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Americans All: World War II and the Shaping of American Identity*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Philip Gleason
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Extract

Although it is four decades since the United States entered World War II, some aspects of the nation's wartime experience are still virtually unstudied. Military and diplomatic historians have labored productively for many years, but historians interested in American social and intellectual developments are just beginning to turn their attention to the wartime era. Recent general studies by Richard Polenberg and John M. Blum are especially welcome since, by drawing greater attention to the period, they should stimulate further research. There is much left to be done because the war affected practically every dimension of American life. The present essay deals with one of its less obvious effects —the way in which it shaped the thinking of a whole generation on the subject of American identity.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , October 1981 , pp. 483 - 518
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1981

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References

1 Blum, John M., V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture during World War II (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; Polenberg, Richard, War and Society: The United States, 1941–1945 (Philadelphia, 1972)Google Scholar; Polenberg, Richard, One Nation Divisible: Class, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States since 1938 (New York, 1980)Google Scholar, esp. chaps. 1–3. (My citations are to the Penguin paperback edition of this work, which comprises volume 7 of the Pelican History of the United States [Harmondsworth and New York, 1980]). Cf. also Heath, Jim F., “Domestic American during World War II: Research Opportunities for Historians,” Journal of American History, 58 (1971), 384–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 The following paragraphs are based on my article, “American Identity and Americanization,” in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, ed. Thernstrom, Stephan, Orlov, Ann, and Handlin, Oscar (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980), pp. 31–58Google Scholar. The present essay is an expansion of matters discussed in that article, esp. pp. 47–50, and makes use of some of the same evidence and formulations found there.

3 Higham, John, Strangers in the Land (New York, 1975)Google Scholar, chap. 11, describes both the passage of the national origins law and the rapid ebbing of nativist sentiment thereafter. Lichtman, AllanJ., Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1979)Google Scholar, the most recent analysis of the 1928 election, stresses the religious issue above all other ethnocultural factors.

4 It is worth noting that in MelvilleJ. Herskovits's brief sketch of Boas's work the principal substantive chapters are headed: “Man, the Biological Organism,”; “Man, the Culture-Building Animal”; and “Man, the Creator.” Cf. Herskovits, , Franz Boas (New York, 1953)Google Scholar. The best discussion of Boas's career and influence is Stocking, George W. Jr, Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (New York, 1968), esp. chaps. 7–11Google Scholar.

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7 Mead, Margaret, Coming of Age in Samoa (New York, 1928)Google Scholar. The work is subtitled “A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation.” See especially chap. 1, “Introduction”; chap. 13, “Our Educational Problems in the Light of Samoan Contrasts”; and chap. 14, “Education for Choice.” In the “Preface 1973 Edition” to a reprint of the book (New York, 1973), Mead writes: “When this book was written, the very idea of culture was new to the literate world. The idea that our every thought and movement was a product not of race, not of instinct, but derived from the society within which an individual was reared, was new and unfamiliar.” Stocking observes, incidentally, that “It was not Boas but his students who were largely responsible for the elaboration and development of the anthropological concept [of culture]” (Stocking, , Race, and Culture, and Evolution, p. 231)Google Scholar.

8 Benedict, Ruth, Patterns of Culture (Boston, 1959Google Scholar [original publication, 1934]). In a preface to this “Sentry Edition” of the book, Margaret Mead comments on its influence in popularizing the anthropological notion of culture. See chaps. 2 and 3 for cultural diversity and cultural integration; chaps. 7 and 8 for applications to contemporary America and the need for tolerance.

9 Chase, Stuart, The Proper Study of Mankind (New York, 1948), pp. 50, 59–86, 275–76, 289–90Google Scholar; quotation from p. 59. The essays collected in The Idea of Culture in the Social Sciences, ed. Schneider, Louis and Bonjean, Charles (Cambridge, 1973) are extremely informativeGoogle Scholar. For examples of emphasis on the culture concept in the 1930's, see Klineberg, Otto, Race Differences (New York, 1935)Google Scholar, part 3, “The Cultural Approach”; and Young, Donald, Research Memorandum on Minority Peoples in the Depression (New York, no date), pp. 220–21Google Scholar.

10 Ware, Caroline F., ed., The Cultural Approach to History (New York, 1940), p. 15 for quotationGoogle Scholar; p. 81 for R. A. Billington's comment about the “unpleasant conclusion” concerning nativism. Cf. also the difference between Qualey's, Carlton C. view of “The Transitional Character of Nationality Group Culture,” pp. 82–84Google Scholar, and the “Summary of the Discussion,” by Caroline Ware and others, pp. 86–89.

