Review - American Jewish Archives

Book Reviews 203
policy of brutality, thus initiating the future pattern of European-
Indian relations. Moreover, the history of race relations in New
York - in the perception of Binder and Reimers one of the most en-
during troubling aspects of New York history-was ominous from
its inception. Under Dutch rule the institution of slavery was rather
loosely defined, but its legitimacy was beyond questioning. Under
English rule, when the dire need for labor made slavery pivotal to
the colony's economy, the legal status of bondsmen gradually wors-
ened as owners defined their slaves as "propertyl' with few or no
rights. Although the American Revolution and the influence of En-
lightenment ideals did stimulate abolitionist sentiment, black New
Yorkers were not granted equal citizenship rights - a situation that
prepared a legacy of continued racial prejudice and discrimination.
By starting the ethnic history of New York in the colonial era,
rather than at the conventional point of departure (with the mass
migrations of the Irish and the Germans in the 1830s and 1840s),
Binder and Reimers subtly challenge the dominant historical pic-
ture in which the majority status of Anglo-Saxon culture is taken as a
given. As the Dutch and Anglo-Saxons reach upper-class status,
however, they disappear from view. At higher social ranks, ethnic-
ity is somehow translated into class. This is unfortunate, because
the ways in which "Knickerbocker" and especially "WASP" culture
achieved and maintained a social and cultural hegemony in New
York, using "descent" not only as a basis of exclusivity but as a
grounds for social and cultural exclusion, go unexamined.
The fact that the upper echelons of the ethnic and racial hierarchy
in New York apparently fall outside the frame of what Binder and
Reimers consider the "ethnic" history of New York is curious con-
sidering the fact that, in other respects, the authors do present a
long-term perspective that takes the transformations of ethnic
groups into account. Their approach conforms to a model in which
ethnicity in America is seen as a form of solidarity rooted in com-
monalities of culture, experience, and interest. Each ethnic group's
distinctive experience is seen as the product of a complex interplay
between the group's characteristics at the point of entry and the
conditions confronting the group at the time and place of settlement.
Ethnic solidarity generally is most pronounced in the first two gen-
erations after settlement, when group commonalities are strongest