assimilation

n.

1. 1. The act or process of assimilating.
   2. The state of being assimilated.
2. Physiology. The conversion of nutriments into living tissue; constructive metabolism.
3. Linguistics. The process by which a sound is modified so that it becomes similar or identical to an adjacent or nearby sound. For example, the prefix in- becomes im- in impossible by assimilation to the labial p of possible.
4. The process whereby a minority group gradually adopts the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture.

The absorption of stock by the public from a new issue.

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Absorption of a new issue of stock by the investing public after all shares have been sold by the issue's underwriters. See also Absorbed.

Absorption of a new issue of stock by the investing public after all shares have been sold by the issue's underwriters. See also Absorbed.

noun

The process of absorbing and incorporating, especially mentally: absorption, digestion. See accept/reject.

Assimilation is the process by which individuals from one cultural group merge, or "blend," into a second group. The concept of assimilation originated in anthropology and generally refers to a group process, although assimilation can also be defined and examined at the individual level.

Concepts Regarding Assimilation

The term "assimilation" describes a change in individual or group identity that results from continuous social interaction between members of two groups such that members of one group (often a minority culture group) enter into and become a part of a second group (often a majority culture group). In this process of assimilation, the minority group or culture may disappear by losing its members to the larger and more dominant cultural group. One of the more extreme forms of assimilation involves intergroup marriage (e.g., interracial marriage). Consider, for example, an immigrant Spanish-speaking Mexican woman who is Catholic marrying an English-speaking Anglo-American Protestant male. If the woman learns English, changes her maiden name and religion, and later becomes a U.S. citizen, she will have assimilated into mainstream American culture. While she does not necessarily need to change her religion and citizenship as the result of her marriage, if she were to make these changes while abandoning her native cultural ways, then this would be a case of full assimilation. In this case, entering another cultural group via marriage has resulted in a woman relinquishing most or all important aspects of her native identity. As part of this full assimilation, this person would undergo psychological changes in her cultural orientation (i.e., beliefs, attitudes, values), and in her cultural behaviors (i.e., customs, traditions) as well as in her personal identity, to the point of losing all or most of the traditions of her original native culture. A health-related question arises as to whether such an assimilation is socially and psychologically healthy. A century ago, scholars regarded such a complete change in identity and behavior—the "melting pot" notion—as a natural and necessary aspect of immigrant adaptation to life in the United States.

Historically, the melting pot notion has not progressed in its entirety within U.S. society, due in part to the presence of structural barriers, including prejudice and discrimination, that have limited some immigrant and native-born minority persons from significant access to the resources and privileges of the dominant social group. Moreover, within the United States some ethnic people have actively chosen not to "give up" their native heritage and identity, despite their desires to participate successfully within the American economy.

The process of assimilation is facilitated by education, and by conformity to the linguistic and most prevalent cultural norms that are valued within the dominant society. Within the United States, the dominant society (the "Anglo Saxon cultural value system") includes the values of individuality, freedom, democracy, and achievement orientation, efficiency and practicality, and science and technology. Thus, for immigrants coming to the United States, learning English is one of several adaptive changes necessary for successfully entering and participating in the social institutions of the dominant culture.

Historically, some ethnic minority groups have experienced a threat to their culture by the imposition of forced assimilation, resulting from governmental policies and programs that used education as a means of assimilating minority people. The classic case of this involves American Indians. Beginning in the 1890s, American Indian children were removed from the reservation and transported to Indian boarding schools where they were forced to learn English while they were also prohibited from speaking their native language. This effort to inculcate mainstream or dominant cultural ways and to eliminate minority culture, or "Indian ways," operated as a form of forced assimilation. Nonetheless, in the case of American Indians, this effort at "Anglo-Saxon conformity" failed to convert these American Indian children and their parents to dominant cultural norms, and subsequently these policies for the educational assimilation of Indians were discontinued. One question that arises, of course, is whether forced assimilation is detrimental to mental health.

Assimilation is to be distinguished from the related concept of acculturation. Both assimilation and acculturation refer to the process by which individuals undergo changes in their way of life through adaptation to pressures to conform to the lifeways of a new society. Acculturation, however, refers to changes in beliefs and behaviors that occur as an individual adjusts to life in a new culture. Level of acculturation has typically been measured by way of acculturation scales. Such scales typically consider: (1) the individual's level of proficiency in language (e.g., in speaking only Spanish, only English, or both); (2) prior life experiences within his or her native country; (3) current preferences regarding friends; (4) preferences regarding television and radio programs broadcast in English or in their native language; and (5) other aspects of cultural involvement.

