FELIKS GROSS: BETWEEN ASSIMILATION AND MULTICULTURALISM

FELIKS GROSS: BETWEEN ASSIMILATION AND MULTICULTURALISMAuthor(s): Jerome KraseSource: The Polish Review, Vol. 52, No. 2 (2007), pp. 171-187Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Polish Institute of Arts & Sciences ofAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25779663 .

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The Polish Review, Vol. LII, No. 2, 2007:171-187 ?2007 The Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America

Jerome Krase

FELIKS GROSS: BETWEEN ASSIMILATION AND MULTICULTURALISM

This essay is an attempt to combine reminiscences as well as to serve as a brief assessment of the work of my good friend, colleague, and

mentor Professor Feliks Gross. To appreciate the theoretical and practical contributions of Feliks Gross to the study of Community in its various

forms, from nation study to local neighborhood, in general, and to my own

work in particular, biographical, and indeed autobiographical annotation must be made. Long before Jacques Derrida and other post-modernists insisted on deconstructing the words of the classics, and by extension those

who authored them, Karl Mannheim had advised that the distance between

theory and ideology was not as great as one might assume, or might hope. Mannheim's version of the Sociology of Knowledge emphasized the

importance of understanding the social position of both science and scientists in attaining maximum objectivity. Another "classical" sociologist,

Max Weber, also discussed social scientists as activists, researchers, and

teachers, cautioning that social scientists must distinguish between what they observe in society and what he would like to see. Modernists and Post

Modernists alike understand that biography, and therefore personal and social values, influence, and perhaps even undermine, scientific objectivity. It is in this way that biography "informs" our works.

As an accomplished interdisciplinary social scientist, Feliks Gross studied how human social values are obtained via the various processes of socialization. The end product of our individual socialization is our personal biography. No social product is value-free, but by making clear one's point of-view, the error due to bias can be reduced. Being political as well as

social animals, social scientists also have political orientations, which affect the way they see the world, the problems they choose to study, their

methods, the conclusions they reach and the suggestions they make as

possible solutions to those problems. Gross is no exception to these

sociological rules and as a "pragmatist"; he not only believed in a connection

between how we think and how we act in society, but that with the

acquisition of humanistic values, we in fact "ought to" act as we think. In

this regard, his, and my own, research and writing parallel our civic activism

aimed at reducing inter-group conflict, increasing the efficacy of democratic

institutions, and achieving the maximum degree of social and economic

equality for all members of society.



172 The Polish Review

Feliks Gross discussing issues with friends and colleagues at his Manhattan

apartment in the spring of2001.

Gross understood that the National versus the Multicultural State, and the tension between common citizenship and cultural diversity, is

ultimately a practical local community problem. The question of "How is it

possible for different groups to peacefully share residential territory?" is also a symbolic or semiotic one. Gross argued that the elementary bonds of human society, which are the roots of legitimacy of any political state, can be reduced to two: Common Descent which is expressed in consanguinity or

kinship, and territoriality, most often recognized in neighborhood. Ernest Renan defined the concept of the nation as "... a soul, a spiritual principle. Only two things, actually, constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is the past, the other is the present." (Renan, 1996: 52) Modern nations are a new concept and a result of "fusion of population which composed them."

(Renan, 1996:44) As opposed to most other countries in the Old World, the United

States is essentially a nation of immigrants. America was ethnically diverse from the very beginning and therefore United States citizenship was destined to be all-inclusive. Recent American history, however, continues to demonstrate that this is a constant work in progress. According to Gross the

working conditions for a (democratic) culturally plural society are

recognition of the right to, and respect for, different norms, cultures and

goals; a set of accepted and shared norms; acceptance of rules of the game and proper procedure; and legitimacy of the norms of a pluralistic state.

