Beyond the Melting Pot Reconsidered

characters in New York consists ofwhites, Asians, Hispanics, and blacks subdivided by a welter of ethnic divisions that draw strength from familial, cultural and emotional connections; from the fact that it often makes political, economic, or social sense to organize and act politically on the basis ofethnic identities; and from immigrants' desire to distance themselves from groups with whom they are lumped on the basis of race. Will these ethnic alignments and divisions be important thirty fiveor forty years from now the same time that's elapsed since the publication of Beyond the Melting Pot? Having begun my remarks with a cautionary note on the risks of making predictions, I hesitate to say. If the United States is the permanently unfinished country, as Nathan Glazer has written in another context, to an even greater degree the same is true of New York City (1988:54). Perhaps it's best, then, to end by coming back to the very last sentence of BeyondtheMelting Pot. "the American nationality is still forming: its processes are mysterious, and the final form, if there is ever to be a final form, is at yet unknown" ([1963] 1970:315).