While both assimilation and acculturation share a common process of adaptation, assimilation constitutes a more extreme form of change compared with acculturation. In other words, while acculturation involves changes in the individual's pattern of living in adapting to the new society, under acculturation the person often maintains some aspects of his or her original cultural ways and identity. As noted previously, with full assimilation the individual blends entirely into the new society losing most or all aspects of his or her previous cultural identity. By contrast, some immigrants develop a bilingual/bicultural identity, which involves the integration of language, beliefs, and behaviors learned from each of two cultures. This integrated bicultural identity is seen by some as a more mature and healthy resolution to the acculturative stress that affects many immigrants.

Assimilation, Acculturation, and Health

Public health research has examined the relationship between acculturation and health status. The results of these studies provide a mixed picture as to whether successful acculturation, and perhaps successful assimilation, can improve or denigrate health status. Generally, many studies have shown a positive relationship between a high level of acculturation and an increased number of health-risk behaviors that are prevalent in the dominant society. In other words, racial and ethnic minority populations have often observed a greater number of health-compromising behaviors as they acculturate into U.S. society. However, as many of these studies are cross-sectional in design, rather than longitudinal, this conclusion involving the apparent ill effects of acculturation has been inferred rather than observed directly.

In one line of health research—the Hispanic Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (HHANES) survey study of health status, which was conducted from 1982 to 1984—results generally showed the aforementioned association between levels of acculturation and various health problems. The association was stronger among women, although it was also apparent among men. Among Hispanic women, higher rates of health-compromising behaviors have been observed across levels of acculturation for cigarette smoking and for alcohol use. Moreover, for both males and females, a greater level of acculturation has been associated with higher rates of illicit drug use, particularly marijuana and cocaine. However, this general trend, when examined in greater detail, shows that the relationship between assimilation or acculturation and health status is very complex. For example, via the process of acculturation, individuals also tend to improve in socioeconomic status—which means better jobs, better insurance coverage, better access to health services, and, therefore, a greater likelihood of having better health.

Research on the influences of acculturation status on mental health and substance use further demonstrates the complexity of this relationship. For example, some researchers suggest that the occurrence of deviant youth behavior and subsequent substance abuse are prompted by the occurrence of acculturation stress among the parents coupled with subsequent parent-child relationship problems. Such problems often occur because immigrant children acculturate at a faster rate than their parents. Among adult immigrants, acculturation stress occurs as the result of the pressure toward conformity to dominant cultural ways that many immigrants experience in their effort to survive within a new country.

Others have argued, however, that the strong family orientation that is characteristic of Hispanic and other minority families serves as a protective factor against delinquency and other types of anti-social behavior. A clearer interpretation of these apparently contradictory findings will require greater depth of analysis regarding the sociocultural and familial factors that may add risk or protection to the lives of immigrants as they adapt to life within a new society.

A recent study of the lifetime prevalence of psychiatric disorders among various Mexican-American migrant laborers in California revealed some important relationships between acculturation and rates of psychiatric disorder. In comparisons of migrant laborers having a low level of acculturation with those having a high level, those having the highest levels of acculturation exhibited higher rates (adjusted odds ratios) of diagnosed mood disorders (depression) and of diagnosed drug abuse or dependence (addiction to illegal drugs). In addition, those migrant laborers who lived in the United States for less than thirteen years exhibited the lowest levels of any psychiatric disorder (lifetime prevalence rates), with higher levels observed for those who had lived in the United States for over thirteen years. Moreover, the highest levels of psychiatric disorder were observed among those who were native-born Mexican Americans. These results suggest that some process involving acculturative stress and/or adjustment to the normative living conditions within the United States increases the risk of depression and of illicit drug use among Mexican-American migrant laborers. Further developmental and longitudinal research is needed to clarify the mechanisms that may produce these effects.

