American Society

Social scientists have long debated the relative influence of individualism and community in shaping the American political culture. Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton (1985) make the case that American nationalism is essentially Eurocentric, based in large measure upon the values and norms of the Anglo elements and groups within society and representative in many instances of the British legal and social traditions. While recognizing that this is the case, Aldon Morris (1984) suggests that in a society which promotes assimilation as a key to success, the so-called color line which separates minorities within American society and gives rise to racism and inter-ethnic conflict is an equally significant determinant of American political culture. This essay will consider the relative significance of individualism and community in American social and political culture, arguing that this culture is as Bellah, et al (1985) suggest fractionalized and conflicted with regard to the competing demands of individualism and assimilation.

Bellah, et al (1985) make the case that the normative value which has shaped American society dating back to the colonial era is individualism coupled with the requirement that Americans must make something of themselves through work and through their contributions to society. Underachievement is antithetical to this particular view while the question of what constitutes community in the view of these authors is open to debate.

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nstitutionalized racism exhibited by the police departments, elements of the law itself, and the very norms and mores that facilitated segregation and mitigated against a heterogeneous community. Morris (1984) views segregation as having provided the constraining yet nurturing environment out of which a complex African-American urban society developed and the black Church as the institutional center of the modern civil rights movement. Where Bellah, et al (1985) see American community as largely if not exclusively Eurocentric and possessed of various forms of bias and prejudice against minorities and Jews in the form of anti-Semitism, Morris (1984) contends that African-Americans responded to these pressures by creating their own unique communities and using them as a political base from which social activism emerged. Morris (1984) recognizes that such variables as language, race, and ethnicity separate minority communities from the American mainstream and also functions as the foundation of community culture. Bellah, et al (1985) would agree that this is the case and would also agree with Morris (1984) that the civil rights movement was the end result of communal political activity that was spurred in part by the organizin

Category: Government - A