Vincent N. Parrillo: A Collection of His Work

By Vincent N. Parrillo

This book is a collection of many talks and writings of Vincent N. Parrillo, a professor of sociology, Fulbright scholar, and internationally renowned expert on immigration and intergroup relations. He gave dozens of invited lectures on three continents, frequently under the sponsorship of the U.S. State Department through its programs in the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and the International Information Program (IIE). In representing the United States abroad, he was interviewed through numerous radio, television, and newspaper outlets, including Radio Free Europe and Voice of America. In addition, other speaking engagements came from universities in Asia, Canada, and Europe, some of these as the keynote speaker at international conferences. He was also a visiting scholar in Belgium, the Czech Republic, England, and Italy. Numerous U.S. newspapers also called upon him for his commentary on current events.
His reputation, both in his homeland and abroad, primarily came from his journal articles and books that mostly centered on the themes of assimilation, diversity, or multiculturalism. As his public presentations and writings increased, they generated still more speaking invitations that in turn led to many being transcribed and printed in various scholarly publications. Many, but not all, of these writings have been included here.
A unique and multidimensional person, Parrillo expanded his horizons into other fields of endeavor. He wrote, narrated, and produced six television documentaries for PBS, so popular that they were aired repeatedly and DVD copies were in heavy demand. He drew from his insights into Ellis Island and immigration to write two historical novels, He also acted in, or directed, dozens of plays—comedies, dramas, and musicals—for a number of community theaters in northern New Jersey.
This collection is an effort to capture at least a part of his insights and observations that he presented to a worldwide public.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Aug 16, 2020
• ISBN: 9781489729927

Vincent N. Parrillo

About the Editor Martha “Martie” Ohl attended Drew University and majored in English. She spent a dozen years in public relations before becoming an early childhood and music teacher. An intimate friend of Vincent Parrillo, she heard him speak in numerous venues and is quite familiar with his publications. About the Book This book is a collection of many talks and writings of Vincent N. Parrillo, a professor of sociology, Fulbright scholar, and internationally renowned expert on immigration and intergroup relations. He gave dozens of invited lectures on three continents, frequently under the sponsorship of the U.S. State Department through its programs in the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and the International Information Program (IIE). In representing the United States abroad, he was interviewed through numerous radio, television, and newspaper outlets, including Radio Free Europe and Voice of America. In addition, other speaking engagements came from universities in Asia, Canada, and Europe, some of these as the keynote speaker at international conferences. He was also a visiting scholar in Belgium, the Czech Republic, England, and Italy. Numerous U.S. newspapers also called upon him for his commentary on current events. His reputation, both in his homeland and abroad, primarily came from his journal articles and books that mostly centered on the themes of assimilation, diversity, or multiculturalism. As his public presentations and writings increased, they generated still more speaking invitations that in turn led to many being transcribed and printed in various scholarly publications. Many, but not all, of these writings have been included here. A unique and multidimensional person, Parrillo expanded his horizons into other fields of endeavor. He wrote, narrated, and produced six television documentaries for PBS, so popular that they were aired repeatedly and DVD copies were in heavy demand. He drew from his insights into Ellis Island and immigration to write two historical novels, He also acted in, or directed, dozens of plays—comedies, dramas, and musicals—for a number of community theaters in northern New Jersey. This collection is an effort to capture at least a part of his insights and observations that he presented to a worldwide public.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS

Diversity in America: Strength Not Weakness

A Challenge for Educators

Working Wives, Family Stability, Socialization and Social Control

Ensuring Equal Opportunity in Education

Resolution

Terrorism and Pre-Emptive Justice: Cultural Contexts

Social Changes That Affected the U.S. Presidential Election

A Cross-Cultural Field Study of Hizmet Schools in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kazakhstan

Assimilation and Pluralism in the US: Are They Dual or Dueling Realities?

BOOK FOREWORDS

Racism and Sexism

Aesthetics and Sociology

Iranian Americans

BOOK CHAPTERS

Asian Americans in American Politics

Rethinking Today’s Minorities

The New Ethnics: Familiar Strains in Different Settings

Global Migration Patterns: Similarities in the Italian and American Experiences

The Strangers Among Us: Societal Perceptions, Pressures, and Policy

Pluralist Tendencies and Assimilationist Pressures

Cultural Identity and Heritage

Ethnic Separation, Marginality, Blending and Decline

Integration or Disintegration? Immigrants, Culture, and Democracy in the United States and Italy

Causes of Prejudice

The Roses and Thorns of Multiculturalism

The Umbrellas of Multiculturalism

PUBLISHED ESSAYS

Global Ethnoviolence

New Jersey and Suburban America

Italian Americans

Undocumented Immigrants

Urban

SELECTED JOURNAL ARTICLES

Rationalization and Ritualism in Committee Decision Making

The Immigrant Family: Securing the American Dream

Taking Proactive Steps to Prevent Violence

Updating the Bogardus Social Distance Studies: A New National Survey

The National Social Distance Study: Ten Years Later

Sociological Storytelling in Film and Literature

INTRODUCTION

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Vincent Nicholas Parrillo (1938 -) came to the field of sociology in his thirties. After graduating from Seton Hall University with a B.S. degree in business management and then serving in the Army, he had New Jersey careers first in printing/publishing in his father’s company in Paterson; then as a high school teacher of 11th and 12th grade English in Pequannock, earning an M.A, degree in English at Montclair State University. Only after becoming a college administrator and college professor at William Paterson University in Wayne did he take his first sociology courses at the doctoral level at Rutgers University. He would subsequently take post-doctoral courses with such noted sociologists as Peter Berger, Talcott Parsons, and Matilda White Riley. Thereafter, he applied that acquired sociological knowledge in a great variety of ways, as a teacher, author, speaker, and film maker.

