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ETHNIC STUDIES AS MULTI-DISCIPLINE 227

phrase *A universalistic achievement society.' Universal values prevail and
achievement is meritocratic. Parsons's contrast is with China, which he
calls *a particularistic achievement society.' Whether he is right about
China is not important for us at this point. Its the contrast that is so
interesting, because, as Parsons is grudgingly forced to admit, particularist
elements are also present in American society, and Americans do not
wish to dispense with them. There are times when Americans want to fall
back on particularism; there are times when Americans do not want to
be meritocratic. In effect, the classic hypocrisy is to credit all one's
successes to one's individuality and to blame all one's failures on
others—a conflation of meritocracy and particularism.^^
Plainly, we always grow up with some sense of ethnicity, our own and
someone else's, difficult as it may be to recognize its exact nature. Do you
see this classic hypocrisy in present-day America? Oh, yes, I do see it here.
/ do too, and I think that one of the reasons that there is so much anger
coming from the middle classes of this country is that people claim
individual credit for their own advances, but, when things go badly, they
do not want to take personal blame for the fall; instead, they blame the
system, blame others, blame the government, blame anybody but themselves.
Of course, there are both individual and social factors for both success and
failure.
In 1945, Talcott Parsons wrote an essay trying to explain anti-Semitism
and anti-Negro feeling." He explained them both in accordance with his
social system analysis. America, as a society built around the values of
universaUsm and individual achievement, would evoke what Parsons calls
"strains" within its own system. The effect of these strains would be felt
in the hearts and minds of quite ordinary middle-class White individuals.
Not all of those who seek to live up to its values and norms would get
ahead in the society. Some of these would become frustrated and
attribute their failures to Blacks or Jews. Both groups fulfill the need for
scapegoats; for Jews, so the argument runs, seem to get ahead effortless-
ly, while Blacks seem to enjoy—and are subsidized for—Uving below the
level of Occidental civilization. But the White working and middle classes

^^ Talcott Parsons, The Social System (Glencoe, 111. The Free Press, 1951),
109-112.
" Talcott Parsons, "Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social
Structure of the Western World," Essays in Sociological Theory, rev. ed., (New York:
Free Press, 1964), 298-322.