The Enigma of Ethnicity: Another American Dilemma

2. Expressions

We have seen that ethnic identity is a time-dependent phenomenon with multiple meanings, that it exists in various forms between countries and over quite a range of spatial and social scales, and that, for many flexible individuals, there may be two or more choices as to ethnic affiliation. But all such considerations would have little more than theoretical interest if such identities could not be perceived, however realistically or otherwise, by the individuals and groups in question and by those outsiders who observe and judge them. It is essential, then, to examine the various modes of ethnic expression as they have been manifested in the United States with special attention to the ways they have evolved over time. In doing so, we can also learn much about the eventual genesis and changing character of Ethnicity itself and about shifts in the attitudes of the larger society. The most useful strategy for treating the topic may be to take each of three perspectives in rough chronological turn: (1) the residual, observable , basically unselfconscious cultural attributes retained by immigrants and their progeny, whether temporarily or over protracted periods; (2) the images of particular ethnic/racial groups maintained by the Anglo-American host population; and (3) the images created and projected outward to the world at large, more or less deliberately, by the various ethnic communities. It is important to note again that Ethnicity, as I have defined it, does not appear on the scene until quite late in the narrative. Consequently, we shall have no occasion to refer to it at all until we reach the third and final perspective. cultural residue We have on hand an enormous literature covering the history of immigration into the United States in its entirety and also in terms of specific groups and periods. Also quite massive in volume are the 2 expressions publications dealing with the economic, ecological, political, and sociological adjustments experienced by tens of millions of newcomers over more than two centuries of international reshuffling. More modestin number and scope arethestudies thathavelooked into thetransmission and survival of cultural elements from alien lands before and after the formation of a distinctly American culture (K. N. Conzen 1991). The missing empirical material would be welcome not only for its own sake but also for its theoretical implications. The evidence to date suggests only one valid generalization concerning the levels at which traditional attributes survive after transplantation , namely, that no generalization holds for all groups and periods. If we focus on the specific group, the degree to which it is capable of preserving its customary ways of life— and thus being readily perceived as ethnically distinct by so-called “ordinary” Americans — depends on several factors. They include the volume of the immigrant influx; its timing; width of the cultural gap between the immigrants and the founding Anglo society; extent of deliberate social isolation; maintenance of links with the originating society, or lack thereof; the severity of the environmental shock in unfamiliar physical surroundings; and, perhaps most germane of all, just where the newcomers decide to settle and how accessible such localities happen to be. All these variables help determine the continued vitality, or demise , of ancestral traits. In the case of the Cajuns, as with many New Mexican Chicanos whose arrival predates the Anglo occupation, with the Sea Island blacks, the Hutterites, and certain Native American groups (most famously the Hopi and Seminole), sheer physical apartness has greatly retarded the forces of acculturation. A combination of geographic and social remoteness has also helped ensure the viability of an archipelago of scattered triracial isolates (Daniel 1992). In other instances, most notably the Amish of Pennsylvania, Indiana, and elsewhere and the Hasidim of the New York metro area, spatial proximity to large host populations has been effectively neutralized by social abstention. It is interesting to note, incidentally, that in at least three cases— those of the Amish, Cajuns, and Hopi— the appeal of the exotic has spawned a thriving tourist trade (Clifton 1990:16). The timing of two or more waves of immigrants from a given Expressions 55 country can have important consequences. Because cultural systems and other conditions in every single homeland in question have undergone serious, accelerated change in recent decades, the package of attributes imported by our potential citizens is time-dependent. Thus the social chemistry between successive cohorts of compatriots resettled in the United States...