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moving onto that territory. This ongoing process is always extremely complicated
and is seldom fully realized. The tendencies toward subordination, amalgamation,
and assimilation of peoples are met by counter-tendencies toward the
transformation and reproduction of a multiplicity of ethnicities: nationality is an
arena of social struggle. Moreover, from the point of view of the dominant powers,
there is no single method of subordination/ amalgamation/ assimilation, but a
variety of possibilities, depending on history and context.
In the United States - especially since the Civil War solved the problem of
regionally-based nationality ~ there have been two main systems of ethnic
subordination, one associated with the immigration of European nationalities
(referred to in the dominant discourse as the "problem of ethnicity") and one
involving peoples of color (referred to as the "problem of race"). Neither of these
systems really has anything to do with human physiognomy or race; both, in fact,
have to do with ethnicity and peoplehood. The roots of these two systems and of
the "color bar" that differentiates them, extend back to fifteenth-century European
expansionism and the colonialism that followed. In the context of world-wide
expansion, a concept of race developed to justify, on the nominal basis of physical
features, the aspirations of European ruling groups to dominate everything non-
European. The color bar and the two related systems of ethnic subordination were
structured into North American settler-dominated society from the beginning and
evolved as that society evolved.
Generally, in the United States, one system of ethnic subordination
functioned to discriminate against European immigrant nationalities to varying
degrees and relegate many of their members to the margins of economy and polity
- but only temporarily. As these "alien" groups progressively, in a few generations,
lost most of their nationality-based characteristics, as their communities dispersed,
as individuals from these groupings tended to move up the economic ladder, they
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