After telling the stories of Ethnic America, from Irish to Germans to Jews to Italians to Chinese to Japanese to Blacks to Puerto Ricans to Mexicans, Thomas Sowell has a conclusion or two.
He starts by reminding us that "factors that advance or retard the progress of groups" are not necessarily moral or immoral. We are born into a group, for good and ill, and its culture may make things easier for us, or not.
It is... simply good fortune to be born into a group whose values and skills make life easier to cope with.
And it is equally important to understand what skills help, and why.
Is wealth important? But Eastern European Jews arrived with nothing, and are now in 1980 the highest income group.
Does politics help? But the Chinese and the Japanese avoided politics and now have higher incomes that average whites.
The open frontier? But the Scotch Irish were on the frontier and didn't do too well.
Education? But Jews, Chinese and Japanese rose by hard work before they got education.
But there are patterns and conclusions we can draw from the American ethnic experience.
Patterns
All ethnic groups have risen and thrived in the United States. But all of them have faced obstacles and suffering on their ascent -- that were less than what they experienced before coming. Even the African slaves in the US did better than Africans sold to the Arabs.
It makes a difference whether migrants came here as "sojourners" -- trying things out -- or as committed migrants. It matters whether people came here when convenient, such as Scandinavians and Germans, or as refugees like the Irish and the Jews. Or as captives, as African slaves or indentured servants.
What we call "white flight" is not new. When the Irish flooded into Boston and New York slums, the existing residents got out. The first blacks in Harlem were fleeing tough Irish neighborhoods in midtown Manhattan.
Strikebreakers? First it was the Irish, then Italians and Negroes were used against the Irish.
Education? Jews were passionate about education; Southern Italians were hostile to education.
Family? Both Jews and Italians had strong families, but Jewish families pushed their children towards upward mobility, while Italians felt they betrayed their family by moving into a wider world.
IQ? Lots of immigrants scored low -- even Jewish soldiers in World War I! -- but improved their standings with time and education.
Culture
National recovery after the devastation of war -- such as the Germans after World War II -- reminds us that "human capital" is more important than physical capital. Migrants can come to the US destitute and rise by effort and thrift despite impediments like racial prejudice.
Police brutality? The Jewish Daily Forward reported in 1907 that "the police in the Jewish quarter of New York are the most savage in America."
Inequality? Immigrants often start way "below the level of existing members of their own ethnic group in the country, but eventually rise to not only equal but surpass them." Often it takes fifteen to twenty years. This suggests that
migration is a selective process, bringing the more ambitious or venturesome or able elements of a population.
And culture matters.
Groups today plagued by absenteeism, tardiness, and a need for constant supervision... are typically descendants of people with the same habits a century or more ago.
And businesses formed by the followers of Father Divine of the Black Muslims typically do better than the "government-sponsored 'black capitalism' programs of the 1960s and 1970s."
And acculturation is a two-way process. Anglo-Saxon Puritans were overwhelmed "by the German easygoing attitude of good clean fun." American popular music owes everything to black jazz and blues. American political machines were invented by the Irish. Nothing is more American than hamburgers, frankfurters, pizza and tacos.
The "melting pot" is now disdained, but is working better than ever before. It is after people are assimilated that they begin to intermarry.
While the public square debates the differences and conflicts between groups, there is also the question of intragroup differences, sometimes generational, sometimes differences in acculturation and affluence. And intergroup conflict is often between similar groups, such as blacks and Irish.
Discrimination is a big question in our time, meaning everything from underpaying individuals to actual barriers inhibiting the development of individuals. But employer discrimination cannot explain income differences between, say Hong Kong Chinese and native-born Chinese Americans. Nor can the average employer distinguish between "free persons of color" and other blacks. And overt economic discrimination can be costly to "profit-seeking competitive firms" although less so for government, monopolies and the non profit sector. It is perhaps the most talented and the most brilliant -- the W.E.B. Du Bois or the Paul Robeson -- that suffers most from discrimination, and is most enraged by it.
The fact is that ethnic identity is a complex question. Some people wear it as a badge of honor; others are embarrassed by it. But, writes Sowell,
It cannot be a simple morality play. It is a story of similar patterns and profound differences, of pain and pride and achievement. It is, in one sense, the story of many different heritages. In another sense, it is the story of the human spirit in his many guises.
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