Books
Stephen Steinberg
THE ETHNIC MYTH
TURNING BACK: THE RETREAT FROM RACIAL JUSTICE IN AMERICAN THOUGHT AND POLICY WRITING AND THINKING
Race, Ethnicity. and Class in America
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STEPHEN STEINBERG
Third Edition
IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
(with Sharon Friedman)
THE ETHNIC MYTH
THE ACADEMIC MELTING POT
THE TENACITY OF PREJUDICE
Gertrude Jaeger Selznick)
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Beacon Press
Boston
Introduction
The New Darwinism
were better established in nineteenth-century social •
thought than the idea that the races that achieved preeminence
were superior, while those that occupied the lowest echelons of the
social order were inferior. Though notions of racial superiority:<
and inferiority had always been invoked to justify. slavery, this
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siderable boost after the publication of .
arwin's Ori in of S ecies in 1859 Darwin, of course, had ~
off~eory of evolution t atpertained to the natural order,
but the Social Darwinists, as they came to be called, sought to aeely
his theory~to- the social oraer as well. In the concept of natural
selection, die Social Darwinists found a basis for postulating that .(J
individuals and races alike are engaged in a stru gle for existence
t11at leads inexorably to the surVlva 0 t e fittest. In t IS popularized
form, Darwinism provided a pseudoscientific rationale for domina­
tion and hierarchy in society. Theories that imputed racial supe­
riority to groups on the top of the social heap and inferiority to
those on the bottom could now be asserted with the force of natural
FEW IDE A S
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Eventually Darwinism was used to give scientific legitimacy to
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nativism as well as slavery, despite the fact that there was nothing
in Darwinism that was inherently antagonistic to the interbreeding
of racial and ethnic stocks. Indeed, Darwin viewed migration as a
vehicle of natural selection, and consistent with the prevailing at­
titude of the first half of the nineteenth century, he believed that
the United States was drawing the best specimens of European stock
and would produce a new and superior race. By the end of the
nineteenth century, however, immigration had come to be equated
in~~C:£l:leular mind with congesfea-ufoaii--slum-s,-pauperTsm, crime,
and all the otne-iTesteriiig -problems -refated- to--the--rapTaeXpai1sion
of capitalism in America. All attention focusedontne racial traits
~;tthe-new_comers,~ho,1;~~to earlier··-;·;~~;-o£ im~s,
came-mosily from eastern and southern Europe. No~.:.~
theo~ w~s ~olded to fit the ~!!vi~~_~tion against forei ne~s,
- and ~mmlgratlOn came to be viewed not as a progressive orce III
human evolution but as ~ ca~st to racial mongrelization and
biologicaLdefeat.
-The hallmark of Social Darwinism was its hereditary determin­
ism. There was hardly any attribute statistically associated with race
or nationality that was not traced to the genes. Even poverty and
t. crime, which previously had been regarded as moral defects,- Were
'i nowassumed to be manifestations oflrilleriied tendencies. Ac­
cordingiy,-the-fiigh- incidence- -o{- poveity, crime,-and other pa­
thologies among immigrant populations was seen as symptomatic
of an innate perversity, and the causes were t9,be found in the germ
plasms of whole races. By collectin&-data on the relative incidence
!"1 ,of t~_~~_p_~t~~~gies a~flK..<:!!_f!e!.ent groups, social scientists be­
- lieved they could ascertain grades otraces. U nsurprisingly they
came to the same cofiCJusloil-that- nativ;sis'-~eached by other avenues
-namely, that restrictions should be elaced on the immigration of
all nationalities that were not of the northern and western European
stoCKfi1afOr1glii"ally settled America.
The Social Darwinists also held that the acquired mental and
emotional states of one generation were passed down to the next.
This seemed to explain the fact that different races and nationalities
exhibited different personality dispositions, corresponding to what
are today recognized as common stereotypes. If Italians were im­
pulsive, Jews mercenary, Germans bellicose, Asians treacherous, and
so on, it was because these traits were inbred and part of a hered-
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Introduction: The New Darwinism
Part Two: Social Class and Ethnic Myths
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itary process. Thus it was feared that the massive immigration of
these groups would overwhelm and irrevocaofyaistort the more
te~rate, moral, and democratic qualities of n~!!y~:J:>..orn Ameri­
cans.