From a different perspective, young immigrants who engage in deviant behaviors (including substance abuse) cannot be characterized solely as being of either high or low acculturation status, but instead can be seen as outcasts or "marginalized," because they do not "fit into" either group. Such individuals do not relate to either the dominant culture or to their native cultural group. In other words, these are persons who have failed to assimilate into the society. Such members of racial or ethnic minority groups may enter into socially deviant lifestyles in efforts to obtain coveted goals (e.g., economic rewards) that are otherwise blocked via conventionally sanctioned mechanisms (e.g., school achievement). These alienated youth may not only isolate themselves from the mainstream culture, but they may also become alienated from their native reference group. Isolated from both cultures, they may choose to become members of street gangs as a means of obtaining mainstream goals. While joining a street gang may serve as an adaptive form of survival in ghetto or barrio environments, it may be unhealthy in the long run, as these youth face greater risks of being victims of violence and of developing drug dependence. Similarly, minority youth who are alienated from the mainstream culture may develop a radical identity that avoids the mainstream culture but that expresses strong loyalty toward their native culture (i.e., separatists). These youth may or may not belong to a street gang, but they do exhibit strong cultural loyalty and adherence to certain traditional cultural traits such as (among Hispanic groups) family bonding (familism), respeto, and machismo.

As the above discussion suggests, acculturation (of which assimilation represents an extreme form) is a complex process. Many immigrants to the United States exhibit improvements in lifestyle as they acculturate and move up in socioeconomic status. However, as they do, some of these immigrants may also exhibit greater rates of unhealthful behavior, reflecting the prevailing or normative unhealthful behaviors that are prevalent within certain sectors of conventional U.S. society. These more complex patterns of change in lifestyle and in risk for various diseases and disorders due to acculturation and assimilation require further study to clarify which life changes are indeed healthful (and why they are healthful), and which increase the risk for disease or antisocial behavior.

(SEE ALSO: Acculturation; Cultural Factors; Ethnicity and Health; Immigrants, Immigration; Migrant Workers)

Bibliography

Alderete, E.; Vega, W. A.; Kolody, B.; and Aguliar-Gaxiola, S. (2000). "Lifetime Prevalence of Risk Factors for Psychiatric Disorders among Mexican Migrant Farmworkers in California." American Journal of Public Health 90:608–614.

Amaro, H.; Jenkins, W.; Kunitz, S.; Levy, J.; Mixon, M.; and Yu, E. (1995). "Epidemiology of Minority Health." Health Psychology 14:592–600.

Amaro, H.; Whitaker, R.; Coffman, G.; and Heeren, T. (1990). "Acculturation and Marijuana and Cocaine Use: Findings from HHANES 1982–94." American Journal of Public Health 80:54–60.

Buriel, R.; Calzada, S.; and Vasquez, R. (1983). "The Relationship of Traditional Mexican American Culture to Adjustment and Delinquency among Three Generations of Mexican American Male Adolescents." Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 4:41–55.

Burnam, M. A.; Hough, R. L.; Telles, C. A.; Karno, M.; and Escobar, J. I. (1987). "Measurement of Acculturation in a Community Population of Mexican Americans." Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 9:105–130.

Castro, F. G.; Proescholdbell, R. J.; Abeita, L.; and Rodriguez, D. (1999). "Ethnic and Cultural Minority Groups." In Addictions: A Comprehensive Guidebook, eds. B. S. McCrady and E. E. Epstein. New York: Oxford University Press.

Cuellar, I.; Harris, L. C.; and Jasso, R. (1980). "An Acculturation Rating Scale for Mexican American Normal and Clinical Populations." Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 2:199–217.

Haynes, S.; Harvey, C.; Montes, H.; Nickens, H.; and Cohen, B. H. (1990). "Patterns of Cigarette Smoking among Hispanics in the United States: Results from HHANES 1982–84." American Journal of Public Health 80:42–46.

Kaplan, H. B.; Martin, S. S.; and Robbins, C. (1984). "Pathways to Adolescent Drug Use: Self-Derogation, Peer Influence, Weakening of Social Controls, and Early Substance Use." Journal of Health and Social Behavior 25:270–289.

Kitano, H. H. L. (1974). Race Relations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

La Fromboise, T.; Coleman, H. L. K.; and Gerton, J. (1993). "Psychological Impact of Biculturalism: Evidence and Theory." Psychological Bulletin 114:395–412.

