Book Review

Canada and the United States

This edited collection is the result of a conference held at State University of New York's Stony Brook campus in June 1992. Some of the essays have appeared elsewhere and are not new. The conference itself aimed at considering multiculturalism and pluralism in a historical context free of angry debates that have surrounded these terms in recent years. The essays touch on the key issues, but overall they lack a coherent focus. Included are a speech by Bill Bradley on race and the American city, which he delivered in the Senate in 1992; essays dealing with racism, Africans, and American blacks; a piece on J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer (1782); and essays dealing with trends and theory. None deal with Latinos in any depth, and editors Wendy F. Katkin, Ned Landsman, and Andrea Tyree do not offer a convincing argument for the inclusion of these particular choices. The reader is left to reading essays that touch upon various aspects of the issues surrounding multiculturalism and pluralism.	1
In addition, like so many volumes of this sort, the book contains essays of uneven merit. Space precludes a detailed discussion of each piece; instead the highlights and strengths and weaknesses of most will be discussed here. The first excellent essay by Stanley N. Katz discusses how the American constitutional system historically has dealt with the claims of groups as opposed to individuals. Katz emphasizes that for most of American history, constitutional issues have referred to individuals and not groups. The Bill of Rights is a case in point. It reflected James Madison's and the Founders' worry over procedures and the rights of individuals. After 1865, Katz sees a shift as embodied in the Reconstruction amendments. For many years. however, the courts used the Fourteenth Amendment to protect corporations and not African Americans, as was intended. Beginning with a case in 1938 (but, more importantly, with the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision), substantive equality entered the Supreme Court's jurisdiction. Although he sees a retreat from this new tradition in recent years, Katz believes that the key question is, "can constitutional democracy in the late twentieth century operate on the basis of having faith in groups other than one's own?" (p. 22).	2
Mary Waters's essay on "Multiple Ethnic Identity Choices" reflects her scholarship on ethnic identity. This is a first-rate summary of recent trends about intermarriage among all American groups. She notes that the American people have been intermarrying at increased rates in the last three decades, and this includes African Americans, even though their rates are lower than those of other groups. Waters sees this trend as the result of the success of the nation's pluralism, which has seen Americans interacting with one another in many parts of American society. The result, however, is that intermarriage complicates ethnic or racial identity—whether in the census, affirmative action, or group identity. She wonders how the children of intermarriage will identify themselves in the future. In Waters's view, the evidence thus far does not provide a simple answer.	3
David Hollinger argues for a postethnic society, one in which the democratic-egalitarian ideology becomes the basis of the nation. This society, which is frankly utopian to Hollinger, is one in which ethnic differences will remain but will not be important to one's identity. Hollinger's vision is one that many share, but how to reach that goal is a major question. He notes that many people of European background have already mixed, but unless economic opportunities are extended to poor minorities, a postethnic society will remain an unfulfilled goal.	. . .