Assimilation Milton Gordon Summary

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. This step can include learning the language, values, or societal norms of the dominant group among many other things. After acculturation, the minority group will move on to integration or structural assimilation. This is the process of the minority group becoming integrated into the dominant group societal social structure. In this process, the immigrant group will first penetrate the secondary sector. The secondary sector is all impersonal relationships, usually based upon a public social setting such as school, work, businesses. The idea is that this is where the immigrant group will make first contact with the

However, Gordon argued that “acculturation was a prerequisite for integration” (page 35). He insists that until the immigrants were culturally assimilated into the dominant society, they would not be able to compete for jobs in order to start the secondary integration. It is hard to believe that an immigrant group would be able to avoid all aspects of the dominant group until they learn the culture, especially since they are living here. If the immigrant can not get a job since they have yet to acculturated, how are they paying their living expensive? In that case, I disagree with the theory that acculturation has to occur before integration. It makes more sense that those two processes occur simultaneously. If the processes were to occur at the same time, it would probably make the acculturation happen a lot faster and easier, since now the immigrant group has direct contact with the dominant group and learn the culture first-handedly instead of from