Following a traditional path like his fellow academics, he would conduct social research and publish in respected journals. Moreover, his teaching undergraduate and graduate students extended beyond the classroom, as he edited or wrote numerous academic books, most notably Strangers to These Shores and Cities and Urban Life, both of which continue to go through multiple editions, and used by thousands of college students throughout the United States and Canada.

For their own published works, other academics sought his contributions in the form of book forewords, book chapters, and encyclopedia essays, many of which are also in this volume. In a few of them (Ethnic Separation, Marginality, Blending, Decline and Global Ethnoviolence), he included autobiographical content to inform the reader about particular sociological concepts.

Expanding his horizons, he employed his sociological insights into writing, narrating, and producing six PBS documentaries: Ellis Island: Gateway to America (1990); Smokestacks and Steeples: A Portrait of Paterson (1992); Gaetano Federici: Sculptor Laureate of Paterson (2013); Paterson and Its People (2015); Silk City Artists and Musicians (2017); and Paterson: A Delicious Destination (2020). His five Paterson films earned him the sobriquet Paterson’s documentarian.

By blending his love of history, sociological perspective, and imagination, he wrote two historical novels: Guardians of the Gate (2011) and Defenders of Freedom (2015). In the final published selection in this volume, Sociological Storytelling in Film and Literature (2019), he explained how his academic background enabled him to enhance his films and novels with numerous sociological concepts.

A gifted speaker, as I often observed, he captivated audiences with a skillful blend of humor, anecdotes, and content, no matter if they were young or old, or he was speaking in the United States or in Asia, Canada, or Europe. Before he retired, he was often invited to give keynote or plenary addresses at national and international conferences, some of which are included here. A Fulbright Scholar in the Czech Republic (2000), a Fulbright Senior Specialist in England (2005), and a visiting professor in Belgium (2010), Italy (2006), and Romania (2018), he also went on dozens of lecture tours to other countries under the auspices of the U.S. State Department (through its U.S. Information Agency and International Information Program). Rave evaluations from embassy cultural affairs officers led to many new assignments.

A recipient of numerous grants, honors, and commendations, including the New Jersey State Legislature, he made dozens of media appearances (including Voice of America and Radio Free Europe), was often interviewed and quoted in newspapers both local and far flung, directed or acted in dozens of community theater productions. He was a book reviewer and manuscript reviewer for several journals, an educational consultant for local school districts, and served on the Paterson YMCA Board of Trustees and on the Ridgewood Historical Commission, which he chaired.

He truly has been—as many called him—a modern Renaissance man. Although not a complete portrait of the man, this volume offers, I hope, a strong cross-section of his talks and writings.

Martie Ohl

Email: [e-mail]

Martha Martie Ohl (1940-) is a former model and retired early childhood and music teacher who has written and published numerous newspaper and magazine feature articles. She is mother to three grown children and has seven grandchildren. She resides in Northern New Jersey, where she met Vince Parrillo and began reading his work. She has also heard many of his lectures in numerous countries, and considers putting this volume together a labor of love.

PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS

For more than a half century, Dr. Parrillo gave thousands of lectures in undergraduate and graduate classes, in dozens of tours arranged through the U.S. Department of State, and in dozens of diversity training programs for the U.S. Department of Defense, DuPont, and the Barnabas Health System in New Jersey.

In addition, he frequently was an invited lecturer at international and national conferences, primarily as the main speaker. Recognized as an expert on immigration and intergroup relations, he usually dwelt on some aspect of the topic of diversity. In these presentations, he often favored two themes—an opening reference to Bob Dylan’s The times they are a-changin’ and a closing audience-rouser about diversity as a strength not a weakness—to drive home his main points. The latter theme also served as the title of one published presentation, and it is the first article in this section.

Although some of the presentations fulfilled his responsibility to set the tone for the conferences that followed, others were notable as part of his effort to effect positive social change. An excellent example in this section is Ensuring Equal Opportunity in Education. Given in Prague at a conference exclusively attended by leaders in the national government and non-government organizations (NGOs), he sought to guide them in improving from top to bottom their educational system, which was under intense criticism for its systemic discrimination against the Roma minority. He followed up by drafting a resolution, publicly announced and adopted by one of the Czech political parties. Although never enacted, that resolution is also included here.

Not all of Dr. Parrillo’s public presentations are in this section, but expanded versions of some others that were published in anthologies or in professional journals will appear in later sections.

