The American Kaleidoscope: Race, Ethnicity, and the Civic Culture

by Lawrence H. Fuchs

Book Overview

Do recent changes in American law and politics mean that our national motto -- e pluribus unum -- is at last becoming a reality? Lawrence H. Fuchs searches for answers to this question by examining the historical patterns of American ethnicity and the ways in which a national political culture has evolved to accommodate ethnic diversity. Fuchs looks first at white European immigrants, showing how most of them and especially their children became part...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0819562505
• ISBN13: 9780819562500
• Release Date: December 1990
• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Length: 646 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

A fine and very readable scholarly work

I first encountered the writings of Professor Fuchs in a graduate seminar on Asian American history. I found him to be both highly readable and balanced in his commentary. This book traces the history of racial and ethnic relations in the U.S. from the perspective of immigration and assimilation. It also confronts the concern for acculturation without resorting to polemics or diatribe. Above all, it makes a cogent and convincing argument for revalidating America's unique civic culture at a time when balkanization is leading us astray as a people. If read in conjunction with some of the more recent writings of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., it will illuminate further. A reasoned counterargument to the excesses of critical race theory and postmodernism.