Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Race and Ethnicity

This debate style reader is designed to introduce students to controversies in race and ethnicity. The pro and con readings discuss issues such as social identities and cultural conflict; immigration, segregation and leadership; affirmative action and legal issues; and new policies. This fifth edition remains a beneficial tool encouraging critical thinking on important issues concerning racial and ethnic minorities. For additional support, link to our student website Dushkin Online (www.dushkin.com/online/).

PART 1. Classical Issues in Race and Ethnicity

ISSUE 1. Do We need a Common American Identity?

YES: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., from “E Pluribus Unum” The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York: W.W. Norton Co. 1992)

NO: Michael Walzer, from “What Does It Mean to Be An ’American’?” Social Research (Fall 1990)

Arthur Schlesinger Jr., historian, asserts that America needs a common identity. In that context he views multiculturalism as an attack on the basic values that have made America what it is today. Michael Waltzer, professor at the Center of Advanced Study Princeton, makes the pluralist argument that America cannot avoid its multicultural identity. He explores the ways in which citizenship and nationality are compatible with the preservation of one’s ethnic identity, culture and community.

ISSUE 2. Is Immigration Good for America?

YES: David Cole, from “The New Know Nothingism: Five Myths About Immigration” The Nation (October 17, 1994)

NO: Peter Brimelow, from Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster (Random House 1995)

David Cole, law professor, critically examines and rebuffs significant myths alleging substantial destructive sociocultural and economic impacts of immigrants and policies in this field. Peter Brimelow, Senior Editor at Forbes and the National Review magazines, argues that the United States is being overrun by a growing tide of aliens who are changing the character and composition of the nation.

ISSUE 3. Race Relations in the 19th Century: Will Accommodation Insure Progess?

YES: Booker T. Washington, from “The Atlanta Exposition Address” from Atlanta Letter (September 18, 1895)

NO: W.E.B. DuBois, from “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others,” from Souls of Black Folk ((New York: Fawcett, 1968) pp.42-54)

Booker T. Washington, the premier black leader of the period 1896-1915 argues that with the embrace of significant norms of the white culture, the race could make progress in the American South. W.E.B. DuBois, the leading black intellectual and progressive social activist of the first half of the twentieth century, viewed Washington’s program as too limited for Black progress in the United States.

ISSUE 4. Does White Identity Define America?

YES: Lillian B. Rubin, from “Is This a White Country, or What?” in Families on the Fault Line (harper Perennial, 1995)

NO: Ellis Cose, from “What’s White, Anyway?” Newsweek (September 18, 2000)

Lillian B. Rubin, senior research fellow at the Institute for Study of Social Change at Berkeley, contrasts current immigrants who are mostly non-white with nineteenth-century European immigrants, almost all of whom were white. She notes that among many descendants of European immigrants currently there is a fear of whites becoming a minority. For these descendants, American identity has always been associated with being white. Ellis Cose, an African American journalist, argues that the traditional boundaries that determine race and skin color are not what they once were. Although he does not specifically cite ethnicity, Cose furthers the claim that American identity today is an expanding category.

PART 2. Race, Prejudice and Racial Minorities

ISSUE 5. Is Skin Color A Proper Determinant of Racial Identity?

YES: Howard Zinn, from “Drawing the Color Line” from A People’s History of the United States (Harper Collins 1980)

NO: Marvin Harris, from “How Our Skins Got Their Color” from Our Kind: Who We Are. Where We Came From and Where We Are Going (Harper Collins 1989)

Howard Zinn, eminent historian, asserts that the black skin of the earliest African American was employed by whites to differentiate and establish them as members of a separate, distinct, and inferior race. Marvin Harris, a leading anthropologist, views skin color as a biological phenomenon, and thus he explains differences in skin color as a biological adaptation of humans for dealing with the potentially harmful solar radiation that we face.

ISSUE 6. Is Race Prejudice a Product of Group Position?

