University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press
Pages: 246
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-61147-935-5 • Hardback • March 2017 • $123.00 • (£95.00)
978-1-61147-937-9 • Paperback • September 2018 • $50.99 • (£39.00)
978-1-61147-936-2 • eBook • March 2017 • $48.00 • (£37.00)
Richard Moss is assistant professor of history at Harrisburg Area Community College, Harrisburg, PA.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1—The Path to the New Ethnicity
Chapter 2—“Is This Any Way For Nice Ethnic Boys to Behave?” The Blue-Collar Origins of the New Ethnicity
Chapter 3—Instincts, Feelings, and Intimacies: The Intellectual Consolidation of the New Ethnicity
Chapter 4—“I’m a Practical Guy Who Wants to Live in a City That Gives People of All Kinds a Chance to Share”: The Struggle for the Progressive New Ethnicity
Chapter 5—Consuming Roots: Popular Culture Representations of the New Ethnicity
Chapter 6—“Let Them Do For Themselves Like We Do!”: The Right’s Appropriation of the New Ethnicity
Conclusion—“Loose Cannons,” Reagan Democrats, and Legacies
Bibliography
The undoing of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society initiatives was fulfilled by its success. In his examination of the “New Ethnic” identity in urban New Jersey of the 1970s, historian Moss (Harrisburg Area Community College) explains how activists among the old core of the Democratic northeast, particularly the Irish and Italian working class, exploited community anger and fear over two factors. First, there was resentment in urban neighborhoods over federal aid to black and Latino families integrating into the local mainstream. Second, community activists asserted that previous ethnic communities had not needed social services, and invoked a mythic past of bootstrap self-reliance rather than recognizing the privilege of being included as white in the postwar US. The author describes the social and intellectual creation of the northeastern “Reagan Democrats,” laying out the recent political implications in the thread of social history pioneered by David Roediger in Working toward Whiteness (CH, Apr'06, 43-4875) and extended by Matthew Jacobsen’s Special Sorrows (CH, Sep'95, 33-0614) and Roots Too (CH, Jan'07, 44-2879). The eventual acceptance of Reagan political conservatism and deregulation came at a price paid in working-class economic stability, but one willingly paid. “Racial and cultural antipathy was powerful enough to turn white ethnics and workers from their [own] self-interest.” A sophisticated but accessible work. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic levels/libraries
— Choice Reviews