Remaking the American Mainstream

Assimilation and Contemporary Immigration

Richard Alba, Victor Nee, Richard D. ALBA

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780674018136, 9780674010406
• eBook ISBN: 9780674261372
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

In this age of multicultural democracy, the idea of assimilation--that the social distance separating immigrants and their children from the mainstream of American society closes over time--seems outdated and, in some forms, even offensive. But as Richard Alba and Victor Nee show in the first systematic treatment of assimilation since the mid-1960s, it continues to shape the immigrant experience, even though the geography of immigration has shifted from Europe to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Institutional changes, from civil rights legislation to immigration law, have provided a more favorable environment for nonwhite immigrants and their children than in the past.

Assimilation is still driven, in claim, by the decisions of immigrants and the second generation to improve their social and material circumstances in America. But they also show that immigrants, historically and today, have profoundly changed our mainstream society and culture in the process of becoming Americans.

Surveying a variety of domains--language, socioeconomic attachments, residential patterns, and intermarriage--they demonstrate the continuing importance of assimilation in American life. And they predict that it will blur the boundaries among the major, racially defined populations, as nonwhites and Hispanics are increasingly incorporated into the mainstream.

• CHAPTER ONE •

Rethinking Assimilation

Assimilation is a contested idea today. Since the 1960s it has been seen in a mostly negative light, as an ethnocentric and patronizing imposition on minority peoples struggling to retain their cultural and ethnic integrity. The very word seems to conjure up a bygone era, when the multicultural nature of American society was not comprehended, let alone respected, and there appeared, at least to white Americans, to be a unitary and unquestioned American way of life. The sociologist Nathan Glazer, in an essay tellingly titled “Is Assimilation Dead?” describes the present attitude thus: “‘Assimilation’ is not today a popular term. Recently I asked a group of Harvard students taking a class on race and ethnicity what their attitude to the term ‘assimilation’ was. The large majority had a negative reaction to it. Had I asked what they thought of the term ‘Americanization,’ the reaction, I am sure, would have been even more hostile.”¹ The rejection of the old assimilation canon is not limited to students and the young. Assimilation was once unquestionably the foundational concept for the study of ethnic relations, but in recent decades it has come to be seen by sociologists and others as an ideologically laden residue of worn-out notions. For many, it smacks of the era when functionalism reigned supreme and when ethnic and racial groups could be rated according to a cultural profile presumed to be required for success in an advanced industrial society. The assimilation concept of the earlier era is now condemned for the expectation that minority groups would inevitably want to shed their own cultures, as if these were old skins no longer possessing any vital force, and wrap themselves in the mantle of Anglo-American culture. The one-sidedness of this conception overlooked the value and sustainability of minority cultures and, in addition, masked barely hidden ethnocentric assumptions about the superiority of Anglo-American culture. Indeed, it has been viewed as a form of “Eurocentric hegemony,” a weapon of the majority for putting minorities at a disadvantage by forcing them to live by cultural standards that are not their own.²

This old conception of assimilation has become passé. It was done in by many forces and events, but perhaps above all by the sociological equivalent of Arthur Conan Doyle’s telltale “dog that didn’t bark”: namely, the virtually universal failure of social scientists to predict the broad impact of the civil rights movement and the identity politics it spawned. Ever since, the argument has been that their view was blinkered by the uncritical acceptance of an assimilation model of American life, which led them to assume that black Americans sought no more than quiet integration with white America.³

Without question, many of the intellectual sins now attributed to assimilation can also be documented in the mid-twentieth-century literature that describes the adjustments made by ethnic and immigrant groups to enter the mainstream of American society. They can be found, for instance, in W. Lloyd Warner and Leo Srole’s Social Systems of American Ethnic Groups (1945), a classic study of ethnic assimilation in “Yankee City.” Warner and Srole conclude that American ethnic groups are destined to be no more than temporary phenomena, doomed by the egalitarian values of the United States and by widespread social mobility: “The future of American ethnic groups seems to be limited; it is likely that they will be quickly absorbed. When this happens one of the great epochs of American history will have ended. . . . Paradoxically, the force of American equalitarianism, which attempts to make all men American and alike, and the force of our class order, which creates differences among ethnic peoples, have combined to dissolve our ethnic groups.”⁴ As part of this assimilation process, ethnic groups must, according to the authors, “unlearn” their cultural traits, which are “evaluated by the host society as inferior,” in order to “successfully learn the new way of life necessary for full acceptance.”⁵ Even more disturbing to the present-day viewpoint, Warner and Srole correlated the potential for speedy assimilation with a hierarchy of racial and cultural acceptability, ranging from English-speaking Protestants at the top to “Negroes and all Negroid mixtures” at the bottom. Whereas the assimilation of fair-skinned Protestants, whether English-speaking or not, was expected to be unproblematic and therefore of short duration, that of groups deviating from this ethnic prototype in any significant respect would be considerably more prolonged, if not doubtful. Thus, the assimilation of “dark-skinned” Mediterranean Catholics, such as the Italians, was expected by Warner and Srole to demand a “moderate” period, which the authors equate with six generations or more! The assimilation of non-European groups was even more problematic and was expected to continue into the indefinite future or even, in the case of African Americans, to be delayed until “the present American social order changes gradually or by revolution.”⁶