~ M.O.

DIVERSITY IN AMERICA:

STRENGTH NOT WEAKNESS

¹

The United States of America is one of the more significant social inventions in history. It was not simply invented by the early colonists or by the framers of the Declaration of Independence or of the Constitution. It was invented over 200 years ago by the great masses of people who came together to inhabit it, intermingling their personal fates to build and shape a new nation with their blood, sweat and tears. These European whites, African slaves, and indigenous peoples gave the United States a particular identity, an identity as a country dedicated to diversity, a nation of different peoples living together as one –e pluribus unum—from the many, one.

The imperfections of the United States are enormous. It sometimes is filled with dissent, anger, and rage. It contains enormous populations that are sometimes at odds with each other, and it practically worships a cult of violence. For all of that, it is an area on Earth where 260 million people live in peace with each other, maintain the democratic process, and speak a common language.

Today, Americans are no longer the lineal descendants of the 13 English colonies that joined together in 1776. From them, they inherited certain priceless things—above all else, the idea that a national community could live by a set of laws that defined a basic degree of equality. The holes and gaps in this concept do not negate it. In the largest sense, the concept is accepted by all of the disparate populations of the United States; but the general sense of philosophical agreement that marked New England of the 19th century is gone forever, as is the romantic myth that America is a melting pot.

America, which in the very beginning was an invention, is being reinvented, and that process of reinvention will go on and on into the future. Three waves of immigration have not just altered the population composition of the United States. They have strengthened the nation and given the American temperament a livelier and far richer national personality than could ever have existed without them.

I’d like to discuss that changing face of American ethnicity with you—to tell you what Americans were, what they are, and what they are becoming. Since 1820, when the nation’s population was 9.6 million, official records have been kept of new immigrants. In the 174 years since then, over 60 million immigrants have come to the United States, with roughly 63 percent leaving a European homeland.

Even when immigration was mostly from northern and western Europe, the colonies were a pluralist entity reflecting the cultural diversity of the European continent. Many of those settlements were religiously and ethnically diverse: New Amsterdam, New Sweden, New Orleans, and New Smyrna are but a few examples. New Amsterdam was itself a pluralistic settlement, with eighteen different languages being spoken there daily in 1660. Among the English settlers were the Calvinists in Massachusetts, the Congregationalists in Connecticut, the Presbyterians in New York, the Catholics in Maryland, and the Anglicans in Virginia.

Many of those first settlers from northern and western Europe, were adventurers, debtors, the poor, the politically or religiously oppressed. In tragic irony, as they sought freedom and opportunity in the New World denied to them in the Old World, they imported thousands of Africans in bondage and victimized the Native Americans already living here.

Both races had rich cultures whose impact on American culture remains strong today. Over 500 Native American words are in our language, and the names of many lakes, rivers and towns give testimony to that legacy. Native American knowledge of herbs and plants, their influence on jewelry; clothing, art, literature, child-rearing, scouting and ecology, as well as the use of such objects as hammocks, canoes, parkas, ponchos, toboggans, rubber syringes and many other objects are all further examples of their cultural impact. African American art, literature, and music—especially jazz and rhythm and blues, are important components of our culture also. African American labor—slave and free, rural and urban, field and factory, peacetime worker or wartime soldier—has been an integral part of the American enterprise.

Despite the significant role of African and Native Americans in American history, it would be almost 200 years after the nation’s birth before their descendants could begin enjoying the same rights and opportunities secured by the whites.

Yet even though black and red Americans would strive for justice for generations, they were able to do so in a country that not only had a Constitution, but a conscience, to which an appeal could be made. This is a triumph of idealism that is forever a tribute to the human spirit. The ideals set forth in the nation’s foundation remain the promise to each generation born here and the beacon of hope to those who come.

Other peoples of color—Asians and Hispanics—would also be important elements in the evolution of the United States into a modern superpower. Long before the English settled in Jamestown or Plymouth, Spanish explorers, missionaries and adventurers roamed through much of this land. In 1518 the Spanish established St. Augustine, Florida, and in 1609, the same year the first permanent English settlement, Jamestown, was established, the Spanish founded Santa Fe. Chinese played an important role in building the transcontinental railroad and many other railroad lines as well. Their soap, candle, cigar and clothing manufacturing in the West prior to 1870 filled important needs in the West. Asian Indian, Japanese, Korean and Filipino agricultural and domestic labor were crucial to the nineteenth century West as well. Once again, the contributions of these people were often ignored because of the suspicions and fears that racist bigotry engendered. Some gave up and went home, but others stubbornly held fast and put down roots.

The influx of tens of millions of European immigrants dominated the American scene though. Between 1820 and 1860, the first great wave of immigration occurred, when 5 million immigrants, mostly from Germany and Ireland, arrived. (1.5 million Germans emigrated at this time.) In this 40-year period, the total U.S. population more than tripled, growing from 9.6 million in 1820 to 31.4 million by 1860. With so many Irish Catholics and Germans Jews arriving, nativists—mostly Anglo-American Protestants—became concerned that the true national character of the United States was being undermined. Hostile reaction ranged from bad-mouthing newcomers to open acts of discrimination, from political demigods campaigning for immigration restrictions to vicious acts by Know-Nothing mobs.

