Abstract
Abstract Ideology underpins and shapes the way people communicate with respect to issues of ethnicity and interethnic relations within a society. Such has been particularly the case in the USA, a nation uniquely founded on the ideals of classical liberalism championing the individual unbounded by ethnic categories. An analysis of the public discourse in the USA reveals four different, but interconnected, ideological perspectives: (1) assimilationism , reflecting the traditional classical liberal themes of individualism, universalism, and procedural equality; (2) pluralism , emphasizing the counter‐themes of group identity, relativism, and status equality; (3) reconciliation , seeking to balance both classical liberal themes and counter‐themes; and (4) extremism , in which claims of group identity are taken beyond realms that most Americans deem reasonable. Together, these differing perspectives form an “ideological circle,” a conceptual template for understanding the political undercurrents of interethnic communication in the USA.
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