is assimilation a good thing

Surely it has happened to everyone: you are touring a large city in the US and happen upon a neighborhood enclave dominated by a single ethnic or religious group. The fact that Muslims make up 1 percent of the U.S. population and that such an agenda is both a statistical and a Constitutional impossibility has done nothing to temper this fear. A bad thing? This is a common fear you hear today. Friends and family, looking to avoid search costs, choose the same area. 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. Think salad bowl, rather than melting pot: Each ingredient keeps its flavor, even as it mixes with others.

‘‘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 told an immigrant-advocacy conference in New York in 2015. You encounter a new way of life. Even many supporters of immigration implicitly endorse this demand by citing. Please, enable JavaScript and reload the page to enjoy our modern features. Immigrants contribute to America in a million different ways, from growing the food on our tables to creating the technologies we use every day. I was happy too: thrilled to have discovered a Little Brazil in Marietta, Georgia, of all places. By what criteria is an outsider judged to fit into such a diverse nation? Yahoo is part of Verizon Media. Along with this comes a huge apparatus of politics: that we, the dominant group, own the culture, that the culture can only be one thing, that outliers are a threat to national well being, and that there is something living and breathing that we can call the national culture in the first place. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except for material where copyright is reserved by a party other than FEE. One result is a daily experience of rejection, which only makes assimilation more difficult. What Does It Take to ‘Assimilate’ in America. He told me he owned a butcher shop in Gardena, about 15 miles south of Los Angeles, but was contemplating retirement. It sounds like a cliché, but that makes it no less true: a beautiful feature of freedom is its diversity within a vast land space. Find out more about how we use your information in our Privacy Policy and Cookie Policy. It happened to me the other day. Immigrants are expected, over an undefined period, to become like other Americans, a process metaphorically described as a melting pot. I was happy too: thrilled to have discovered a Little Brazil in Marietta, Georgia, of all places. How might assimilation affect a person's identity? In 1890, this newspaper ran an article explaining that while ‘‘the red and black assimilate’’ in New York, ‘‘not so the Chinaman.’’ Cartoons of the era depicted Irish refugees as drunken apes and Chinese immigrants as cannibals swallowing Uncle Sam. Those who believe that assimilation is a matter of principle emphasize a belief in the Constitution and the rule of law; in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and in a strong work ethic and equality. There are network effects that produce advantages for locating where they do. After all, Americans have always been a heterogeneous population — racially, religiously, regionally. I knew the area well, having lived nearby when I was in graduate school, though I hadn’t been there in years. But why do we suppose this at all?

The alt-right pundit Milo Yiannopoulos, an immigrant himself, told a campus group in January that ‘‘the hijab is not something that should ever be seen on American women.’’ The perception that visible signs of religious identity are indicators of deep and sinister splits in society can lead to rabid fears of wholly imaginary threats. So far this year, American police officers have killed more than 500 people, but for the commentator Ann Coulter, the shooting in Minnesota would never have happened in Australia because ‘‘they have fewer than 10k Somalis. I looked again and found that he was right. What does assimilation mean these days? This was a huge place with vast specialities, including breads and desserts, and a friendly staff that felt great pride in their national foods. The shopkeepers were excited to have new customers and happy to brag about their products. Starting in 1903, people arriving at Ellis Island were greeted by a copper statue whose pedestal bore the words, ‘‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’’ One of this country’s most cherished myths is the idea that, no matter where you come from, if you work hard, you can be successful. Even if Jews and other “dysgenic” groups learned to behave in a way consistent with Anglo-Saxon American cultural ideals, they believed that these aliens could still poison and destroy the American bloodstream. ‘‘The problem is,’’ my seatmate said, ‘‘they don’t assimilate.’’ We were about 30,000 feet in the air, nearly an hour from our destination, and I was beginning to regret the turn our conversation had taken. I drive 20 minutes and find myself in Brazil, thrill to the music, the food, the people, the culture. One is free to act and do as they please:but if you want to have a decent life,then assimilation is the best way to go. A conjectural history goes something like this: a few immigrants arrive and choose to live in a certain area. The stores open. Could be a Chinatown. Maybe it is Polish, Cuban, or Persian. We and our partners will store and/or access information on your device through the use of cookies and similar technologies, to display personalised ads and content, for ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. Debates about assimilation are different from debates about undocumented immigration, even though they are often mixed together. Public schooling and compulsory attendance in the US was developed in the hope of homogenizing the culture, purging attachments to the home country and instilling a new one – by force. At different times, the United States barred or curtailed the arrival of Chinese, Italian, Irish, Jewish and, most recently, Muslim immigrants. This fear was intensified by the rise of the eugenics movement. If they do adopt the country’s customs or speak its language, they aren’t said to have ‘‘assimilated’’ but to have ‘‘gone native.’’ In France, by contrast, politicians regularly lament that people descended from North African immigrants choose halal food options for school lunches or want to attend classes in head scarves. The demand that immigrants acculturate and assimilate – and fear that they will not – has been a staple in the immigration debate since the late 19th century or even earlier. It started out as small talk. Jeffrey Tucker is a former Director of Content for the Foundation for Economic Education. Back then, the grave fear was that the Irish, Jews, and Italians would hold on to the values of the home country and fail to adopt that of the new. live off reserve and 51% live on reserve. Assimilation plays an important role in how we learn about the world around us. Whichever model they prefer, Americans pride themselves on being a nation of immigrants. The diversity we gain from the stubborn unwillingness to adapt is a beautiful thing.

