Steinberg states that the blacks exclusion from the industrial jobs of the North stalled their assimilation process. Now, however, the very same reasons for their stall of upwards social mobility, is being propagated from within: the internal stigma surrounding assimilation. I belive that if blacks are to climb the social class system, it is imperative that they assimilate and start ``acting white.''2 This, however, is not limited to the blacks of this country; this may be applied to whichever ethnic, or racial group, to sexuality, in regards to gay right, to feminism &c. Pluralism is both a curse and a blessing: if it is not handled correctly, it can entrap and chain a people within a system of class and ethnic dominance. On the other hand if it is handled with care, the same care that you would give carring a new born baby, it can empower. Sadly enough, this country has chosen the former.
Steinberg puts it best when he states racial and ethnic pluralism is very unstable. [I, p. 256] He argued that a pluralism based on systematic inequalities is, by definition, unstable because ethnic groups at the ``bottom'' of the pile, will have little reason to maintain the very items that make them different. In other words, the ethnic, or racial minority will have very little incentive to keep what makes them different (read: what allows for their group's stigmatism) alive. Instead, those at the bottom will drop, or alter their ethnic and racial differences in hopes of being able to achieve upwards class mobility.
As we approach the elections of the year 2000 in America, and possibly the four years reign of Lieberman as vice-president, it would be interesting to see whether his Jewish cultural values will hold up against the strain of the latent social, political and class stigma associated with the resident Jews in America.