Now that the theme of “ethnicity” has blazed up again before public eyes, a number of important questions have been raised, a number of objections voiced. What is the meaning of ethnicity? What is the difference between the “old ethnicity” and the “new ethnicity”? Is everybody ethnic? What political implications follow?
One of the most interesting developments is the abrupt rejection of ethnic analysis altogether. This rejection is of three types. Those who have been trying all their lives to get over their ethnic origin and join the influential mainstream sometimes see the experience of ethnicity as regressive; sometimes don't even want the subject brought up, have vivid emotional reactions against it; sometimes experience a new sense of relaxation and liberation, in a kind of expanded and (at last) integrated self-consciousness.
A second type of rejection occurs among some who have for a time been living in “superculture,” that is,...
