp...
...is Such an attitude is decried by those who seek "class con 13 Robert A. Dahl, "The Ex-Plebes," in Harry A. Bailey, Jr...
...But it is also true that many people seek not a narrow new ethnicity but rather guidelines under which to express feelings they never lost...
...But the work of Thomas Pettigrew offers a more hopeful view of ethnicity...
...Most basic in his findings was an overlap between ethnic background and economic level...
...It has been assumed that one workingclass community is very much like another, all comprised of individuals at about the same economic level...
...It is strange that so little has been said about "the quest for identity" regarding blue-collar youth, when such a quest is so commonly understood among the more affluent...
...If negative ethnicity is allowed to fester, aided by attacks from more established forces on the legitimacy of ethnic identity, the conventional scenario of fragmentation, petty group chauvinism, and destructive separatism will once again play itself out...
...12 Whoever would organize these women politically would need to know how to communicate, listen, and establish priorities, based at least in part on the cultural traditions of their communities...
...At first I was really angry, but then I started wondering why my friends and I hadn't asked some of those questions ourselves...
...Robert Dahl has an interesting insight into ethnic workers' attitudes toward the economic system, at least in New Haven...
...So is the most activist segment of the Jewish Defense League...
...For blacks to be randomly distributed with whites, almost 90 percent would have to move—but that most commonly thought-of segregation was only the extreme end of a condition which held true for almost any two ethnic groups...
...Another example comes from Chicago, where a hospital planning study updated 1960 Census data to 1969 estimates...
...11 Nathan Kantrowitz, "Ethnic and Racial Segregation in the New York Metropolis, 1969," American Journal of Sociology, May 1969, pp...
...Here a historical view indicates the degree to which an objectively overriding economic interest seldom crystallized because of interethnic clashes...
...The Italians' strong underuse of community services, which was established by Mobilization for Youth, was at first attributed to their having fewer problems...
...Are there important differences between ethnics and nonethnics in the working class, and what are the finer distinctions between and within ethnic groups themselves...
...Furthermore, job choice, level of entry into a field, and progress within the ranks are all obviously affected by family and friendship ties, group expectations, and even the entrepreneurial structure of the group itself...
...He calculated, for example, that fully 45 percent of the area's Swedish residents would have to be geographically dispersed so that there may be a random chance of a Swede Iiving near a Norwegian...
...In a given region, in a given city, even in a given plant or neighborhood these responses will vary...
...If a large segment of America's working class is second- and third-generation ethnic, there is a need to understand the influence of the ethnic factor on its attitudes and behavior...
...As Richard Lemon says, "Of the remaining 31 percent, many were two or three generations removed from a foreign country and were closely tied to ethnic customs through their families...
...Looking at white Protestants, Jews, white Catholics as a whole, and four white Catholic subgroups, Abramson found distinct differences with respect to occupation, home ownership, educational level, income, political party preference, attitudes toward other groups, and socializing patterns...
...A.: Well it's always been true that if anItalian is running against a non-Italian, all he had to do was write, "— the Italians" over the toilets, and whatever the other issues were, he was in...
...Thus, social analysis has characteristically been concerned with "the Negro," then "the poor," now "the working class," all collective nouns followed by singular verbs and adjectives...
...The sense of not belonging may account for some of the virulence with which identity is being expressed in ethnic forms...
...In building-trades locals, where ethnicity is often identical with craft, more is at stake than racism...
...The primary relationship was to income...
...For example, in an ethnic enclave —as opposed to a more anonymous, more transient physical "neighborhood"—the presence of parents and relatives for baby-sitting may save a young couple as much as $30 a month...
...For some individuals, and at some times, the group serves a chiefly cultural purpose, providing a link with past, customs, family traditions, etc...
...They fear that a "turning inward" is necessarily a turning away from the unfulfilled social agenda of America...
...A recent, detailed study by David Featherman is based on economic mobility from 1957 to 1967...
...17 Thomas Pettigrew, "Ethnicity in American Life: A Social Psychological Perspective," in Ethnicity in American Life (New York: Anti-DefamationLeague of B'nai B'rith, 1971) p. 30...
...Italians take "turf" very seriously and are most staunch in their opposition to busing...
...THE LIFE OF WHITE ETHNICS Working-Class Women Here, too, there has been almost no recognition of a woman's ethnic background as a significant influence on her perceptions, desires, behavior...
...We do not suggest that ethnicity is a basic cause of the problems faced by working-class Americans, or that one's ethnic identification or background is the sole or even primary determinant of one's perceptions and actions...
