The Mantra of Assimilation

       Here’s an interesting argument. It appears in Alejandro Portes and Rubén G. Rumbaut’s, Legacies: The Story of the Immigrant Second Generation. The authors contend that assimilation “still represents the master concept in the study of today’s immigrants”; and then, in the same paragraph, they argue that assimilation represents “just one possible alternative” for the many millions of people who immigrated to the U.S. after 1965.

      But why should assimilation be the master concept if it only represents one path chosen by today’s immigrants? And, if there are multiple paths, how do you conceptualize them using the assimilation model? In Legacies the authors actually argue that individuals who do not assimilate engage in “dissonant” acculturation. Synonyms for dissonant include discordant, inharmonious and jarring. So, rather than challenge the validity of the master concept, the authors reaffirm it by defining differences as deviations from the assimilation norm.

      From this perspective, it is the immigrants who are a problem, not the analysts using concepts that have never accurately reflected the world that is actually there. As early as 1940 the Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz argued that American sociology’s almost religious devotion to assimilation missed the social changes that immigrants always brought in their wake. Besides the possible loss of the original culture, and the acceptance of a new one, Ortiz argued that immigration always included a third probability. Ortiz called this third possibility transculturation and he used the concept to describe the cultural creativity that always occurs when two or more ethnic groups interact for significant periods.

         Rather than accept and embrace the host culture, Ortiz said that immigrants could be imaginative forces in the reconfiguration of the host culture. Living in Cuba, he often keyed on Santería, the made in the Caribbean religion that artfully combines, among others, Nigerian and Christian versions of God. On a recent visit to Cuba, I even saw, spot lighted by Wal-Mart Christmas lights, a blond haired Barbie added to the Santería pantheon. For Ortiz this was normal; let cultures interact for significant periods and people will often produce social change rather than an acceptance of the conventional wisdom.

    The mantra of assimilation points us backwards, to the culture that is, rather than to the culture that is being reconfigured right before our eyes. Consider the identity Chicano, a made in America label that, in its most extreme forms, represents a serious rejection of the host culture. Developed in the late sixties and early seventies, the Chicano identity includes the notion that, before Native Americans, Mexicans inhabited the American Southwest. They have such a natural right title to the land that a still popular textbook for Chicano studies is entitled Occupied America.

    Using the assimilation model, this is dissonant acculturation; but what do the analysts do when the dissonance becomes an institutionalized part of the host culture? I am referring to the Chicano Studies programs that exist in hundreds of universities throughout the United States. The curriculum often includes distinctly anti-American courses that encourage students to understand and criticize the “imperialism” and ugly prejudices of American culture. The Chicano Studies programs are so powerful in some Western and Southwestern universities that they assume more prominence in the curriculum than Latin American, and certainly, Caribbean Studies.

   The theoretical problem for the master concept of assimilation is that, in 2008, the so called “dissonant” response is now (at least in the West and Southwest) an integral part of the cultural mainstream. So, is it a successful assimilation to contemporary American culture if newcomers embrace the anti-American beliefs and values associated with Chicano studies?  Or, does the absurdity of the question not underline the theoretical arguments made by Fernando Ortiz almost seventy years ago.

    There is no one master concept. Immigration always includes at least three possible alternatives –loss of the original culture, assimilation, or transculturation- and the likelihood of one response dominating is relative to a variety of social conditions. For example, in 1916 the United States government helped orchestrate a movement to “swat the hyphen”; you were to be a 100% American or suffer the consequences. In 2008 federal, state and local governments throughout the nation sponsor and foster a multiculturalism that demands as much respect for the immigrant’s culture as it does for the host culture.

     By using assimilation as the master concept Sociology sustains the status quo and offers no way to understand a society in which transculturation is an everyday  phenomenon  This is only a theoretical embarrassment when, as with Chicano Studies, anti-American beliefs are part of the mainstream. But, equally important, the discipline needs to ask another question. What do we stand for? For example, in Arab Detroit, editors Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryock present evidence that assimilation includes learning very negative things about African Americans, and, in addition, negative things about your own ethnic group.

    The mainstream often teaches hate. So, rather than broadcast the mantra of assimilation, perhaps we should be stressing that those who reconfigure the host society often have good cause for their complaints and anger. Tranculturation is not only predictable, it may point us to what Durkheim called “our first duty” as sociologists. We need “to fashion a morality for ourselves”, especially when assimilation means learning ugly prejudices and versions of U.S. history that are mythical rather than factual.