미국의 다문화주의의 전개와 현주소

Development and Current State of Multiculturalism in the American Society

The multiculturalism of American society is approached in two ways. The first is a conceptual one in which the whole development of multiculturalism is reviewed. The cause, proceed, debate, and retreat of multiculturalism are identified and discussed. The second is an empirical approach in which the way Americans think of minorities is analyzed by using a national survey data. Here I hypothesize as follows. Since the multiculturalism has developed longer than half a century by now, Americans are considerably generous to the cultural differences of minorities. However, since assimilationism has been deeply rooted in American culture since the colonial period, the ideology that the minorities should give up their cultural uniqueness is not washed away that easily. An analysis of General Social Survey 2002 suggests that even though Americans principally allow the minorities to keep the right to their cultural uniqueness, they still feel the need of the minorities adjusting to the mainstream for the smooth functioning of American society. Americans responds to multiculturalism differently depending upon their own racial and ethnic identity. The minorities have a very positive attitude to such ideology while the whites have passive posture. When the determinants of the attitudes towards multiculturalism are analyzed in a regression analysis, it turns out that educational attainment and political ideology has strongest impacts on the attitude. On the other hand, age, sex, region of residence, and religious affiliation does not have significant impacts. When all the aspects of multiculturalism are considered, I conclude the multuculturalism takes a firm root in the American society regardless of recent outbreaks of terrorist attacks.