Anti-Semitism in the United States : $b Its history and causes — John Shaqi
Anti-Semitism in the United States : $b Its history and causesLevinger, Lee J. (Lee Joseph)
History
Anti-Semitism in the United States : $b Its history and causes
Levinger, Lee J. (Lee Joseph)
Antisemitism -- United States; Jews -- United States
The problem of group and sub-group can be approached either
descriptively or genetically. If we take the former angle, we see every
large group divided indefinitely into small, conflicting, overlapping,
and infinitely various sub-groups. Much of the complexity of our
society consists in this overlapping, by which the individual belongs
to many groups at once, so that his mind cannot attain complete unity,
and none of his groups can possess him wholly. A man belongs to a
family, a city, a profession, a church, a school alumni body, a nation
and an international peace society. In addition, he may join a
labor union, a chamber of commerce, or a half dozen fraternal orders.
His mind is a perfect maze of group attitudes; he shifts from one group
to another as interests or contiguity impel him. In the same way, a
large group such as a political party includes members from different
sections of the country, different economic strata, different churches,
and so on. The group mind, as a category in this situation, is purely
a functional unity, which works in and through its individual members
and through its smaller groups of individuals in exactly the same way.
I quote Dr. Singer: [38]“My world is highly organized—groups within
groups, and groups within these,” for that is the scientific, realistic
view of the social world.
Various classifications of groups have been devised by students of the
problem, useful for their different purposes. Cooley speaks of primary
and secondary groups, those in which men and women are born and grow,
and the larger integrations into which the smaller, more natural groups
enter. Miller prefers [39]“Vertical and horizontal groups,” the former
being the natural divisions which include all classes, such as the
nation; the latter a caste or class grouping. Hayes calls them personal
and impersonal groups, apparently meaning much the same as Professor
Cooley by the terms primary and secondary. Probably the most useful
mode of classification is the genetic, beginning with the family, and
then expanding according to the particular situation in view—in the
primitive group to the clan, tribe and confederacy; in the civilized
to the school, the interest group, the religious affiliation, the
political nation, the international ideals and bonds of union.
Whatever be the more or less arbitrary mode of classification, we see
that, except for the supposititious primitive horde, groups are never
single nor simple. They resemble rather the physical organism or the
mind of the individual, either of which is necessarily complex. Group
minds exist and grow by progressive integration of the lesser into the
greater, from the individual up to the greatest possible bodies of
human beings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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