The answers are complex, varied, and not necessarily pleasant. From one point of view, it is all rather simple. America's Poles are Euro-Caucasians, descendants of an earlier immigration successfully blended into the mainstream. We have ironically become part of a homogeneity to which multiculturalists object. Another explanation is that the Polish ethnic group has already received its share of the American pie, as witnessed by the recognition accorded to thousands for their achievements, and that Americans of Polish descent should not interfere with the acquisition of rights and privileges to which more recent immigrant groups and historically oppressed peoples are entitled Without a literary culture, acceptance and participation within the multicultural movement will not occur.
Literature offers yet another explanation.
Without a literary culture, acceptance and participation within the multicultural movement will not occur since literature is, in important ways, at the center of a nation's cultural traditions. In comparison to African, Jewish and, more lately, Hispanic and Asian groups, American writers of Polish descent have not been as productive in capturing the ethnic experience. For well over a hundred years, as I have shown in Princes, Peasants, and Other Polish Selves, we have been portrayed rather extensively by host-culture writers who have represented Poles in various guises. The emergence of a body of work and group of writers which together can fashion a literary tradition is a complex cultural matter. Wishing will not make it so.