This booklet is comprised of three articles. (1) Ethnicity in American Life: The Historical Perspective, by John Hope Franklin, recounts the trends in the last three centuries. It is contended that ethnicity has extended and continues to extend beyond race; that at times it meant language, customs, religion, and national origin, but that it has also meant race; that it had already begun to have a racial connotation in the eighteenth century, a larger racial component in the nineteenth century, and even greater significance for racial consideration in the present century, as other factors receded in importance. (2) Ethnicity in American Life: A Social Psychological Perspective, by Thomas F. Pettigrew, focuses on assimilation and pluralism, the problems of ethnic solidarity, and causal factors in race relations. (3) Ethnicity in American Life: The Urban Crisis, by Raymond W. Mack, deals with the changing ethnic fabric of metropolitan areas and discusses the following factors for social change in the coming decade: variation in the rate of assimilation of the three new metropolitan minorities, diminution of the social distance between dominant and minority populations, rapid change in status of black Americans and the increase in the interracial conflict, seizure of considerable political power by the minorities, and greater delineation of social class differences as class becomes less mistaken for ethnicity. (RJ)