Word: ethnicities
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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This is most true of black people, and maybe only true of black people. You know, we've had a great deal of recent political awareness of ethnic political potential, and I'd say the Jews are a foremost example of awareness of the ethnic limitations and the exercise of that ethnic power. Ellison's statement is mostly true of black people, and I would disagree with his seeming contention that it's a problem for all Americans. It's not. I think that even Indians or Spanish-speaking Americans are more positive of their identity than are we: because...
...much birth control could be a disaster for Jews, argue Commentary Editor Norman Podhoretz and Contributing Editor Milton Himmelfarb in the magazine's April issue. Given the low level of Jewish fertility, Podhoretz warns that Jews who advocate Z.P.G. are pushing for ethnic "suicide." Would even the devil, he asks, "have ever dreamed that so many would come to sterilize their very own selves in the name of a greater sense of responsibility to the future, and a greater reverence for life...
...make if they did? It is obvious to the point of boredom that, despite this connection, the vast majority of Italian Americans are law-abiding citizens. What is gained by pretending that Jews and blacks and Armenians are not different from one another, or that they lack racial and ethnic characteristics? What cause is helped when oppressive minorities declare that only black comics can tell jokes about blacks, or only Jews jokes about Jews? The babble of competing minorities drowns out the legitimate cries of agony. The cancer victims of American society are put in danger of taking their place...
Minorities in the U.S. are, of course, oppressed and persecuted. But to define this reality in terms of "image," to argue that the use of familiar words describing familiar facts constitutes "persecution," only trivializes the ideals of equality and social justice. When touchy minorities turn hypersensitive and overreact to ethnic slights (some real, some imaginary), they succeed only in transforming tolerance into a subtle new form of hypocrisy, more mouthed piety than reform of the heart...
...less land is owned by absentee landlords than in Viet Nam, the average Cambodian peasant is less apt to leave it in moments of stress, and more anxious to return to it when the fighting eases. Cambodia's most serious refugee problem has been the plight of the ethnic Vietnamese, who became the target of war-inflamed hatred last year. About 200,000 have been repatriated to Viet Nam; tens of thousands of others remain in fetid camps in Cambodia...