Assimilation, American Style

Universalist ideals, capitalism, a plethora of associations, and a love of progress are the secret to interethnic identity.

Peter D. Salins from the February 1997 issue

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While all these metaphors--including the melting pot--are colorful ways of representing assimilation, they don't go far in giving one an accurate understanding of what assimilation is really about. For example, across the ideological spectrum, they all invoke some external, impersonal assimilating agent. Who, exactly, is the "great alchemist" of the melting pot? What force tosses the salad or pieces together the mosaic? By picturing assimilation as an impersonal, automatic process and thus placing it beyond analysis, the metaphors fail to illuminate its most important secrets. Assimilation, if it is to succeed, must be a voluntary process, by both the assimilating immigrants and the assimilated-to natives. Assimilation is a human accommodation, not a mechanical production.

The metaphors also mislead as to the purposes of assimilation. The melting pot is supposed to turn out an undifferentiated alloy--a uniform, ethnically neutral, American protoperson. Critics have long pointed out that this idea is far-fetched. But is it even desirable? And if it is desirable, does it really foster a shared national identity? The greatest failing of the melting-pot metaphor is that it overreaches. It exaggerates the degree to which immigrants' ethnicity is likely to be extinguished by exposure to American society and it exaggerates the need to extinguish ethnicity. By being too compelling, too idealistic, the melting-pot idea has inadvertently helped to discredit the very assimilation paradigm it was meant to celebrate.

On the other hand, behind their unexceptionable blandness, the antithetical cultural pluralist metaphors are profoundly insidious. By suggesting that the product of assimilation is mere ethnic coexistence without integration, they undermine the objectives of assimilation, even if they appear more realistic. Is assimilation only about diverse ethnic groups sharing the same national space? That much can be said for any multiethnic society. If the ethnic greens of the salad or the fragments of the mosaic do not interact and identify with each other, no meaningful assimilation is taking place.

Perhaps a new assimilation metaphor should be introduced--one that depends not on a mechanical process like the melting pot but on human dynamics. Assimilation might be viewed as more akin to religious conversion than anything else. In the terms of this metaphor, the immigrant is the convert, American society is the religious order being joined, and assimilation is the process by which the conversion takes place. Just as there are many motives for people to immigrate, so are there many motives for them to change their religion: spiritual, practical (marrying a person of another faith), and materialistic (joining some churches can lead to jobs or subsidized housing). But whatever the motivation, conversion usually involves the consistent application of certain principles. Conversion is a mutual decision requiring affirmation by both the convert and the religious order he or she wishes to join. Converts are expected in most (but not all) cases to renounce their old religions. But converts do not have to change their behavior in any respects other than those that relate to the new religion. They are expected only to believe in its theological principles, observe its rituals and holidays, and live by its moral precepts. Beyond that, they can be rich or poor, practice any trade, pursue any avocational interests, and have any racial or other personal attributes. Once they undergo conversion, they are eagerly welcomed into the fellowship of believers. They have become part of "us" rather than "them." This is undoubtedly what writer G.K. Chesterton had in mind when he said: "America is a nation with the soul of a church."

In the end, however, no metaphor can do justice to the achievements and principles of assimilation, American style. As numerous sociologists have shown, assimilation is not a single event, but a process. In 1930 Robert Park observed, "Assimilation is the name given to the process or processes by which peoples of diverse racial origins and different cultural heritages, occupying a common territory, achieve a cultural solidarity sufficient at least to sustain a national existence." More recently, Richard Alba defined assimilation as "long-term processes that have whittled away at the social foundations of ethnic distinctions." But assimilation is more complex than that because it is a process of numerous dimensions. Not all immigrants and ethnic groups assimilate in exactly the same way or at the same speed. In Assimilation in American Life (1964), Milton Gordon suggested that there is a typology, or hierarchy, of assimilation, thus capturing some of the key steps that immigrants and ethnic groups go through as their assimilation--their cultural solidarity with native-born Americans, in Park's words--becomes more complete.

