ABSTRACT
At the beginning America was seen as a severing of roots, a liberation from the stifling past, an entry into a new life, an interweaving of separate ethnic strands into a new national design. The recent apotheosis of ethnicity, black, brown, red, yellow, white, has revived the dismal prospect that in happy melting-pot days Americans thought the republic was moving safely beyond—that is, a society fragmented into separate ethnic communities. The ethnic ideology inculcates the illusion that membership in one or another ethnic group is the basic American experience. Ethnic subcultures, Stephen Steinberg, author of The Ethnic Myth, points out, fade away "because circumstances forced them to make choices that undermined the basis for cultural survival". Others may enjoy their ethnic neighborhoods but see no conflict between foreign descent and American loyalty. Unlike the multiculturalists, they celebrate not only what is distinctive in their own backgrounds but what they hold in common with the rest of the population.
