Like Uncle Ben, in the television commercial for Uncle Ben’s Catchup, I’ve come here to sell a product.  My product is American studies.  I think it is important that the Russian people know more about the United States, and that Russian educators and researchers are actively involved in studying, writing and teaching about the United States.

Now, whether this makes you like the United States better is another matter entirely.  I have always believed that the main purpose of non-Americans studying the United States is to develop a better understanding of the complexity of American society and institutions.  It is of little consequence, as far as I am concerned, whether people in other countries come to like us better as a result of studying the United States; indeed, in some instances, the more people learn about the United States the more they dislike Americans.  Far more important, in my view, is that people outside of the United States understand the complexity of the democratic process in a heterogeneous nation like the United States, and the limits that this complexity places on governmental decisions and the exercise of American power.

There are two images of the United States that prevail in many parts of the world, and both are simplistic distortions that lead to misleading conclusions about American domestic and foreign policies.

One image, the one that you would find in many textbooks and the one that is common among people of my generation, is that the United States is a highly fragmented society, united only by a common commitment to materialistic gain and exploitation.  It is the image of a consumer's paradise governed by a small, wealthy group of financiers, industrialists, politicians and media moguls who disregard the welfare of the poor and minorities, and who pursue a foreign policy that reflects the capitalistic goal of accumulating wealth.   America is depicted as a nation consumed by divisive social problems such as racial discrimination, unemployment, poverty and crime, and driven in its foreign policy by the imperialistic aspirations of the ruthless capitalists who control it.

It is assumed, moreover, that, as the richest and most powerful country in the world, the United States could solve all of its social problems and conduct its foreign policy on any basis it chose.  Our failure to do so is attributed to the fragmentation of our society, the shallowness of our culture and the dominance of materialistic values.

Americans usually blame our media, popular television programs, rock music, and films, for this distorted view of American society and culture.  This explanation is especially popular among American foreign policy specialists who worry about what people in other countries think about the United States.

The difficulty with attributing this negative view of the United States to the media is that those people in other countries who probably have the most exposure to American media, and American popular culture, the young people, particularly teenagers, generally have a very positive image of the United States.  Drawing many of their impressions from films and television programs that exaggerate the riches and happiness of the average American, young people commonly regard the United States as a wealthy country in which life is fast and exciting.  Their image is that in America it is possible to become whatever you want, and, like those who harbor a negative image of America, that the United States can do whatever it wants.

The American media, then, project images that are both positive and negative.  How people in other countries regard America, what conclusions they draw from our popular culture, has a lot more to do with their own preconceptions about America and their concerns about the impact of the United States on their traditions, economy, and national goals, than on whether the characters in «Santa Barbara» say good things or bad things about the United States.

More problematic, in my view, is that the American media, and the popular American culture that they export, project a simplistic and superficial understanding of American society and culture that often leads to serious misunderstandings about American domestic and foreign policies.

Part of what makes American popular culture so popular in other countries is that you do not have to be an American to understand it; it does not demand sophisticated knowledge about American values.  Almost anyone in any part of the world can relate to the stories and characters in American television programs and films.  It is a culture that was formed in response to the needs of immigrants, people who came to America without knowing much about it, but were anxious to learn and become Americans.  American popular culture is appealing because it is easy to penetrate and instantaneously intelligible.

One of the most appealing messages of American popular culture is that in America each person can become whatever he wants to be -- there are no artificial limits to human potential.  Whether this promise of America is interpreted as the fulfillment of each person’s god given rights, or as the justification for irresponsible and selfish behavior that destroys social cohesion, it promotes a misconception that Americans, and by extension the United States, have the power to accomplish whatever they wants.  It is a misconception that, in my view leads to misunderstandings that impede the development of better relations and mutual understanding between the United States and other countries.

What is needed is a more critical and realistic understanding of how democratic decisions are made in such a culturally diverse nation as the United States. This requires knowing more about how American traditions of decentralization and local autonomy sustain diversity, the basis for national unity in universalistic conceptions of individual rights and democracy, and how Americans arrive at national social and foreign policies in a heterogeneous democratic society with powerful competing interest groups.