11 Hughes, Everett C. and Hughes, Helen M., Where Peoples Meet (Glencoe, Illinois, 1952), pp. 30–31Google Scholar. For the overlapping of the anthropological and the older humanist senses of the word culture, see Stocking, , Race, Culture, and Evolution, pp. 69–90, 195–233Google Scholar.

12 Madge, John, The Origins of Scientific Sociology (New York, 1962), chap. 3Google Scholar.

13 Herskovits, Melville J., Acculturation (New York, 1938), esp. pp. 22–23, 49–50, 51Google Scholar. Walter Goldschmidt recently began an article by stating: “The natural habitat of the cultural anthropologist is the world of native, preliterate, tribal, and peasant communities.“Further on he adds that the two distinctive marks of the anthropological approach, cultural relativism (meaning the need to understand each culture in its own terms) and holism, both had “their source in that vanishing environment of ethnographic fieldwork” (Goldschmidt, “Should the Cultural Anthropologist Be Placed on the Endangered Species List?” in New Dimensions in the Humanities and Social Sciences, ed. Garvin, Harry R.. [Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, 1977], pp. 15, 19)Google Scholar.

14 The best treatment of Park is Matthews, Fred H., Quest for an American Sociology: Robert E. Park and the Chicago School (Montreal, 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the discussion of Park in Bramson, Leon, The Political Context of Sociology (Princeton, 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Faris, Robert E. L., Chicago Sociology 1920–1932 (Chicago, 1967)Google Scholar. Park, Robert E., Race and Culture (Glencoe, Illinois, 1950)Google Scholar, collects twenty-nine of Park's papers, published from the teens to the 1940's. It also contains a very brief autobiographical note.

15 This follows Matthews, , Quest for an American Sociology, pp. 160–62Google Scholar, who refers to Park's model as “the interaction cycle, or cycle of group interaction.” Park used a slightly different set of labels (“contacts, competition, accommodation and eventual assimilation”) in a 1926 paper on “Our Racial Frontier on the Pacific,” in which he spoke explicitly of “The Race Relations Cycle.” See Park, , Race and Culture, pp. 149–51Google Scholar. The sequence, competition, conflict, accommodation and assimilation as presented in Matthews is taken from chaps. 8–11, which have those titles, in Park, Robert E. and Burgess, Ernest W., Introduction to the Science of Sociology (Chicago, 1924)Google Scholar. For later critiques of the race relations cycle, see Lyman, Stanford M., “The Race Relations Cycle of Robert E. Park,” Pacific Sociological Review, 11 (Spring 1968), 16–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Metzger, L. Paul, “American Sociology and Black Assimilation: Conflicting Perspective,” American Journal of Sociology, 76 (1970–1971), 627–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Barth, Ernest A. T. and Noel, Donald L., “Conceptual Frameworks for the Analysis of Race Relations: An Evaluation,” Social Forces, 50 (03 1972), 333–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar, as reprinted in Thomas F. Pettigrew, ed., The Sociology of Race Relations; Reflection and Reform (New York, 1980), pp. 418–22.

16 Matthews, , Quest for an American Sociology, pp. 167–69Google Scholar. See also Park's, article on “Assimilation, Social” in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1930), vol. 2, pp. 281–83Google Scholar, which is not included in the essays collected in Race and Culture, but which Matthews calls “Park's most concentrated theoretical discussion of assimilation.”

17 In an important essay contrasting “genuine” and “spurious” versions of culture, Edward Sapir in 1924 wrote that a genuine culture was ”inherently harmonious, balanced, self-satisfactory,“ and “not a spiritual hybrid of contradictory patches.” Such a culture could not tolerate the thousand “spiritual maladjustments” to be found in the spurious modern American culture. Sapir preferred the “well-rounded life of the average participant in the civilization of a typical American Indian tribe,” before that culture was destroyed by contact with white civilization. Sapir, , “Culture, Genuine and Spurious,” American Journal of Sociology, 29 (1924), 410, 416CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Coben, , “Assault on Victorianism,” pp. 607–08Google Scholar, discusses this article (see above note 5 for citation to Coben).

18 Young, Donald, American Minority Peoples (New York, 1932), pp. xii–xiiiGoogle Scholar. The classical formulation of the concept of the minority group is Wirth, Louis, “The Problem of Minority Groups,” in Linton, Ralph, ed., The Science of Man and the World Crisis (New York, 1945), pp. 347–72Google Scholar. Cf. also Rose, Peter I., The Subject Is Race (New York, 1968), pp. 69–71Google Scholar; Reuter, E. B., “Racial Theory,” American Journal of Sociology, 50 (05 1943), 452–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frazier, E. F., “Sociological Theory and Race Relations,” American Sociological Review, 12 (06 1947), 265–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Young, , American Minority Peoples, pp. xiii–xivGoogle Scholar.

