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2A)  Book Review

Amazon.com: buying info: The New Americans
... his snobbish American elite. Retired Judge Don Binkowski
Was this review helpful to you? 3 of 4 ...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0895262029/
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But, Amazon deliberately put an opposite spin on my review of Barone's book, which was definitely negative, and  NOT   HELPFUL.

When a Detroit-raised author does not mention either Slavs or Middle
Easterners after discussing the Irish, Blacks, Italians, Latinos, Jews and
Asians, what is the significance??? Probably, not that the Slavs and Middle
Easterners have not made a contribution to America but that these Americans
are not as economically and politically strong as his six selected groups.

In his most recent book, The New Americans: How the Melting Pot Can Work
Again (Regnery Publishing, 2001), Barone claims that
"blacks resemble Irish, Latinos resemble Italians, Asians resemble Jews."
Whom do the Slavs, and Middle Easterners resemble?

For an author who confided of having received his elementary education in a
Detroit public school and then Cranbrook in the 1960s and who served as an
intern for Mayor Jerry Cavanaugh during the 1967 riots, Barone appears to
have developed ethnic blinders after graduating from Harvard and Yale.
Since he appears often on current talk shows claiming to be "one of America'
s foremost political historians and commentators," we cannot ignore him,
although he forgets us.

Decide for yourself the significance of his assertion, "I am of Italian and
Irish ancestry; my former wife is Jewish (p. 7)." Was Barone finally
accepted by the American elite after his marriage?

While growing up in Detroit and attending school in its suburbs, could
Barone have possibly avoided any contacts with Slavs and Middle
Easterners?

How is it possible to discuss the Jews who immigrated from Poland in great
detail (pp. 201-203) but then omit the Polish gentiles in America who are
ten times as numerous?

Careful to omit any references to Polish Americans, Arab Americans, Belarus
Americans,
Bulgarian Americans, Croatian Americans, Czech Americans, Macedonian

Americans, Montenegrin Americans, Serbian Americans, Slovak Americans,
Slovenian Americans, Russian Americans, Ukrainian Americans, or the
Americans
from any of the countries of the Middle East, Barone does not list any of
them in his Index.

Even though he mentions in passim the fact that Poles built their own
churches (p. 136), this reference does not appear in the Index. Of all
ethnics, Italians have probably inter-married most often with Polish
Americans.

Of course, this is not the first time that these ethnic groups have been
omitted but it demonstrates a trend that has existed for over a decade.
Conveniently, Barone does not define his "new Americans."

While one cannot dispute that "the greatest obstacle to the interweaving of
blacks, Latinos, and Asians into the fabric of American life is not so much
the immigrants themselves or the great masses of the American people; it is
the American elite (p. 277)," Barone is deluding himself if he is implying

that the American elite have accepted the blacks, Italians, and the Jews.
He is careful not to identify this American elite as the White Anglo-Saxon
Protestants (WASPS). Prejudiced, the WASPS have steadily refused to accept
ethnics, who were not English, Scottish, German, and only the Irish in
relatively recent decades.

Although Poles arrived in Jamestown in 1608, Polish Americans, like most of
Barone's omitted ethnics, have been tolerated but never accepted by either
the American elite or the WASPS. One inescapable conclusion is that Slavs
and Middle Easterners must write their own history to provide Americans with
their contribution, but it is almost guarantied not to gain their universal
acceptance.

Although my grandfather arrived in Detroit in 1885, his great-granddaughter
attorney and medical doctor today are not regarded as "American," due to the
prejudice implied in Barone's book. He would have made a monumental
contribution if the American elite truly embraced the six groups he
identified but why do any ethnics, after many centuries, need approval by
anyone in a so-called democratic society? Barone has merely proved what
social scientists have documented for decades that America's pecking order
continues to operate with its usual efficiency.

The respective ethnic contributions speak for themselves but more critically, the
blood that all of the ethnics have spilled in defense of America. Ethnics do not need the
approval either of Barone or his snobbish American elite.

Retired Judge Don Binkowski
 

 

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