Following his lead, my own modest contribution to understanding and



Feliks Gross: Between Assimilation and Multiculturalism 173

managing cultural diversity is the development of visually based pedagogy for multicultural education and visual research methods studying interethnic relations in urban community settings. (Krase 2004a and 2004b)

The way that we express the passage of time can make the same

period seem to be longer or shorter. By changing the temporal phraseology, statements can also seem more or less profound. For example "one hundred

years ago" sounds longer, but less profound, than "a century ago." In this

regard we ought to celebrate the life of Feliks Gross (1906-2006) as his

"Century." Often, when we are in the middle of an event, it might seem as

though time is "dragging on" yet when it over we feel as if the "time has flown." In this virtual and existential context it seems like only yesterday that I first met Feliks Gross, but actually it was more than a third of a

century ago. At that time ?1970? he was about the same age I am today as I write this essay

? 64. Although it seems like ages ago now, I was then a

"young," long-haired, semi-hippy, untenured instructor in the Department of

Sociology at Brooklyn College pursuing my doctoral degree at New York

University in Greenwich Village. I had been hired to teach in the college's evening School of General Studies programs.

The occasion of our first encounter was more or less routine. The administration of Brooklyn College required annual evaluations of untenured faculty. The college had a well-deserved reputation as an

institution of teaching excellence, and mandatory annual evaluations therefore included observations of classroom teaching. The Sociology

Department at Brooklyn College has always been a very democratic

organization, and even though Feliks Gross was a distinguished senior

faculty member he was assigned to observe my class. He also taught a

popular graduate class for Master's Degree students in the evening. During my "command performance" I gave it my best, erudite, effort and believed that I had done exceptionally well. As I recall, I lectured on the latest, as yet un-deconstructed, sociological canon of "Structural-Functionalism."

Undoubtedly I did so with suitably deferential references to the ethnographic work of Bronislaw Malinowski among the Trobriand Islanders. When the class ended, Feliks called me over to his side and spoke to me and in what I

thought was an extremely fatherly tone. He gently explained that although he thought it was not a particularly good class, he believed that I had

"potential" and therefore would give me an "excellent" review. His gifts of

kindness did not end that evening and, despite his passing, continue to this

day.

In the late 1960s, Brooklyn College's Sociology Department had

many accomplished senior faculty. Feliks was one of a few senior professors who reached out, and not only "down," to the younger faculty. It should be

noted that the professorate of CUNY had been accidentally enhanced by the

great scourges of the Twentieth Century: Nazi Germany, Soviet

Communism, and American Racism. European Refugees, exiles, as well as

African American scholars found a more welcome place in New York City




and many of them gravitated to CUNY. Similarly, the student body of CUNY colleges was composed of students who were children of

immigrants. Most of them were also poor and working class, and therefore had little other opportunity for higher education. At the time, tuition was free for those students who could make the grade.

It might be difficult for most to understand how Feliks Gross and I

could become such good friends. Our biographies are at different ends of a

wide social and economic spectrum. Feliks Gross was born June 17, 1906 in

Krakow which was at that time was part of the semi-autonomous Austrian

province of Galicia and a vibrant center of Polish intellectual and cultural life. He was raised and educated in this beautiful city and studied at the esteemed Jagiellonian University where he earned a Doctorate in

Jurisprudence. On a fellowship to the University of London, he came to know the great anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski whose influence led him into the social sciences. A member of a prominent Jewish Polish family, Gross was a courageous and respected social and political activist as well as a scholar. He was the founder and Director of the Labor Social Science School in Krakow from 1934 to 1938, a committed and energetic labor

lawyer, and a member of the prewar Polish Socialist Party. Despite all his

ample credentials however, he was denied the opportunity for a university appointment as he once put it, "... because of my religion, origin, and

political views." (1986: 563) With his wife Priva, he fled from Poland in 1939, escaping both the

Nazis, and, later, the Soviet Communists, before finally arriving in the United States. After settling in New York City, he became a member of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, which was established in 1942 by Malinowski along with other prominent Polish scholars. The Institute (PIASA) has served as a democratic and independent beacon for Polish scholars and scholarship until Poland again become "free" in 1989.