20 The article on “Minorities, National” in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York, 1933), vol. 10, pp. 518–25Google Scholar, deals with the European kind of minorities and does not mention American minorities. Cf. also Taft, Donald R., “Problems Arising from Minorities,” in Brown, Francis J. and Roucek, Joseph S., eds., Our Racial and National Minorities (New York, 1937), pp 18–32Google Scholar; Roucek, Joseph S., “Minorities — a Basis of the Refugee Problem,” The Annals, 203 (05 1939), 1–17Google Scholar; Roucek, , “Editorial,” Journal of Educational Sociology, 12 (12 1939), 449–50Google Scholar; Cole, Stewart G., “Europe's Conflict of Cultures,” in Maclver, Robert M., ed., Group Relations and Group Antagonisms (New York, 1944), pp. 121–56Google Scholar; Oscar I. Janowsky, “Ethnic and Cultural Minorities” in ibid., pp. 157–70; Britt, George, The Fifth Column Is Here (New York, 1940)Google Scholar; and Polenberg, , One Nation Divisible, pp. 42–45Google Scholar; Myrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma (New York, 1962 [orig. pub. 1944]), p. 50Google Scholar, notes the difference between minorities in the U.S. and Europe: “The minority peoples of the United States are fighting for status within the larger society; the minorities of Europe are mainly fighting for independence from it.”

21 Sumner, William Graham, Folkways (Boston, 1906), pp. 12ffGoogle Scholar.

22 Encyclopedia ofthe Social Sciences (New York, 1931), vol. 5, pp. 612–13Google Scholar. ForMurdock's relation to Sumner, and some differences between his approach to anthropology and that of the Boasian school, see Murdock, George P., ed., Studies in the Science of Society (New Haven, 1937), pp. xiii–xvGoogle Scholar.

23 The issue was just below the surface in some discussions. In explaining the need to go beyond tolerance to sharing values, Rachel Davis-DuBois warns “we must not allow people to be so proud of their own culture that they can see no good in that of others. This disease the sociologists call ethnocentrism. We can avoid this by putting emphasis on … sharing our values so that new values will emerge which will have in them the best of those which have gone into the merging …. The term ‘cultural democracy’ will describe this process — a thinking, feeling and acting together, on a basis of equality.” Davis-Dubois, R., “Sharing Cultural Values,” Journal of Educational Sociology, 12 (04 1939), 482–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Along the same lines, ”… we misconceive group prejudice when we think of it as primarily a prejudice against some one or more particular groups: as anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-Anything-in-particular. It is instead at bottom a prejudice in favor of ‘My Own Group’ as against all others, ‘pro-us’ prejudice eternal, live, and waiting, ready to be focussed and intensified against Any Other Group.” Llewellyn, Karl N., “Group Prejudice and Social Education,” in Maclver, R. M., ed., Civilization and Group Relationships (New York, 1945), p. 13Google Scholar. Italics in original.

24 This point was implicit in Billington's observation that nativists did more to make immigrants preserve their cultural heritage than disciples of the immigrant-gifts approach did. Cf. Ware, , Cultural Approach, p. 81Google Scholar.