People assimilate into the society that they are in.If you are talking about assimilating into America,it is a wise course of action. ‘‘The group doesn’t seem at all interested in integrating,’’ Carlson complained.

However, this process does not end with childhood. Today, approximately 49% of the First Nations population in B.C. But what this means, in practice, remains unsettled.

‘‘You have to assume it’s a statement.’’. Once eugenics became unfashionable (or at least undiscussed) following the Second World War, the fear of dysgenic poisoning abated, while the worry that immigrant groups won’t assimilate was revived.

The pendulum between hope and fear continues to swing today. My example of Little Brazil is a small one but it illustrates the point nicely. But for those who believe that assimilation is a matter of identity — as many on the far right do — nothing short of the abandonment of all traces of your heritage will do. On the other side, there was a Brazilian bakery. Please do not edit the piece, ensure that you attribute the author and mention that this article was originally published on FEE.org. It’s one thing if the US were like the country of Luxembourg, with a population about the size of Tucson, Arizona, and a territory not that much bigger (although Tucson has a massively diverse population with even as many as 100 Asian cuisine restaurants, and no terrible fate has befallen it).

We have >100k.’’ Earlier this month, the Fox News personality Tucker Carlson ran a segment in which he said citizens of a small town in Pennsylvania claimed that several dozen Roma who had been resettled there ‘‘defecate in public, chop the heads off chickens, leave trash everywhere.’’ (The police said they issued citations where relevant.) I asked about that. This fear was intensified by the rise of the eugenics movement, which observed that culture and genetics are different issues. It is a good thing. The result was a. to isolate and alienate the immigrants who were here and keep new ones from arriving (hence the immigration restrictions of the 1920s, among many other government measures). Several states have passed anti-Shariah measures, in fear that Muslims will seek to impose their own religious laws on unsuspecting Americans. On July 24, 1833, a law was passed to give all free colony residents "civil and political rights". “Assimilation” has become part of the liturgy of our civil religion, and like any liturgy, we repeat it without often pausing to consider what we mean by it. It puts on display what is most magical and wonderful about the liberal order: its capacity to create peaceful and productive outcomes based on radical heterogeneous inputs.

For some, assimilation is based on pragmatic considerations, like achieving some fluency in the dominant language, some educational or economic success, some familiarity with the country’s history and culture.

Its primary purpose was to unify the population in singular cultural commitments – not education as such.

Public schooling and compulsory attendance in the US was developed in the hope of homogenizing the culture, purging attachments to the home country and instilling a new one –. This fear was intensified by the rise of the eugenics movement, which observed that culture and genetics are different issues. It makes living in the US far more interesting and adventurous. Do I really want to live in a country where places like Little Brazil are not possible, where every single neighborhood is like every other one, all homogenized and unified? It prompted me to think about the whole question of immigration and the incessant demand for assimilation. This attracts more residents.

The proprietor said that there were lots of Brazil things in this shopping area. Where necessary, they support policy changes to further deter any cultural customs that defy those values. Now things were getting serious.

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