To develop this understanding it is necessary to look at how the United States manages to reconcile its diversity with national unity, a process that is central to America's sense of peoplehood and identity.  There is a tension between forces for unification and diversification in all societies, but heterogeneity makes this tension especially intense in the United States.  In constantly striving to reconcile these opposing forces, the United States has developed a sense of national identity and an institutional framework that accommodate people of almost all ancestries and faiths.  At a time when, in many parts of the world, religious and ethnic divisions are being tragically reasserted, there has been considerable interest in how the United States has forged a relatively flexible approach to national identity in responding to diversity and unity.

How we manage to maintain a balance between these two forces, to reconcile diversity with national unity, is one of the most fruitful areas of current writing and research in the field of American studies.   This scholarship has provided new insights into the way the porous quality of American nationality mediates between feelings of identity based upon particularistic religious, ethnic and racial affiliations, and a more unifying sense of identity based upon a conception of universal abstract rights.  It is also at the center of the debate in the United States over multiculturalism, and it has generated considerable controversy over the shape and design of history, social studies, language and literature curricula in both secondary schools and universities.

By focusing on the lives of ordinary people and emphasizing the diversity of the American people and the exploitation of the powerless, the "new" social historians of the past twenty-five years, as well as specialists in the study of the structure of language and literature, seriously undermined the adequacy and coherence of the conventional narrative of American culture.  Their emphasis on institutional patterns and power relationships (social mobility, child rearing, sexuality, patterns of work, family organization, etc.) also diminished the significance of the values and abstract principles on which the ideology of national unity was based.  The resulting incoherence of the story of the American nation, as well as a more general fear of "disuniting" America, reawakened the interest of intellectuals in cultural values and in reintegrating the American narrative.  This has prompted some to call for research based on a "pluralistic integration" model of American development, and others to demand the restoration of the balance in the school curricula between unum and pluribus.  At the heart of these concerns is a discussion of how well and in what ways we have succeeded in managing our social and cultural heterogeneity within a matrix of national unity.

These two traditions, diversity and unity, are deeply rooted in American history.  Almost from the beginning of permanent settlement in North America there was a conviction that a well-ordered society should sustain the diversity of its component groups.  This localism was supported by a condition of decentralization that enabled local districts to remain autonomous communities and by a belief that this autonomy was a key to liberty.  In the 19th Century, drawing on the romantic premise that differences were valuable and should take precedence over conformity to a universal standard, this communal localism came to embrace a pluralistic conception of society initially based on regional and religious differences.  More recently, pluralism has been redefined in terms of ethnic and racial differences, and has provided groups who regard themselves as out of power with the means to resist absorption.

Running counter to this pluralistic conception of society was the idea of a unified society.

There was a powerful desire  in the 19th Century to build a national republic, to make a homogeneous future from a heterogeneous past.  Looking to eliminate boundaries between groups, those favoring national unity drew on another tradition, rooted in some aspects of seventeenth century Calvinism and in eighteenth century political theory, that emphasized the equality of individuals.  For them the well-ordered society consisted of detached and mobile individuals held together by a common set of beliefs, an "American Creed" of abstract principles that any individual could adopt.  After the Civil War, in the drive for national integration, intellectuals elaborated the meaning of this democratic creed, and American business and professional leaders built unifying networks of communications and social control.

There are many factors that have shaped the ways in which American have sought to reconcile these two traditions, the traditions of diversity and national unity.  I should like to mention just three of them, which I believe are particularly important to understanding this reconciliation. The three conditions are:  social equality; cultural diversity; and a fluid social structure.

Social equality is a condition and ideology with a long history in America, longer than that of any other modern society. Throughout most of our history, social equality has meant that each individual is equal to every other individual before the law.   Everyone has the same legal rights.  No one group of people has legal rights superior to those of any other group. National integrationist took this to mean the equality of individuals.

The basis of social equality in America was that almost from the very beginning there were no privileged social groups in America.  In Western Europe, as well as Japan, and other non-western societies, there were many groups that had special privileges.  This was the legacy of feudalism.  Because of feudalism, many countries had entrenched elite groups with special privileges.  In most western European societies, for example, there was an established church, a landed gentry, with special governmental privileges and influence, and laws that guaranteed that the wealth of the country would remain in the hands of just a few people.  In England the majority of land was controlled by just twenty families until the end of the 1920's.  The reason for this were feudal traditions like primogeniture and entail that guaranteed that land holding could not be broken up and that government could not change the way in which wealth was inherited.

