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AHR Forum
Amalgamation and the Historical Distinctiveness of the United States
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Understanding the meaning and implications of population diversity
challenges us in the present as it has done consistently in the
past. This AHR Forum addresses the issue by focusing on the
question of racial and ethnic amalgamation in the United States.
David A. Hollinger frames the discussion with a thoughtful
and provocative essay in which he draws on a large body of scholarship
to argue that the mixing of the world's peoples in the United States
is one of the most distinctive yet most unappreciated realities
of the nation's history. He contends that through amalgamation—intermarriage
among individuals from every possible ethnoracial group—Americans
created new and unique communities of descent. Understanding their
creation and development is critical to the recovery of a full understanding
of the American past and particularly one that moves beyond the
fundamentally flawed ideal of the melting pot. And such a history,
he insists, requires that we recognize the distinctive experiences
of particular racial and ethnic groups, especially the unique past
of African Americans, as well as the power of white racism. Three
commentators then expand the discussion. Thomas E. Skidmore
draws on Brazilian history to place the subject in a comparative
context. Barbara J. Fields argues that amalgamation
cannot be understood without drawing important analytical distinctions
between race and racism. And Henry Yu identifies some
of the pitfalls in the use of interracial marriage and sex as analytical
tools in historical analyses. Taken together, the article and commentaries
suggest why racial and ethnic amalgamation pose fundamental analytical
issues for historians who study various times and places.
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