Locke, D. C. (1998). Increasing Multicultural Understanding: A Comprehensive Model, 2nd edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Markides, K. S.; Ray, L. A.; Stroup-Benham, C. A.; and Trevino, F. (1990). "Acculturation and Alcohol Consumption in the Mexican American Population of the Southwestern United States: Findings from HHANES 1982–84." American Journal of Public Health 80(suppl.):42–46.

Marmot, M. G.; Syme, L. S.; Kagan, S.; Kato, H.; Cohen, J. B.; and Belsky, J. (1975). "Epidemiological Studies of Coronary Heart Disease and Stroke in Japanese Men Living in Japan, Hawaii, and California: Prevalence of Coronary and Hypertensive Heart Disease and Associated Risk Factors." American Journal of Epidemiology 104:225–247.

Olson, J. S., and Wilson, R. (1984). Native Americans in the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

Padilla, A. M.; Cervantes, R. C.; Maldonado, M.; and Garcia, R. E. (1988). "Coping Responses to Psychosocial Stressors among Mexican and Center American Immigrants." Journal of Community Psychology 16:418–427.

Szapocznik, J., and Kurtines, W. M. (1989). Breakthroughs in Family Therapy with Drug Abusing and Problem Youth. New York: Springer.

Vega, W. A.; Hough, R. L.; and Miranda, M. R. (1985). "Modeling Cross-Cultural Research in Hispanic Mental Health." In Stress & Hispanic Mental Health: Relating Research to Service Delivery, eds. W. A. Vega and M. R. Miranda. Rockville, MD: National Institute of Mental Health.

— FELIPE GONZALEZ CASTRO; VERA LOPEZ

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Also known as acculturation, or integration, this is the integration of an immigrant, outsider, or subordinate group into the dominant, host community. Initially the migrant group is segregated from the host culture but then there is often a blurring of cultural lines, and the concept of assimilation does imply that the minority group eventually takes on the values of the host, or charter group. This contrasts with the view that new groups can affect the values of the dominant group, or live alongside it in a multicultural society.

The rate of assimilation depends on the race, religion, customs, occupations, and cultures of the migrants and the dominant group. Behavioural assimilation is the absorption of the incoming group into the host community, as the newcomers absorb the culture and history of the charter group, while structural assimilation is concerned with the way incomers are distributed throughout society, in occupational and social groupings. Urban geographers note that the degree of residential segregation is inversely correlated with the level of assimilation of urban immigrants.

This familiar word can suggest opposing ideas: there is active assimilation, where a society or individual absorbs forces from outside, which strengthen its own identity and which comes to be regarded by later generations as peculiar to that identity; and passive assimilation, where the society or individual allows the outside forces to change or destroy its identity. Jewish history exhibits many instances of active assimilation in such matters as language, music, diet, and dress. More often, however, assimilation signifies the replacement of practices sanctified by the Jewish past by others derived from the non-Jewish world and is the equivalent of complete absorption. This process is illustrated by the transformation of Jewish life in Europe following the French Revolution. Prior to that event the Jewish communities of Europe had lived as a corpus separatum, segregated in their own residential areas, restricted in their occupations, professing a religion which their neighbors regarded with hostility, speaking their own language, living under their own laws. Their position depended on the will of the ruler, while the hope of messianic redemption limited their interest in the politics of their immediate environment and compensated psychologically for the wretchedness of their situation.

Differentiation by inherited status was not suffered by Jews alone, and the philosophers of the 18th century Enlightenment visualized a society in which all men would enjoy the same freedom, live under the same laws, and stand in the same relation to the State. To share the life of the majority it would not be necessary for Jews to embrace the religion of the majority: religion was a matter on which state and society would be neutral.

Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1783) was the herald of this ideal for the Jews of Europe; and the French Revolution created political conditions which made its accomplishment possible. Mendelssohn emphasized the importance of secular education and familiarity with the vernacular; the French Revolution conferred on the Jews the status of equal citizens, at the same time dismantling their separate corporate structure, and this became the hallmark of Jewish Emancipation. Official Jewish activity became limited to the religious congregation and, as with other denominations, this was subject to government control.

Educational and political factors speedily undermined the Jew's acceptance of his tradition in such matters as language, dress, and the authority of rabbinic law. Economic opportunity enhanced the claims of the gentile world on the Jews' style of life.

