Page 225 - Contribution To Phenomenology

218 STANFORD M LYMAN & LESTER EMBREE

"Ethnic" of course is an old word that comes out of the Greek,
ethnos, a people, and has arisen, especially strongly in America, to refer
to the social and cultural aspects of life for various national minorities
from Europe and, for national and racial minorities from Africa, Asia,
and among the aboriginal Americans as they find expression in everyday
life. At present, members of what physical anthropologists of earher days
would have designated as the "Negroid" race would consider themselves
ethnically as Blacks or African-Americans. These terms are the socio-cult-
ural expressions, respectively, of a racial or national peoplehood. Among
such expressions language and religion come first to mind for me. Yes,
language, reUgion, and other relatively visible and audible aspects of
culture, e.g., food, music, dance, clothing. Which are all cultural, Le,,
historical, learned, and able to change.
Yes. This issue in America sorts itself out along a line that is
interesting for public policy and for such disciplines as political science,
that is, along the line that divides the pubUc from the private. Assimila-
tion theory, when modified by a pluralistic accommodation, holds, in
terms of public policy and the national economy, that people will
ultimately participate in the public arena as persons, as individuals. In
terms of the content of private life, i.e., such activities as family
get-togethers, social gatherings, recreational occasions, and religious
observances, non-acculturated elements will be the order of the day. This
division makes a kind of practical sense, but critics point to the ways in
which socialization into the pubUc economy and polity insinuates itself
into the ways of the "old World" cultures, erodes their values, under-
mines their quality, and diminishes their meaning to those who participate
in them. Moreover, the prerequisites for maintaining a separate culture
are not available to every culture group. To these critics, society is said
to have an obUgation to insure the availability of a heritage and culture
for each people. In part. Ethnic Studies arose as a way to meet this
need.
/ have the impression that Ethnic Studies programs began in California,
Is this correct? Yes, they did. I was a part of that movement and very
close to it. It started in history at the University of California at Berkeley
when the State of California, struck by its recognition of how racially and
ethnically unrepresentative the pubUc school textbooks were, commis-
sioned the revisionist historian, Kenneth M. Stampp, to form a scholarly
committee and examine the textbooks used in the American history
courses in the pubUc schools in the state. This occurred in 1956-57. The