On the other hand, I was born in the Red Hook Houses, a low income housing project, in Brooklyn, New York to parents hardly able to

provide for their seven children. My own Slavic roots are a version of the

journey of Djuro Kracha as told by Thomas Bell in his novel Out of This Furnace (1976) (1941). As Bell relates, Kracha, a Slovak, came to America in the mid-1880s and made his way from New York to Braddock, Pennsylvania. The ship manifest record at Ellis Island shows that my grandfather, Janos Hrasc, citizen of Hungary, was 25 in 1893 when he left from the port of Bremen for New York City. Upon arrival, as did Djuro, he also set out for Braddock as a laborer. My mother came from a middle-class Sicilian family which was aghast at her youthful marriage to someone outside their tight ethnic circle in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. As to intellectual

aspiration, my father thought the only good reason for me to go to college, rather than to work, was to play football. This I did with a football

scholarship to Indiana University but after two years I left school



Feliks Gross: Between Assimilation and Multiculturalism_175

Feliks Gross's desk at his Manhattan apartment in the spring of2001.

involuntarily. Consequently, I completed both my undergraduate and

graduate education on the GI Bill after volunteering for military service in 1964.

Feliks Gross joined the faculty of the Brooklyn College Sociology Department in 1946 and taught there for thirty-one years before going into semi-retirement in 1977. He also lectured at the CUNY Graduate Center on

political sociology. Over the years his interests expanded to include American issues of civil rights and developing African nations. Over his

long career he held positions at the League of Nations, London School of

Economics, Eastern European Planning Board, and lectured at New York

University, University of Wyoming, University of Virginia, and the Universities of Florence, Paris, Rome, College of Europe. He authored more

than twenty books and countless articles, which have been, published many




different languages. His many honors come from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, Order of Polonia Restituta, a medal from the Polish National Archive, and the Order of the Phoenix from the King of Greece.

In 1970, as a consequence of an ill-planned, and highly politicized, experiment in higher education ?

"Open Enrollment" and "Free Tuition," ~

the student body of CUNY exploded in size and this demographic transition set off a rapid search for new faculty. For various reasons, the hiring of

much of the new talent, including myself, was not as academically selective as it might have been in calmer times. For example, many young full-time instructors and lecturers were hired while they were still in graduate school. In addition CUNY's relatively high teaching loads also meant that the

scholarly requirements for tenure and promotion were commensurately lower. This was to change just as quickly when in the mid 1970s a fiscal crisis hit and CUNY sought reasons to let people, including myself, go.

When I was turned down for tenure, Feliks came to see me. I was expecting another miracle of kindness. Instead, he explained that although he would

strongly support my appeal for reconsideration he also wanted me to know that some excellent sociologists had been denied tenure at Brooklyn College. The decade of the 1970s was a time of divisions in society as well as academe. One was voluntarily or involuntarily placed within class, racial, ethnic, and political categories. Despite protestations to the contrary, this unofficial "ranking" system continues today in many professions including the social sciences and humanities. One unfortunate manifestation of this process is the creation and maintenance of hyphenated "studies"

departmental or program ghettos. To some of my colleagues, I was a freund in stetl [a foreigner in the shtetl] to others I was a working-class white ethnic

who might know of a good auto mechanic for their foreign cars. It was a

period of time in national academe when the appellation "Roman Catholic intellectual" was considered an oxymoron.

I had neither yet read Bell's novel nor searched the Ellis Island database of ship manifests and was still unsure of my own ethnic

background. Feliks Gross helped me to figure it out. I was sure that my mother's family was from Sicily but my last name "Krase" made other Italian Americans a bit suspicious. "Krase" was the name my father had created because it was easier for other people to sound and to spell. His father's name was written "Hrasch" to create the proper Slavic sounding (a version of Hrasc). John (or Jahn) Hrasch was also, according to my father, an Eastern Rite Roman Catholic. Based on that and other clues I was able to

provide him at the time, Feliks hypothesized that I was probably a Polish Ukrainian Uniate. With this Polish and Italian American identity he was able to help me in my profession as did no one else. He placed his considerable Polish and Italian connections at my disposal. Slowly I came to a greater understanding of why he is universally recognized not only for his intellect




but also for his exceptional character, charity and respect for people of any social station.