25 The following discussion owes much to Matthews, , Quest for an American Sociology, pp. 167–74Google Scholar.

26 I have found no historical study of the development of the concept of prejudice. Higham's, John “Anti-Semitism and American Culture,” in Send These to Me (New York, 1975), pp. 174–95Google Scholar, contains relevant material. Higharn states that in the nineteenth century “‘Prejudice’ was defined as a prepossession for or against anything, formed without due examination of the facts. No one supposed that it might be reified. … [or] that it referred distinctively to negative judgments of minorities and therefore connoted a certain kind of exclusionist mentality” (p. 176). Gordon W. Allport still used prejudice in this loose and generalized way in an article written in 1935 for a handbook of social psychology. The article dealt with “Attitudes,” and, in the section headed “Prejudgment and Prejudice,” Allport wrote that a preexisting attitude so strong that it “seriously distorts perception and judgment … [is called] a stereotype, a prejudice, or sometimes, more loosely, … a logic-tight compartment.” Allport illustrated the workings of prejudice by reference to experiments in which respondents were asked to rate the literary quality of selected passages, all of which were in fact written by the same author, although they were labeled as being the work of different authors. Prejudice was revealed by the fact that respondents consistently rated passages supposedly written by authors they admired more highly than other passages alleged to be works of lesser known writers. Other experimental results cited by Allport dealt with preferential ranking of racial and national groups, but it is clear that Allport did not regard prejudice as referring primarily to negative judgments of minorities or as connoting what Higham calls an exclusionist mentality. Cf. Allport, Gordon W., “Attitudes,” in Murchison, Carl A., ed., Handbook of Social Psychology (New York, 1967 [orig. pub.1935]), pp. 814–16Google Scholar. Myrdal, , American Dilemma, pp. 52 n, 1141Google Scholar, expresses his dissatisfaction with the conceptual fuzziness of the term prejudice. Horowitz's, Eugene L. study of “ ‘Race’ Attitudes,” undertaken as a part of the Myrdal study and published in Klineberg, Otto, ed., Characteristics of the American Negro (New York, 1944), pp. 138–247Google Scholar, provides evidence of a marked shift in the understanding of prejudice around 1940. The term hardly appears at all in the body of Horowitz's study, which is a descriptive summary of numerous investigations of racial attitudes in children and other population groups. When he turns to “Suggested Hypotheses for Future Research,” however, prejudice suddenly becomes the major conceptual category, although no effort whatever is made to relate the heavily psychological hypotheses concerning the origins of prejudice to the evidence adduced in the previously reviewed studies of racial attitudes. Horowitz's study also reveals, incidentally, the degree of uncertainty still prevailing around 1940 as to the content of the concept of attitude. On this general problem, see Fleming, Donald, “Attitude: The History of a Concept,” in Perspectives in American History, 1 (1967), 287–365Google Scholar.

27 Cf. Park, , Race and Culture, pp. 256–60Google Scholar: “The Concept of Social Distance” (1924); pp. 230–43: “The Bases of Race Prejudice” (1928).

28 Bogardus, Emory S. followed the distinction slavishly in his Immigration and Race Attitudes (Boston, 1928), pp. 30ff.Google Scholar, a book dedicated to Robert Park. Eight years later, however, Donald R. Taft conflated racial antipathies with race prejudice, specifically including “Olfactory, Tactual, Gustatory, and Visual Experiences” among the “Types of Experiences Leading to Race Prejudice.” See Taft, , Human Migration (New York, 1936), p. 332Google Scholar.

29 Cf. Weiss, Richard, “Ethnicity and Reform: Minorities and the Ambience of the Depression Years,” Journal of American History, 66 (12, 1979), 574–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Clinchy, Everett R., “Prejudice and Minority Groups,” in Brown, and Roucek, , Our Racial and National Minorities, pp. 538–39Google Scholar.

31 Fleming, , “Attitude,” pp. 342 ff.Google Scholar; Harding, John et al. ., “Prejudice and Ethnic Relations,” in Lindzey, G., ed., Handbook of Social Psychology, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Masachusetts, 1954), II: 1021Google Scholar.

32 The concept of the stereotype was introduced in Lippmann's, WalterPublic Opinion (New York, 1922)Google Scholar.

33 Fleming, , “Attitude,” pp. 351 ff.Google Scholar; Harding, , “Prejudice,” p. 1021Google Scholar; Jay, Martin, The Dialectical Imagination. A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950 (Boston, 1973), chap. 7Google Scholar. Horowitz's “Suggested Hypotheses” (see above note 26) is also relevant in this context. Rose, Arnold M., “The Causes of Prejudice,” in Merrill, Francis E. et al. , Social Problems (New York, 1950), pp. 402–25Google Scholar, is an excellent review of the literature on the eve of the publication of The Authoritarian Personality.

34 Weiss, “Ethnicity and Reform,” provides evidence of sympathetic interest in minorities in the late 1930's. It is also interesting that immigration historiography reached a new level of sophistication and visibility with the publication of a cluster of outstanding works between 1938 and 1941: Billington, Ray Allen, The Protestant Crusade 1800–1860. A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (New York, 1938)Google Scholar; Wittke, Carl, We Who Built America. The Saga of the Immigrant (New York, 1939)Google Scholar; Hansen, Marcus L., The Atlantic Migration 1607–1860 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1940)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hansen, , The Immigrant in American History (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1940)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Blegen, Theodore, The Norwegian Immigration to America: The American Transition (Northfield, Minnesota, 1940)Google Scholar; and Handlin, Oscar, Boston's Immigrants; A Study in Acculturation (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1941)Google Scholar.

35 The prevailing view on assimilation was well presented in Smith's, William C. excellent synthesis of the existing sociological and historical literature, Americans in the Making: The Natural History of the Assimilation of Immigrants (New York, 1939)Google Scholar. The assumption of rapid and nearly complete assimilation of immigrants is also reflected in Benedict's, Ruth curious essay, “Race Problems in America,” The Annals, 216 (07 1941), 73–78Google Scholar. Myrdal, , American Dilemma, pp. 51–53Google Scholar, comments on the difference in expectation about the assimilation of Negroes as contrasted to persons of immigrant stock. Dollard's, JohnCaste and Class in a Southern Town (New York, 1937)Google Scholar, gave new prominence to the concept of caste in racial matters; see also Davis, Allison et al. , Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class (Chicago, 1941)Google Scholar.