In Central Europe, the emancipation of the Jews did not proceed without interruption. In general, civil rights were conceded before political equality, the lifting of the final barriers being retarded by an upsurge of German nationalism. This did not diminish assimilationist tendencies, since among many Jews it stimulated the desire to prove themselves worthy members of the host nation. In the area of religion, it is found as one of the factors influencing the development of Reform Judaism. Likewise it is seen in the Neo-Orthodoxy which replaced the old traditional Judaism in Central Europe.

The situation in Eastern Europe raised stiffer barriers against assimilationist forces. The Jews were not a small, isolated group living side by side with a dominant indigenous culture; they were one of several ethnic groups, and there was no obvious reason to assimilate to any one of them. The czarist government's clumsy attempts at Russification and suspicion of missionary motives hardened the traditionalist outlook among Jews. At the same time, countercurrents developing within the Jewish groups---the desire to cultivate secular knowledge, the spread of Jewish nationalism, adherence to revolutionary groups--- weakened the hold of traditional Judaism. It would be far-fetched to attribute to assimilationist forces the westward migration of East European Jews at the end of the 19th century, but the readiness with which many of the emigrants divested themselves of their traditional garb suggests a susceptibility to those forces.

The United States provided par excellence the "open society" sought by the Enlightenment. Legally based stratification, inherited in Europe from feudal practice, did not exist and ran counter to the American political system. Adherence to the Jewish community was a matter of voluntary decision; there was no basis for the traditional community structure, and defection from traditional Judaism was an individual affair. Though Reform Judaism attempted to halt the tide of assimilation it exhibited the strong influence of assimilationist forces, extending eventually to the "Protestantization" of the synagogue.

During the second of the two centuries following the French Revolution the pendulum swung against the liberal society envisioned by the Enlightenment, and within the Jewish group the current in favor of cultivating the separate Jewish identity prevailed. The emergence of a Jewish State (1948), supported wholeheartedly by Diaspora communities, is the outstanding witness to this movement. Jewish cosmopolitan socialist groups disappeared along with the East European communities which sustained them; in the United States, Reform Judaism turned away from its assimilationist tendences and cultivated Jewish ethnic identity, while there are sections of Orthodoxy which use the openness of the American system to recreate something similar to the corpus separatum of pre-revolutionary Europe, as was the case with certain sections of Orthodoxy within the State of Israel.

If assimilation as ideology is disavowed, as practice it is in full force. The post-Holocaust world is hospitable to the Jew, and the evidence, in particular the rate of Intermarriage, suggests that large numbers are succumbing to it. In the United States, according to a study completed in the year 2001, the total Jewish population stands at around 5.5 million, continuing a downward trend; moreover, barely half are affiliated to a synagogue.

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[Ge]

The absorption of a minority group into a majority population, during which the group takes on the values and norms of the dominant culture.

1. In physiology, the incorporation of new materials into the internal structure of an organism.

2. In sociology, a process in which a minority group adopts the values and behaviour patterns of a majority group, and eventually become absorbed into the majority group. Compare accommodation.

3. A cognitive process in which children incorporate new experiences into their present interpretation of their world. The new experiences become part of the child's current conceptual schema, which therefore becomes fuller and more elaborate. If the new experiences cannot be assimilated, then the conceptual schema is changed (see accommodation).

Assimilation refers to the integration of the members of a minority group into the broader society to which they belong. According to the sociologist Milton M. Gordon, it is a seven-stage process, in which "acculturation," or the adoption by newcomers of the language, dress, and other daily customs of the host society, is the first step. "Structural assimilation," the second, involves the large-scale entrance of minorities into the cliques, clubs, and institutions of the host society, in a manner that is personal, intimate, emotionally affective, and engaging the whole personality. Once a group has achieved structural assimilation, the remaining stages "naturally follow." Those include "amalgamation" or frequent intermarriage, the development of a sense of peoplehood based solely on the host society, the disappearances of prejudiced attitudes and of discriminatory behavior toward the minority, and the absence of civic conflicts in which the competing interests of the majority and minority groups are an issue.