By the time the much maligned and misunderstood Open Enrollment and Free Tuition ended at CUNY, the system had become "tiered" in several different ways. Along with, or perhaps as a consequence of, the expanding undergraduate remedial programs, the CUNY Graduate and University Center became more important as "The" place for high level

scholarship. In other words, the locus of the Ivory Tower was directed away from the periphery and toward the center. To give me an entree there, Feliks

arranged for me to have a place as the "Program Organizer" of the Eastern

European Section of the Institute for European Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center. I am almost certain that he simply created the position for me. He also wanted to enable other junior faculty to participate at the Graduate Center. Toward this end, he worked with a small group of

accomplished CUNY scholars such as Henry Wasser, Abraham Eisenstadt, Hans Trefousse, Herbert Parmet, and Allan Mandelbaum, to create the CUNY Academy of Humanities and Sciences in 1980. The Board of Directors elected Feliks as the first President, and me as the first Secretary. Over the years the CUNY Academy has well-served its role by holding important conferences and on-going seminars. The CUNY Academy also holds an annual, university-wide, competition for the "Feliks Gross Endowment Award" that is given to emerging scholars for their research and

scholarly achievements. After I demonstrated some small academic "promise", Feliks Gross

surprised and honored me greatly by sponsoring me as a member of the

Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America. Many personal and

professional blessings eventually flowed from this affiliation. It was from

my activities with my new Polish and Polish American friends and

colleagues that I better learned what was meant by the term "community of scholars." He also made it possible for me to go to Poland, to photograph, attempt to learn the language, and to increase my appreciation of high and not so high Polish culture. For a visual sociologist like myself, viewing the

works, and some of the actual settings for the work, of Stanislaw

Wyspianski, was another marvelous cultural gift. I also viewed with awe the

Turn of the Century Exhibition of Polish Modernism 1890-1914 (Koniec Wieku: Sztuka Polskiego Modernizmu 1890-1914) at the National Museum, not far from where Feliks grew up on Ulica Studencka in Krakow. This

experience has greatly influenced my approach to what looks "Polish"

beyond the common ethnic and national stereotype. (Krase, 2005,1997, and

1998).

Krakow in transition 1996

There are many ways to honor a mentor, and the best is show

appreciation by demonstrating how their work influenced your own. I have




written several review essays of Feliks Gross' recent works, Citizenship and

Ethnicity: The Growth and Development of a Democratic Multiethnic Institution (1999) and The Civic and The Tribal State: The State, Ethnicity, and the Multiethnic State (1998). They have appeared in the Revista Internationale di Sociologia (2000) and The Polish Review (1998) and reflect the fact that I have taken as my own his quest for the answer to the

question of "What makes it possible for people who are different from each other to live in peace?" Gross has argued in many places that bonds between

ethnically and otherwise diverse in society can be managed through coercion. In a democracy however it must be accomplished by consensus and there different techniques and principles are demanded. As he

understood, "Such an association of different peoples, ethnic groups with

equal rights for all, free of discrimination by public authorities, necessitates the need for a common bond that would embrace all, a broad bond, and in the hierarchy of accepted standards, one that rises above ethnic or racial

identification; in a word, a common denominator for all. citizenship is such a

bond, it is also a vital common denominator." (1999, xiii) Feliks Gross's wit and wisdom often matched his scholarship. Many

of his students and colleagues warmly remember the stories that he told as he commented upon excerpts from his published works as he lectured. Two of the most frequently recalled are elaborations from his work on Ethnics in the Borderlands (1975), and his research on the Plains Indians while he

Visiting Professor at the University of Wyoming (1945-52). For example, in

"Language and Value Changes among the Arapaho," (1951) Gross documented and analyzed the adoption of Western tools as well as language. He noted that Native Americans were not as naive as they are imagined to be and readily adopt technologies which they believe will enhance their existence. Dr. Arnold Wendroff, a Medical Sociologist who was inspired by Gross to pursue his research studies in Africa, fondly remembers Gross's anecdotal approach to the subject. Gross noted, with some pleasure, that the Native Americans he interviewed were amused, and puzzled, that white

people hunted and fished for leisure. This was a voluntary as opposed to

necessary activity and was taken as an indication that perhaps white people were aspiring to be "native."