First, and perhaps foremost, natives and immigrants must accord each other legitimacy. That is, each group must believe the other has a legitimate right to be in the United States and that its members are entitled to pursue, by all legal means, their livelihood and happiness as they see fit. Second, immigrants must have competence to function effectively in American workplaces and in all the normal American social settings. Immigrants are expected to seize economic opportunities and to participate, at some level, in the social life of American society, and natives must not get in their way. Third, immigrants must be encouraged to exercise civic responsibility, minimally by being law-abiding members of American society, respectful of their fellow citizens, and optimally as active participants in the political process. Fourth, and most essential, immigrants must identify themselves as Americans, placing that identification ahead of any associated with their birthplace or ethnic homeland, and their willingness to do so must be reciprocated by the warm embrace of native Americans.

The speed and thoroughness with which individual immigrants conform to these criteria vary, but each dimension is critical and interdependent with the others. The absence of legitimacy breeds ethnic conflict between natives and immigrants and among members of different ethnic groups. The absence of competence keeps immigrants from being economically and socially integrated into the larger society and breeds alienation among the immigrants and resentment of their dependence among natives. The absence of civic responsibility keeps immigrants from being involved in many crucial decisions that affect their lives and further contributes to their alienation. Having immigrants identify as Americans is, of course, the whole point of assimilation, but such identification depends heavily on the fulfillment of the other three criteria.

One of the most frequently overlooked dimensions of assimilation is the extent to which it depends more on the behavior of natives than of immigrants. Most conventional definitions and analyses of the subject assume that assimilation involves affirmative acts or choices that immigrants alone must make. But the real secret of American assimilation is that the native-born Americans-- not the immigrants--have made it work. Since independence, a majority of Americans, all of whom once were immigrants themselves or the descendants of immigrants, have been instilled with the assimilationist ethos and have, in turn, instilled it in each new generation of immigrants.

Americans have accorded immigrants (and their children) their legitimacy. They have done so by letting them come, letting them quickly become citizens, according them a full complement of American civil rights, and treating them in myriad ways, both large and small, as equals. Americans, through their faith in individual achievement, have given immigrants the chance to prove themselves. They have employed them, let them buy homes in their neighborhoods, let them join their social organizations, and even let them marry their sons and daughters. Regarding the latter point: Americans may only recently have grown so tolerant that they condone their children marrying immigrants of another race, but Americans have long surpassed the citizens of other nations in accepting interethnic marriages. Americans have sustained a civic order and a civic ideology that values good citizenship and political participation by all residents. They have drilled the immigrants' children in the American Idea, actively encouraged immigrants to become citizens and to vote, aggressively appealed to them as political constituents, and let them run for political office. In short, Americans, by law, policy, and attitude, have actively encouraged immigrants to become fellow Americans in spirit as well as in law.

The roots of Americans' predisposition in favor of assimilation reach deep into the American psyche. This predisposition is undoubtedly nourished by the personal and collective memories and aspirations of a nation of immigrants, but since other nations of immigrants (Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, and New Zealand) have not been nearly as assimilationist, there must be some other explanation. American assimilation owes its power to four unique aspects of American society: 1) the liberal, universalist ideas embedded in the U.S. Constitution; 2) the universal commitment to an economy built on market capitalism; 3) the density and redundancy of organizational life--governmental, political, religious, social, economic, and philanthropic; and 4) a persistent, society-wide infatuation with modernity and progress. Each factor by itself is assimilationist. Together, they make assimilation irresistible.

America's political system has fostered assimilation in several ways. By blocking acts of discrimination against immigrants and ethnic minorities, it has given immigrants civil legitimacy, undermined the credibility of nativists, and prevented the buildup of unresolved ethnic grievances. In its machinery of political participation based on universal suffrage, it has further enhanced immigrants' civil status, offered appropriate forums for airing ethnic grievances, and provided an important entr�e for involvement in American organizational life. By allowing all immigrants to become citizens after a brief residence and a painless apprenticeship, the United States has offered them formal membership in the American community. Finally, as the practical embodiment of universally cherished, if often breached, principles of civic idealism embodied in the "American Idea," the U.S. political system has served as a compelling philosophical rallying point for all Americans.

