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We explore and debate the concept of Cultural Assimilation with Kim and Dino from Breaking Barriers
Every week we introduce you to an event in American History, policy, and media, then discuss how that historical event impacts the socio-political issues America faces today. We give you The Dig on US History and offer political commentary and opinion, as well as discussion of current news from Progressive perspectives.
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Now my 8th grade social studies teacher Mr Humble taught me things that turns out, after doing my own research, wasn’t exactly the whole story. And this week, we will dive into the topic of Cultural Assimilation.
Cultural Assimilation is the process in which a minority culture gets absorbed into the dominant culture of a society. Let’s just get this out of the way quickly. While race is often amalgamated with culture and it is often a trait used to identify a cultural belonging, or more frequently to assume another’s cultural background, race is not indicative of culture or ethnicity.
According to Penn State anthropologist Nina Jablonski, "Race is understood by most people as a mixture of physical, behavioral and cultural attributes. Ethnicity recognizes differences between people mostly on the basis of language and shared culture." Ethnicity recognizes differences between people mostly on the basis of language and shared culture." In other words, race, which by the way is a relatively new social construct, with origins in the 18th century, is often perceived as something biological, inherited across generations. Cultural Ethnicity, on the other hand, is typically understood as something we acquire, or self-ascribe, based on factors like where we live or what religion we subscribe to.
Closing out on race here, at least until we get to the great replacement theory’s role in this conversation, is this. In the US, and some other countries, such as Canada, which just did whatever we did until a few years back, race is political. Irish, Italian and Polish Americans were not considered white until the early 1900’s, and Greeks were not considered white until the 1980s. Even more astonishing from today’s lens is that Arab Americans had been considered white until the second half of the 20th century. Ya don’t say.
Anyway, skepticism about whether new arrivals can assimilate into American society was a key concern in the 2016 presidential election and remains an ongoing theme in the public debate on immigration policy. This controversy is not new. The U.S. has experienced repeated waves of hostility toward immigrants and today’s concerns echo alarms sounded often in the past, as many in this country, and others to be fair, have viewed immigrants as a threat to the integrity of the nation’s culture, fearing that foreigners somehow make America less American. Consider the following statement: Immigration “is bringing to the country its hard people whom it is very difficult to assimilate and who do not promise well for the standard of civilization in the United States.” The speaker was Massachusetts Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge in 1891. Despite the engraved words on the statue of liberty, give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, we have not been particularly welcoming to most groups. And why would we be? We saw what happened to Native American culture and land when they welcomed us. In fact, we have been the opposite of welcoming to the unassimilated. Charactures of Chisense immigrants, Polish and Irish immigrants, and of course of blacks, who were immigrated by force, have peppered our media since the country was founded. During the Great Depression, as many as one million Mexican-Americans were deported under the pretext that they were to blame for the economic downturn, and a few years later we threw Japanese Americans into internment camps.
According to YouTuber, Mr Beat, cultural assimilation doesn’t even matter, as immigrants at large already share American values, evidenced why they are coming here, and the that the different cultures they bring here are almost always beneficial to the nation.
One of the most common ways that immigrant families have assimilated into American culture is in how they name their children.
The question for this dig however, is, as Mr. Beat raised, why is this even necessary? Should people even have to assimilate? I mean, after all, when Americans travel or move abroad do we assimilate to other cultures? Or do we just expect those cultures to accept us as we are, speak our language, and create our own communities. A great example of this is Hawaii, which really only became a state due to the amount of white Americans whom had moved there and started their own communities.
The word assimilate has its roots in the Latin ‘‘simulare,’’ meaning to make similar. Immigrants are generally expected to become like other Americans, a process metaphorically described as a melting pot. But this term is problematic. After all, America has from day one had a heterogeneous population — So by what criteria is an outsider judged to fit in? For some, assimilation is based on pragmatic crap like speaking English, or achieving economic success. For the faith and flag crew, it runs deeper and involves relinquishing all ties to the old country, including language and even cuisine in your own home. After all, I have to be comfortable if I decide to come over so you better have hotdogs and apple pie. For yet others, the whole idea of assimilation is wrongheaded, and integration — a dynamic process that retains the connotation of individuality — is seen as the better model. Indeed, America is not a melting pot, it is closer to a salad bowl, where each ingredient keeps its flavor as it mixes with others to create something amazing, like Asian fusion, see, case closed.
Since 911, this has boiled over, and finally went mainstream in 2016, as those on the conservative right wing decided that masking our bigotries was no longer necessary, and the veil of plausible deniability began to get thinner and thinner, thanks to one man.
‘‘We are a country where people of all backgrounds, all nations of origin, all languages, all religions, all races, can make a home,’’ Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.
‘‘Not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate.’’ Donald Trump the very next day. Clearly, the latter won out, and has found a new champion in not only Trump, but Tucker Carlson. Mother Tucker’s message is so clear that it’s used by white supremacists to keep their messages main stream, the assimilation is a matter of identity — nothing short of the abandonment of all traces of your heritage will do, and even then, you’re still an outsider, but a useful one in so far as the right wing has discovered that the best way to combat those of us who think more progressively, is to have members of the outgroup amplify their message. According to one study on mobility gains, we have little to no evidence that demonstrates whether an immigrant's assimilating to a dominant culture causes changes in the perception of those who were born in the dominant culture, a phenomenon that rears it’s ugly head in great replacement theory, a baseless theory that claims that whites are purposely being replaced by other ethnic groups. By the by, the number of whites in America has increased over the decades, and, as pointed out by sociologist Milton Gordon, the cultural assimilation of ethnic groups into mainstream American society did not affect their systemic separation. Gordon notes limited integration of the immigrants into the occupational hierarchy, political offices, and even social cliques. So if the Deep State is trying to replace whites, they’re doing a pretty bad fucking job at it.
So in closing, to what degree should people assimilate?
Well, to the amount that they feel they want to, individually. If one person, however, chooses to move from Mexico, change his name from Jose to Joe, give up speaking Spanish and fly an American flag, that’s fine, but Joe should not be seen as a standard bearer for the next Jose we meet. Of course, you should not come here and abuse or murder people, but you also should not do that anywhere else. It’s reasonable to put some effort into learning the local language, for safety reasons, such as reading signs and knowing what is in a contract you enter into, and for interacting in business. But what is unreasonable is to be told that you still cant be more comfortable using your first language, and prefer to use it whenever you can. in closing to assimilate into something that is neither defined or has remained static. It is power that has remained static. Not culture, and we should treat people as what they are. People.