These newcomers tended to settle in cities, the Irish primarily along the East Coast and the Germans in the Midwest. Other Irish worked in railroad construction across the nation’s mid-section while other Germans became farmers, again mostly in the Midwest. Like the immigrants who would come years later, the Germans and Irish clustered together in recognizable ethnic subcommunities where the creation of parallel social institutions (newspapers, stores, churches, clubs and organizations) helped as sort of a decompression chamber to provide familiarity, security, and emotional support for these strangers in a strange land. Between 1880 and 1920, the second great wave of immigration occurred, when 23 million immigrants arrived. In this 40-year period, the nation’s population more than doubled, going from 50.1 million in 1880 to 105.7 million in 1920. Even so, most of the immigrants coming in this period were different from those already here, coming as they did from southern, central, and eastern Europe. Once again, their cultural distinctions and high birth rates alarmed nativists who saw the nation’s population composition and national character threatened. Once again, prejudice and discrimination, not a warm welcome, greeted these immigrants, as did new calls for immigration restrictions, along with demonstrations and violence by the Ku Klux Klan. (The Klan acted not just against American blacks, but also against foreigners, Catholics, and Jews. By 1920 it claimed 5 million members, more from the North where most immigrants were, than in the South where most African Americans lived.)

The America these immigrants came to was vastly different from what earlier immigrants had found. It was now a booming industrial nation, with factories located in manufacturing cities, and most European immigrants—usually peasants from small towns and villages—settled in overcrowded tenements to work in the mills.

For all these European immigrants seeking their fortunes in the land of opportunity, the reality did not always live up to the expectations. Some prospered, while others became discouraged and went home. For some, the promise flickered and faded, but the light never went out completely. And one place where the light often shone brightest was in our schools, where a good education offered their children a way out of the ghetto, out of poverty and into the mainstream. Coming from lands where rigid social class lines seldom meant upward mobility, the sacrifices of immigrants to secure better lives for their children was the motivation that kept them going.

However, America’s immigrant experience is not simply a past event; it is an ever-present, continuing saga. Today, about one million people each year immigrate to the United States. America is living through the third great immigration wave, with about 16 million new immigrants since 1970. Mostly Asian and Hispanic, the newcomers have again triggered nativist alarms and calls for new restrictions.

Today, immigrants still come west across the Atlantic, but more come east across the Pacific, or north across the Caribbean or our southern border. They come from different backgrounds and for different reasons. For many, violence, persecution, repression or poverty encircled their lives, but they dreamed of something better; they dreamed of freedom and opportunity. Over 200 years old, the dream still works on the imagination like a magnet, and the dream has a name: America.

For many who come, the passage to America is the hardest ordeal. For centuries the ocean voyage—that trial by wind and wave, hunger and sickness—was so intense an experience that few immigrants ever forgot it. Although most simply arrive by jet today, for some the passage can be equally harrowing to those steamship voyages of yesteryear. Almost any waiter in a Vietnamese restaurant in the United States has a tale of walking across Cambodia or fleeing Vietnam by boat, of attacks by ruthless Thai pirates and long months in a refugee camp. The Cambodians have their holocaust; the Haitians their small flimsy boats; the Cubans their escape from a stagnant, repressive society; the Mexicans their encounters with the feared La Migra, the border patrol.

But no danger seems too great, no obstacle too large to stop those who are determined to come. First the name—America—begins to circulate in towns and villages. Then the idea takes hold, and the flood begins. Millions of people forsake the lands of their ancestors, give up old traditions and old dreams to pursue new dreams and new traditions. For most nativeborn Americans, America has been a gift long since given; for each new arrival though, it is fresh and dynamic—and not to be squandered. Each new immigrant thus re-creates the American Dream.

These immigrants pay the United States the profoundest compliment by leaving the land of their birth to come and spend the rest of their lives in their adopted country. And they didn’t come to do nothing; they came to join something—America at its best, America as they imagined it after a thousand movies and television shows and books and reports from relatives.

And when immigrants arrive, some kind of magic happens. They do extraordinary things, things they couldn’t do at home. They work long hours and take risks, carving out new markets for goods and services. They go to school and pursue careers impossible to have in their homelands. They build, buy property, start businesses and become entrepreneurs. In most of our major cities, the new immigrants—many of them shopkeepers—run a whole level of the city. Nationwide the small shops that the immigrants run in our towns and cities create thousands of jobs and contribute billions to the economy. In return, the newcomers get the possibility of realizing their dreams as they become Americanized.

Over the past dozen years, the United States has experienced the biggest flow of immigrants in the memory of almost any living American. It has recently absorbed twice as many immigrants as the rest of the world combined. Not since the first decade of this century have so many new immigrants become Americans. About 7.3 million legal immigrants came in the 1980s, and about ten million are expected in the 1990s. Unlike previous immigrant waves bringing mostly Europeans, the current immigration is from the Third World. Now 38 percent of the new immigrants come from Asia and 47 percent from Latin America. Immigration from Europe, historically the principal source of newcomers, has fallen to 11 percent. India alone sends more than England, West Germany, Ireland, and Italy put together, the nations that for the past 300 years furnished the great majority of immigrants to America.