America had no feudal traditions.  It was a young country that was settled by the middle classes and the poor.  Some wealthy aristocrats did settle in America, and they brought with them feudal practices and traditions, but they could not enforce them.  The simple reason for this was the abundance of land in America.  The land was so vast that when people wanted to escape a particular law they just moved away and settled elsewhere.  There was no military force sufficiently powerful or large enough to enforce such traditions in the vast expanse of the American wilderness.

By the time of the American Revolution Americans had become accustomed to a society in which virtually all individuals enjoyed the same privileges.  When they created a new government, they created one which reflected this condition.  It was a government in which everyone had the same rights before the law.

Two developments in the early history of the United States reinforced these conditions of social equality. One was the development of political parties, which were inclusive rather than exclusive.  In the United States anyone can join any political party.  There are no dues or any other requirements for membership.  You do not even have to vote to be a member of a political party.  All you have to do is declare that you are a member.  The other development in America’s early history which reinforced social equality was rapid economic expansion, especially in the years between 1815 and 1850.   The result was that it became easy for people to overcome disadvantages in family background and accumulate wealth.

There were major exceptions to the individual legal equality.  Blacks, Native Americans and women were all discriminated against in the law.  But the principle of individual legal equality was firmly entrenched in America by the 1830's, and what remained was to expand this principle to include those who were denied legal equality.  This was no trivial task.  Slavery came to an end only after a bloody civil war, and it was not until after two decades of agitation and civil rights legislation in the 1950's and 1960's that Blacks had equal voting rights.  In the case of woman it took a constitutional amendment in 1920 before they could vote.  But I believe that today it is fair to say that all American are equal before the law, and, therefore, social equals.

Social equality shaped the American personality in several important ways.  Most importantly, it reaffirmed the equality of all individuals in America, and this was the basis of a unifying ideology which transcended differences in  race, ethnicity, language, or religion.  The nation was defined as a disembodied state held together by the commitment of individuals to a common set of abstract principles that guaranteed liberty and legal equality. Citizenship was not based upon ancestry, national origin or creed.  Anyone who enters the United States legally can become a citizen, after a period of residence, by simply swearing fealty to the principles of the United States Constitution.

It would be a mistake, however, to ignore the significance of race, ethnicity and religion as ways in which Americans identify themselves.  With what is arguably the most heterogeneous population of any major country in the world, and in the absence of a powerful centralized national state, America early permitted innumerable separations to flourish.  This localization of power was the basis of a pluralistic conception of the United States that encouraged Americans to maintain their attachments to particularistic subcultures.  The result is that at the same time Americans regard themselves as individuals, equal to all other Americans, they see themselves as part of discrete groups that separate them from other Americans.

The source of our heterogeneity, of course, was immigration.  Because we had an abundance of land and an eager desire to exploit it, we welcomed immigrants, with few restrictions, from the very beginning of settlement right up to the years just before WWI.  At times immigration has been unusually heavy.  In the years between 1880 and 1920, more than 23 million immigrants settled in the United States.  They and their children and grandchildren accounted for more than one-half of the population of the United States by 1970.  Even today, though we restrict the number of people who can immigrate, our immigration policies are the most liberal of any developed country in the world; from 1980 to 1990 more than ten million people legally immigrated to the United States.

Because America is such a heterogeneous nation, Americans have learned to tolerate differences among people.  There is no one group with sufficient dominance in America to force its customs, traditions and values on the rest of the people.  As a result Americans have had to learn to respect the right of each individual to have his own beliefs and custom.  They have come to tolerate diversity.

Americans are a nation of people, then, who simultaneously define themselves as  individuals and by their membership in differentiated groups. This was revealed in the 1980 Census of the United States, which for the first time, asked respondents to voluntarily identify their ethnicity.  To the surprise of many, almost everyone who responded to the Census identified himself as belonging to a particular ethnic group.  The results of the Census seemed to confirm that we not only think of ourselves as Americans, but as members of distinctive ethnic groups as well.  Accordingly, the United States must be a pluralistic society in which people are divided by their loyalties to particularistic ethnic traditions.