It is from Ethnics in the Borderlands that much of Gross's wisdom about common misunderstanding of contemporary intergroup problems emerges. He often referred to this in his lectures and conversations on the

subject. On the Italian- Slovene frontier, Gross studied how Italians and Slavs relearned how to live together after a long period of antagonism and conflicts which resulted in genocide and massacres. It could be a theoretical model of what can happen in areas inhabited by various nationalities and hostile ethnic groups. We ask today in too many places across the globe whether local people learn to forget the past, and to live together again as

good neighbors. It is possible that Gross anticipated "Transnationalism" when he answered in the affirmative by showing that people often do not




identify primarily with the state they live in. For them the most significant sources of their "imagined community" are their regional and local associations that make a difference in their everyday lives, and not the national myths of political leaders.

As already noted Gross had an abiding interest in "values." For him, political values are not merely matters of formal institutions, or what Max

Weber termed "Legal-Rationality." In his works, he convincingly argued that even good ideas, without good values, can be just as dangerous as bad ideas. America was ethnically diverse from the very beginning and the

country's founders were also keenly aware of their English forebears

struggles with nobility, and the conflicts of parliaments. Accordingly, the first ten amendments to the US Constitution, most often referred to as The Bill of Rights, was elevated to a Supreme Law. As extended by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution it was gradually applied to

previously excluded racial groups such as Africans, Asians, and Native Americans. For Gross, America was not the only multiethnic democracy but to him it was unique in its favorable comparison to ancient Rome. This is so because of what he saw as its unusual ethnic, religious, and racial variety as well as its relative success in tying the country together by means of a civic

principle whose common denominator is citizenship. In 1999 the Democratic and Republican parties fought an

ideologically ironic battle. It indirectly tested Gross's thesis that the United States of America was a model of the modern Civic State -

democratic,

pluralist, and rational. Here ones culture, religion, or ethnicity is a private matter having a place only in the civil society. Simultaneously in Europe, and much more extremely in Africa, and today in the Middle and Near East, there is unfortunately increasing evidence to support for his theory that narrow tribal definitions of nationality are the roots for totalitarian states.

The presidential election between US Vice-President Albert Gore and Texas Governor George W. Bush, but actually it challenged long-held assumptions about the relative positions on "States' Rights" of American liberals and conservatives. For the first time there was a Jewish candidate for

Vice-President, Joseph Lieberman. National surveys showed that issues such as affirmative action, the death penalty, abortion, and school vouchers

divided the electorate along racial, ethnic, and religious lines. In the end,

although the vast majority of African Americans and Jews voted for the

Democratic Party's Gore-Lieberman ticket, the rest of the national popular vote split virtually down the middle. For most voters, gender, and social

class were the most salient factors. The closeness of the popular vote in Florida, and the Electoral

College system itself, provided another test for the Gross hypothesis. The

selection of the President and Vice-President of the most powerful country in the world was decided by a few hundred intensely disputed votes in the

State of Florida. The culmination of a month-long series of court, battles was

a 7-2 US Supreme Court per curiam ruling. It stated that the remedy




proposed by the Supreme Court of the State of Florida to deal with ballots

challenged by the Democratic Party would violate the "Equal Protection Clause" of the US Constitution. Ironically, a half-century after the Civil

Rights Movement in the American South, liberals decried the interference of the Federal government in issues of States' Rights while conservatives hailed the "judicial activism" of the Supreme Court. Few noticed, as would have

