Assimilation in American Life : The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins

Gordon, Milton M.

1960s study of social life in the United States with regard to ethnic and religious characteristics and their significance to processes of assimilation. Social group observation as a means of understanding cultural conflicts based on incommensurate "value-assumptions," and as a foundation to eliminating many sources of inter-group prejudice (16). Contains information acquired from interviews with officials from numerous American organizations concerned with intercultural relations. General sociological introduction to group structures, stages of assimilation and its subprocesses, and theories for occurrences of these in the United States. The American formation and presence of the "ethclass" - "[the characteristic sub-societal unit] based on race, religion, and, to a declining extent, national origin, criss-crossed by social class stratification..." (160). Sections devoted to African Americans, Jews, Catholics, and intellectuals as functioning American "subsocietal" structures. Hypotheses and suggestions for the future of cultural and structural pluralism in the twentieth-century United States.

1964

en

Book

217632;133168206

1960s; United States