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Article: Beyond the Melting Pot
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- Dictionary of American History
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BEYOND THE MELTING POT
BEYOND THE MELTING POT
(Glazer and Moynihan). In this 1963 work, subtitled
The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City,
the sociologists Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan sought to explain the persistence of ethnic affiliation in New York City, and by implication the United States, long after "distinctive language, customs, and culture" had been lost (p. 17). What impeded the absorption of ethnic groups into "a homogeneous American mass" (p. 20)? Material necessity wed to sentimental attachment, Glazer and Moynihan maintained
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a combination of "history, family and feeling, interest, [and] formal organizational life" (p. ...