Assimilation is a problematic term. It can refer to the experiences of a group or of its individual members. Originating in the natural sciences, it identified a process through which one organism absorbs another; the latter then ceases to exist in recognizable form. Scholars are vague about the techniques for measuring the progress of assimilation and imprecise in defining its practical completion short of the disappearance of the minority, which rarely occurs. Some focus on socioeconomic adjustment and demographic behavior, while others emphasize changes in identity. Advocates with differing political agendas regarding national development debate whether assimilation is a desirable outcome for a society containing multiple groups.

Theorists have given names to existing, implicit models of assimilation and have proposed alternative ones. Identifying the boundaries that separate terms such as "melting pot," "pluralism," "cultural pluralism," and "multiculturalism" is not easy. The use of ancillary concepts, including "Anglo-conformity," "triple melting pot," "primordial ethnicity," "symbolic ethnicity," and "postethnicity" further complicates discussions.

The Melting Pot

In the 1780s, Hector St. Jean de Crèvecoeur offered one of the earliest descriptions of the formation of the American population as the physical melding of diverse European peoples into a new, single people. Israel Zangwill's eponymous 1908 play made "melting pot" the twentieth century's phrase for Crèvecoeur's idea. An English Jew who espoused various forms of Zionism throughout his life, Zangwill nevertheless presented, as the outcome of life in the American cauldron, the union of seemingly implacable enemies—a Russian Jewish immigrant to New York and the daughter of the tsarist official who had ordered the destruction of his village.

Although melting pot implies mutual change leading to the creation of a new alloy, most who adopted the phrase described a process, which Milton Gordon later called "Anglo-conformity," through which newcomers adapted to norms derived from an Anglo-American heritage. Alternative visions arose almost immediately. In 1915, Horace Kallen described the United States as an orchestral combination of constant European cultures. Cultural pluralism, as Kallen's outlook became known, rejected the melting pot and described ancestral roots as so determinative that Americanization had to be repeated with each generation. Writing as an opponent of U.S. involvement in World War I, Randolph Bourne critiqued the melting pot ideal as the effort of Anglophiles to place their own culture ahead of others and envisioned Americans sifting and winnowing the best from all traditions. Unlike Kallen, Bourne implied greater mutual change among the nation's constituent groups, with residual differences being of little consequence. Bourne's phrase, "trans-national America," has not survived, but the term "pluralism," or some variant of it, has captured the spirit of his ideas.

The melting pot metaphor, especially as expressed by proponents of "100-percent Americanism," held sway through World War I and after. As of the New Deal and World War II, however, concepts like "cultural democracy" and versions of cultural pluralism closer to Bourne's point of view than to Kallen's became predominant. Under the influence of thinkers like the sociologist Robert E. Park, the criteria for assimilation became political loyalty, adoption of generally accepted social customs, and conformity to national practices and aspirations.

As limited immigration changed the demographics of America's foreign stock after the 1920s, the Great Depression, World War II, cinema, radio, and eventually television spread generations of common experiences across the nation. By the 1940s, the sociologist Ruby Jo Reeves Kennedy argued that a "triple melting pot" had emerged. Clear ethnic boundaries were disappearing, as Protestants, Catholics, and Jews willingly married across nationality groups but within their religious traditions.

Religious Segmentation

Religion's potential for segmenting the population was a source of concern. Paul Blanshard accused Catholics of hostility to America's democratic and liberal traditions. Several observers noted the lagging socioeconomic status of Catholics, and Gerhard Lenski attributed the gap to values rooted in the religion. Overall, however, the triple melting pot was simply an elaborated expression of the benign pluralist model of the era. Will Herberg, in Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (1955), argued that the nation's three major religions shared the political and civil values that made the United States the world's leading theistic power. Subsequent scholarship indicated that, on average, foreign-stock Euro-Americans had "caught up" by 1950. For those seeking reassurance, the election of John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, as president offered evidence that differences based in religious background had waned.

Race Succeeds Religion

The issue of race was peripheral to the assimilation debate in the first half of the century. With the rise of the civil rights movement, however, race succeeded nationality and religion as the final frontier of America's assimilation history. Drawing from works like Stanley Elkins's Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life (1959), liberals assumed that slavery had deracinated blacks and made them the most culturally American of all the peoples who had come to the New World. Color prejudice, therefore, was the primary obstacle to total assimilation.

