Word: pattersons
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...attraction of ethnicity, Patterson contends, is nothing new; it is, rather, a primordial problem. Its source lies, he argues in his introduction, in man's basic inward struggle between the "centrifugal pull of the group" and what Patterson proclaims "the noble drive towards individualism." Patterson puts his finger on a fundamental conflict between men's need to revel in their distinctiveness from other cultures--by banding together around unique cultural symbols--and their individualistic desire to strike out and forge independent identities. Patterson thus makes the daring intellectual move of taking on all the various and sundry historical forms...
...understandable, Patterson acknowledges, that the development of an atomized, impersonal, alienating modern industrial society should stimulate the yearning for these historical forms of "community." Yet Patterson points out that in their nostalgia for these various types of group life, people today mistakenly ignore how unjust and internally coercive these ethnocentric societies have been. This misguided romanticism is particularly characteristic of the modern world's nationalistic zeal, Patterson contends--and he comes down particularly hard on the use of racial mysticism in Third World nationalist movements...
...fact, Patterson argues that all symbol-laden nationalist movements are inherently fascist, in that they sweep up people's personal racial anxieties into a mass identification with the glory of the state. He goes on to argue that Leopold Senghor's theory of "Negritude" and similar mystical notions of black "soul-brotherhood" come dangerously close to the basic model of fascist ideology. It gives you an idea of how provocative Patterson is willing to be that, as a black sociologist, he consistently brings his criticisms so close to home...
...this elaborate sociological discussion of ethnicity, as fascinating as it is, only serves as a prelude to Patterson's commentary on the current new ethnicity debate. In his sixth chapter, "The Modern Revival of Ethnicity: With Special Reference to the United States," he moves in for the kill. Here again, the first target of his attack is the American black community. For although he sympathetically argues that the black nationalism of the '60s served as a defiant response to the racial shame American blacks have suffered for two centuries, he also points out that all the posturing and celebration...
Perhaps the most provocative part of the book comes in Patterson's analysis of what he calls the "intellectual treachery" of America's group of neo-conservative once-liberal Jews. These champions of new ethnicity are, he observes, by and large second or third generation immigrants, uprooted from their European cultures and, as Jews, haunted by the idea of being exiled from the homeland, or belonging to a pariah class. Via intellectual cosmopolitanism, and either political left-liberalism or socialism, they compensated by making the world their home. But in the past 50 years, the holocaust and the subsequent creation...