ipl-logo

America Is Not A Melting Pot Summary

1913 Words8 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Immigrant assimilation into american culture

The Melted Melting Pot
An assumption about America was that it is a melting pot (Kohn 1961). The ethnic church was seen as a place solely for immigrants, with the presupposition that the SSG would eventually melt into mainstream society. However, for decades now, studies have shown that America is not a melting pot. One’s ethnicity has profound implications on their identity. . In an article for Asian American Society, Phi Hong Su wrote, “Three basic assumptions of classical assimilation include: the superiority of white Anglo Saxon Protestants (WASPs), the inferiority of immigrant cultures, and the unidimensionality of ethnic change. These three assumptions signal the expectation that immigrants will come to share the culture of the dominant …show more content…

In 1999, Elijah Anderson wrote, “Rather than giving it up, racial and ethnic groups appear to embrace their particularism. In public and to an extent in private life, there is more mixing of people of various groups than there was a generation ago, but at the same time people tend to retain more of their ethnic particularity within these interactions.” He goes on to write, “the wake of the civil rights movement encouraged racial pride among African Americans. This in turn prompted other groups to do the same. At the same time, the U.S. experienced an influx of immigration, especially people of color, who have likewise retained their particularity.” By the early 2000s, sociologists and political scientists started to emphasize the significance of ethnic identity and the pluralism of society (Barry, 2001; Favell, 1998; Verkuyten, …show more content…

Segmented assimilation theory assumes that immigrants will assimilate into different categories, or segments, and that there are many different paths to get there (Gans, 1992; Portes & Zhou, 1993). Segmented assimilation theory is widely held by many sociologists (Boyd, 2002; Berry, 2006; Warner, 2007; Piedra & Engstrom, 2009; Haller, Portes & Lynch, 2011) and does well in accounting for America’s multicultural landscape.
A criticism of segmented assimilation is that it has difficulty accounting for intergenerational paths of assimilation (Faulkner, 2011). Important factors about individuals such as gender, and socio-economic status are not considered. And group factors such as how long the immigrant/migrant community has been established, and what was going on in the greater sociopolitical arenas during the time of immigration are not considered. It is hard to apply the same immigration theories to different individuals or

Show More
Related
1025 Words | 5 Pages

The government seemed to only be focusing on the experience of white/ European immigrants transition to America. Omi and Winant clearly point out in their book and research that it’s the minority’s job to be assimilated into society, and not the larger society responsibility fro accepting them as they are. They argue in the United States that ethnicity theory was exclusively based on the immigration patterns of a white ethnic population and did not account for the unique experiences of non-whites in this country (Omi & Winant 17). Omi and Winant also believe in the “Bootstraps Model”. As a result, they believe that hard work will allow one to overcome any obstacle that is placed before them.

Read More
1644 Words | 7 Pages

Jason Richwine discusses the Latino’s absorption and integration into the American culture. He compares the Latino immigrants with other countries’ immigrants that has rose out of poverty, while the Hispanics have not been rising up out of the lower class after several generations have passed. Richwine mentions that American prejudice might be influencing the Hispanic immigrants not striving. For example, “popular explanations from the left include the

Read More
871 Words | 4 Pages

Unlike in the past where immigrants from certain religions and cultures were associated

Read More
673 Words | 3 Pages

In 2008, Linda Chavez wrote an article for Tucson Citizen, “Immigration policy’s goal should be assimilation”, and in 2009, Laura Marcus participated in a debate under the question, “Should immigrants assimilate?” Chavez, an author and talk show host believes that to be a “successful” immigrant, assimilation is important. Marcus, a student at Yale during the time of her debate, argues that to ask an

Read More
1189 Words | 5 Pages

The term “melting pot” has been used since the early 1900s, and it means a place where people, ideas, theories, cultures, etc. are mixed together. Although this may seem like a harmless thing, the idea that one must give up part of their culture to obtain parts of a new one undermines the importance of cultures in one’s life. In chapter 14 “The Melting Pot” of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Anne Fadiman shows the challenges and hardships that Hmong immigrants faced when immigrating to America to show the power that an environment has on a person’s connection to their culture, and the impact that people have on the culture of the society they are entering Fadamin provides examples of the action of Americans towards to Hmong people

Read More
558 Words | 3 Pages

Daniel Garcia TH 1:30-2:50pm March 14, 2017 Advanced Concepts in Criminal Justice From the works of Morenoff and Astor, we are to explain why crime might be higher among second generation immigrant Americans. Though there are many assimilation theories which coincides with this, Portes and Zhou’s theory of segmented assimilation stands up to be the strongest of them all. My reasoning behind it is based on the array of the data from Morenoff and Astor collected in this article and my own interpretation which I experienced first hand. The article shows segmented assimilation branching out to two main scenarios of the straight line assimilation, the positive and the negative. Segmented assimilation is carried though by the immigrants themselves or by their offspring adopting aspects of the culture in which they 're residing in.