Exhibited here are some of the features of the old assimilation conception that scholars now vigorously reject in relation to new immigrants and their American-born children. One is the seeming inevitability of assimilation, which is presented as the natural end point of the process of incorporation into American society. Even black Americans, blocked by the racism of U.S. society from full pursuit of the assimilation goal, are presumed by Warner and Srole to be assimilating, albeit at a glacial pace. Further, by equating assimilation with full or successful incorporation, these and other earlier writers viewed African Americans and other racial minorities as, in effect, incompletely assimilated, rather than as incorporated into the society on some other basis. In relation to black Americans in particular, this older assimilation conception was consistent with liberal incrementalist strategies for pursuing racial justice, which, on the one hand, sought to remove legal and institutional barriers to equality and to combat white prejudice and discrimination and, on the other, urged blacks to seek integration and to become more like middle-class whites.⁷ In his classic work, An American Dilemma, Gunnar Myrdal stated this premise baldly: “We assume that it is to the advantage of American Negroes as individuals and as a group to become assimilated into American culture, to acquire the traits held in esteem by dominant white Americans.”⁸ By this standard, black Americans and other racial minorities should want to assimilate rather than seek support and protection in the company of their racial/ethnic peers.

Another feature that has been found objectionable in the old formulation of assimilation is its apparent ethnocentrism, which elevates a particular cultural model, that of middle-class Protestant whites of British ancestry, to the normative standard by which other groups are to be assessed and toward which they should aspire. This is bluntly apparent in the ranking of groups by Warner and Srole, which places groups higher in the scale, and thus more rapidly assimilating, the closer they are at the outset to the Anglo-Saxon cultural (and physical) model. Assimilation, then, meant becoming more like middle-class Protestant whites. That this was in fact the cultural prototype for assimilation was quite explicit in the most authoritative discussion of the concept in the post–World War II era, Milton Gordon’s Assimilation in American Life (1964). Gordon wrote, for instance, that “if there is anything in American life which can be described as an overall American culture which serves as a reference point for immigrants and their children, it can best be described, it seems to us, as the middle-class cultural patterns of, largely, white Protestant, Anglo-Saxon origins.”⁹ He did not argue that this cultural standard enjoyed its preeminence because of inherent superiority, just that it was the first one established by the European colonists and was associated with the ethnic core of U.S. society. He recognized, moreover, that the mere acquisition of this cultural prototype did not guarantee acceptance by the core group and thus social assimilation to it; discrimination could still be practiced against minority individuals, even if they perfectly mimicked the behavioral repertoire of the WASP upper-middle class.¹⁰ But what Gordon and other writers on assimilation failed to recognize was the possibility of successful incorporation into the society on a cultural basis other than that of the WASP mainstream. Insofar as individuals and groups retained ethnic cultural distinctiveness, they were presumed to be hampered in achieving socioeconomic and other forms of integration and, of course, to be incompletely assimilated, with the implication that over time their similarity to the middle-class Anglo-Saxon standard would grow.

The one-sided nature of the assimilation process, as traditionally conceived, and the cultural and ethnic homogeneity it allegedly produces have also provided the basis for disputing it. As Warner and Srole’s reference to an “unlearning” process suggests, the old assimilation concept assumed that the minority group would change almost completely in order to assimilate (except for areas where it already resembled the majority group), while the majority culture would remain unaffected. Gordon was quite explicit about this. In a well-known passage, he asked whether acculturation was “entirely a one-way process? Was the core culture entirely unaffected by the presence of the immigrants and the colored minorities?”¹¹ Although he took pains to stress the contributions to American life of many minority individuals, his answer was for the most part affirmative: other than in the area of institutional religion, and aside from what he characterized as “minor modifications” made by minority cultures, the culture of the Anglo-Saxon core was accepted intact by assimilating ethnic groups and thus took the place of their own. From the contemporary standpoint, this view of the predominance of the culture of Anglo-American groups that settled in North America in the colonial era downplays the multiple cultural streams that have fed into American culture, affecting even the English language as spoken by Americans.¹² And it presumes that assimilation will impose a cultural homogeneity where diversity previously reigned. Not only does this view seem in contradiction to the riotous cultural bloom of the United States, but also, in the contemporary, rapidly globalizing world, it seems quite undesirable to extinguish the distinctive cultural and linguistic knowledge that immigrants could pass on to their children.

