Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America (review)

This ambitious work demonstrates Professor Jacobson's grasp of a considerable volume of recent American literature and media. Because it is very East Coast-centered, focusing heavily on Jewish writers and other culture makers, I prefer to note my caveats at the outset. It is not so much a study of the white ethnic revival but rather an exploration of the cultural products that defined or were related to that revival. While Jacobson strives to illustrate the broad impact of the revival, the rationale for some topics is not always evident, and some seem awkwardly related to any white ethnic revival. I wish he had included material on the community level revival, rather than presenting it through a plethora of diverse works.

Two quotes frame the book. The first declares that America was a "country . . . of hyphenation—maybe even a hyphen nation" (faces Introduction). At the end, Jacobson quotes a 1963 study of the "distinct and unmelted Irish," which contended that to "celebrate the hyphen is not to diminish individuals' 'Americanism,' but rather. . . 'to show what kind of Americans they are'" (396, 16).

In his introduction and opening chapter Jacobson explores how "the roots craze" (4) began and how two co-existing ideologies underlay the theme of the book: "'Ellis Island white' (the long standing hegemony of U.S. political culture . . . ) and 'Ellis Island white' (myths and symbols of a distinctively immigrant whiteness jostled with the older icons of WASPdom . . .)" (7). Ellis Island whiteness has supplanted Plymouth Rock whiteness, and "ethnic hyphenation" has "become a natural idiom of national belonging in this nation of immigrants" (10).

Jacobson describes eight factors responsible for the white ethnic revival: the Civil Rights Movement; the "nationalist [homeland] fervor of many ethnic subcultures"; the appearance of "literary and cinematic texts" reflecting a new pluralist sensibility; academic works emphasizing the notion of ethnicity as culture, a fitting "analytic category"; federal funding of the Ethnic Heritage Studies Program in 1972; the sensational 1976 publication of Alex Haley's Roots; the movement in American political culture toward the conception of ethnic heritages and ethnic celebrations "as an idiom of American nationalism"; and the restoration of Ellis Island, "sanctifying" the revival and the predominantly white European immigrant sagas.

Rather than move toward a discussion of groups, ethnicities, or a description of the reenergized Euro-American ethnic communities, Jacobson turns to the cultural expressions of a revived white ethnicity, relying heavily on the accomplishments of American Jews. I do not fault this American Studies approach, but his many discussions leave nagging questions: We read Jacobson's take on how these varied cultural forms represent the revival but he rarely documents that Americans outside the academy and inside these communities perceived these cultural expressions in the way he does. For example, were the Rocky films a portrayal of white victimization (104–106)? Was Rocky really fighting for his Italianness? Did he express that sentiment in such terms? Did audiences perceive the film in that manner? If so, I missed it. Then, Jacobson discusses the reawakening of ethnic consciousness not as a rejection of assimilation "but [as] proof of its fulfillment" because "ethnic difference is the assimilated norm"? Have most persons actively held on to their ethnicity and consider that choice a manifestation of their assimilation? Is there no longer an "American" mainstream?

Jacobson shifts again to ethnic literature, including works of Mario Puzo, Erica Jong, Henry Roth, and Phillip Roth and yet, given that assertion regarding assimilation, he concludes chapter three with the observation that "the white ethnic revival may have been a lament over 'assimilation,' but so was its literature a pan-European ethnic celebration of white assimilability" (175). Now a lament? And, how does a cluster of works by one Italian and three Jews warrant a conclusion about "a pan-European" celebration?

Jacobson then offers a most interesting commentary about the use of the white ethnic revival by the opposing schools of neoconservatism and multiculturalism. The sanitizing of the...