In Search of Metaphors

During the last half century, in particular, many writers have tried to create a coherent narrative that tightly integrates ethnicity into the American story. Some of these efforts have involved capsulizing this process into a metaphor.

For decades one popular metaphor, the “melting pot,” reigned supreme. According to this metaphor, people from diverse backgrounds came to America and melted into the proverbial pot. But there were variants of the melting pot story.

One of those variants held that these cultures essentially disappeared as they entered the pot, leaving behind few traces. In that version of the American story, the use of ethnic languages dwindled. Some ethnic surnames remained, although often shortened or Americanized. A few folkways [Page xliv]survived along with ethnic foods, traces of ethnic music, and smatterings of ethnic expressions. The search for ethnic heritage became a journey into the often-romanticized discovery of days of yore or the construction of family trees. According to this story line, ethnic culture largely became ethnic nostalgia as the melting process proceeded inexorably and virtually eliminated cultural distinctiveness.

Another variant of the melting pot story held that, while these cultures were disappearing, they added significant tastes and flavors to the pot's contents. Ethnic surnames populated telephone books. Ethnic restaurants flourished, primarily in traditional ethnic neighborhoods, while ethnic foods became omnipresent in supermarkets. Ethnic festivals spiced up community calendars. Ethnic words and expressions gained entry into the American English lexicon.

But whatever the variants of the melting pot story, they converged on one central theme. By and large, the story of American ethnicity was essentially the story of acculturation. Primarily a historical curiosity to be recognized and maybe nostalgically celebrated, ethnicity was to become a casualty in the unrelenting process of melting.

However, even as the melting pot was being extolled, at least by many Americans, the metaphor's flaws were being glossed over. In fact, in order for there to be a celebration of the melting pot, those flaws had to be glossed over because they revealed the limits and distortions inherent in that metaphor. In opposition, two alternative story lines emerged, narratives that proved to be highly inconvenient for melting pot enthusiasts.

The first alternative story line emphasized the fact that, while the melting pot was being celebrated, some ethnic groups were legally and structurally being denied entrance into the pot. This was particularly true for groups like African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos—groups whose predominant skin colors or other physical features set them apart from the white American norm. For the most part, ethnic groups perceived as racially different could not melt even if they wanted to.

Exclusionary practices were of many types. Laws and court decisions created and maintained segregation. People of some ethnic ancestries were barred from attaining American citizenship. Three-fourths of the states had laws prohibiting specified types of interracial marriage. Some organizations and institutions closed their doors to those of certain ethnic heritages or religious affiliations. In other words, for some ethnic groups and for tens of millions of Americans, melting was never an option.

There was also a second story line that contrasted with the dominant melting pot narrative. Some groups refused to melt. Even as ethnic individuals acculturated to mainstream American life, the groups themselves maintained strong ethnic bonds and identities. Ethnic communities remained vibrant. Ethnic organizations became a source of group cohesion and pride. Even across generations, some ethnic languages not only failed to disappear but rather became the basis of rich new strands of American literature, music, and other creative forms.

As the 20th century progressed, the shortcomings of the melting pot metaphor became increasingly apparent. In the process, there arose the concept of multiculturalism. It ultimately became a principal competing framework for examining and telling the American story.

The 1960s brought the apex of the civil rights movement, with people of color demanding to be admitted to the full and equal rights of American citizenship. Simultaneously, that era brought a flourishing of ethnic pride movements. These developments vividly revealed that ethnic groups, particularly those that had been marginalized in American life, had developed resilient cultures and resolute historical memories, which they were not about to surrender.

At first scholarly and public attention was focused on the cultures and experiences of what were known as minorities and, later, people of color, such as Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders. Soon European ethnic groups, mainly from eastern and southern Europe, joined the multiethnic chorus, proclaiming cultural survival, sometimes resistance, even in the context of relentless acculturation pressures.

Simultaneously, the melting pot was being challenged as a misleading symbol. Myriad terms began vying for metaphorical supremacy, terms such as salad bowl, stew, mosaic, crazy quilt, and kaleidoscope. Books on U.S. history [Page xlv]became increasingly attentive to the experiences of ethnic groups, not just ethnic individuals, as being vital to our nation's core narrative and self-understanding.

