Emergence of an American Ethnic Pattern by Nathan Glazer

Against the Emergence of an American Ethnic Pattern by Nathan Glazer

In the text, The Emergence of an American Ethnic Pattern by Nathan Glazer, the author argues that affirmative action is creating a 'tribal' America. Rather than a cohesive American identity, Glazer argues that Americans are becoming increasingly identified with their personal racial, religious and ethnic differences. Glazer states that this stands in defiance of the fact that "the United States has become the first great nation that defines itself not in terms of ethnic origin but in terms of adherence to common rules of citizenship." However, Glazer confuses this idealized view of American history with the realities of discrimination that have been perpetuated upon minorities, and which minorities continue to suffer in America. Glazer argues his case as if America were not a nation with a history marked by racial divisiveness, despite the goal of racial harmony advocated by contemporary laws.

True, civil rights and voting rights have remedied some of the abuses codified in American law. Still, the social ramifications of the legal disenfranchisement of African-Americans, Indian-Americans, and other disenfranchised groups still exist with these once legally discriminated against communities. The social actions of lynching, local laws discriminating against Chinese and Catholic Americans, the denial of land rights to American Indians, and other social abuses still have long-standing social effects that do not disappear as the words of the 'Jim Crow' laws disappeared from the law books of the South. Discrimination today exists, even if it is not in law, it does in fact and common, often unspoken practice.

True, not every minority has been excluded with the same totality as African-Americans were in the days of slavery and segregation. But even if not every group is equally economically excluded from mainstream American society has suffered all of the abuses put upon African-Americans, the persistence of social discrimination creates social barriers that affirmative action helps to alleviate for all groups -- even groups designated as 'model minorities' such as Asian-Americans may face discrimination, as the fact of Asian-American poverty may be ignored in some areas, because of presumptions that such suffering does not exist amongst, say recent emigrants from Cambodia or Vietnam.

Glazer fears the creation of a tribal America, yet the fact is, tribes already exist, because discrimination and oppression has created such identities as "African-American" and "Asian-American" after the collective waves of enslavement and discrimination against a variety of groups, from slaves, to immigrants, to the original, indigenous or 'native' residents of the continent. Glazer states that "the chief threats in the past were, on the one hand, the danger of a permanent subordination of certain racial and ethnic groups to others, of the establishment of a caste system in the United States and on the other hand, the demand that those accepted into American society become Americanized or assimilated, and lose any distinctive group identity," but counters that the danger today lies too much factionalization rather than discrimination or assimilation.

But the idea of "Americanization" itself is an absurdity, when one thinks how 'mainstream' American conceptions of identity have shifted since the English, white agrarian roots of the Founding Fathers to today's far more pluralistic and heterogeneous fabric. Also, while Glazer concedes that equality is a laudable goal for Americans to strive for, he really offers no other conception of how to create a more level playing field than currently exists, other than through integration and equality via the law. But this is an equality that cannot adjust the psychologically and institutionally ingrained racism that often transcends formal policy and law, but still affects the psyches of both the oppressor and the oppressed.