YES: Herbert Blumer, from “Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position” The Pacific Sociological Review (Spring 1958)

NO: Gordon Allport, from “The Young Child” The Nature of Prejudice (Perseus Books, 1979)

Herbert Blumer, a sociologist, asserts that prejudice exists in a sense of group position rather than as an attitude based on individual feelings. Gordon Allport, a psychologist, makes the case that prejudice is the result of a three-stage learning process.

ISSUE 7. Are Definitions of Race Just Political?

YES: Lawrence Wright, from “One Drop of Blood” The New Yorker July, 1993 (Wendy Weil Agency, Inc.)

NO: Clara Rodriguez and Hectore Cordero-Guzman, from “Placing Race in Context” Ethnic and Racial Studies 15, 4, pp. 523-541, October, 1992 (Routledge)

Lawrence Wright, a writer for The New Yorker, demonstrates the influence of politics on census categories of race and ethnicity. In the 1990s, multiracial groups who did not fit into the government’s traditional categories of race and ethnicity began to challenge them as too narrow and inaccurate. Clara Rodriguez, a professor of sociology at Fordham University, and Hector Cordero-Guzman,an associate professor and chair of the Department of Black and Hispanic Studies at Baruch College of the City University of New York, suggest that race is a much more complex concept. Using responses by Puerto Ricans to questions about racial identity, they argue that racial identity is “more contextually influenced, determined and defined.”

ISSUE 8. Do Minorities Engage in Self-Segregation?

YES: Beverly Tatum, from “Identity Development in Adolescence” in Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? (Basic Books, 1977)

NO: Peter Beinart, from “Degree of Separation at Yale” The New Republic (November 3, 1997)

Beverly Daniel Tatum, an African American psychologist, examines identity development among adolescents, especially black youths, and the behavioral outcomes of this phenomenon. She argues that black adolescents’ tendency to view themselves in racial terms is due to the totality of personal and environmental responses that they receive from the larger society. Peter Beinart, Senior Editor for The New Republic, examines the complexity of the issues of multiculturalism and diversity on the nation’s campuses and in contrast, he asserts that one examine how a broad spectrum of groups responds to the challenges of identity and "fitting in" within increasingly multicultural and diverse communities.

ISSUE 9. Are Asian Americans a Model Minority?

YES: David A. Bell, from “America’s Greatest Success Story: The Triumph of Asian-Americans” The New Republic (July 15 & 22, 1985)

NO: Frank H. Wu, from “The Model Minority: Asian American ’Success’ as a Race Relations Failure” in Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White (Basic Books, 2002)

David A. Bell agrees that Asian Americans are a "model minority" and expresses a great appreciation for the progress and prominence they have achieved within the nation. Frank H. Wu, Howard University law professor, rejects the characterization of Asian Americans as a "model minority" based on the belief that this characterization tends to obscure problems facing Asians in America.

ISSUE 10. Are Hispanic Making Economic Progress?

YES: Linda Chavez, from Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Pokitics of Hispanic Assimilation (Basic Books, 1991)

NO: Robert Aponte, from “Urban Hispanic Poverty: Disaggregations and Explanations” Social Problems (November 1991)

Linda Chavez, writer and former political candidate, argues that Hispanics are making economic progress in America. NO: Robert Aponte, a social scientist, argues that Hispanics are not making economic progress. He presents significant disaggregated data to show that certain Hispanic groups are becoming increasingly poor.

PART 3. Social and Political Issues of Education and Multiculturalism

ISSUE 11. Are America’s Schools and Neighborhoods Resegregated?

YES: Gary Orfield and Susan E. Eaton, from “Turning Back to Segregation” Dismantling in Desegregation (New York: The New Press, 1996)

NO: Ingrid Gould Ellen, from “Welcome Neighbors?” Brookings Review (Winter 1997)

Gary Orfield , professor of education and social policy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Susan E. Eaton, author, demonstrate that America’s public schools are resegregating. Their argument is based on a series of le...