Is Assimilation Dead?

Abstract

This article considers the decline in the positive attitude toward the term “assimilation” as an ideal for immigrant and minority groups in the United States, and it explores the period between World War I and the mid-1920s, during which assimilation moved from an ideal to a forceful policy, under the name “Americanization.” During this period, attention was given almost exclusively to immigrants; blacks were totally ignored in the debate over assimilation and Americanization. Nevertheless, until the mid-1960s, the dominant black ideal for their future in the United States was assimilation. The failure of assimilation to work its effects on blacks as on immigrants, owing to the strength of American discriminatory and prejudiced attitudes and behavior toward blacks, has been responsible for throwing the entire assimilatory ideal and program into disrepute.

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References

as quoted in Philip Gleason , “American Identity and Americanization,” in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 33.

2. Gleason , “American Identity,” p. 31.

3. Nathan Glazer , Affirmative Discrimination (New York: Basic Books, 1975).

4. Gleason , “American Identity,” p. 32.

5. Harold J. Abramson , “Assimilation and Pluralism,” in Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups, p. 152.

as reprinted in Philip Davis , Immigration and Americanization: Selected Readings (Boston: Ginn, 1920), pp. 625-626.

for a description of the meeting, see Edward George Hartman , The Movement to Americanize the Immigrant (New York: AMS Press, 1967), p. 11 n.

8. Davis , Immigration and Americanization, pp. 642-643.

9. Hartman , Movement to Americanize the Immigrant, pp. 220-221.

10.

10. James A. Gavit , Americans by Choice (New York: Harper, 1922), pp. 10, 11-12.

11.

11. Ibid., pp. 7-8.

12.

12. Nor can we find what was once a key sociological concept, “assimilation,” among the entries in the recent four-volume Encyclopedia of Sociology by C. F. Borgatta and M. L. Borgatta (New York: Macmillan, 1992).

13.

13. Read Lewis , “Americanization,” in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 2:33.

14.

14. John Dewey , as quoted in Horace M. Kallen , Culture and Democracy in the United States (New York: Boni Liveright, 1924), pp. 131-132.

15.

15. Kallen, pp. 127, 165.

16.

16. For a characterization of the movement, see Nathan Glazer , Ethnic Dilemmas, 1964-1982 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 104-108.

17.

17. Robert E. Park , “Assimilation,” in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2:282.

18.

18. Glazer , Ethnic Dilemmas, pp. 100-101.

19.

19. Lewis , “Americanization,” p. 34.

20.

20. Stanley Lieberson and Mary Waters , From Many Strands: Ethnic and Radical Groups in Contemporary America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1988).

21.

21. Ethnic Options (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990).

22.

22. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton , American Apartheid (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).