New ethnic neighborhoods are transforming U.S. cities. Previously homogeneous suburbs are now peppered with first-generation Asian, Arabic, and Hispanic Americans. New faces are turning up in offices, shops, and factories. New languages buzz in schools, just as in generations before. This bubbling stew may seem strange to some, but it has usually been the normal condition of America.

As American society changes, the changes frighten some people just as past immigrations concerned contemporaries then. Immigrant bashing has always been in vogue among nativists. Consider, for example, this 1682 letter by Rev. Cotton Mather:

There be now at sea a ship called Welcome, which has on board 100 or more of the heretics and malignants called Quakers, with William Penn, who is the chief scamp, at the head of them. Much spoil can be made by selling the whole lot to Barbados where slaves fetch good prices in rum and sugar, and we shall not only do the Lord great service by punishing the wicked, but we shall make great good for His Minister and people.

About 100 years later, George Washington wrote to John Adams, complaining that German, Irish and French immigrants were settling in clusters and retaining their native language. Benjamin Franklin worried about the large concentration of Germans in Pennsylvania. I suppose in a few years, he groused, that [interpreters] will be necessary in the Assembly, to tell one-half of our legislators what the other half say. One Federalist bemoaned, None but the most vile and worthless, none but the idle and discontented, the disorderly and the wicked, have inundated us from Europe.

Another hundred years later editorial writers were calling southern and eastern European immigrants scum ... bad-smelling ... foreign wretches who never did an honest hour’s work in their lives. By the late 1920s, Ellis Island—the now-resurrected symbol of immigration—all but ceased to function as an immigrant processing station as restrictive immigration laws reduced the flow of immigrants to a trickle.

A 1992 Business Week poll revealed that 68 percent of all respondents were apprehensive about the current influx of immigrants, saying that today’s immigration is bad for the country. The public worries that immigrants take away jobs, drive down wages, and use too many government services. How real are these fears? Data from the 1980s show that the economic benefits to the nation far outstrip the costs. An unprecedented 1.5 million college-educated immigrants joined the work force, many helping out high-tech industries to remain competitive. Some 11 million working immigrants earned over $240 billion a year, paying more than $90 billion in taxes, far more than the estimated $5 billion immigrants received in welfare.

Immigrants helped revitalize cities and older suburbs by opening businesses, buying homes, paying taxes and shopping locally. Jefferson Boulevard in South Dallas, for example, changed from a dying inner-city business district filled with vacant stores to a thriving area of 800 businesses there and on neighboring streets. Over 80 Korean-American merchants invigorated Broad Avenue, the main thoroughfare of Palisades Park, New Jersey. Without the immigrants these and other areas would have suffered a shrinking tax base. Further evidence is that the nation’s ten largest cities grew by almost five percent in the 1980s, but without the immigrants these cities would have suffered a seven percent population decline. Today, immigrants continue to arrive in pursuit of the American Dream of a better life, just as others have done for over two hundred years. Yet these newcomers frequently generate negative reactions among native-born Americans despite their common pride in belonging to a nation of immigrants. In all parts of the country can be heard frequent expressions of fear, suspicion, anxiety, resentment, hostility, and even violence in response to the immigrant presence. And immigrants are not the only group triggering a backlash; African American and Native American assertiveness often provokes resistance as well.

Why this contradiction? If Americans value their nation’s immigrant heritage and ideals of equality and opportunity, why do they begrudge those traveling the same path to the same destination?

Answers come readily from the critics. It’s different now. Earlier immigrants came here, learned the language, worked hard, and became Americanized. America is getting too many immigrants. They take away jobs from Americans. They drain the tax dollar through health and welfare benefits and schooling for their children. They don’t want to assimilate or even learn English, and therefore present a threat of unraveling the fabric of society. Too many people today are just too lazy and want a handout. Too many want undeserved privileges at the expense of everyone else. They want the rewards without earning them.

Complaints by the citizenry in everyday conversations are partially fueled by the media or by public pronouncements from reactionaries and immigrant-bashers. Sometimes, though, even respected scholars are in the forefront. Noted historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., for example, has denounced in his book The Disuniting of America what he calls the cult of ethnicity (an insistence on maintaining vibrant ethnic subcultures) as a forerunner to the imminent balkanization of American society. His reference to the continuing hostility among the Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs in the Balkan Peninsula is a scary one. No one wants American society disintegrating into a collectivity of groups hostile to one another.

Complaints and threatened lawsuits against the federal government by the governors of California and Florida in 1994 struck a responsive chord with many native-born Americans. The governors contended that the government had lost control of the nation’s borders, resulting in large concentrations of illegal aliens in their states, thereby placing a severe strain on their state’s financial resources in increased education, health and welfare costs.