Gross, that the principle that one group should not be treated better than another was used to protect all voters against the privileging of even an

aggrieved, minority. Public opinion polls showed that the Supreme Court's decision was

received differently according to one's race, religion, and ethnicity. Yet few Americans would support a resort to violence to express even justifiable discontent. One might ask why Americans take for granted that such actions are beyond the legitimate scope of political contests. Feliks Gross would remind political commentators that the ideas of both democracy and

republicanism in the US are supported by a common foundation of "rational and humane" values. He would emphatically posit that Americans reject the notion that political contests may be settled through violence, because in this

republic, without tyranny, political violence can have no legitimacy. Although an idealist, Gross was too much of a pragmatist to be

pollyannaish. He recognized that official public policies do not ensure that all members of a society agree on them. He taught that changing social

attitudes, norms, and values in the direction of tolerance is a slow, even

reversible, process. For example, in the process of creating a common culture the level of cultural difference between groups is very important. A

propos of the current immigration debate he noted that immigrant groups must also be willing to adjust to the occasionally "better" values of the host

society. Every civic nation needs a critical mass of tolerant and educated voters in order to make the system work efficiently. If effective citizenship is a requisite for a democratic multiethnic state, then we have miles to go before we rest. And to be frank, we may never be without intolerance, but, almost as though whistling past a cemetery, Feliks Gross offered that "The advance toward a more human and more benign humanity has begun. Effective citizenship in a multiethnic state is a major expression of this

trend, a signpost on this road." (Gross, 1999:134) As Gross learned to appreciate a mythic America, through him I

have come to appreciate an equally mythological Europe and "The Western

Tradition;" which incidentally places me outside the Pale in my own

discipline of choice, Sociology. As I was not blessed with a classical

education, the trappings of scholarly traditions which I occasionally demonstrate were learned in association with him on projects such as a 1977 Seminar on Ethnic Policy in New York City that sadly presaged the growth of divisive ethno-politicking in New York City mayoral elections. Finally, Professor Gross and I are both, for want of a better term, "pre-post modernists." In one of the many rather futile attempts I have come across to




define Post-modernism (without it becoming a treble entendre) George Ritzer informs that "Modern social theory sought a universal, a historical, rational foundation for its analysis and critique of society... (Whereas, I

assume)..."Postmodern thinking rejects this 'foundationalism' and tends to be relativistic, irrational, and nihilistic." (Ritzer, 2000: 604).

Gross's major claim is that citizenship is the basic institution that is

necessary for the construction of a democratic multiethnic state. Citizenship enacted is an articulation of the state and the entire political culture. The term "Citizen" has many definitions and for him it is the "sense of democratic citizenship"- which "extends human, political and civil rights to

all inhabitants, regardless of race, religion, ethnicity, or culture. In a civic

state, which is based upon the concept of such citizenship, even foreigners are protected by the rule of law." (Gross, 1999: xi) He cautioned however that as the public domain expands, the modern democratic state needs to

maintain a balance between individual and collective spheres. Central to

democracy in a multiethnic state is the direct association of individuals, not

groups or corporations, to the state. In such a society citizens also carry at

least two identities- universal and particular- universal is the citizen, in the multicultural case the particular is most often the ethnic.

In American social discourse, the term "ethnics" come into use in

the 1970s and referred to the millions of poor and working-class immigrants who poured into the United States between 1880 and 1920, and their more or

less assimilated descendants. As they became assimilated, or

"Americanized," they adopted the values of the dominant society. Therefore

only limited "traces" of their original values can be found. Assimilation

theorists argue that when immigrants are no more likely to live with one another than with "Americans" then they have become another dissolved

ingredient in the melting pot. For Euro-Americans, Richard Alba has termed this process the "Twilight of Ethnicity." (Alba, 1985)

