Ethnic Cleavages in the United States: An Historical Reminder to Social Workers

Abstract

■ Unlike (lass differences, to which reference is frequently made in analyses of client behavior, ethnic differences are accorded scant attention by social workers. In this paper, however, an historical examination of intorgroup relations in the United States reveals the pervasiveness of ethnic tensions and suggests the degree to which ethnicity must be taken into account in social planning and treatment. ■ The social work literature and the pro fessional thinking of most social workers generally deal with two kinds of reality— intrapsychic and interpersonal. In discus sing the interplay between these, much attention has been given to the social ar rangements and patterns among collections of people that in some way regulate their actions toward one another, individually and in groups. Currently, the social pat ternings that engage the greatest interest of social workers and others in the helping professions are those subsumed under the idea of class. The social worker who is concerned with social as distinguished from psychological factors is likely, when he uses the word social, to be thinking of class, and when he uses the word class, to be thinking mainly, if not solely, in terms of economic variables, hence the bur geoning number of studies on the relation ship between income and mental illness, lower-class use of agency services, and the common use of phrases such as working class attitudes, middle-class values, and the like.1 Today, a social work client's position in the class structure is perhaps the major