-"Needless to say, modern social science has come to reject these ,_
biological theories. Though there is an occasional recrud_e~e of
biological determinism, especiaIryon the issue of intelligence, the _\
thrust of modern social thought has been to establish the essentially ~
social character of race and nationality," and the overriding im­
portance of envi~ental factors in the shaping of personality
and behavior. The concept of race has itself undergone revision,
so that the various European nationalities are not generally per­
ceived as belonging to different races, and even in the case of
groups still regarded as constituting distinctive races, genetic factors \
are not considered relevant to the social or cultural character of ~
these groups. Though there are still a few antiquarians who look
genetic factors in poverty and crime~--most social scientists
would regard any such suggestion as patent nonsense. Above all, a
consensus seems to have been reached that regards any claims of
biological superiority or inferiority as belonging to a class of be­
nighted ideas that have no scientific validity whatsoever.
Yet modern social science has not transcended the logic and '"
values of Social Darwinism as completely as is generally supposed.
All too often, notions of biological superiority and inferio~it.t._.have
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been replaced with a new set of ideas that amount to{claims ~1 ~
cultural su eriorit and Illfenorit _'- A~cording _to th_~_£.c:rspe~~ve,
differences in socia c ass position_ among ethnic groups in America
are a prod,%t of cultural attributes that are endemic to the groups
tlleinseIVes. In- a sense, nineteenth-century Social Dafwlllism has
been replaced with a "New Darwinism" that has simply substitmed
culture for genes.
Though the New Darwinists eschew such value-laden terminology _
as cultural "superiority" and "inferiority," they nevertheless argue
that the relative socioeconomic success of each ethnic group depends.
upon the extent to which it exemplifies a given set of cultural values.
The specific valuesc~tedare familiaL!O anyone who has heard
Benjamin (Franklin's homilies Or read Horatio Alger novels­
fruKa}i~y,_ i~dustr , foresi ht, erseverance in enuity, and the like.
T oug masked in pseudoscientific terminology, and obscured by
for
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Part Ttuo: Social Class and Ethnic Myths
Introduction: The New Darwt'nism
an avalanche of statIStIcs, the underlying premise of the New
Darwinism is that "good" things come to those with
cultural values, whereassoclar disfioi:to~r-a-ria-~a
-----'---'-­
l~fall those gr9J.Ips tnat arecuIturally aberrant.
The affinity to nineteenth-century Social Darwinism is especially
pronounced where culture is treated as fixed-that is, as a relatively
permanent and immutab
.
at operates as an independent
force in history. For the New Darwinist culture is inherited just
as inexorably asiCit had'-bee-~-Tmplanted lfi tfie genes.=Chiidren
ac uire from their arents cultural traits that either allow them to
exce in social competition, or that condemn them to languish
behind. The principle;: of the survival of the fittest still holds, thg.ugh
itis now defined in cultural rather than biologica!.!srms-:­
Of course, the belief that the fittest will prevail is predicated on
the assumption that ~ competitors have more or less equal op­
portunity. Thougi(flP se~ is paid to the external obstacles that
impede th~,_p
o f some groups, especGilI raCial minorities,
th r·o~rridin em hasis is on the capacity of individuals and grou s
to-.:riumph if they exhibit the-ajfpropriate cultura virtues. n a
classic expression of Social Darwinism, the president of Stanford
University declared in I91I: "It is not the strength of the strong,
the weakness of the weak which engenders exploitation and
tyranny." Stripped 001t geflet!cJ!~mption, this refrain is just as
characteristic of the ~~ew Darwinists w~o attribute the. plight Qf
fouEs on the bottom to cu tural wea nesS wether of a _weak
amily s~able COmmUfiltleS, a paucity of eth[lic PJ'ide, or
a defective system of values. As with the Social Darwinists, the
focus of blame is shifted awayJrom s~ietal institu~ns and £laced
on the victims the~lves.
The four chapters that follow deal in different ways with the
American tendency in social science to posit cultural factors as the
main determinants of class differences between ethnic groups. Chap­
ter 3 attempts to unravel the "mystery" of Jewish success, a mys­
tery that owes itself to the exclusive preoccupation with
factors in attempts to explain Jewish success patterns. Chapter
4 challenges the body of thought that holds that lower-class
minorities, blacks in particular, are saddled with a "culture of
poverty" that perpetuates their social and economic disadvantage.
Chapter 5 takes a critical look at the idea that the destiny of
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ethnic groups in America has depended on the extent to which
they have availed themselves of educational opportunities. Finally,
Chapter 6 deals with the specific question of why so many Irish
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immigrants, and so few Italians Or Jews, worked as domestics. In
,~ach instance) the overarching theoretical issue concerns the relation- ~
Ship be'tween culture and social strucU!!.e. The thrust of these chap­
ters is to look beyond the simplistic cultural explanations that have
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been so much a part of both the conventional wisdom and social
science, and to explore the interface~een cu~raI_y~J':l_~s and +J
societal factors.
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