Assimilationism is also an ideology that argues that immigrant groups ought to melt into, and become indistinguishable parts from the

whole. On the other end of the spectrum is the current ideology of

Multiculturalism, which is predicated upon the notion that not only do

distinct cultural groups continue to exist in American society, but that their

distinctiveness ought to be preserved. George M. Fredrickson commenting on race and citizenship in the United States notes that:" "The growth of

ethnic consciousness among blacks and the desire of Latino and Asian

immigrants to preserve aspects of their culture have made

"multiculturalism", rather than simple integrationism, the dominant anti

racist ideology in the United States today." (Fredrickson, 2002:5) The rise of Multiculturalism as an ideology is also directly linked to

the "Post-1965" immigration which allowed the entry into the country of a

spectrum of peoples that reflected the diversity of the world population. Prior to that time the law favored immigrants who reflected the US

population, with few exceptions, circa 1920. Additional factors that favor




retention of immigrant cultures today are advanced communication and

transportation technologies that make it possible to stay connected to places of origin. The population diversity of places like New York City is also enhanced and even maintained by a constant flow of undocumented aliens.

According to Alejandro Portes and The Economic Sociology of Immigration today's immigrants still have a need for ethnic concentration because they lack much in the way of Social Capital or "the capacity of individuals to

command scarce resources by virtue of their membership in networks or

broader social structures." (Portes, 1995:12.) For all immigrants, the ethnic enclave facilitates their employment and they are found in virtually every location where immigrant labor is required. In contrast to Euro-Americans, Portes posits that today a different social context exists for second

generation immigrants who even though acculturated may not be able to enter the white mainstream. Therefore, for them remaining in the enclave is not necessarily a "symptom of escapism" but a rational strategy for survival. In contrast, we might say ethnic concentration among Euro-Americans is an

aspect of "Voluntary" or "Symbolic Ethnicity". (See especially: Waters, 1990.)

Gross preferred the ideology of Cultural Pluralism over both Assimilationism and Multiculturalism. Cultural Pluralism recognizes the

positive value of ethnic and other diversity for democratic societies but only in tandem with overarching common values that connect the disparate groups. In this context the current dynamics of large-scale immigration and ethnic change in post-industrial Europe, as well as calls by historical micro ethnics for political recognition, if not autonomy, are noted. I also must

playfully insert here a contrast in Arjun Appadurai's "post-national" solution to the same problem. (Appadurai, 1997) "The challenge for this emergent order will be whether such heterogeneity is consistent with some minimal conventions of norm and value, which do not require a strict adherence to the liberal social contract of the West.

" (Gross, 1999:23)

In many places in the world today ethnic tensions, in tandem with

economic, political and cultural competition, have exploded in violence. In

many other places the fuses have been lit. It would be foolish to rely on the effusive pledges of "never again" which followed the experience of

genocide by allegedly the most "civilized" and "enlightened" nations of their time. What are needed are national, perhaps even international, institutions, laws, and commitment. Some states, it is argued by Gross, have a "better"

type of citizenship, one that can be seen as an indicator of human rights and freedom. Furthermore, because of globalization, nations are increasingly interdependent and international borders more irrelevant. Therefore democratic citizenship is even more problematic and ways to promote it need to be carefully addressed. His search for answers to contemporary problems turns to a source in the past from which he roughly sketches the

history of a powerful idea.




The United States may be less of a melting pot today than it was a

century ago, but even so it sets a good example. Perhaps it is the lack of

integrative strength in other societies, which makes people feel that the only place they really belong is among their own people. Globalization may have

something to do with it, as well as the disintegration that accompany modernization. The words below from Sir Ralf Dahrendorf could easily have been written by Gross about his favorite street near his apartment in New York City, Broadway:

"For those who have not abandoned hope for the eventual

victory of enlightened values but who nonetheless see things as

they are in the real world, a version of "separate but equal" may provide at least an interim answer. So far as equality is

concerned, the guarantee of full citizenship rights for all

represents a major task. Much remains to be done to achieve it. So far as separateness is concerned, it should not be explicitly promoted unless a fence seems to be the only hope of peace. It

should, however, be allowed, while at the same time common

spaces should be available and safe for all. London comes to mind when thinking of an example of relative success in the face of extraordinary diversity. In this great metropolis, many people share the pleasures as well as the miseries of public spaces. Their lives are intertwined yet diverse." (Dahrendorf, 2002:22-23)

