Polyethnicity, the side-by-side existence of people with varying ethic backgrounds, has become the norm for most of the human community around the world. As a result, concerns about interethnic relations have increased. Even as individuals of differing ethnic backgrounds live and work in closer proximity than ever before, issues of ethnicity and ethnic identity frequently bring about volatile responses in many people. Indeed, hardly a day passes without reports of some new incidents of ethnic conflict in some part of the world. Of course, each society, each locale, and each incident involves a unique set of historical, situational, and psychological twists, making it difficult to generalize about the nature of interethnic relations. In the case of the United States, interethnic relations has been at the forefront of public consciousness and a source of social unease and struggle ever since the...