Multiculturation

As the 20th century entered its final quarter, two things became increasingly clear. First, in some respects the acculturation process, as capsulized by the melting pot metaphor, was still occurring. At the same time, however, both the melting pot metaphor and the traditional acculturation framework were proving to be woefully inadequate for capturing the totality of the ethnic experience in the United States.

Because of these two realities, I began using a different term to capture the dynamics of ethnic diversity within the American trajectory. That term was multiculturation, a conflating of the words multiple and acculturation. Far more than acculturation, the idea of multiculturation suggests the complexity of a multiculturally changing America, including the ways that America and Americans of all backgrounds have adapted, for better and for worse, to the growing presence of ethnic diversity. Multiculturation includes five major constellations of stories: individual, group, intragroup, intergroup, and societal.

Individual acculturation. There are hundreds of millions of individual acculturation stories. While each individual acculturation story is unique in some respects, these stories merge to create two basic narrative prototypes.

First, some people have allowed their ethnic cultures to lapse as they immersed themselves into the American mainstream. Moreover, children were raised with little attention to their ethnic roots and little emphasis on maintaining their heritage languages.

In contrast, other Americans have remained dedicated to their ethnic cultures and languages. They have done so even while acculturating to America, participating in mainstream American life, and demonstrating their national loyalty through such acts as spilling their blood on foreign battlefields.

Group acculturation. But acculturation is more than the collection of individual stories. It is also the story of the ways that ethnic groups as a whole have adapted to America.

Each ethnic group has its own unique story. Some American ethnic groups have virtually disappeared, leaving only traces of their heritage, such as surnames, food practices, and limited fluency in ancestral languages. In contrast, other groups have vigorously maintained their ethnic cultures, including their languages, even as they adapted to, participated in, and contributed to American society.

Intragroup acculturation. No American ethnic group is a citadel of internal homogeneity. No matter how clear and stereotypically simple an ethnic group may seem when viewed from the outside, each ethnic group has its own internal complexity. Within each group lie important intragroup distinctions, often based on such factors as religion, language, class, caste, racial categorization, geographical origin, historical roots, mutual perceptions, and sometimes long-standing old-country animosities.

Such intragroup dynamics continue to play out in American society. Intragroup bridges have been built, while intragroup conflicts, sometimes imported conflicts, have erupted. Intragroup intermarriages have occurred, sometimes marriages unimaginable in their heritage countries. Intragroup acculturation has produced new cultural blendings, sometimes leading to the emergence of fostered-in-America ethnic cultures.

Intergroup acculturation. In a multiethnic United States, ethnic groups have had to acculturate not only to America at large but also to other ethnic groups. Sometimes this interaction has occurred as a result of ethnic groups living in adjoining, often competing, neighborhoods. At other times residentially integrated multiethnic communities have emerged.

Each new ethnic or multiethnic configuration has brought new intergroup dynamics as these groups mutually acculturate to each other. This process has not always been benign. Such factors as language barriers, cultural misunderstanding, racial animosities, economic competition, and dedication to defending turf have given rise to conflict. At other times, however, intergroup acculturation has led to mutual appreciation, cooperation, alliances, community building, and [Page xlvi]intermarriage, resulting in ethnically mixed offspring who have carried the intergroup acculturation process down through the generations.

Societal acculturation. Then there is the acculturation of America itself. Ethnic diversity has brought profound changes to America writ large. Put another way, the United States has acculturated to ethnic diversity, for better and for worse.

Societal acculturation can be seen in laws and court decisions, which have ranged from opening doors of inclusion for the marginalized to reinforcing barriers of exclusion. It can be seen in advertisements, store signs, religious institutions, and government documents using various languages. It can be seen in companies that hire people with multiple language skills and cultural knowledge because of the special contributions they can make to the proverbial bottom line. It can be seen in changes in the nation's diet, as ethnic foods become mainstream and ethnic restaurants take root even in communities not usually thought of as multicultural. It can be seen in changes in American English, as ethnic words and expressions penetrate the language and become part of everyday conversation.

Yet, while the multiculturation process has been inexorable, it should not be idealized. As with traditional acculturation, there has been an underside to multiculturation. Mutual adaptation has sometimes involved segregation, the denial of rights, and the restriction of opportunities. Interethnic conflict and intraethnic tensions have erupted. Prejudice, discrimination, inequality, and power differentials have not disappeared.