This optimism waned when dismantling discriminatory legislation proved an inadequate means to achieve rapid structural assimilation for black Americans. Critics argued that the legacy of slavery and the visibility of color differences made it impossible for racial minorities to attain assimilation of the kind achieved by Americans of European origin. They denied that blacks had reached the status of an "interest group," which Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan saw as the remaining function for group identity among the Irish, Italians, Jews, blacks, and Puerto Ricans of New York City. Rediscovering ties to Africa, or reinventing them, activists posited the existence of true cultural differences separating blacks from the majority in the United States. Similar developments occurred among smaller minority populations, including Native Americans, Latinos, and Asians who had experienced discrimination analogous to that suffered by blacks.

The Revival of Multiculturalism

After the 1960s, Kallen's version of cultural pluralism, which the author himself had long since abandoned, enjoyed a revival, often under the term "multiculturalism." Although some commentators used the word simply as a synonym for the view of pluralism dominant at midcentury, others offered multiculturalism as a distinct alternative. They saw ethnic and racial identities as primordial or ineradicable; accepted the existence of real and permanent cultural differences; vested the strength of the United States in its diversity, which the government, therefore, had an obligation to preserve; and stressed the importance of group as well as individual rights.

Multiculturalism did not escape criticism, especially when its proponents reduced American diversity to a split between Europeans and allied "peoples of color," and, in an era of renewed immigration, not only predicted what the future would be but also offered policy prescriptions for what it should be. Although Asian and Latino newcomers to the United States in the late twentieth century had direct or indirect ties with groups that had suffered prejudice on the basis of ascriptive characteristics, they arrived in an era when the nation had rejected discrimination based on such grounds. They constitute majorities in the minority groups to which they ethnically belong, and the empirical evidence leaves it open to debate whether their experiences are replicating the history of exclusion associated with race or the history associated with the integration of European immigrant groups.

Michael Novak, in The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics: Politics and Culture in the Seventies (1972), adopted some multicultural premises but used them to demonstrate that Europeans from quadrants outside the northwest of that continent suffered exclusions similar to those experienced by racial minorities. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., in The Disuniting of America (1991), and Nathan Glazer, in Affirmative Discrimination: Ethnic Inequality and Public Policy (1975), more thoroughly disagreed with the contentions of the multiculturalists and with the various programs they endorsed to preserve minority cultures and to promote access to education and employment for minority group members.

Moderate commentators have sought to find themes that may lead to a generally accepted interpretation of assimilation. Although cognizant of the real experiential differences between the heirs of European immigrants and descendants of African slaves, Matthew Frye Jacobson, in Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (1998), demonstrated the overlap-ping histories of the terms "race" and "ethnicity" and the constructed rather than substantive meanings of both. Herbert Gans has claimed that for Americans of European descent ethnicity is primarily a "symbolic" identity that they can use voluntarily and in positive ways. Ann Swidler has similarly described ethnicity as just one of the cultural tools through which persons can express their identities. David Hollinger, in Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (1995), argued for a future in which all persons can comfortably claim one or more ethnic identities without having their expectations or behaviors limited by those identities.

Bibliography

Blanshard, Paul. American Freedom and Catholic Power. Boston: Beacon Press, 1949.

Bourne, Randolph. "Trans-national America." Atlantic Monthly 118, no. 1 (July 1916): 86–97.

Gans, Herbert J. "Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America." Ethnic and Racial Studies 2, no. 1 (January 1979): 1–20.

Glazer, Nathan, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Beyond the Melting Pot: The Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Jews, Italians, and Irish of New York City. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1963.

Gordon, Milton M. Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Kallen, Horace. "Democracy Versus the Melting Pot." The Nation (18 Feb. 1915): 190–194 and (25 Feb. 1915): 217–220.

Lenski, Gerhard E. The Religious Factor: A Sociological Study of Religion's Impact on Politics, Economics, and Family Life. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961.

Park, Robert E., and Herbert A. Miller. Old World Traits Transplanted. New York and London: Harper, 1921.

Swidler, Ann. "Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies." American Sociological Review 51, no. 2 (April 1986): 273–286.

—Thomas Archdeacon

The process by which a person or persons acquire the social and psychological characteristics of a group: “Waves of immigrants have been assimilated into the American culture.”

Conversion of nutritive material into living tissue; anabolism.