ABSTRACT
Pluralism is a term that has taken on a great many meanings. There is a pluralism of pluralisms. But in an American context, there has been a distinctive history of the meaning of pluralism—especially cultural pluralism. It is a story that has its roots in the pragmatism of William James and John Dewey (and the influence of their students). The expression ‘cultural pluralism’ was popularized by Horace Kallen, a student of William James and a close colleague of John Dewey. The idea of cultural pluralism, as we shall see, came to prominence in the opening decades of the twentieth century. Between 1870 and 1920, more than 27 million immigrants were admitted into the United States. The vast majority came from Southern and Eastern Europe. There is probably no other time in history when a country was so welcoming to immigrants. By 1910, 40 per cent of the population of New York City was foreign born. But it is a myth that this wave of immigration was a smooth and welcoming process. There was widespread discrimination and fear of the ‘pernicious’ influence of foreigners. Even our universities and colleges set strict religious quotas to exclude some immigrant groups. Throughout the country (and not just in the South), there were hotels, resorts and restaurants that would not accept Jews, Catholics and, of course, Blacks—and this lasted well into the 1960s. Despite the great waves of immigrants, America, at the beginning of the twentieth century, was primarily a WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) country, and many wanted to keep it that way. There was ‘scholarly’ research that reinforced stereotypes and justified racism. In short, there was a significant backlash to open immigration policies. And after the First World War, some of the most restrictive immigration policies in U.S. history were enacted by Congress. By 1924, new federal laws severely limited immigration; ‘experts’ on eugenics supported the idea that immigrants from some foreign countries were racially inferior to ‘Nordic’ stock. Lynching of Blacks and anti-miscegenation laws were common. It was only in 1967 that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that anti-miscegenation laws were unconstitutional.
