Winner of the 1999 Oskar Halecki Award of the Polish American Historical Association
Opposite
Poles presents a fascinating and complex portrait of ethnic life
in America. The focus is Chicago Polonia, the largest Polish community
outside of Warsaw. During the 1980s a new cohort of Polish immigrants
from communist Poland, including many refugees from the Solidarity
movement, joined the Polish American ethnics already settled in Chicago.
The two groups shared an ancestral homeland, social space in Chicago,
and the common goal of wanting to see Poland become an independent
noncommunist nation. These common factors made the groups believe
they ought to work together and help each other; but they were more
often at opposite poles. The specious solidarity led to contentious
conflicts as the groups competed for political and cultural ownership
of the community.
Erdmans's dramatic account of intracommunity conflict demonstrates
the importance of distinguishing between immigrants and ethnics
in American ethnic studies. Drawing upon interviews, participant
observation in the field, surveys and Polish community press accounts,
she describes the social differences between the two groups that
frustrated unified collective action.
We often think of ethnic and racial communities as monolithic,
but the heterogeneity within Polish Chicago is by no means unique.
Today in the United States new Chinese, Israeli, Haitian, Caribbean,
and Mexican immigrants negotiate their identities within the context
of the established identities of Asians, Jews, Blacks, and Chicanos. Opposite Poles shows that while common ancestral heritage
creates the potential for ethnic allegiance, it is not a sufficient
condition for collective action. |
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