For some people the term "Anglo-America" provokes discomfort, even anger. That is because some people see America as very ethnic, and they minimize the Anglo part of America's heritage. Before the 1960s most historians agreed that once upon a time, immigrants and other minority groups wanted and expected to become "Americans." Their goals were escape, deliverance, assimilation. They saw America as a transforming nation, banishing dismal memories of the countries they came from. The point of America was not to preserve old cultures, but to form a new American culture.

This, an older generation of historians, such as the late Arthur M.Schlesinger argues, was the goal of most up-and-coming Americans. But ethnic activists today increasingly push a new ethnic gospel the underlying philosophy of which holds that America is ... a nation of groups, that ethnicity is the defining experience for most Americans, that ethnic ties are permanent and indelible.... It belittles unum and glorifies pluribus.

Do you agree with that statement, or parts of it? Why or why not?