アメリカ史における分裂と統合 : 南北戦争、民族集団・人種対立、ティーパーティ運動

Abstract

The contradictions between unity and disunity are interesting characteristics in American history. A famous clause in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal”, is a typical unifying factor of American society. However, in spite of this universal declaration of human rights, minorities have suffered from racial and ethnic discriminations throughout American history. For example, not only non-whites were excluded from civil rights, but Catholic immigrants were also discriminated in the North. At the beginning those minorities resisted those discriminations while proclaiming the unifying logic: “all men are created equal”. In the early 20th century, however, the non-WASP white population such as the Irish, Jews and Italians began to bring up the famous logic of “Melting Pot” or “Cultural Pluralism” to combat ethnic discriminations. Because of these resistances, John F. Kennedy could be elected to the first Catholic President in 1960. The non-white population, on the other hand, organized the Civil Rights Movements in the mid-1950s and succeeded in the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which abolished the Jim Crow system in the South. This victory gave them legal rights as citizens, but they were still discriminated economically as well as socially. Black people therefore organized the “Black Nationalism Movement”, which aimed at nursing their racial pride and called for social reforms such as affirmative action, whereas non-whites began to support “Multiculturalism” as a new logic for American integration. These historical processes in the racial and ethnic relations show us flexibility and elasticity in the formation of American Identity. In other words, minorities have been successful in changing the majority’s logic of integration as a result of their racial and ethnic struggles. These historical processes, I think, give many insights to the Japanese.