...On the contrary, many new immigrant workers who were the butts of ridicule and abuse by native American laborers fought among themselves with no small degree of ferocity...
...If women's movements exclude the working-class woman, if youth culture represents other kids, if manhood is only to be found through war and football on TV—and if the culture no longer values work, let alone dull work—then perhaps Italian Unity Day is performing more than a narrow ethnic function...
...THE LIFE OF WHITE ETHNICS 287 the 1960 population was 19 percent white foreignborn and another 28 percent white foreign stock...
...Within working-class America, economic differences are less gross but still prevalent...
...Social Attitudes and Values Related to the development of identity, and affecting people of all ages, is the effect of ethnicity on values and attitudes...
...What the larger community interest is, and how much an individual ought to contribute toward it, could be defined by groups in very different ways...
...A neighborhood with many friendly craftsmen may save families hundreds of dollars in home repair costs...
...Yet, in Syracuse five years ago, the first "experimental" educational park, which would have replaced the neighborhood school, was planned for the Italian section—and the neighborhood's outcry defeated the entire plan for such parks...
...Of these five ethnic groups, most often thought of in connection with the white work ing class, nearly 20 million people lived in families with $5,000-$10,000 annual incomes...
...Management consultant Jules Cohn describes an AT&T employee whose brief testimony suggests the importance of ethnic factors in the work place...
...At other times, however, the ethnic group becomes an interest group, through processes that are not adequately understood...
...discrimination was...
...Dennis Clark points out: "Among the white foreign-born are survivors of terrible persecutions and wars in other lands...
...Thus, in Chicago, perhaps the prototypical ethnic city, white ethnics are overrepresented in blue-collar occupations...
...Obviously, while such real differences of opinion must be tolerated, it is equally legitimate to attempt to change those opinions in order to pass a school bond issue or to advance racial justice...
...Later, there were some challenges and changes: Q.: You mean your being Italian doesn't helpyou win union elections in a local withsuch a large Italian membership...
...The groups who arrived first have largely been those who have progressed furthest...
...Changes in such basic patterns as sex roles would therefore have a profound impact on women from traditional ethnic homes...
...Similarly, the rise of blacks into positions once held by Italians in Newark has little to do with Italian history but much with Italians as a political interest group...
...For some, the choice is a conscious one, influenced by the presence of such institutions as the church...
...If work is done, issues are articulated, and communities developed with sensitivity—without hardening of organizational forms or premature alliances between fearful groups—then the ethnic factor in working-class life can be an important tool for creating both individual fulfillment and social unity...
...Some understanding of how this jumble gets translated into an integral sense of self has been obtained from psychiatrists who treat upper-middle-class patients and from newly self-conscious black writers, but there is almost nothing to compare to these insights from any ethnic group but the Jews...
...379-84...
...Still, more than 46 million people of Irish, Italian, German, Polish, or Russian (largely Jewish) origin were described in some detail...
...More important than the speculative, ideological questions is how—how to define, prescribe, interpret, organize, how to build coalitions and train leadership, how to listen...
...In Southeast Baltimore, an ethnic savings and loan association is the force behind home renovation, since large banks have "red-lined" the area...
...The Ethnic Neighborhood In most of the cities where the white working class is ethnic—in the Northeast and Midwest particularly—common origin is reflected in distinct neighborhoods...
...3 See Jerome M. Rosow, "The Problems of LowerMiddle-Income Workers," in Blue Collar Workers, Sar A. Levitan, ed...
...That these neighborhoods and communities, and sometimes even union locals, are often held together by another common characteristic—ethnicity—is a fact that has not been given sufficient attention...
...A sensitivity to attitudinal differences might have led to choosing a less fearful neighborhood and dissipating some anxiety through demonstrating success...
...Some differentiation is being enforced this time, largely through the logic of large youth and women's populations...
...In voting studies of Gary, Indiana, in 1968, he found that a self-identified Pole, with many friends and associations in the Polish community, was only half as likely to vote for George Wallace as was his more marginal confrere who reported few if any formal Polish associations...
...294 IRVING M. LEVINE AND JUDITH HERMAN...
...Ethnic-Economic Correlations One of the reasons for the difficulty of sifting out the precise influence of ethnicity in America is that it so often is directly correlated with economic status...
...A final example of the impact ethnicity has on attitudes relates to feelings about authority...
...Of that foreign-born/ foreign-stock group, some 1.8 million people in 1969, only 13.5 percent held jobs in the professional, technical, and managerial occupations compared to 30 percent of the white population as a whole...
...Thus ethnicity interacts, to varying degrees, with economic and other factors in workingclass communities...