But this conclusion was disputed by a follow-up study of the 1980 Census which looked at patterns of intermarriage between different ethnic groups.  What this study revealed was an extraordinarily high rate of intermarriage, and intermarriage is generally regarded by social scientists as the best indicator of assimilation.  In l930, for example, less than 30% of persons of Italian ancestry married non-Italians; in 1980, more than 80% married non-Italians.  Similarly, in 1950 the rate of intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews was less than 3%, while in 1980 the rate of intermarriage soared to over 50%.  Subsequent studies of other ethnic groups and of intermarriage rates between Asians and non-Asians corroborated these findings.  Although intermarriage between Blacks and whites has lagged behind the intermarriage of other groups, it now occurs with enough frequency that there has been a demand for a category designating mixed racial background in the Census for the year 2000.  The studies of intermarriage indicate that America is a highly assimilated society in which ancestry is no longer a barrier to social acceptance.  What this suggests is that, despite their differences,  Americans are merging into one unified culture.

But if this is so, how do we explain the persistence of ethnic identity.  It may well be that America is both a pluralistic and a highly assimilated society.  The more individualistic and assimilated we have become, the more we seek some group membership to provide us with an identity.  Unfortunately, the theoretical models of analysis that we usually use to explain the course of immigration and assimilation in America are incapable of reconciling pluralism and individualism.  They assume that America is moving in one direction or the other, but never in both directions at the same time.

It was the fluidity of the social structure in the United States which made it possible for Americans to reconcile unity, based upon individual equality, with diversity, based upon their enduring attachments to the diverse origins and traditions of their forebears.  Fluidity allowed Americans to separate their private and public cultures.  In their public culture, which characterizes economic and political social intercourse, Americans see themselves as individuals united by a common set of beliefs.  In their private culture, which characterizes their most intimate social relationships, they remain rooted in particularistic subcultures.  Americans are a schizophrenic people who regard themselves as American and something else -- it is only in the United States that people commonly designate themselves as African Americans, Italian Americans, Irish Americans, German Americans, Jewish Americans, etc.  Indeed the practice of identifying yourself as American and something else is so pervasive that even those people whose ancestors settled in America before the Revolution have taken to thinking of themselves as WASPS, White Anglo Saxon Americans.

What makes it possible in the United States for people to see themselves as German or Italian, but at the same time as an American equal to all other Americans, is that, for the most part, their group identification is voluntary.  They change ethnicity or religion almost as easily as they can change political party.  The only exception is race, and even here the barriers that separate people are beginning to weaken.

This voluntarism is a product of social fluidity.  In comparison to other societies in Western Europe and in Asia, America is a remarkably fluid society.  People move around all the time - they move around geographically, and, perhaps more importantly, they move economically and socially as well.

The rate of population turnover in America has been fairly consistent throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  It has also been fairly consistent in cities and in rural settlements.  We have statistics that go all the way back to 1800.  What they show is that from that time to the present, anywhere from 40% to 60% of the population will change within one decade.  That is, within the short time of ten years, 40% to 60% of the population will leave to be replaced by a new population - and it is the same for both urban and rural communities. It was an American, one historian has argued,  who must have invented the rocking chair - for, it allows you to be in motion even when you are resting.

Not only do Americans move from place to place, but they also move from one occupational level to another.  Career mobility is much more extensive and pervasive in America than in any other major developed country.  Throughout most of American history about one-third of the children of blue collar ( unskilled and semiskilled) workers have moved up into white collar (clerical and managerial) positions.  Even within the same generation there is a remarkable amount of mobility.  About one-fourth of all men who entered the labor market as manual workers end their careers in middle class occupations.  There are some, of course, who start in middle class occupations and backslide into blue collar occupations, but their numbers are relatively small.

One result of this mobility is that most Americans believe that any person can get ahead as long as he or she tries.  In America you can recreate yourself.  No one is permanently consigned to memberships in a particular social class, or other group based upon ethnicity, religion or national origin.  Group affiliation is voluntary, and, so too is diversity.  Americans maintain their diversity because they choose to do so.  This has made diversity itself one of America’s unifying ideals, and a part of the democratic creed that fosters national unity in the United States.