ABSTRACT
Immigrants were expected to transform their ethnic identities into an ideal American prototype. Acceptance and emulation of the prototype indicated assimilation. In schools, an ethnic group's history was studied from a basis of the group's relationship with "Americans." Immigrant groups experienced far lower levels of discrimination, benefiting from a preeminent American policy of encouraging new groups to come. Since the 1970s, a new ethnic awareness has focused attention and public policy on the ethnic as an American, legitimizing his cultural or racial differences and assuring him a place in mainstream America. Sowell produces data to suggest that there is a marked difference in levels of achievement and acceptance between blacks who are descendants of free immigrants, blacks whose freedom can be traced back to pre-Civil War years, and those whose freedom came with emancipation during the Civil War. By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, emancipation of slaves had been achieved in the northern states.
