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Book <strong>Review</strong>s 207<br />
These questions are never explicitly debated but beckon considera-<br />
tion. If the relation between tolerance and economics can be submit-<br />
ted to analysis, why not the relation between intolerance and<br />
economics?<br />
While the authors do list several factors, such as the loss of man-<br />
ufacturing jobs, the economic shift toward high-tech industries,<br />
budget cuts, and the crisis in public education, to explain the fact<br />
that, presently, African <strong>American</strong>s and Puerto Ricans constitute the<br />
bulk of what usually is referred to as a growing "underclass" in<br />
<strong>American</strong> cities, they do not advance a cogent and sustained analy-<br />
sis. One wishes for a more pronounced perspective, which would<br />
have added intellectual depth to one of the most ardently debated<br />
issues of our time. Nevertheless, for the careful reader, the message<br />
stands out clearly enough.<br />
-Esther Romeyn<br />
Esther Romeyn is a doctoral candidate in America Studies at the University of<br />
Minnesota.<br />
Notes<br />
I. For an enlightening overview of the changes in conceptions of ethnicity since<br />
the 1960s, see Richard D. Alba, Ethnic Identity: The Transformation of White America<br />
(New Haven: Yale University Press, lggo), 16--21.<br />
2. Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes,<br />
Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians and Irish ofNew York City (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1g70).<br />
3. Thomas SowelI, Ethnic America: A History (New York: Basic Books, 1981).
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