American capitalism has been nearly as important as its political institutions in fostering assimilation. As economist Thomas Sowell pointed out, by putting an economic premium on talent and effort, market capitalism makes any discriminatory, anti-assimilation policies of natives or immigrants unprofitable. Even anti-immigration scholar George Borjas noted in his 1990 book, Friends or Strangers, "Not only is economic mobility an important aspect of the immigrant experience, it is also sufficiently strong to guarantee that for most of their working lives, first- generation immigrants outperform natives in the American labor market." Competition between natives and immigrants in most parts of the world has bred hostility and ethnic conflict. From time to time, it has done so in the United States as well, especially during economic downturns, but America's capitalist ethos has been so strong that inevitably the economic contributions of immigrants earn the grudging respect, rather than the envy, of natives. Once immigrants and natives work together and come to appreciate each other's economic value, it becomes much easier to form other kinds of interest-based relationships. Eventually, economic relationships lead to social ones, culminating in friendship and even intermarriage. At a deeper philosophical level, a society devoted to judging people mainly by their accomplishments is a society that, of necessity, places less stock on judging them by their ethnic, or even class, backgrounds.

More than 160 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville remarked about Americans' proclivity to join and participate in an array of organizational activities and saw that proclivity as one of the young nation's most stabilizing and heartening tendencies. The United States still leads the world in the density and profusion of organizations of every imaginable sort and the extent to which its citizens join them. Francis Fukuyama, in his 1995 book Trust, thoroughly documented the importance of America's "intermediary" institutions in promoting the stability and harmony of American life, not the least in providing one of the most effective venues for the assimilation of generations of immigrants. Even the formal governmental apparatus of this federated nation, which, in addition to the states, supports thousands of local and special-purpose jurisdictions, offers a vast arena for formal and informal participation by citizens. Leaving government aside, in even the smallest towns and neighborhoods, people have always belonged to an abundance of religious, fraternal, business, social, recreational, philanthropic, and single-purpose activist organizations.

Americans' active organizational life has greatly facilitated all aspects of assimilation. Civic organizations have given immigrants status and reinforced their civic assimilation. Other kinds of organizations have enhanced immigrants' competence and protected their economic interests, reinforcing their "structural" assimilation. From the beginning, ethnically based religious and social organizations have given aid and comfort to immigrants, greatly eased the immigrants' transition to American life, and led inevitably to their participation in a wider social network. The historian Maldwyn Jones explained the paradox of how ethnic churches and ethnic celebrations actually worked to promote assimilation and "Americanization" as follows: "To some observers there has been an element of contradiction in the fact that immigrants assert their American patriotism as members of separate groups. But the contradiction is only superficial. When Polish Americans observe Pulaski day, when Irish Americans parade in honor of St. Patrick, when Italian-Americans gather to fete San Rocco or San Genaro, and even when Americans of Greek, Mexican, or Armenian origin celebrate the old country's independence day, they are merely asserting their cultural distinctiveness, merely seeking to make clear their own identity in the larger American community. And even while doing so, they rededicate themselves to the common national ideals that bind them together." "The common national ideals" Jones had in mind include Americans' enthusiasm for religious expression and, on a secular plane, their civic spiritedness and freedom of cultural definition.

The most overlooked national attribute that has facilitated assimilation is Americans' enduring enthusiasm for "progress" and all things modern, what Max Lerner referred to as "the merging of the Constitution with the idea-of-progress strain in American thought." A country that is in love with progress appreciates the potential contributions of immigrants and is eager to incorporate them. A country that is determined to be in the vanguard knows that anti-assimilationist ethnocentricity represents a retrograde and outmoded way of thinking. A country that is always willing to embrace change is rarely daunted by the prospect of living with new and "exotic" peoples.