America's Banquet of Cultures

The melting pot is a myth according to Fernandez who shows that the United States is and always has been a banquet of cultures. As he argues the best way to deal with the more than 20 million new immigrants since 1965 is to accept recognize and eagerly explore the differences among the American people.Fernandez seeks to forge a positive national consensus based on two building blocks. First the nation''s many ethnic groups can be a powerful source of unprecedented economic artistic and scientific creativity. Secondly the nation''s many ethnic groups offer a way to erase the black/white dichotomy which masks the shared injustices of millions of European Asian African Native and Latino Americans. This is a provocative analysis of how we arrived at our current ethnic and racial dilemmas and what can be done to move beyond them. Scholars and students of American immigration and social policy as well as concerned citizens will find the book equally rewarding.