Let's talk about Race Relations

Is America living up to its motto E Pluribus Unum, the Latin for "From many, one" and rapidly advancing towards a melting pot? Have all races and ethnic groups enjoyed similar opportunities to assimilate into American culture? In his latest book, Race Relations: A Critique, sociologist Stephen Steinberg argues that the prediction of ultimate assimilation, replete in our history books, has been dead wrong with respect to African Americans.

In a recent interview with Znet magazine, Steinberg remarked that, “Today there is compelling evidence that Asians and light-skinned Latinos are following in the footsteps of earlier immigrants -- which is to say, footsteps leading to the melting pot. But it is another story altogether for peoples of African descent -- African Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, Afro-Latinos, and immigrants from Africa. In effect, we are witnessing the emergence of a dual melting pot--one for blacks, the other for everybody else.”

As we arrive at the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath (of the failed, or to say the least, badly mismanaged relief and recovery efforts), which disproportionately affected one side of our “dual melting pot,” these questions are worth revisiting.

Comments

[princeton67]

Dr. Steinberg dares to say the politically incorrect obvious: every immigrant group has surpassed the two minority groups that have been here the longest: African- and Native- Americans. Irish, Chinese, Asian, Jewish... all have risen to the middle class - and often not speaking English at home. My grandparents came over with four suitcases (if they more arms, they would have had more suitcases) and were never comfortable with/in English. My father spoke Yiddish and Russian when he began kindergarten: he eventually became a Ph.D. engineering professor. I became one in English.
And, as Orthodox Jews, we were, and are, instantly recognizable as a distinct subgroup.