The final fatal flaw in the old assimilation canon, according to a common view, is that it allows no room for a positive role for the ethnic or racial group. The ethnic community could provide temporary shelter for immigrants and their children seeking to withstand the intense stresses associated with the early stages of immigration to a new society; according to frequently used images, the ethnic community was a “way station” or a “decompression chamber.” But, past a certain point, attachment to the ethnic group would hinder minority individuals from taking full advantage of the opportunities offered by American society, which require individualistic mobility, not ethnic loyalty. What assimilationist scholars appeared to overlook was that, in some cases, the ethnic group could, by dominating some economic niches, be the source of better socioeconomic opportunities for ethnic entrepreneurs. In New York’s garment industry throughout the first half of the twentieth century, it was an advantage for businessmen to be Jewish or Italian, and it would have been difficult for members of other groups to establish themselves in the industry’s network of particularistic transactions. There are also important non-economic ways in which the ethnic group can contribute to the well-being of its members, such as through the solidarity and support provided by co-ethnics with whom one shares a diffuse sense of a common heritage.¹³

Clearly there are marked deficiencies in the old assimilation canon. Events and intellectual trends since the 1960s have brought about social changes that make these deficiencies very apparent. The 1960s were a watershed period shaped by social movements that raised probing and far-reaching questions about the constitution of American society, especially with respect to the status of minorities and women. In light of the institutional changes that followed in the wake of these social movements, future historians may view this period as just as transformative for American society as was the Protestant Reformation for European civilization. Intellectual trends responding to the unfolding events emphasized the rights of groups whose history of exclusion and discrimination was viewed as justifying remedial action. Criticism of the old canonical formulation of assimilation reflects a new consensus involving a mandate for the inclusion of all groups in civil society and for remedial action to secure equality of rights, interpreted broadly as meaning parity in life chances. This logic has permeated thinking about the incorporation of immigrant minorities, imparting a strong momentum to the rejection of the old assimilation canon.

Alternative models have developed describing how immigrants adapt in a new historical context of globalization and non-European immigration. One such alternative envisions enhanced prospects for a vigorous ethnic pluralism in the contemporary world, generated partly by the advantages to be derived from welfare-maximizing features of ethnic connections and partly by globalization driven by enormous advances in information technology, market integration, and mass air transportation—all of which make it feasible for immigrants and perhaps the second and later generations to maintain significant relationships with their homeland and with the relatives and towns that hold a special place in their hearts and memories. So remarkable has the prospect for such relationships seemed that a substantial body of scholarship has mushroomed around it under the somewhat faddish name of transnationalism (though the phenomenon is not entirely new, as we will observe in a later chapter).¹⁴ The pluralist alternative envisions that, in the contemporary world, the choice to live in an ethnic social and cultural matrix need not be associated with the loss of the advantages once afforded almost exclusively by the mainstream.

The prospect that pluralism will flourish to a degree not seen before in the United States begins with the observation that some level of pluralism has in fact survived all along, though often at the societal margins. Growing interest in multiculturalism has led to a recognition that minority cultures have retained a vitality that was not acknowledged during the period when the melting pot was the paramount metaphor for American society. Native American languages such as Navaho (178,000 speakers in 2000) continue to thrive, for instance, as do African American religious traditions and numerous customs brought by immigrant groups. Recent scholarship adds the innovative claim that ethnic individuals can derive advantages from a group’s culture and institutions. The claim comes in varied forms: the argument that bilingual individuals possess cognitive advantages over those who speak only one tongue; the suggestion that ethnic sub-economies, epitomized by the extensive Cuban sub-economy in Miami, can provide opportunities for income and mobility equal to those in the mainstream economy; and the observation that involvement with an ethnic culture and institutions offers protection to second-generation adolescents from some of the hazards of growing up in the inner city.¹⁵ In each case, it is implied that ethnics have a motivation to reject assimilation, at least in its crassest forms.

Transnationalism may strengthen that motivation. The idea of transnationalism emphasizes the prospects for achieving an almost seamless connection between workaday lives in America and the origin society through a web of border-spanning cultural, social, and economic ties. An example of a style of transnationalism rooted in globalization is seen in the large Japanese business community in America, where corporate executives and technical personnel maintain close linkages with their home offices and business associates in Tokyo through information technology and frequent air travel to Japan. Another example of transnationalism is the new form of sojourning by low-wage laborers and entrepreneurs from the Caribbean Basin and Central America.¹⁶ Border-spanning social networks enable sojourners to send remittances, operate cross-national small businesses, invest their savings in the hometown economy, and sustain ongoing communal life in two countries.

While the pluralist alternative to assimilation envisions opportunities that are at least the equivalent of those found in the mainstream, another alternative model foresees a form of incorporation associated with constricted opportunities. It focuses on the possibility that many in the second and third generations from the new immigrant groups, hindered by their very humble initial locations in American society and barred from entry into the mainstream by their race and their class location, will be incorporated into American society as disadvantaged minorities. This approach is assoc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Rethinking Assimilation
• 2 Assimilation Theory, Old and New
• 3 Assimilation in Practice: The Europeans and East Asians
• 4 Was Assimilation Contingent on Specific Historical Conditions?
• 5 The Background to Contemporary Immigration
• 6 Evidence of Contemporary Assimilation
• 7 Conclusion: Remaking the Mainstream
• Notes
• Index