36 A particularly authoritative statement of concern over the decline of diversity may be found in: National Resources Commission, Problems of a Changing Population (Washington, 1938), pp. 249–51Google Scholar, which reflects a strong Deweyan influence. For the other points, see for example, Brown, and Roucek, , Our Racial and National Minorities, pp. 570–72Google Scholar, and more generally, Powell, James H., “The Concept of Cultural Pluralism in American Social Thought, 1915–1965” (Ph. D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1971), pp. 79 ff., esp. 106–12Google Scholar.

37 Montalto, Nicholas V., “The Forgotten Dream: A History of the Intercultural Education Movement, 1924–1941” (Ph. D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1977), chap. 2Google Scholar, is a useful review of the concern over the second-generation problem which discussesAdamic, pp. 67–73. Adamic is also discussed in Weinberg, Daniel E., “The Foreign Language Information Service and the Foreign Born, 1918–1939: A Case Study of Cultural Assimilation Viewed as a Problem in Social Technology” (Ph. D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1973), pp. 158–62, 172–73, 177Google Scholar. Cf. also Weiss, , “Ethnicity and Reform,” pp. 579–82Google Scholar; and Vecoli, Rudolph, “Louis Adamic and the Contemporary Search for Roots,” Ethnic Studies, 2 (1978), 29–35Google Scholar. Adamic's, concerns in the late 1930's are best approached through his books, My America, 1928–1938 (New York, 1938), esp. pp. 185–259Google Scholar, and From Many Lands (New York, 1940), esp. pp. 291–301Google Scholar.

38 In 1926, Carlton J. H. Hayes, the principal authority on nationalism, concluded that it was “the indivisible source of grave abuses and evils,” such as a spirit of exclusiveness and narrowness; a tendency toward social uniformity; a tendency to increase the docility of the masses; an unhealthy concentration on war; jingoism; imperialism; and intolerance. If not mitigated, Hayes predicted that nationalism would be “an unqualified curse to future generations.” Cf. Hayes, , Essays on Nationalism (New York, 1926), pp. 257–60Google Scholar.

39 Donald S. Strong reported in 1941 that of 119 anti-Semitic organizations in the U.S. at that time, all but five had been formed since 1933. Cited in Rose, , “Causes of Prejudice,” p. 416 (see note 33)Google Scholar. Myrdal, , American Dilemma, pp. 53, 1186 nGoogle Scholar, notes the growth of anti-Semitism in the late thirties. As a newcomer to the U.S. in 1938, Myrdal felt that anti-Semitism “probably was somewhat stronger than in Germany before the Nazi regime.” The belief that anti-Semitism was growing was disputed on the basis of public opinion surveys by Klineberg, Otto, “Race Prejudice and the War,” The Annals, 223 (09 1942), 191–93Google Scholar. Cf. also Higham, , Send These to Me, pp. 184–93Google Scholar; and Polenberg, , One Nation Divisible, pp. 40–42Google Scholar.

40 For the Bund, see Luebke, Frederick, “The Germans,” in Higham, John, ed., Ethnic Leadership in America (Baltimore, 1978), pp. 83–85Google Scholar; and Diamond, Sander, The Nazi Movement in the United States, 1924–1941 (Ithaca, New York, 1974)Google Scholar. For the Italians, see Diggins, John P., Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (Princeton, 1972), pp. 340–52Google Scholar. Diggins states that “Until the summer of 1940 there was no question that Italian-Americans in general were solidly behind Mussolini” (p. 349).

41 Graham, Patricia A., Progressive Education: From Arcady to Academe (New York, 1967), pp. 81–84, 93, 105–108Google Scholar. Cf. also Montalto, “Forgotten Dream.”

42 Montalto, “Forgotten Dream,” chap. 6, provides interesting details on the Americans All project. Jones, J. Morris, Americans All … Immigrants All. A Handbook for Listeners (Washington: Federal Radio Education Committee, n.d.)Google Scholar, and Jones, , Americans All … Immigrants All. A Manual (Washington: Federal Radio Education Committee, n.d.)Google Scholar, provide commentary and suggestions for using the recordings. For somewhat similar hortatory collections, see The Atlantic Presents We Americans (Boston, 1939)Google Scholar; Locke, Alain and Stern, Bernhard J., eds., When Peoples Meet: A Study of Race and Culture Contacts (New York, 1945 [orig. pub., 1942])Google Scholar; and Herrick, Arnold and Askwith, Herbert, eds., This Way to Unity: For the Promotion of Good Will and Teamwork among Racial, Religious, and National Groups (New York, 1945)Google Scholar.

