Beyond the Melting Pot

In 1908 Israel Zangwill wrote a play "The Melting Pot" and introduced the phrase into the national vocabulary. Although his words were new, the idea was not. From Crevecoeur on, Americans have embraced the concept of the melting pot to affirm their peculiar destiny and to reassure themselves that despite the diversity of its people the United States is or will be one nation indivisible. In Beyond the Melting Pot Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan challenge the very idea of the melting pot through an examination of the Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians and Irish of New York City.

Admitting at the start that New York's polyglot hodge-podge is unique in its complexity, Glazer and Moynihan argue that New York's example is not without parallel and that the nature of its ethnic groups offers a perspective on America's development and future. To illustrate their argument they first describe the five major ethnic groups and then try to fit them into the jigsaw puzzle of New York life.

In the first task they are remarkably successful. All of the descriptive essays display insight, understanding, and (rare in this kind of work) a sense of style. Of all the groups the Irish receive the most handsome, if least organized, treatment. Indifferent to Yankee standards, occasionally addicted to the pleasures of alcohol, the Irish provide an ideal subject for a colorful romp as well as a serious analysis. If the other essays are less delightful, they are equally astute, treating a variety of subjects--both lucidly and intelligently.

Nevertheless some difficulties remain. In their chapter on the Negroes the authors assume a hard-headed reasonableness that proves illuminating in a discussion of school boycotts (the current rage) but fails to convey the spirit and depth of commitment involved in the civil rights struggle. I wish too that they had placed more emphasis on the forces behind the rise of Negro extremism and the effect of permanent poverty, on the Negro's response to the compound problem of discrimination and unemployment. Two other omissions mar the book, the failure to adequately discuss the difference between the Puerto Rican's experience and that of earlier immigrant groups, and the neglect of the Catholic attitude toward birth control that limits the effectiveness of welfare programs.

Also the authors do not really succeed in their attempt to relate ethnicity to the rest of the city's life. Themes are left dangling like unhappy participles, and Glazer and Moynihan blithely neglect the large proportion of the city that belongs to no easily definable minority group. Much more importantly, they fail to outline the effect of a rising middle class on ethnic identities.

Certainly the central tenet of the book--that ethnicity defines and will continue to define much of New York's culture, politics, and thought--is true, but only partially so. As middle-class America absorbs the lower-class immigrant groups, ethnic ties will become part of a ritual, a method of paying homage to the past but less and less a guide to the present.

Even religion, which the authors maintain will continue to separate ethnic groups, will be less divisive as ecumenicism becomes more catholic. I am convinced that political conflict, centering on civil rights and poverty, will develop as the major source of group identification (in New York City and the nation), joining the Irish and Italians wth those already part of the American mainstream, dividing the Jews, and providing Negroes and Puerto Ricans a stronger sense of community. Although the melting pot, as Glazer and Moynihan point out, doe not melt away conflict and produce uniformity, it does continually recast the nature of the conflict.