Minority actions also reinforce nativist perceptions. The rhetoric of leaders from the National Council of La Raza and from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) for the maintenance of Spanish language and culture at public expense, both in the schools and workplace, demonstrates to native-born Americans an unwillingness to assimilate. The insistence of some African American leaders for slavery reparation payments to all Blacks enrages many Whites as an unreasonable demand. The so-called clannish retail shopping patterns of Asian Americans and their non-involvement in community activities annoy many local residents and merchants. News reports about militant actions, public mayhem, street crimes, and mob violence all trigger other negative reactions against minorities.

Once, the United States was talked about as a melting pot of immigrants becoming Americans. Now there is something called multiculturalism, which Schlesinger and others fear is undermining the cohesiveness of American society

What is happening? Are such instances illustrations of a different pattern emerging than in previous generations? Are we witness to a new social phenomenon? Is the U.S. being overwhelmed by a flood of immigrants who do not wish to integrate? Are they and the people of color born in the United States pursuing separatist paths that will lead to the disuniting of society? Is the land of e pluribus unum therefore disintegrating into e pluribus plures right before our eyes as Diane Ravitch warns? Cultures and societies are rarely static entities. In the United States, the continual influx of immigrants has helped shape its metamorphosis. Part of this tempering has been the evolving definition of the mainstream ingroup, or identifying who was really an American.

In the initial conception of mainstream Americans, WASPs comprised virtually all of this ingroup. Gradually, this ingroup expanded from English American exclusivity to British American, thus including the Scots-Irish and Welsh previously excluded. This reconceptualization was triggered by the rapid Americanization of these groups after the Revolutionary War and by nativist reaction to the first large-scale wave of immigrants whose culture and religion and, in the case of the Irish, their peasant class that set them apart from the mainstream.

By 1890 the mainstream American ingroup did not yet include many northwest European Americans. While some multi-generational Americans of other than British ancestry had blended into the mainstream, millions had not. These Americans remained culturally pluralistic, their separateness resulting from race, religion or geographic isolation. In addition, over nine million foreign-born—one in seven, perhaps one in five, including their children—also lived outside this mainstream society then.

In 1890, the melting pot had not yet absorbed the 80,000 Dutch, 200,000 Swiss, or 1.2 million Scandinavians in the Midwest, most of whom had arrived after 1870. Likewise, the 150,000 French immigrants, 200,000 Cajuns in Louisiana and 500,000 French Canadians in New England and the Great Plains remained culturally, linguistically, and religiously separated from the larger society. So too did many of the eight million Germans in the rural Midwest or concentrated in concentrated in many large cities. Their poverty and Catholic faith kept six million Irish in the Northeast and 300,000 Mexican Americans in the Southwest in social isolation. About 7.5 million African Americans, 248,000 Native Americans, and 110,000 Asians also lived as mostly impoverished racial minorities separate from the mainstream.

Race, culture, and/or social class origins shaped group relations in the United States in 1890, keeping the nation a patchwork quilt of cultural diversity. All three variables influenced perceptions, receptivity, and interaction patterns.

In the 1890s the tide of immigration began to change. The turning point came in 1896 when immigrants from northern and western Europe were surpassed by immigrants from the rest of Europe. These new immigrants soon caused a redefinition of a mainstream American, bringing those of north and west European origins (including Australians and Canadians) into this classification in contrast to the newer, less desirable newcomers.

By 1970 a new turning point in immigration had been reached, with Third World immigrants outnumbering European immigrants. Once again, partly through a reaction to this change and partly due to acculturation, education, and upward mobility, the concept of mainstream American expanded. It included this time anyone of European origin, thus setting them apart from the people of color now arriving in great numbers, as well as the still nonintegrated African Americans and Native Americans.

What can be learned from this focus on mainstream Americans? As the nation’s population mix has changed over the generations, so too has its definition of national cultural identity. Groups once excluded, once considered inassimilable and even sometimes reviled, became included. In time this socially constructed new reality seemed natural, especially with the appearance of a new group perceived as different and/or as economic competitors. A long, sometimes conflict-ridden, process unfolded. Eventually, the newer group also became part of the ingroup and it was replaced by another outgroup.

The concept of an expanding mainstream American identity is similar to the history of the walled medieval cities. Only so many inhabitants could fit within the protective wall that surrounded the city. The lack of available space forced newcomers to settle outside in faubourgs (the first suburbs!) where they could participate in the city’s daily activities although they were not really a part of the city itself.

Hawking their wares as merchants inside the city’s gates, they no doubt were resented by some as economic competitors. When trouble came in the form of marauders, all united in a common cause, but the newcomers were more likely to suffer the most in loss and destruction of their property outside the walls. In time, as the outsiders became a more integral part of the city, a new encircling wall would be built farther out, as the old wall was torn down. With the previously excluded inhabitants now safely ensconced within the city’s new walled perimeter, others would soon settle outside and begin the process anew.

The wall is an apt metaphor. In intergroup relations, too often protective walls of isolation, avoidance, or exclusion are still created. Whether physical or social, walls do more than separate people: they limit one’s field of vision; they restrict movement; they create a they and we mentality and inspire conflict. Walls of prejudice keep people apart from one another, making those on one side more susceptible to victimization, as those faubourg dwellers once were. Just as economic growth brought the medieval walls down, so, too, it may bring down walls of prejudice. Conversely, economic decline helps erect walls between groups as people compete for jobs.