The multiculturation story, then, is a complex and dynamic one. It is a goal of this encyclopedia to shed light on this dynamic complexity.

Understanding America

This brings us back to questions that undergird this encyclopedia. As our multiethnic composition changes, how does this affect the nature of American multiculturalism? More broadly, how might these developments influence the nature of the United States itself?

This encyclopedia offers a variety of perspectives on these issues. It does so not by presenting a new, integrated American narrative but rather by providing myriad windows on American ethnicity—more than 900 articles totaling more than 1.3 million words. Moreover, in the online edition there are more than 350 photos and 100 video clips that illustrate and illuminate American multiculturalism.

This encyclopedia reveals that, throughout history, Americans of all ethnic backgrounds have become part of the American polity, participated in American society, and adopted the core elements of American culture. At the same time, tens of millions have blended the process of Americanization with the maintenance, in some cases the reinforcement, of their ethnic cultures. Moreover, the United States itself has changed in response to this multiethnic presence. One result, particularly in the last half century, has been the emergence of a robust, vital, sometimes controversial, still evolving American-style multiculturalism.

This encyclopedia is dedicated to providing greater clarity about the history, nature, and myriad dimensions of American multiculturalism. These articles contribute to a deeper understanding of the United States by addressing the following:

• Historical and contemporary dimensions of the constantly evolving American multicultural reality
• The myriad groups that comprise the American multiethnic mosaic
• The intersection of ethnicity and race with gender, sex, age, religion, class, sexual orientation, disability, and other facets of our society
• The complex interactions between ethnic groups and American institutions
• The dynamics of intergroup and intragroup relations
• The language, terms, and labels that are used in talking about diversity
• The varied, sometimes conflicting, perspectives and lenses used by analysts when addressing American multiethnicity

Choices

In the process of conceptualizing this encyclopedia and bringing it to fruition, many difficult decisions had to be made. Some arose from the enormous challenge of how to set limits on the encyclopedia's virtually limitless topic. The encyclopedia does not try to cover the entire diversity waterfront. Rather, it focuses on ethnicity and ethnic [Page xlvii]groups, including those religious groups—such as Jews, Muslims, and Amish—whose American trajectories incorporate an experience that has been both ethnic and religious.

Even the title of the encyclopedia required making choices. As we use the word in this encyclopedia, “multicultural” refers to ethnicity and ethnic cultures, including those groups classified by the U.S. census as “racial.” We recognize that multicultural is often used more broadly to include other dimensions of American life, such as the cultures of women and men, religion-centered cultures, gay culture, various disability-related cultures, generational cultures, class-related cultures, and regional cultures. The list goes on and on. Rather than attempt to cover them all, we instead focus on ethnicity.

The encyclopedia does not ignore those other important sociocultural categories. Rather, we address them in terms of their intersections with ethnicity, not as isolated, self-contained topics. In this way we hope that the encyclopedia fosters a better understanding of intersectional complexities, not the simplicity—often the stereotypical simplicity—of merely gazing down cultural silos.

Themes

Even after deciding to focus on ethnicity rather than diversity writ large, we still faced the challenge of selecting more than 900 articles from the virtually endless list of possibilities arising from the richness of American multiethnicity. This meant choosing what to include and, conversely, what to exclude. We began by establishing a set of analytical categories.

Obviously, we would have articles on individual ethnic groups, about 200 of them. Even then we faced the challenge of titling these categories. In some cases, group names were obvious. In other cases, that was not so, especially when it came to groups with multiple labels, particularly when label preferences have changed over time or when group members themselves disagree about the preferred term. Should we say Latinos or Hispanics? How about Native Americans or American Indians? Ultimately, we had to make choices, which will inevitably displease those adamant about the “correctness” or superiority of their preferred terms.

