Americanism has been a major focus of political conflict since colonial days. The country has been an ethnically mixed settler society from its inception, and disagreement emerged early over what it means to be an American, who is or can become an American, and whether it is sensible policy to promote or even require would-be citizens to embrace some more or less official version of American values and lifestyles. The argument was never really settled but became temporarily less critical when the scale of annual arrivals was dramatically reduced due to the combination of Asian restriction, the national-origins quota laws of 1921–24, the onset of the Great Depression, and the outbreak of World War II. Congress retained the quota system in 1952 and kept migration from the Eastern Hemisphere at modest levels. A leading historian described America at midcentury as a country that had accommodated three great religious traditions and in which the successful assimilation of the huge numbers of immigrants around the turn of the twentieth century meant that cultural and ethnic differences had melted away leaving three groups: whites, blacks, and Jews (Thomas J. Archdeacon, Becoming American, 1983).
By 1965, the nation was sufficiently at ease with immigration that the national-origins quota system was ditched in favor of source-country universalism, opening the door deliberately or naively to massive entries of Asians, Latin Americans, and, eventually, migrant streams from the four corners of the earth. Little surprise that this turn of events produced a renewal of concern about immigrant incorporation; more surprising is that it was a quarter century after the national-origins policy was abandoned before serious agitation about unassimilated migrants reappeared. Just how serious the latest outbreak of concern for Americanism is, what sparked it, how it may be distinct from earlier incarnations, and what should be our attitude toward it is the subject of Deborah Schildkraut's impressive study.
Schildkraut builds her analysis on an original random digit-dial national survey of 2,800 residents funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and carried out in 2004. She is admirably conscious of the shortcomings of most of the surveys monitoring opinion on immigration. Her survey instrument is designed to exploit the opportunities available in extant survey data—hence, she draws many items from a range of earlier polls. Moving beyond existing data, however, her survey oversamples Asians, Latinos, and blacks and inserts many questions designed to provide a fuller picture of the attitudes of different groups toward national identity, membership, and citizenship. In short, this is the most comprehensive survey of attitudes toward immigrants, national identity, and citizenship yet undertaken.
Americanism in the Twenty-First Century is a strongly empirical and analytical study, but it is motivated by normative impulses, namely, a concern with claims that many recent migrants, especially but not only those from Mexico, are failing to embrace an American national identity. Schildkraut worries that such beliefs, founded on misinformation and lacking empirical grounding, can lead to discriminatory, bigoted, and ill-conceived public policy. She rises to the challenge laid down by such diverse voices as Patrick J. Buchanan, Lou Dobbs, and the late Samuel P. Huntington. Her empirical research seeks to measure the degree of consensus there is on the content of American national identity and then to explore the attachment Americans have to their group membership. But, as she puts it, “This book is about more than just showing that many of Huntington's claims … are unfounded … It is about understanding the roots of that [immigrant] resentment and, more broadly, the impact of national identity on both the majority and minority” (p. 13).
Schildkraut writes from the multiple-traditions school on American identity and draws on major intellectual approaches in the literature that try to capture that identity: liberalism, ethno-culturalism, civic republicanism, and incorporationism (the idea that America is a nation of immigrants). Factor analysis of items related to each of these ideas reveals just three dimensions related to identity: ethno-culturalism and two types of civic republicanism (action and identity). Obtaining this result, Schildkraut launches a detailed analysis of linkages between ethnic groups and conceptions of identity. No stone is left unturned.
Given the impossibility of summarizing her findings in a short review, I will simply highlight some of her more important conclusions. First, she finds “little support for concerns that different ethnic and immigrant groups define what being American means differently” (p. 55). She notes that the increasing diversity of the US population with respect to ethnicity, race, nativity, and ancestry has little effect on American national identity (p. 60). She reports that there is a broad consensus as to what constitutes national identity that belies the often inflammatory rhetoric of political debate (p. 61). “What people seem to want,” she continues, “is a common American identity, not necessarily a white, Christian identity” (p. 93). But do recent immigrants or minority group members reject an American self-identification? Again, Schildkraut finds these fears exaggerated. A majority of respondents chose American as their primary identity (Table 5.1).
Next the author asks if a non-American identity attachment affects one's relationship with American political institutions and other Americans? The survey data are mixed and show that where there is perception of discrimination, feelings of alienation follow (Table 6.5). Schildkraut devotes a long chapter to the measurement of resentment by whites of immigrants, racial groups, and ethno-cultural groups. Her data indicate that only small minorities of whites embrace ethno-cultural resentments. Racial resentment is, oddly in my view, measured by questions about immigrants with no reference to race. Apart from the belief that other groups have “made it” and so today's immigrants could as well (a sentiment which 80% of whites endorsed), the two items gaining the most adherence were positive statements about immigrants. The key items measuring immigrant resentment had to do with the belief that immigrants are not trying to fit in (Table 7.1). Finally, Schildkraut finds, not surprisingly, that “immigrant resentment is a consistent and powerful predictor of anti-immigration preferences” (p. 189). I think it might have been useful to take the measure of immigrant resentment of whites, of other immigrant groups, and one's ethnic kin. Some evidence suggests that just as dominant groups have a tendency to prefer earlier migrants to current ones, already-settled immigrants can be critical of their late-arriving brethren.
Americanism in the Twenty-First Century is a major achievement. The author goes toe to toe with many of the leading critics of US immigration policy and challenges alarmist accounts of the dangers posed by mass immigration for American society. If I find any serious fault with the book, it is that the author is perhaps too assiduous in her account. A shorter, less detailed presentation might have been more accessible without sacrificing important aspects of the argument. As it is, the book is essential for scholars and appropriate for graduate seminars; undergraduates, on the other hand, will find this monograph tough sledding.