43 From the viewpoint of intellectual content, the most substantive effort was a series of lectures sponsored at Columbia University by the Institute for Religious Studies beginning in 1942 and continuing for several years thereafter. The Columbia sociologist, Robert M. Maclver, was the leading figure in the series and the editor of volumes that it produced. These volumes, all edited by Maclver, , were: Group Relations and Group Antagonisms (New York, 1944)Google Scholar; Civilization and Group Relationships (New York, 1945)Google Scholar; Unity and Difference in American Life (New York, 1947)Google Scholar; and Discrimination and National Welfare (New York, 1949)Google Scholar. Maclver's, book, The More Perfect Union: A Program for the Control of Inter-Group Discrimination in the United States (New York, 1948)Google Scholar, grew out of his concern with intergroup relations. Cf. also Higham, , Send These to Me, pp. 218ffGoogle Scholar.

44 Cf. Stonequist, Everett V., “The Restricted Citizen,” The Annals, 223 (09 1942), 149–56Google Scholar. This volume of The Annalsis devoted to “Minority Peoples in a Nation at War.” See also Polenberg, , One Nation Divisible, pp. 59–60, 78–85Google Scholar.

45 Roucek, Joseph S., “Group Discrimination and Culture Clash,” in Maclver, , Civilization and Group Relationships, pp. 39–69Google Scholar, is an informed discussion of wartime tensions and their implications; Williams, Robin M. Jr, The Reduction of Intergroup Tensions: A Survey of Research on Problems of Ethnic, Racial, and Religious Group Relations (New York, 1947), p. 7Google Scholar, gives the figure of 123 national organizations. For more general accounts see Wynn, Neil A., “The Impact of the Second World War on the American Negro,” Journal of Contemporary History, 6 (05 1971), 42–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sitkoff, Harvard, “Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War,” Journal of American History, 58 (12 1971), 661–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Polenberg, , One Nation Divisible, pp. 69–78Google Scholar.

46 Common Ground, 1 (Spring 1941)Google Scholar, 133, lists the following books as timely treatments of “America's current ‘urgency’ and her future”: Counts, George S., The Prospects of American Democracy (New York, 1938)Google Scholar;Lerner, Max, ItlsLater Than You Think: The Need for a Militant Democracy (New York, 1938)Google Scholar; Bernays, Edward L., Speak Up for Democracy (New York, 1940)Google Scholar; and Chamberlain, John, The American Stakes (Philadelphia, 1940)Google Scholar.

47 Myrdal, American Dilemma, esp. chap. 45, “America Again at the Crossroads.” Robert E. Park discussed the influence of the war and the ideological issue on race relations in his essay on ”Race Ideologies,” in William F. Ogburn, ed., American Society in Wartime (Chicago, 1943), pp. 165–83, reprinted in Park, Race and Culture, pp. 301–15., Writing to a former student after the Detroit race riot of 1943, Park said he was less concerned with stopping race riots than with stopping the fact that Negroes always lost them. Then he added: “I am in favor of winning the present war and this [racial conflict] seems to be merely one aspect of the war—war on the home front” (quoted in Matthews, , Quest for an American Sociology, p. 189)Google Scholar.

48 Becker, Carl, “Some Generalities That Still Glitter,” Yale Review, 29 (06 1940), 649–67Google Scholar; Max Lerner quoted in Adamic, Louis, “This Crisis Is an Opportunity,” Common Ground, 1 (Autumn 1940), 73Google Scholar; Swing's Council for Democracy statement quoted in ibid, 1 (Winter 1941), 79; for Bill of Day, Rights, see New York Times Magazine, 12 14 1941Google Scholar; and Polenberg, , One Nation Divisible, p. 53Google Scholar. Alain Locke pointed out in 1941 that “Democracy has encountered a fighting antithesis, and has awakened from considerable lethargy and decadence to a sharpened realization of its own basic values.” Locke, “Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy,” in Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Relation to the American Way of Life, Second Symposium, Science, Philosophy and Religion (New York, 1942), p. 206Google Scholar. His point is repeated almost verbatim in Locke, and Stern, , When Peoples Meet, p. 735Google Scholar.

49 The statement of purposes was carried on the inside cover of the magazine published by the Council, Common Ground. Weinberg, , “Foreign Language Information Service” (see above note 37) traces the history of the Common Council's predecessor group from 1918 to 1939Google Scholar; see pp. 172–77, for the reorganization that brought the Common Council into existence.

