The Journal of Politics

Table of Contents - February 1994 - Volume 56, Issue 01  

Articles

Racial Conflict and Cultural Politics in the United States

Richard M. Merelmana1

a1 The University of Wisconsin, Madison

Abstract

This article argues that recent instances of cultural conflict in the United States are part of a single, historically distinctive trend likely to intensify in the future. Recent cultural conflict springs in part from growing competition for cultural capital between dominant and subordinate racial groups in the United States. This article analyzes this conflict, treating its chief symbolic expression—“multiculturalism”—as a form of subordinate resistance to dominant group power. This article concludes that the uncertain outcome of cultural conflict in the United States reveals the absence currently of white ideological hegemony in American society.

(Accepted February 05 1992)

(Received June 09 1993)

Richard M. Merelman is professor of political science, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706.