ABSTRACT
As discussed in Chapter 9, by the 1950s and early 1960s, a new orthodoxy of liberal multiculturalism had come to characterize the national discussions about race relations, evidenced by celebratory rhetoric about immigration and assimilation as normative, even universal, aspects of the American experience. Rather than cast ethnic minorities as unwanted or inassimilable “others,” new representations depicted them as vital participants in the American mosaic. In the world of Broadway musicals during the 1960s, for example, West Side Story showed Puerto Ricans claiming the American dream and a place in the U.S. melting pot, Fiddler on the Roof presented the saga of Jews fleeing the pogroms of Russia for new lives in the United States as a quintessentially American story, and Flower Drum Song domesticated the history of Chinese in America as a charming tale of generational conflict and cultural negotiation.