50 Common Ground, 1 (Fall 1940), 103Google Scholar. The sociologist, James G. Leyburn, likewise stressed the role of the war in bringing home a realization of the ideological nature of American identity. Discussing ethnicity and Americanization, he stated: “What really stirs our hearts and minds is our set of ideals and values. Often we do not realize explicitly what these are until they are threatened. But in the present crisis we know with our inmost being how dear to us are our American ideals of democracy, decency, and individual freedom, our belief in free speech and in free elections and in the right to worship as we choose, our family mores, our religious faith, our respect for certain symbols which convey these ideals to our attention (the American flag, for example)” (Leyburn, , “The Problem of Ethnic and National Impact from a Sociological Point of View,” in Foreign Influences in American Life, ed. Bowers, David F. [Princeton, 1944], p. 60)Google Scholar.

51 On Kallen and cultural pluralism, see Powell, ”The Concept of Cultural Pluralism” (see above note 36), chap. 1; Higham, Send These to Me, chap. 10, “Ethnic Pluralism in Modern American Thought”; Gordon, Milton M., Assimilation in American Life (New York, 1964)Google Scholar, chap. 6; and Gleason, , “American Identity and Americanization,” in Harvard Ethnic Encyclopedia, pp. 43–46Google Scholar.

52 Higham, , Send These to Me, pp, 220–21Google Scholar; Powell, “Concept of Cultural Pluralism,” chap. 4; Weiss, , “Ethnicity and Reform,” pp. 578–82Google Scholar.

53 Kallen, , “ ‘E Pluribus Unum’ and the Cultures of Democracy” Journal of Educational Sociology, 16 (02 1943), 329–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

54 Higham, brings this out in his brilliant essay on pluralism in Send These to Me, pp. 197–98Google Scholar, 211–13, 230.

55 Kallen, , Cultural Pluralism and the American Idea (Philadelphia, 1956), p. 97CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf.Gleason, , “American Identity, ” in Harvard Ethnic Encyclopedia, p. 50Google Scholar.

56 The literature on national character is very large, but two essays by Margaret Mead are especially useful in pinning down the connection with wartime needs. See Mead, , “The Study of National Character,” in Lerner, Daniel and Lasswell, Harold D., ed., The Policy Sciences (Stanford, 1951), pp. 79–85Google Scholar; andMead, , “National Character and the Science of Anthropology,” in Lipset, Seymour M. and Lowenthal, Leo, eds., Culture and Social Character (Glencoe, Illinois, 1961), pp. 15–26Google Scholar.Hartshorne, Thomas L., The Distorted Image: Changing Conceptions of the American Character since Turner (Cleveland, 1968)Google Scholar, chaps. 6–7, sets the new approach to national character studies in context. Revaluations of the late 1960's, when the concept had lost most of its attractiveness, may be found in Hoebel, E. Adamson, “Anthropological Perspectives on National Character,” The Annals, 370 (03 1967), 1–7Google Scholar; Bell, Daniel, “National Character Revisited: A Proposal for Renegotiating the Concept,” in Norbeck, Edward et al. , eds., The Study of Personality (New York, 1968), pp. 103–20Google Scholar; and Stannard, David E., “American Historians and the Idea of National Character,” American Quarterly, 23 (1971), 202–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 Mead in Lipset, and Lowenthal, , Culture and Social Character, p. 18Google Scholar. Cf. alsoMead, Margaret and Metraux, Rhoda, eds., The Study of Culture at a Distance (Chicago, 1953)Google Scholar; and Berger, Morroe, “ ‘Understanding National Character’ — and War,” Commentary, 11 (1951), 375–86Google Scholar.

58 Mead, Margaret, And Keep Your Power Dry (New York, 1942), pp. 239Google Scholar ff., comprises Mead's unsuccessful effort to reconcile cultural relativism with a commitment to the imperatives of democratic ideology. She resorted to the analogy of “disease,” arguing that postwar reconstruction should treat institutions that breed fascism as “dangerous viruses,” while the individuals infected by these institutions should be regarded as “carriers of fatal social diseases” (p. 245). Quotation in text from p. 255.

59 Ibid., pp. 52–53.

60 Gorer, Geoffrey, The American People (New York, 1948), p. 26Google Scholar.

61 Handlin, Oscar, The Uprooted (Boston, 1951), pp. 3, 305Google Scholar.

62 Erikson, Erik H., Childhood and Society (New York, 1950), pp. 244–83Google Scholar. Erikson used American identity in the sense of American character in “Ego Development and Historical Change,”Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 2 (1946), 359–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar,, but that technical journal had a very limited readership. Coles, Robert, Erik H. Erikson (Boston, 1970)Google Scholar, is an informative biography which provides extensive commentary on Erikson's writings .

