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Book Review: Creating Ethnicity: The Process of Ethnogenesis

Explicating in detail the process that John Higham called "pluralistic integration," Gerber shows, in this splendid book, how the American political system encouraged expressions of ethnic Americanization by German and Irishimmigrants in Buffalo. The Germans arrived bringing a diversity of sectional, religious, class, occupational and political loyalties; yet they rapidly became German Americans by participating in a political system that was easy for white immigrants to penetrate. Under the 1846 Constitution of New York State, which lowered court fees to make naturalization easy, immigrants who had been naturalized for only ten days could vote. Since there were no state registration laws until 1859, many may have cast their ballots before the laws allowed. There was no want of issues to activate the immigrants---ethnic and religious conflicts over public schools, parochial schools, language, the use ofalcohol, the Sabbath and the use of tax money for churchrelated institutions. They flocked to Democratic Party ward meetings and caucuses, particularly to show ethnic solidarity in protest against nativist Protestants, shown by Gerber to be an ethnic group, too. In addition to the Democratic Party, the main vehicle for the expression of ethnic Americanization, they joined militia and volunteer fire companies. Their interests and claims were ethnic, but the rhetoric and symbols they used invariably were American, as when German butchers presented themselves in white frocks and scarlet sashes in the annual Fourth ofJuly parade. The comparisons between the Irish and the Germans with regard to economic mobility are instructive, even for our own time. Most ofthe factors that add up to mobility were present for the Germans in contrast to the Irish. German immigrants came mostly as families, many