...Categorical thought is rarely avoided even among those who know better...
...The cultural aspects of ethnicity are transmitted within the family largely through the woman, even without her conscious awareness...
...Higher income wards were more likely to approve such expenditures even though their taxes yielded more benefits for others...
...In ethnic communities, neighborhoods, churches, and union locals—in Saturday night discussions around dinner and penny ante poker, or Friday night Sabbath dinners of chicken soup, or Christmas celebrations, or births or deaths—an entire structure of unconscious associations and patterns is stored...
...s This kind of suggestive insight reinforces the need to look more closely at ethnic diversity, especially if one is interested in polarization and group conflict...
...Certain ethnic neighborhoods may even have "economic satisfaction factors" associated with to Bob Wyrick, "The Three Worlds of Long Beach," Newsday [Long Island, N.Y...
...In a word," say the authors, "each group has its own idea of what justice requires and of the importance of acting justly...
...what seems crucial is to ask the right questions...
...Still later, the distinctions became even more subtle, as an organizer with a Northern Italian background said, "Not only wouldn't I send a black to organize in a white shop, or a German into a Polish plant, I wouldn't even send a Southern Italian in to organize a Northern Italian shop...
...fragmentation results not from recognizing difference but from ignoring it...
...The community mental health movement has included discussions of public education programs, referral systems, and "gatekeepers in the community" (those who are consulted on problems...
...What might seem to be an issue of prejudice or "backlash" could relate as much (or more) to legitimately differing definitions of "the public interest" or "the right thing to do...
...When does the need of one's own group take precedence over the needs of others, and when are broader social goals primary...
...and Ellis Katz, eds., Ethnic Group Politics (Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Co., 1970), p. 230...
...Attitudes toward neighborhoods have already been mentioned...
...lT Perhaps ethnicity—whether expressed consciously or through influences on behavior—dispells at least part of the insecurity keenly felt within the working class and, if progressively organized, may allow real selfinterest to replace spurious appeals of demagoguery and extremism...
...But one would suspect that strong differences exist...
...876-87...
...Does an Irish neighborhood need the same approach to the problem of alcoholism as a Greek one...
...The working class, then, is not "all the same," and educational programs offered by colleges and/or unions will differentially attract workers according to their ethnic background...
...a picket line has no color...
...Many of the participants, after all, were the same men who had rallied at City Hall against peace demonstrators, and the emotional levels of the two mass meetings seemed quite comparable...
...Statistical precision is difficult to achieve, since the Census counts only first and second generation (born of foreign-born parents...
...If "labor" is Democratic, then how can one explain the following: the percentage of bluecollar workers in Connecticut who identified themselves as Democrats varied from 47 (white Protestants) to 86 (Irish Catholics), with the Poles, other East Europeans, Italians, and Jews falling in between (64, 67, 80, and 83, respectively) . Part of the explanation for both ethnic differences among the working class and the ethnic nature of even class-oriented politics lies in the dual purpose of the ethnic group...
...288 IRVING M. LEVINE AND JUDITH HERMAN and they are now facing the same need to respond to the particular interests of women and young people...
...In southeast Baltimore, Barbara Mikulski—a progressive and exciting social worker—won election to the city council through sensitivity to ethnic feelings...
...were transferred in many cases to the United States...
...The neighborhood can be anextended family...
...Who are the authority figures in the community whose "blessing" would legitimate going for help...
...8 Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966...
...Most important, since workingclass problems are still basically economic, the political sophistication being developed in many ethnic communities—over such issues as schools and housing—can lend much needed new support to a united working-class agenda...
...What follows is an attempt to suggest how that interweaving occurs in several areas of working-class life...
...In considering this question, the need for knowledge regarding ethnicity becomes clear...
...In all these instances—and in the case of ethnic particularism as well—a failure to deal with the group factor weakens appeals to universalist principles...
...Lorenz and Tiger confirm the common experience that severe threat leads to a diminution of universalism and retreat to more "primitive" loyalties...
...There are both positive and negative possibilities in the ethnic movement, but there are potential leaders in every ethnic community whose stances would excite the most progres sive response...
...The third generation," he says, "returns to the seclusiveness of ethnicity in resentment against unattained promises...
...Others doubtless include rural and small-town residents, whites with an Appalachian background, nonethnic aged, some not in the work force, and ethnic groups and individuals not self-identified...
...that is, he found that no white ethnic group seemed to be held back because of national origins...
...The larger structure of politics, involving nonethnic issues as well as candidates, is usually seen in purely socioeconomic terms, though some studies and experiences suggest a strong ethnic factor...
