St. Paul recorder. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1934-2000, 1945-10-05
ONE NATION
By Walter Stegner and the
Editors of Look, Published by
COwles Magazine Company.
$40 PIP. $3.75
By CONSTANCE CURTIS

Perhaps some day Americans, as
we'll as the peoples of the world,
will realize that their minorities,
when added together, make a siz-
able portion of the population, in
some cases a majority. When this
day comes, no doubt tolerance will
come with it, and one nation, as
well as one world, will be the final
outcome.
Already, the editors of Look,
alarmed at the increasing racial
tensions during the war, have set
about to do what they can about
the situation. Out of their work,
and the work of Walter Stegner,
has come a book which bursts
many myths and gets at some
truths that need publicizing. One
Nation is the outgrowth of
years work by Look photographers
and writer Stegner, welded to-
gether into unified whole.
MinOrities Discussed
The minorities discussed in the
volume include the Pacific races,
under which come the Filipinos,
Chinese-Americans and Japanese
Americans, Mexicans, Indians, His
panos, Negroes, Catholics and
Jews, go to make up the minorities
who form a large part of the main
stream of our lives.
Throughout the book the fact
becomes more and more clear that
the patterns of discrimination
throughout the nation do much to
make minorities react in certain
ways, setting them a bit or a great
deal apart from the whole. De-
pressed wages, segregation, vicious
propaganda, poor housing, insult
ficient schooling, disease, enforced
inferiority completes - all take
their toll of the minority group
member. His differences are mag
nified because he is treated differ
emily.
The problems that have arisen
because of the discrimination prac-
ticed against Negroes, Catholics
and Jews has been we'll talked out
in the past, although little has
been done about it. There are other
minorities, however, faring as bad
ly or worse, whose problems are
not so popular. The Hispanos, for
example, and the Mexicans, Japa-
nese Indians.
Americas coolest Citizens"
The reservations, on which
Americas Coolest citizens" have
been confined, to scratch a meagre
living from the land and die of
poverty and ignorance. The His
panos, who have held to an old and
outworn culture because, in many
instances, they were held back
from acquisition of the new.
The story of the Mexican, who
figured so luridly in the recent
"zoot suit riots" has so many of
the elements of what the Negro
American has suffered included,
that his story is like tale re-told.
Add to this our mass ghettos,
which through government action,
were set up during the war to seq
regate thousands of Japanese
Americans and their families, SIM
ply because of their race.
It's a Liberal Education
That the editors of Look have
seen fit to see such a project begun
and so successfully completed por-
tends a brighter future. Popular
magazines have not been known,
in the past, for trail-blazing on the
race relations front. Look, how
ever, has broken the mold, and has
done it admirably. One Nation is
liberal education in the fact that
our minority problem" breaks
down, on close examination, into a
group of individuals, all Ameri-
cans.