The social barriers people erect can sometimes be just as insurmountable and long-lasting as many of those medieval walls still standing these many centuries later. Sometimes, however, those walls can be scaled, their gates opened, the ramparts destroyed. It is a paradoxical tribute to the dynamics of American society that its cultural identity walls of exclusivity have been weak enough to be overcome several times, thereby producing a stronger nation and a more vibrant American character than could have existed without such expansiveness.

Americans should not worry about the arrival of so many immigrants, for they come to be part of America. Despite the fears of alarmists, the U.S. is in no danger of becoming a Tower of Babel in the 21st century. Studies show that the new immigrants learn English as readily as previous immigrants. Their children learn in school not just U.S. history but the moral and philosophical underpinnings of their new country. They don’t just learn about the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. They learn about the reasons why we fought those wars, about our deep-rooted principles of equality, liberty, opportunity and democracy. They learn the meaning of the civil rights movement and its importance in seeking the implementation of those principles too long denied to some Americans.

By learning what America was, they learn what it is, what they now are. They become part of the American mosaic, individually discernible up close, but part of the collective whole that is the United States.

America has long called itself a melting pot, but since race and ethnicity have always been an important part of American society, a more accurate metaphor—one that encourages acceptance of others—is that of a mosaic.

The metaphor of a mosaic to describe American society is helpful in many ways. When we examine a mosaic up close, it is easy to see the individual tiles with their different colors. It is also easy to see the flaws—those individual tiles that are chipped, cracked, or spotted. We cannot help but notice the mortar between the tiles that separates them. (Or does it join them together?)·

Up close we see everything and we see nothing. It is another version of failing to see the forest for the trees. We are able to focus on the individual differences of the tiles but, until we step back, we are unable to grasp the beauty of the big picture that the tiles collectively present to us. When we do step back, the borders between the tiles fade as they blend into one another. The flaws we were so critical about are meaningless now in appreciating the beauty of colors and design the artist has provided for our enrichment and enjoyment. The whole is the sum of its parts.

In a very real sense, the United States is a mosaic of peoples of different colors, religions, and national origins. It is a microcosm of the world itself. It has become what Ben Wattenberg calls the first universal nation.

And yet, one aspect of the mosaic metaphor does not fit the U.S. at all. A mosaic is something fixed, static, unchanging, and we have never been that. Tens of millions of people from all over the world have come to the U.S., made it their home, and invigorated it with their energy and determination. From its colonial diversity to its present-day diversity, the United States each year has experienced new arrivals and new changes to its population mix.

If the U.S. is a mosaic, then, it is an ever-changing one. Some might prefer to call the U.S. a kaleidoscope to allow for continually changing patterns, but I prefer the idea of an everchanging mosaic. Looking in a kaleidoscope is an individual experience, but gazing upon a mosaic can be a shared one, and shared experiences are what the metaphor is partly about. Moreover, the mosaic metaphor extends the analogy further, in enabling us to use its closeup flaws as comparable to the criticisms often directed against non-mainstream groups.

Whether one uses the metaphor of an ever-changing mosaic or a kaleidoscope to describe its people, the United States continues to manifest a dynamic cultural pluralism that has always marked its existence, even in colonial times. While it has a greater mix of races and nationalities today, the United States is in some ways actually less multicultural than in its past. The large-scale immigration and minority challenges to the status quo are part of the continuing dynamics of a nation evolving to make its reality resemble its ideals even more.

Despite fears about divisiveness, the mainstream group is larger than ever before. Despite concerns over language retention, today’s immigrants want to learn English and do so no slower than past immigrants, and perhaps even more quickly because of the mass media. Despite nativist anxieties about non-westerners not blending in, Asians are demonstrating their desire to integrate by having the highest naturalization rates among all of the largest sending countries.

Multiculturalism is neither new nor a threat to the stabilization and integration of American society. It is an old, continuing presence that strengthens not weakens, enriches not diminishes, nourishes not drains, a civilization whose character and temperament have long reflected the diversity of its people.

A CHALLENGE FOR EDUCATORS

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Today’s educators—whether they are ESL or bilingual teachers or those in a regular classroom setting—face enormous challenges in meeting the needs, instilling the knowledge, and developing the skills of the young people in their care. Why are there such challenges? Well, the list of reasons is a long one, but at or near the top is the fact that over five million immigrant children are enrolled in the public schools and that number is steadily rising. The result is that many schools—both urban and suburban—are struggling for funds, space, and qualified teachers for their various bilingual programs.

Recently, the 2000 Census data releases gave us an official picture of what we already knew intuitively. The United States is a bigger and more diverse nation than it was just ten years ago. We increased in population by nearly 33 million, a 13 percent increase to a new population total of 281.4 million. Immigration was a significant factor in this increase of more than 3 million people per year. Over 9 million legal immigrants came to the United States in the 1990s and, combined with children born to them in the past decade, accounted for nearly half of the nation’s population growth. Their impact will grow. By midcentury the Census Bureau expects that 21 percent of the population-an estimated 82 million-will either be immigrants who arrived after 1991 or children of those immigrants.

