American attitudes regarding ethnicity and cultural pluralism have undergone a significant shift in recent years. The new viewpoint is far more positive; it conceives of ethnic identity as a valuable resource for both the individual and the society as a whole. One explanation for this trend is the growing discomfort with what is perceived as an increasingly impersonal and uniform mass society. Many are finding in their immigrant roots and ancestral traditions a perfect counterbalance to the seemingly pervasive influence of distinct, large-scale institutions which, by their very remoteness and vicariousness, tend to create feelings of isolation and alienation. America's legacy of ethnic diversity can be regarded as a source of enrichment for personal lives as well as a means to imbue society with kind of cultural hybrid vigor.
Despite a plethoric presence of ethnic groups, many Americans remain curiously unaware of the kaleidoscopic cultural diversity around them. In part, this can be explained by the fact that ethnicity in America is, to a great extent, a private rather than a public concern; and, in part, by the tenacity of the obsolete yet venerable theory of the melting pot. While this is not to deny the historical reality of the assimilation process by which generations of immigrants and their children have been absorbed into American life, it would be misleading to ignore the persistence of ethnic subcultures in this country. For evidence, one need only take note of the innumerable ethnically based voluntary associations, religious institutions, and cultural activities that abound in our society.
In many ways, the Serbian-Americans personify the nurturing of ethnic identity in America. They are among the smaller Euramerican groups, numbering not more than about 250,000 in our population. At the same time, they are in a broader sense representative of approximately fifty million Americans with origins in southern and eastern Europe, the descendants of the so-called New Immigration dating from the second half of the last century.
Serbs, who first emigrated from parts of the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish empires, and later form Yugoslavia, differed markedly from the earlier northern European, Protestant settlers of America. They shared with other southern and eastern European immigrants impoverished peasant origins, values stressing kinship and family solidarity, religious beliefs and practices for the most part uninfluenced by Puritanism and the Reformation, cultures that placed a high value on expressive and effectual behavior, a strong sense of nationalism, and an ethos of reliance on personal ties rather than on impersonal institutions. At the same time, they shared with other Americans a strong work ethic and a desire for social mobility, a goal that has been realized by the majority of their descendants.
Thus, it has been possible for American-born Serbs to assimilate into public and occupational life with little or no reference to their national origins; in a sense, to become invisible within the general white population. Nevertheless, in the privacy of their own personal lives, many have chosen to cultivate customs and values transplanted by their ancestors--in some cases, more than one hundred years ago--from the Balkan countryside.
Origins and traditions of the Serbian slava
Despite the richness of
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