Word: ethnics
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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THAT is how the politician hero of Hogan's Goat, a recent play about the 19th century Irish in Brooklyn, recalls the era when ward politics was one of the few ways in which the immigrant masses could dream of sharing power. The ethnic vote-the vote of "our kind"-has remained part of the American political vocabulary for a century. Big-city bosses operated on the assumption that they could deliver that vote to whatever candidate they chose-all they needed was a Christmas turkey, a memory for the names of the children, and a fluency...
Statistically, the ethnic concern is understandable. Some 34 million Americans, or 19%, are listed by the most recent census as of "foreign stock," which the Census Bureau defines as either foreign-born or with at least one foreign-born parent. Others have defined "ethnic" as any individual who differs from "the basic white Protestant Anglo-Saxon settlers by religion, language and culture." Since, of the total population, 65% come from non-Anglo-Saxon stock, this amounts to a lot of voters, most of them in the big cities. In New York, as the Rheingold-beer ads say, there are more...
...part, the shifting urban vote is a result of the slow, steady erosion of the coalition of ethnic minorities, Negroes and intellectuals that F.D.R. forged 34 years ago. Negro militancy has siphoned off much support from urban Italians, Irish and Slavs. The war has disenchanted many intellectuals. Of greater concern to the Democrats is their fading appeal to the blue-collar vote, once their mainstay. California's Brown, who had the support of labor leaders but lost the rank-and-file vote, noted: "Workers used to ask about workmen's compensation and disability insurance. Not this time. The workers have...
...seat in the U.S. Senate. The fact that this second sweep was won with large pluralities had led many Massachusetts Republicans to hope that the usually Democratic Irish and Italian voters had elected the Republican candidates mainly because they were Republicans. They felt that the victory did not reflect ethnic voting or a protest against poor candidates offered by the Democratic party. Heightening this belief was the knowledge that the Democratic candidates for governor and senator were energetic, able, good men. If these hopes were true then the Republican party in Massachusetts was at the beginning of a proud...
...troubled by the riots and the chants of "black power," which he knows hurt his cause. The gulf between the two is widened by the fact that the better-off Negro tends to demonstrate too little concern for those he has left behind. Almost alone among all U.S. ethnic groups, Negroes have no significant charity supported by their own people for their own people. The number of Negroes on the public-welfare rolls is increasing, and one-third of the nation's spending for public aid, education and housing (or an estimated $3.5 billion in all) goes to Negroes...