The American Kaleidoscope. Lawrence H. Fuchs

       Acknowledgments

      I have many to thank for help on this book. After finishing my work as executive director of the staff of the Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy in 1981, I was given an office and support as a guest scholar in the Program of American Society and Politics at the Woodrow Wilson Center of the Smithsonian Institution for several months, where I began this book. Additional support during the past eight years for my work on ethnic pluralism and the civic culture came from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and the Exxon Foundation. The Jaffe Foundation has provided continuous support for secretarial assistance since 1984, and I am particularly grateful, as holder of the Meyer and Walter Jaffe professorship in American Civilization and Politics, to have received that generous assistance. I am also appreciative to the Rockefeller Foundation for my appointment as Scholar in Residence at the splendid Villa Serbelloni at Bellagio in Italy during the summer of 1985.

      I am grateful to my secretaries in the American Studies Department at Brandeis, Grace Short and her replacement, Angela Simeone, for their patience. I am indebted to Debra Post, who provided secretarial help on the book during its early stages; I am especially grateful to Christine Stone, whose intelligence and skills and pungent editorial suggestions added a measure of assistance far beyond what should normally be expected in a secretary.

      To my research assistants, all former students at Brandeis, I offer a special salute. Thank you: Anaya Balter, Christopher Bean, Alka Gurung, Jill Lennett, Shelly Tenenbaum, and Veljko Vujacic. Ms. Tenenbaum, who has become a scholar of ethnicity, was particularly thoughtful about many ideas in this book.

      A slightly different version of chapter 16 appeared in The Tocqueville Review, Volume VIII, 1988/89, edited by Jessie R. Pitts (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1989), with my permission and that of Wesleyan University Press. Some of chapter 23 appeared in 1986 in a booklet published by the American Jewish Committee, Counting by Race.

      I think the idea for the title of this book may have been planted when I first read John Higham’s series of essays, Send These to Me: Immigrants in Urban America (1975), where he writes of the United States as a “kaleidoscopic culture.” The concept was also used as a title for an exhibition on ethnicity at the Balch Institute in Philadelphia (1976–1987).

      I appreciate the many helpful suggestions I received from several scholars: Elliott Barkan, Rodolfo O. de la Garza, Edwin Dorn, Victor Fuchs, Alan Kraut, Virginia Yans-McGlaughlin, David Reimers, Peter Rose, John Stack, Reed Ueda, Stephen Whitfield, and Myron Wiener. An extra tip of the hat to Professors Barkan, Kraut, Reimers, Rose, Stack, and Ueda for having read the entire manuscript. Professor Barkan made dozens of detailed suggestions.

      I also thank the staff at Wesleyan University Press for thoughtful assistance. Jeannette Hopkins, one of the most experienced editors of books dealing with race and ethnicity, did not always agree with my interpretations or emphases. But I learned from her tough and thorough comments and queries. Of course, neither she nor any of the scholars acknowledged above should be blamed for errors of mine. John Anderson was a superb copy editor.

      A word of thanks also to my agent and friend, the always helpful Gerard McCauley.

      To my family, especially my wife, Betty, thanks for your good humor and support.