...In many cases, what looks like an economicsbased blue-collar suburb is in reality a community consisting of several ethnic enclaves...
...How does that awareness work itself out in the factory...
...Therefore, when one's goal is "opening new opportunities" for blacks and others, one must un derstand the strength of resistance in ethnic as well as economic terms...
...How does background affect job performance...
...Twenty-two percent were black or Puerto Rican, leaving only an additional 31 percent as "other...
...Ralph Kolodny goes back to pre-1930 literature to look at ethnicity and labor and finds that "a united front against a dominant Anglo-Saxon group was never a goal of the 4 Richard Lemon, The Troubled Americans (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969), p. 168...
...20, 21...
...Here I was [she said] a typical nice Irish Cath olic parochial school graduate, doing what I was told, not asking any questions...
...For example, those ethnic groups whose recent past is dominated by an escape from a Communistcontrolled country—the Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Poles—could be expected to be more antiCommunist than the Irish, the Italians, or the Greeks...
...For an identity is formed out of early family experiences, in nonverbal communication between mother and child, in "significant others" who reflect ourselves back to us...
...national identity in a country so divided into regions and other subgroups.15 A recent research project supports the notion that skepticism over the American dream leads one to look for strength in some other group identity...
...we treat everyone equally whatever his background...
...Opinion polls, a principal source of data on the mass of workers, do not report ethnic differences, probably do not even ask about them except as black/white distinctions...
...in blue-collar occupations and with family incomes above $10,000 varied significantly across ethnic lines: Percent Percent in blue collar with familyincome of White occupations $10,000 or over Protestants 52 18 Jews 25 32 Catholics total 64 17 East EuropeanCatholics 70 23 Irish Catholics 51 24 Italian Catholics 64 14 Polish Catholics 78 11 Thus, a Connecticut issue that might appear to be based in economics might also be (or become) an ethnic issue...
...IRVING M. LEVINE AND JUDITH HERMAN 292 sciousness," and it is not cited here necessarily for approval...
...Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970), p. xxxiii...
...At mother's knee she has learned about men, what to expect, what to guard against, how to maneuver...
...These transferred conflicts naturally took placein workingmen's communities, since the Slavicimmigrants were mainly unskilled laborers...
...ie This withdrawal from universalism worries many observers of ethnic resurgence...
...In looking for the negative, however, he discovered a positive that "national origin background does appear to differentiate the gross socioeconomic attainments of major religious groups in these [seven] metropolitan areas...
...For the first several hours, the conversation did not get past such statements as, "A worker is a worker...
...Certainly the students who "invaded hard-hat country" after the Wall Street demonstrations to "build bridges" did not understand such feelings...
...Her campaign kick-off with a dance at the Polish Home, and her speech-making styles were used not just to boost Pulaski Day parades but to deal with working-class issues— taxes, unwanted highways, inadequate schools...
...The ethnic factors were not being stressed in order to divide unions, they were seen as important tools for building unity...
...Politicians understand this aspect of ethnicity, perhaps intuitively...
...But within income groups, and controlling for homeownership and the percentage of nonwhites in the ward, there were substantial ethnic differences on such "public interest" voting...
...5 Pierre de Vise, "A Demographic Survey of Chicago's Ethnic Groups," unpublished paper presented to the Chicago Consultation on Ethnicity, November 1969, Tables 4 and 8. various southern and eastern European groups...
...For example, Edward Banfield and James Wilson found significant ethnic differences in votes on bond issues and community facilities referenda in Cleveland and Chicago...
...290 IRVING M. LEVINE AND JUDITH HERMAN living there...
...Lionel Tiger, Men in Groups (New York: Random House, 1969...
...Indeed, at such times, a conflict that revolves around neighborhoods, occupations, even social classes, may be expressed as an ethnic conflict—and may be resolved more effectively by treating it as such...
...685-95...
...Such questions demand specific, small-scale responses, not only macro-level analyses...
...An Italian American from Newark has described the growing-up process he went through: "We knew there were three kinds of people—the blacks, the Americanos, and the Italians...
...7 Further study showed that it was the educational level of these groups that most influenced their economic progress—so that ethnic background affected level of education, which affected economic mobility...
...For others, the ethnic neighborhood is a convenience, maintaining some features of the extended family, lost (but yearned for) in more heterogeneous neighborhoods...
...But one of the most important elements in adolescent life—the issue of individual and group identity—has received almost no attention in working-class communities...
...The Young Worker's Search for Identity Considerable work is now being done on the young worker—his rebellions within union and workplace, his potential political volatility, his spending patterns...