In the 1990s, the nation’s resident Hispanic population increased by 13 million, accounting for 1 in 2 of all foreign-born residents, compared to 1 in 5 in 1970. Asians and Pacific Islanders—aided by heavy immigration from China, the Philippines, and Vietnam—increased by well over 3 million. About 6 in 10 of all Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States are foreign-born. Asians now account for 4 percent of the nation’s total, and Hispanics represent 12 percent, 1 in 8 Americans, about the same as Black Americans.

New Jersey plays a primary role in these changing demographics. Nationally, it may be the fourth smallest state in size, but for many years it has been the fifth highest destination choice of immigrants, behind California, New York, Texas, and Florida. That combination of numbers and size creates a population density that not only makes New Jersey the most urban state in the nation, but the most ethnic state as well. Other states may get greater numbers or have larger numbers of certain groups, but no other state has as great a combination. From the first census in 1790 right through to the one conducted last year, it has had a greater mixture of races and ethnicities than any other state. And with the increasing diversity in our society, New Jersey is clearly a microcosm of the nation in the visibility of that presence in our cities and towns, our schools, shopping centers, workplace, and places of worship.

In 2000, the foreign-born population was 11 percent of the total, compared to 8 percent in 1990. However, in 1910, the foreign-born were 15 percent of the total population, and the foreign-born population of our cities in New Jersey and throughout the northeastern quadrant ranged from two-thirds to three-fourths. Today’s one-third or so foreign-born populations in Miami, New York, and Los Angeles seem pale by comparison to those of 1910. So, proportionately, we do not have as many immigrants now as we did 100 years ago.

Back then, nativists worried just as much about the impact of the Italian language on the country as today’s worriers fear the impact of Spanish. Back then, nativists worried just as much about the impact of Judaism on this Christian nation as today’s worriers fear the impact of nonwestern religions on this Judeo-Christian nation. Back then, nativists expressed racist fears about those darkeyed, dark-haired, dark-complexioned Mediterranean and Slavic peoples, just as today’s worriers fear the arrival of people of color. Back then, Americans expected the schools to provide the heat for the melting pot, and so do today’s Americans, which is one reason why so many dislike bilingual education.

Yet bilingual education is not a new phenomenon. As many of you know, bilingual education is not even an invention of the 1960s. Contrary to popular misconception, earlier waves of immigrants often enrolled their children in bilingual or non-English-language schools-public and private.

In 1839, Ohio became the first state to adopt a bilingual education law, authorizing German-English instruction at parents’ request. Louisiana enacted an identical provision for French and English in 1847, and the New Mexico Territory did so for Spanish and English in 1850. By the end of the 19th century, about a dozen states had passed similar laws. Elsewhere, many localities provided bilingual instruction without state sanction, in languages as diverse as Norwegian, Italian, Polish, Czech, and Cherokee.

Enrollment surveys at the turn of the 20th century reported that at least 600,000 primary school students (public and parochial) were receiving part or all of their instruction in the German language—about 4 percent of all American children in the elementary grades. That’s larger than the percentage of students enrolled in Spanish-English programs today

But political winds shifted during the World War I era. Fears about the loyalty of non-English speakers in general, and of German Americans in particular, prompted a majority of states to enact English-only instruction laws to Americanize these groups. Some went so far as to ban the study of foreign languages in the early grades—a restriction that was struck down as unconstitutional in 1923.

Nonetheless, by the mid-1920s, bilingual schooling was largely dismantled throughout the country. English-only instruction continued as the norm for LEP students until its failure could no longer be ignored. LEP students in English-only classrooms were falling behind in their academic studies and dropping out of school at alarming rates, and so the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 came into existence.

Even when bilingual schooling existed prior to World War I, most educators had a very different approach with students of limited English proficiency. Let me exemplify that approach with an excerpt from a 1909 book, Changing Conceptions of Education, which was popular among educators and required reading in many teacher education courses. It captures the mindset not only of most educators, but also the public as well. Listen carefully to these words advocating the stripping away of all vestiges of ethnicity:

The southern and eastern Europeans are of a very different type from the north Europeans who preceded them. Illiterate, docile, lacking in self-reliance and initiative, and not possessing the Anglo-Teutonic conceptions of law, order, and government, their coming has served to dilute tremendously our national stock, and to corrupt our civic life. The great bulk of these people have settled in the cities of the North Atlantic and North Central states and living, moral and sanitary conditions, honest and decent government, and proper education have everywhere been made more difficult by their presence. Everywhere these people tend to settle in groups or settlements, and to set up here their national manners, customs, and observances. Our task is to break up these groups or settlements, to assimilate and amalgamate these people as part of our American race, and to implant in their children, as far as can be done, the Anglo-Saxon conception of righteousness, law and order, and popular government, and to awaken in them a reverence for our democratic institutions and for those things in our national life which we as a people hold to be of abiding worth (Cubberly 1909: 15-16).

I have listened to the