At the beginning of the Twenty-first century, many American and

European cities are experiencing the influx of large numbers of people from cultures distinct from native-born residents. Mass migration is not a new

phenomenon; human history can be seen as either the cause or effect of one or another process of population movement. Although diverse people frequently live within the same large-scale political boundaries, the real test of community takes place during the course of everyday life. Because of modern technology and world systems, increasingly, "cultural strangers" share common environments. For social scientists and humanists the ultimate question remains "What makes it possible for different, even hostile

groups, to live together in smaller scale city, town, and urban neighborhood environments?" Some urban places have a long history of dealing peacefully with such in-migration. Many others do not. Compared to the kaleidoscopic ethnic and racial diversity of major cities in the United States, new migrants to Europe are settling and forming their own sub-communities in relatively homogenous urban places. The way that native born city residents respond to these new invasions will set the tone for the future of intergroup relations and a more "open" European society.




Feliks Gross, Arnold Wendroff and Feliks's "friend" the peddler on Broadway near his apartment in the Spring of2001.

Before concluding this essay, allow me here to demonstrate a few of the ways that the ideas and ideals of Feliks Gross have infused my own

writing and teaching. I emphasize teaching here because he is remembered

by many as an inspiring instructor. The values he believes in must be transferred in as many ways as possible. My own specialty is spatial semiotics and visual sociology or urban, especially ethnic, neighborhoods. Central to the notion of the possibility of "Seeing Community in a

Multicultural Society" are the spaces and places created and maintained by more and less recent immigrant groups. The Visual Sociology of the Vernacular Landscapes allows us to "see" how immigrants and others are

both products and producers of space. Regardless of perspective one cannot fail to recognize the agency and symbolic life of ordinary people, while at the same time see the greater power of others to determine their ultimate fate. A visual approach demonstrates how what I have termed "Traces of Home" (Krase, 1993) and Lefebvre might call "material spatial practices" are transformed via "representations of space" into "spaces of

representation." "Material social practices refer to the physical and material




flows, transfers, and interactions that occur in and across space in such a

way as to ensure production and social reproduction. Representations of

space encompass all of the signs and significations, codes and knowledge, that allow such material practices to be talked about and understood, no

matter whether in terms of everyday common sense or through the sometimes arcane jargon of the academic disciplines that deal with spatial. Spaces of representations are social inventions that seek to generate new

meanings and possibilities for spatial practices. (Harvey, 1989:261) In my study of urban neighborhoods I have tried to maintain the

edge of my own sociological imagination; "...a quality of mind that seems most dramatically to promise an understanding of the intimate realities of ourselves in connection with larger social realities." (Mills, 1959:15). Ethnic enclaves are a product and source of both social and cultural capital. Although ordinary people in the neighborhood are ultimately at the mercy of distant forces, in their naivete they continue to create and modify the local

spaces allocated to them, and which inevitably become part of the urban

landscape. Thusly people and spaces become symbols. They come to

represent themselves and thereby lose their autonomy. We can now re-visit the question of what makes it possible for people who

are different from each other to live in peace. As we read from Feliks Gross. "... an association of different peoples, ethnic groups with equal rights for all, free of discrimination by public authorities, necessitates the need for a common

bond that would embrace all, a broad bond, and in the hierarchy of accepted standards, one that rises above ethnic or racial identification; in a word, a

common denominator for all. Citizenship is such a bond, it is also a vital common denominator." (Gross, 1999:xiii) but legal citizenship is insufficient unless authorities and ordinary members of society alike are able to recognize the common humanity of all peoples in multicultural societies as expressed in

the way they present their particular local spatial versions of universal human

community. Understanding the biography and scholarship of Feliks Gross one can easily understand how he was able to see others as members of his own

community. Looking at the world in which we live today, it obvious that there

is a need to teach others to see the world in the same way.

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