ARTHUR SCHLESINGER,
JR.
631
While I favor curricular changes that make for more inclusive inter–
pretations of past and present, I do not believe that we should magnify
ethnic and racial themes at the expense of the unifying ideals that pre–
cariously hold our highly differentiated society together. The republic has
survived and grown because it has maintained a balance between
pluribus
and
unum.
The report, it seems to me, is saturated with
pluribus
and ne–
glectful of
unum.
The first paragraph of the preamble notes that "no other country
in the world is peopled by a greater variety of races, nationalities, and
ethnic groups." It continues: "But although the United States has been a
great asylum for diverse peoples, it has not always been a great refuge for
diverse cultures." Both points are correct - but the report is oblivious to
the historical fact that the second sentence explains the first.
Why has the United States been thus far exempt from the "trends
toward separation and dissolution" that, as the report later notes, are
having such destructive effects in the Soviet Union, South Africa,
Canada, Yugoslavia, Spain, and the United Kingdom? The report replies
with general statements about diversity as a source of strength. But
diversity has plainly not been a source of strength in the Soviet Union,
South Africa, Canada, and so on. Why has it been a source of strength
in the United States?
Obviously the reason why the United States, for
all
its manifest
failure to live up to its own ideals, is still the most successful large multi–
ethnic nation is precisely
because,
instead of emphasizing and perpetuating
ethnic separatism, it has assimilated immigrant cultures into a new
Ameri–
can
culture.
Most immigrants indeed came to America precisely in order to es–
cape their pasts. They
wanted
to become Americans and to participate in
the making of an American culture and an American national identity.
Even black Americans, who came as involuntary immigrants and have
suffered - still suffer - awful persecution and discrimination, have made
vital contributions to the American culture in which they have grown up
and
of which they are an indispensable part.
The preamble rejects "previous ideals of assimilation to an Anglo–
American model." Of course America derives its language and its primary
political purposes and institutions from Great Britain. To pretend oth–
erwise is to falsify history. To teach otherwise is to mislead our students.
But the British legacy has been modified, enriched, and reconstituted by
the absorption of non-Anglo cultures and traditions as well as by the
distinctive experiences of American life. That is why America today is so
very different a nation from Britain. Assimilation does not equal Anglo–
conformity.
But the report goes on to reject the very ideal of assimilation. I