Read More
1158 Words | 5 Pages

Liu uses this strategy to explain to us why Americans have a hard time pulling away from traditional culture and embracing multiculturalism. This stems from the fact that in the past, politics and media coverage during the beginning of the culture wars put the two in contention. He acknowledges in the article that “The assumption was that multiculturalism sits in polar opposition to a traditional common culture” (Liu 10), in contrast, Liu wants his readers to understand that this is not the case. He also negates the mentality people hold that non whites didn’t play a role in shaping America. He uses Ronald Takaki’s argument that says, “Since well before the formation of the United States, the United States has been shaped by non whites (Liu 11)”.

Read More
102 Words | 1 Pages

The “discovery” by the United States that Europe had inferior and superior races was a result of the large amount of immigration from southern and eastern Europe in the late nineteenth century (Brodkin, 1994). Before this wave of immigration took place, European immigrants had been accepted into the white population. However, the European immigrants who came to the United States to work after 1880 were too numerous and too concentrated to scatter and blend in. Rather, they built working-class ethnic communities in the United States’ urban areas. Because of this, urban American began to take on a noticeably immigrant feel (Brodkin,

Read More
1686 Words | 7 Pages

Assimilation is usually meant to indicate what happens to immigrants in a new land. However, “rejection, loneliness, discrimination—these were the byproducts of living in the United States” (Ghymn 37). In Marilyn Chin’s essay on assimilation “How I Got That Name,” the speaker acquaints the readers how she got the American name “Marilyn.” The tension between the two cultures is evident, for the speaker is treated as “Model Minority.” Her race and ethnicity define her; in fact, the stereotypes inscribed with her race restricted and cage her significance in the society.

Read More
994 Words | 4 Pages

So, no matter the political leaning, movements are subject to change depending on the effects it may or may not cause over time. Huntington proves this idea when he explains exactly how Mexican immigrants are different than European immigrants. He begins by stating how, completely ignoring the existence of Native Americans, America was originally settled by “white, British, and Protestant” people whom established original American culture (Huntington 1). Then, during the 19th century, when people migrated across the Atlantic Ocean from countries like Germany, Ireland, and Scandinavia, and brought their cultures with them. They were accepted with open arms.

Read More
301 Words | 2 Pages

For many new immigrants coming to America, it is difficult to adjust into the new society. Many come to America without the basic knowledge of English, the new immigrants do not have the ability assimilate to American society because of the lack of possible communication between the immigrant and an native. Non-English speaking immigrants that come to America face harsh challenges when trying to assimilate to U.S. society because immigrants are often segregated into ethnic communities away from natives, Americans do not know basics of words of other well known languages, and the lack of government funding education programs. Assimilation into a new society is difficult enough, but when the society pushes any new immigrants to separate part

Read More
793 Words | 4 Pages

Upon reading the selections The Myth of the Melting Pot, Gentrification, and How Immigrants Became Other, one notices a shocking trend: The “land of the free,” isn't really what it claims to be. From ideas of white supremacy, to heterogenous cultural mixtures that result in only one uniform product, to the rejection of outsiders, America is not the melting pot that it has pretended to be for centuries. Ever since the founding of the colonies, so-called Americans have never been truly and intimately intertwined. As one peels away the facade, it becomes evident that citizens in this great land favor sweeping differences under the rug rather than facing them, keeping shame in the dark, and inferiority and superiority mounted on the wall. Who sings

Read More
448 Words | 2 Pages

Milton Gordon believed that the process of assimilation can be separated into seven different subprocesses. However, the book focuses entirely on the first three processes of assimilation. The first process of assimilation is acculturation or cultural assimilation. This is when members of the immigrant or minority group learns the culture of the dominant group.

Read More
740 Words | 3 Pages

U.S. culture has also been shaped by the cultures of Native Americans, Latin American, Africans and Asians. The United States is sometimes described as a "melting pot". In “‘Blaxiacan’ and Other Reinvented Americans”, Richard Rodriguez claims when different culture value and beliefs clash, the effect of culture assimilation involved people’s daily life. Although different groups of immigrants integrate in different ways culturally, assimilation has not meant repudiating immigrant culture because culture also has been always flexible and accommodating.

Read More
775 Words | 4 Pages

This specific theory is an alternative to straight line assimilation. It is a combination of straight line assimilation including the ethnic disadvantage model. It suggests that there are three possible paths of integration that the children of immigrants might undertake. Either upward mobility, downward mobility, or horizontal mobility. For instance, let’s take into consideration Pedro Flores.

Read More

More about America Is Not A Melting Pot Summary

Related Topics

Open Document