The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work Again

by Michael Barone

Book Overview

Many Americans feel swamped by immigrants with alien cultures, languages, and customs apparently flooding into our country.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0895262029
• ISBN13: 9780895262028
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Regnery Publishing
• Length: 338 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.2" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Quotas and victims

Some of the criticisms of Mr. Barone's work, mostly from the anti-immigration nativists, seem to me to be wholly misguided. What Mr. Barone is encouraging people to do is to think differently about how America views immigration AND race. I think he clearly, and devastatingly, shows that today's victim-oriented, quota-based debate hurts the people it's designed to help. He also encourages Americans to be more hopeful about the ability of society to slowly assimilate different 'races' (he makes the point frequently that Jews and the Irish were once thought of as a 'race') and the ability of those 'races' to succeed in America.I took this as a treatise much less on immigration policy than on what truly works for all American families to succeed. At it's core, it remains uncomplicated: a strong family structure, desire to succeed in school and an interest in success in the entreprenurial world. Very rarely is it about government programs, set-asides or quotas.

The more things change the more they stay the same

Barone thesis that the "new" groups (blacks, latinos, and asians) pursuit of the american dream runs parallel to earlier groups; (Irish & blacks, Italians & latinos, Jews & asians) is a well argued case. His arguement that blacks (or african americans if you perfer) belong in the "new" group becasue it was only in the 50's and 60' that the death of "Jim Crow" gave them the full rights of Americans everywhere is well made. There are several revelations here for modern americans who decended from these groups (not the least that Italians were not considered "white" and that all three groups were considered different races.) and these revelations should be noted and remembered by those who achieved the American dream thanks to the efforts of their grandfathers and grandmothers. It is an optomistic book about an optomistic future for this country and it argues that the growing pains of assemilation which every past ethnic group went through is the same pain that we their decendants don't recognize in others. He believes it will pass and in the end the genius of the concept of America will prevail for the benefit of all. I like the arguement and despite the time, happily subscribe to it. READ IT

Brilliant

Every American who wants to understand the hope for our future and the destructive attitudes and policies of our elites toward integration and assimilation needs to read this book. Everyone who wants to understand the difference between Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda and America should read this book.This is a breathtaking tour of how American weaves a pattern of achievement and opportunity and how various ethnic groups have responded and are responding to it. The heart of Barone's thesis is that America has successfully integrated and assimilated people of different backgrounds, and that there are patterns to that assimilation that are working for 21st century new Americans just as they worked for the 19th and 20th century American immigrants. Barone asserts that the modern elite's attitude toward group identity, opposition to middle class society, and assertion of racial grievances actually retards the process of assimilation. He regards most bilingual education as a political spoils system for bilingual teachers, which actually hurts the very people it is designed to help. He notes that patterns of intermarriage and upward mobility in income and education are creating assimilative patterns even as university elites seek to divide young Americans by race and teach them to focus on historic grievances rather than future opportunities.It is impossible in a short review to do justice to the brilliance of Barone's writing, the depth of his research, or the clarity of his examples. His parallels between Irish and African Americans, Italian and Latino immigrants and Jews and Asians are profound and extraordinarily thought provoking.

Your Tired And Poor Are Still Welcome With Open Arms

Reviewing Norman Podhoretz passionate "My Love Affair with America," Thomas Sowell remarked that if gifts were exchanged on the 4th of July, the book would make an ideal present. The same can be said about Michael Barone's immigration chronicle, "The New Americans."For some reason, a number of conservatives have chosen to highlight the problems of illegal immigration as an excuse to advocate curtailing legal arrivals. Many liberals have sententiously denounced attempts to penalize illegal immigrants while surepttiiously erecting roadblocks wherever possible. Michael Barone writes from the right, and he properly sees that immigration has always been and will always be a major plus for America. Throughout the work, he happily acknowledges that the United States is multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious land. It has never been a multi-cultural region, and pestiferous forces that are presently striving to make it such must be fought at all levels. This is not to say that every American citizen needs to become a carbon copy of each other; rather we all, despite our differences, need to blend together--giving a little, taking a little to enrich the one American culture. America has succeeded so admirably for 200+ years largely because we rejected the vagaries now championed by multiculturalists. The melting pot brought all immigrants together, unlike the situations in Lebanon, the Balkans, Yugoslavia, Rwanda and other places synonymous with the horrors of group vs. group ideology. As politically incorrect as the concept has become, assimilation is the only way for burgeoning immigration to succeed. Fortunately many immigrants know this. Barone quotes California Professor Gregory Rodriguez who says of Latin American arrivals, "we are assimilating ourselves." Rodriguez also scoffs at the bizarre notion of a Latino minority as if all immigrants from Guatemala, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico and the rest of South and Central America form a heterogeneous group. Barone, himself points out how the fixation on racial classifications has trivialized the distinctions between the many disparate European nationalities.White supremacists and diversity advocates constantly remind us that the minority population is expanding, and the question of how the growth of different races will impact us weighs heavily upon both groups of alarmists. Barone documents how the Irish, the Italians and the Jews were each once viewed as a separate and in many cases inferior race as well. He sites locations in the south were "No Blacks or Italians" signs were posted. Luckily through natural assimilation practices, these canards eventually disintegrated.The work is a triumvirate of comparisons--Blacks to Irish---Italians to Latinos--and Jews to Asians. In each section he compares such issues as family, religion, crime, work, the journey that brought them there, the impetus for them to leave, politics, and uniqueness. Striking similarities exist for each grouping of the tri

Easy read full of great information

I understand more about the melting pot and why there is a great future for America. The new immigrants are bringing the same great characteristics the old immigrants did.ANDIf any of your ancestors immigrated to America and you wonder why your nationality is more or less successful than the others, this book will help you understand. I finally found out why most of the Italian immigrants never urged their children to stay in school. None of my aunts and uncles graduated high school.