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The Enigma of Ethnicity: AnotherAmerican Dilemma. By Wilbur Zelinsky. (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2001. xx, 315 pp. Cloth, $39.95, ISBN 0-87745-749-2. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-87745-750-6.)
Wilbur Zelinsky calls ethnicity an enigma, but his feeling about it is no mystery. He thinks it a very bad thing and that it operates in close partnership with "cryptoracism," the "oppression with a human face" that has replaced the frankly avowed racism of yesteryear. In this he agrees with other recent commentators who argue that to speak of "ethnicity" obscures the fact that race is what really matters. He also has lots of company in endorsing "multiculturalism," but he subjects these and other terms to elaborate analysis and situates them in a broad cultural and historical context.
Zelinsky has no problem with "ethnic groups"; he definitely approves...