Moreover, we wanted the encyclopedia to be much more than a catalog of individual ethnic groups. We wanted it to be a book about multicultural America, including its historical development, contemporary nature, and future directions. To do so, we selected a number of major themes that then served as the basis for choosing our articles:

• Historical events and forces that have influenced the trajectory of American multiculturalism
• Governmental treatment of ethnicity, including major laws, treaties, and court decisions that have shaped American multiculturalism and intergroup relations
• Wars and other conflicts that have altered boundaries, disrupted cultures, and resulted in treaties that have modified or reinforced the nature of our nation's multiethnic mosaic
• The tortuous story of immigration, including changing policies and practices concerning citizenship and naturalization
• The sometimes embattled relationship between education, particularly public education, and the various groups that make up multicultural America
• Selected elements of ethnic cultures—including languages, religions, organizations, and institutions—that have been particularly reflective of American multiculturalism and that, in some cases, have influenced mainstream American culture
• Intragroup diversity and intergroup relations, including intermarriage and the resulting challenges of multiethnic identity
• Intersections of ethnicity with selected social categories, such as age, generation, sex, gender, religion, class, sexual orientation, disability, and other aspects of American life
• Analytical frameworks and concepts developed by scholars in an effort to provide greater understanding of American multiculturalism
• Artifacts of popular culture—for example, books, motion pictures, theatrical works, and television shows—that have influenced public perceptions of ethnic groups, sometimes illuminating ethnic experiences, other times contributing to deleterious negative group stereotyping

Structure

To help readers gain a better grasp of the changing nature of American multiculturalism, the encyclopedia is structured in a somewhat nontraditional manner. It begins with a series of articles examining the 2010 census and the historical development of racial and ethnic census categorizations. This section provides a statistics-based overview of contemporary multiethnic America, suggests frameworks for interpreting the current and past censuses, and examines some of the decisions and controversies associated with designing and implementing the census.

Then the greater part of the encyclopedia delves into the intricacies of multicultural America. This includes articles both on individual ethnic groups and on broader themes that illuminate the complex story of American multiculturalism. In the online edition, these articles are further enriched by 100 video clips and color photos.

A decision was also made not to include articles on ethnic individuals—articles on ethnic groups alone number more than 200. Given the encyclopedia's limit on the number of entries, it would have been impossible to winnow down the list of the tens of thousands of ethnic individuals who would have deserved an article. Moreover, entries on specific people would have virtually eliminated almost all other articles, leaving this mainly an encyclopedia of ethnic groups and individuals, not an encyclopedia of multicultural America writ large.

We decided that the best way to deal with important ethnic individuals was to include them within the context of other articles. Therefore, the encyclopedia provides a list of people mentioned in those articles, with references to those entries in which the individuals appear.

Finally, the encyclopedia contains other important features. These include a Reader's Guide, a multicultural Chronology, a Glossary, a Resource Guide, and an Appendix of 2010 U.S. census statistics. In short, our encyclopedia provides an ideal avenue for entering the world of American multiculturalism and gaining a greater understanding of its past, present, and possible future.

The American Future

In some respects, Multicultural America: A Multimedia Encyclopedia is a snapshot of a moment in time. But in other respects it is also a motion picture of a nation in process. On the one hand, it is a snapshot of the early-21st-century multicultural United States. That snapshot reveals our nation at the end of a chaotic decade that included the tragedy of 9/11, the growing visibility of the multilingual media, a superheated debate on immigration, and the election of our first president of African American ancestry. It is a snapshot made particularly vivid by the release of the 2010 census, with its revelations about the country's changing ethnic composition.

At the same time, the encyclopedia captures the United States in process. It explores our nation's multiethnic historical roots and their connection to the American present. Moreover, it reconsiders critical questions raised by the past and present about the American future:

• What continuities and changes can we expect in U.S.-style multiculturalism?
• In what respects will ethnic cultures continue to coexist with the common culture?
• In what ways will ethnic groups continue to enrich the nature of the United States while at the same time being modified by the power of the common culture?
• How can America adapt more constructively to the growing presence of multiethnicity?
• How can the nation more effectively address the remaining obstacles to full inclusion and the root causes of group-connected inequality?
• In what ways can healthy interethnic and intraethnic relationships be fostered, including new types of interethnic fusions?
• How can we forge a more powerful civic Unum while drawing on the richness of ethnic Pluribus?

These are some of the questions that confront America as we advance into the 21st century. We hope this encyclopedia will provide greater clarity in addressing these questions and will contribute to a better understanding of the unique, continuously evolving American multicultural experiment.