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 le
gally 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. But the idea of "America
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Approximate Word count = 785
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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