63 Erikson, , Childhood and Society, p. 242Google Scholar; Erikson, , “ ‘Identity Crisis’ in Autobiographic Perspective,” in Life History and the Historical Moment (New York, 1975), p. 43Google Scholar. Cf. also Erikson, , “Identity and Uprootedness in Our Time,” in Insight and Responsibility (New York, 1964), pp. 83–107Google Scholar.

64 Cf. Jay, , Dialectical Imagination, pp. 217–218Google Scholar and chap. 7 passim, esp. pp. 226–34. Horkheimer, Max and Flowerman, Samuel H., “Foreword to Studies in Prejudice,” in Adorno, T. W. et al. , The Authoritarian Personality (New York, 1950), pp. v–viiGoogle Scholar, provides some background information on the anti-Semitism project.Adorno, Theodor W., “Scientific Experiences of a European Scholar in America,” Perspectives in American History, 2 (1968), 355–65Google Scholar, is a commentary by the principal investigator. Fleming, , “Attitude” (see note 26), pp. 352–57Google Scholar, discusses The Authoritarian Personality within the context of attitudinal surveys. Referring to the “Aesopian” terminology developed by the Frankfurt group while in America at a time when “Marx and Marxism could not be mentioned,” Henry Pachter notes that “they used Hegel or ‘German idealism’ as code words. They said alienation when they meant capitalism, reason when they meant revolution, and Eros when they meant proletariat… When the success story of the word alienation in America is written the contribution of the Institute people will receive its due acknowledgment” (Pachter, , “On Being an Exile,” in Boyers, Robert, ed., The Legacy of the German Refugee Intellectuals [New York, 1972], p. 36)Google Scholar.

65 Hofstadter, Richard, “The Pseudo-Conservative Revolt,” in Bell, Daniel, ed., The Radical Right (Garden City, New York, 1964), pp. 75–95Google Scholar. ( The Radical Rightis an expanded and updated version of The New American Right, originally published in 1955.) For references to ethnics by other contributors, see Radical Right, pp. 129, 216–17, 319. At about the same time, Samuel Lubell offered an ethnic explanation for isolationism. See Lubell, , The Future ofAmerican Politics (New York, 1952), p. 132Google Scholar.

66 Hofstadter's second and third thoughts are found in Radical Right, pp. 97–103; andHofstadter, , The Paranoid Style in American Politics (New York, 1965), pp. 56 n., 66–92Google Scholar.

67 Hughes, and Hughes, , Where Peoples Meet, pp. 30–31Google Scholar.

68 Redfield, Robert, The Primitive World and Its Transformations (Ithaca, New York, 1953), p. 147Google Scholar.

69 Park, , Race and Culture, p. 18Google Scholar.

70 Coben, , “Assault on Victorianism” (see note 5 above), pp. 605–08Google Scholar;Matthews, F. H., “The Revolt against Americanism: Cultural Pluralism and Cultural Relativism as an Ideology of Liberation,” Canadian Review of American Studies, 1 (Spring 1970), 4–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 16 ff. See above notes 17, 7, and 8, for citations to the works of Sapir, Mead, and Benedict.

71 Higham, , Send These to Me, pp. 211–12Google Scholar, speaks of the “great leap forward” in assimilation.

72 Williams, Robin M. jr., American Society; A Sociological Interpretation (New York, 1952), p. 527Google Scholar; Stein, Howard F. and Hill, Robert F., The Ethnic Imperative (University Park, Pennsylvania, 1977), pp. 35–36, 82 ff.Google Scholar; and Polenberg, , One Nation Divisible, pp. 46–54Google Scholar, 57.

73 Becker, , “Some Generalities” (see above at note 48), pp. 666–67Google Scholar.

74 See Tead, Ordway, “Survey and Critique of the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion,” in Approaches to National Unity; Fifth Symposium, ed. Bryson, Lyman et al. (New York, 1945), pp. 783–92Google Scholar. Cf. the proceedings of the first conference held by the secessionist group, entitled The Scientific Spirit and the Democratic Faith (New York, 1944)Google Scholar.

75 Glazer, Nathan and Moynihan, Daniel P., Beyond ike Melting Pot (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1963), p. 271Google Scholar.

76 Higham, , Send These to Me, pp. 220–21Google Scholar.

77 Ibid., pp. 225–27.

78 The distinction between these two versions of pluralism has never been developed systematically, but see ibid., pp. 197–99, 228–29; and Hollinger, David A., “Ethnic Diversity, Cosmopolitanism and the Emergence of the American Liberal Intelligentsia,” American Quarterly, 27 (1975), 133–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 142.