INTRODUCTION:

• Assimilation: the process of inclusion through which newcomers become full members of another group or society.

• Does America have an assimilation problem? Debate

THREE IDEOLOGIES OF ASSIMILATION:

1. ANGLO-CONFORMITY

2. MELTING POT

3. CULTURAL PLURALISM

ANGLO-CONFORMITY:

• Complete assimilation of the minority group into the Anglo patterns of culture, etc. Most widely accepted ideology

• 13 colonies—north & south eastern states

• English as common language—unity

• Ethnocentric—values & customs—modified Englishman

MELTING POT:

• Belief that the culture and society of each ethnic group should be blended with the culture and society of the host group to produce a new and different culture and society.

• This ideology lost favor with the rise of political liberalism in the 1960s.

CULTURAL PLURALISM:

• Horace Kallen (1915), Jewish philosopher, argued that members of every American ethnic group should be free to participate in all of the society’s major institutions while simultaneously retaining or elaborating their own ethnic heritage.

• A salad bowl analogy, i.e., each ingredient in the salad retains its distinct flavor but adds a new essence to the salad

CULTURAL PLURALISM: Continued

• “Salad bowl” is not an appropriate metaphor—ingredients are mixed but do not change—suggests “kaleidoscope”—complex & varied in form, pattern and color and continuously shifting from one set of relations to another (Lawrence Fuchs 1990:276)

• Similar metaphors are multiculturalism and mosaic, i.e., a picture made of many small pieces of mixed, colorful stone, glass, etc.

NOTE:

• The "melting pot" metaphor was first articulated by the eighteenth century French immigrant to America, Hector St. John De Crèvecoeur, but popularized in Israel Zangwill’s 1908 play "The Melting Pot.“

• Zangwill called America “God’s crucible, the great melting pot where all the faces of Europe are melting and reforming”

• Horace Kallen (1914), a Jewish philosopher articulated "cultural pluralism" i.e., salad bowl as the new American reality. A new metaphor the "salad bowl" was popularized in the 1970s replacing the melting pot.

Sociologist Robert E. Park:

• Known for his famous theory of the cycle of race relations.

• Park (1939) formulated a cycle of race relations theory that focused on four stages: contact, competition, accommodation and eventual assimilation.

• Weakness: a linear model

W. E. Du Bois (1903) statement:

• “One ever feels his twoness,…an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings in one dark body.”

Milton M. Gordon (1964):

• Proposed 4 main sub-processes of assimilation:

Cultural assimilation by substitution:

• Similar to Anglo conformity

• Example: Irish Americans

Cultural assimilation by addition :

• Means the subordinate group will take some cultural aspects of the dominant group.

• Example: Hispanics/Latinos

• Spanish + English

• Similar to cultural pluralism

Secondary structural assimilation:

• equal status relationship in the “public” sphere, e.g., dominant and subordinate groups in the work environment. Occurs more rapidly than primary.

• Examples: education, employment, income and housing (residential segregation).

Primary structural assimilation:

• refers to close, personal relationships,

• examples: social clubs, families, etc.

Marital assimilation:

• intermarriage

FOUR MAIN STRATEGIES OF ACCULTURATION:

Acculturation: is a process of adaptation to a new environment as a result of first hand contact between two distinct cultural groups (Redfield, Linton, & Herskovits, 1936)

J. W. Berry (1997, 1998, 1999) identified four strategies:

1. Assimilation2. Integration3. Separation4. Marginalization

ASSIMILATION:

• Reject one’s cultural values & identity and accept the host cultural values, i.e., assimilation by substitution

INTEGRATION:

• Accept both, i.e., own and host cultural values

• Similar to cultural pluralism and assimilation by addition

SEPARATION:

• Accept one’s cultural values & identity and reject the host

MARGINALIZATION:

• Rejection of both cultural values & identities, as a result of discrimination or exclusion

• Marginality

ETHNOGENESIS:

• Process of creating a distinctive ethnicity as a means of adapting to discrimination, even as some degree of assimilation occurs (Andrew Greeley 1971, 1974)

• Examples: celebration of Hanukkah (Jewish Holiday)—close to Christmas

• Kwanza (African American holiday) means “first fruits” in Swahili—December 26- January 1(Ron Karenga created it in 1966)

e pluribus unum

• Now glorify pluribus & belittle unum (union)

• The contemporary ideal is not assimilation but ethnicity