...Only later was it learned that a classic Italian mistrust of authority was a strong force keeping people away, but that if an Italian intermediary accompanied the family, they would indeed make use of the service...
...The report offers some indication of income distribution...
...In some quarters, the ethnic dimension has been rejected as largely irrelevant at best, destructive at worst...
...Abramson found substantial ethnic divergences in both these respects, even among just the blue-collar respondents: If one-third to one-half of a particular groupin the central city claims that most of itsfriendship choices in the neighborhood areamong relatives and kinfolk, then the idea ofthe urban neighborhood assumes a strengthand a character which, perhaps, many havetended to ignore...
...Two questions asked—the proportion of homeowners, and the extent to which close friends in the neighborhood are also relatives —have a direct bearing on the ethnic neighborhood...
...Alienation Many journalistic reports have by now suggested that the working class feels neglected, forgotten, invisible...
...14 And if to them, then to some extent to their children also...
...To them, militancy and disorders of any kind summon harrowing memories and fears...
...Lowest are the groups that, while not recent arrivals to America, are the most recent migrants to the cities—the blacks, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, Indians, and even the Appalachian whites...
...10 That ethnic concentration still exists was recently shown by a detailed study of the New York-New Jersey region done by Nathan Kantrowitz...
...Kolodny cites the coal industry in Pennsylvania, with a high rate of ethnic conflict: The national conflicts of Europe...
...Does he only form an identity around what he is not—not black, not affluent, not college-educated...
...And how much of the young worker's anger, which observers are beginning to describe, is related to that kind of "negative identity...
...How, then, does the ethnic factor interweave with other influences in working-class life...
...It is extremely difficult for someone who has not survived such disorders to understand or share the feelings Clark describes...
...As long as blacks and other nonwhite ethnic groups remain visible, others will raise the ethnic banner, too, and with legitimacy on their side as well...
...The current concern with "America's working class" seems to continue this tradition...
...Delivery of Services: Mental Health For a long time there have been proposals to "educate people as to the need for services...
...Six million males over age 16 were employed in blue-collar jobs, with another 1.5 million in sales, clerical, and service work...
...Politics: the Ethnic Group as Interest Group Politics is the one area where ethnicity is openly discussed and easily recognized—but even here public understanding seldom extends beyond the balanced ticket, the picture in an ethnic newspaper, the appointment of local committeemen...
...Union leaders have always known that a social-action or collective-bargaining package must include benefits for workers in various job situations, e Ralph L. Kolodny, "Ethnic Cleavages in theUnited States," Social Work, January 1969, pp...
...Other suggestive data tend to substantiate this common observation...
...There is need for a "new pluralism" that would allow each individual to choose whether, when, 15 Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot, 2nd ed...
...Perhaps the multiservice center in that neighborhood should have been in a different physical setting...
...Urban and Social Change Review, Fall 1970, p. 19...
...Indeed, appeals that were merely symbolic have worked with the proper rhetoric—the 1969 tax cuts, which gave the worker next to nothing, even the initial Nixon speech on wage freezes...
...These are formed early in life, have more to do than we realize with the arguments around the family dinner table...
...Jules Cohn, "Business and Ethnicity," working draft of paper prepared for the National Projecton Ethnic America...
...Former Assistant Secretary of Labor Jerome Rosow, in his "Blue Collar Memorandum" to the Presidents estimated that 70 million Americans make up the $5,000-$10,000 family income group, of whom 10-15 million are nonwhite minorities...
...Thus, the 20 million figure cited by the Census for parts of only five ethnic groups supports the notion that a very large proportion of urban working-class America is ethnic...
...THE LIFE OF WHITE ETHNICS 289 ogies in human behavior to animal instincts of "herd," `own kind," and "instinctual fear of strangers...
...The militant core of Anthony Imperiale's support in Newark—the kids in white helmets who surrounded the Catholic church when it hosted a black basketball team "so we can protect our women"—is young, dropped out or is just out of high school...
...little has been said except that working-class neighborhoods are most often nearest to black ones and that workers are most resistant to busing, public housing projects, and suburban integration...
...Even suburbanization has not diminished the intensity of many ethnic neighborhoods...
...Who wants or takes what kinds of jobs...
...But to build a consciousness one must be aware of where people are to begin with, and sons and daughters of New Haven ethnic groups may be in a very different starting place because of their fathers' attitudes toward mobility...
...At times ethnicity may be that important— the question is when...
...How do the varying cultural expectations of each group influence the proportion of women who work...
...Which groups favor group care for children, and which rely on relatives...
Vol. 19 • January 1972 • No. 1
