What do we mean when we talk about assimilation?

*Let’s clear a misunderstanding. How do you assimilate into a nation of immigrants, whose culture is constantly changing, whose history of immigration and assimilation is more myth than reality? This is a good piece by Aaron Sanchez. VL


commentary_&_cuentosBy Aaron E.Sanchez, Commentary y Cuentos

On July 22, 2015 Republican presidential hopeful Bobby Jindal posted a petition demanding that Obama fire the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigrations Services, Leon Rodriguez.  At the top of this petition was a quote from Jindal explaining why, as a son of an immigrant, he was angry that the Obama administration would alter the oath of allegiance that would not require naturalizing citizens to militarily defend the nation:

Becoming a United States citizen is not a right, it is a privilege. Immigration without assimilation is not immigration, it is invasion. Legal immigration by people who vow to defend the United States of America can make us stronger, and my own family is evidence of this.

Then, two weeks later Jindal repeated the same phrase.  He added:

We must insist on assimilation. Immigration without assimilation is an invasion. We need to tell folks who want to come here come here legally.  Learn English, adopt our values, roll up your sleeves and get to work.  I’m tired of the hyphenated Americans and the division. I’ve got the backbone, I’ve got the band width, I’ve got the experience to get us through this.

Jindal is deftly but also deafly conflating a myriad of matters meant to strike key issues important to the aging Republican base.  At its opening, the statement is a condemnation of “illegal immigrants,” who in his estimation fail to respect the authority and appreciate the magnanimity of the U.S.  Then he makes the key connections for a constituency anxious about their position in a changing economy and demographically different U.S.  Immigration is supposed to be about assimilation for Republicans.  If an immigrant does not “become American” then that person is infiltrating not only the nation but the culture—immigrants are invaders.  Since many of these voters have a racialized understanding of immigrants, all Latinas/os are seen as immigrants, regardless if they were born in the U.S. or not.  By the very presence of Latinos, Jindal’s constituency believes that they are under a verifiable invasion.  Because of the invasion, the borders need to be secured.  A secure border requires militarization.  Militarization of the border is a defense of this nation and underlines the need to serve in the military.  In his statement, Jindal wraps up a series of bumper-sticker slogans—“support our troops,” “secure the border,” “America love it or leave”—and legitimizes them through his own immigrant past.\

[pullquote]… assimilation assumes that America and Americans are one singular static entity—something that has never changed and will never change.  Ironically, those who use this idea already acknowledge that the nation is changing and they are upset about it.[/pullquote]

Jindal is an American, without hyphens, because he assimilated.  He is not an immigrant.  Of course, this is obvious because he was born in the U.S., which, because of the fourteenth amendment, makes him a citizen.  Jindal is asserting that citizenship does not make you an American.  Assimilation makes immigrants Americans.  But, what do we mean when we talk about assimilation?

The history of the concept of assimilation dates back to the nineteenth century.  Great dislocations caused by a century of industrial revolution, political disruptions, and technological advancements sent millions of people from the eastern hemisphere to the western hemisphere.  Many arrived on the shores of the young nations of the western hemisphere, the U.S., Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil all received significant immigrant populations.  Within the context of these population shifts and industrializing forces, many nations struggled to understand how they were supposed to integrate very different populations into a cohesive whole.  In Europe, this was not as pressing of an issue because of their long history of population fixity.  Previous political and economic systems kept peasant and elite populations in one location over generations.  But, in the New World, these old systems of connections and relationships were broken by migration.

[pullquote]Assimilation connects national myth, misunderstands U.S. history, expresses contemporary economic and racial anxieties, and is built upon a shaky foundation of white supremacy and cultural deficiency theory.[/pullquote]

By early twentieth century Americans were concerned with the influx of newcomers.  Millions of Irish and German immigrants arrived in the mid-nineteenth century.  By the end of the century, over 10.5 million Southern and Eastern European immigrants arrived.  Over 100,000 Chinese immigrants were in the U.S. West.  Millions of Mexican migrants found their way northward after 1876, with the building of both Mexican and U.S. rail lines and the growth of U.S. agribusiness in Texas and other parts of the Southwest.  After the Mexican Revolution, another 1.5 million Mexican migrants moved northward.  Responding to nativist and xenophobic pressure in 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act which barred all Chinese immigration and excluded them from citizenship.  Immigration acts in 1917, 1919, 1921, and 1924 would all tighten immigration restrictions, attempting to close off the U.S. from “inferior races.”

In the U.S., some declared that all this difference would lead to a segregated society.  In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois declared that the color line was the most pressing problem in the nation.  In the 1909 play, The Melting-Pot, Drama in Four Acts, Israel Zangwill lamented the destruction of European culture in the U.S., melted down by immigrant difference.  In 1919, Madison Grant, a eugenicist, declared that the “passing of the great race,” was upon the U.S. because of all the inferior racial groups, including Italians, Czechs, and Jews.  He bemoaned the future fate of the nation filled with such inferior stock.  There were optimists as well who used different social metaphors to imagine an integral nation.  In 1915, Horace Kallen wrote that the U.S. was not destined to destruction but was instead a beautiful “cacophony” of diversity.  Yes, the U.S. was a discordant mixture of sounds, but with the right policies and human power it could become a never before heard “harmony.”  A year later, Randolph Bourne, wrote that the U.S. could become a “tapestry” of interwoven cultures and people who chose to share their differences and similarities.

[pullquote]After more than a century of immigration the pressing problem for the nation was how to forge national unity from ethnic diversity. [/pullquote]

After more than a century of immigration the pressing problem for the nation was how to forge national unity from ethnic diversity.  For eugenicists and white supremacists, it could not be done.  For a growing group of American Progressives, Americanism could be taught and learned.  They created extensive Americanization programs across the country to teach immigrants how to become American.  They taught English courses, home-making courses, and citizenship courses.  Women became the targets of many of these programs, believing they were key to impacting the children and subsequent generations.  Progressives discouraged Mexican women from preparing traditional foods like tacos, beans, or atole.  Instead, they encouraged Mexican women to prepare white-bread sandwiches with cold cuts, roasts in the oven, and coffee.  Progressives discouraged the use of Spanish and tried to make the women run their homes in the “American-style.”    While the Progressives were optimistic, they were not without their shortcomings.  They believed in the inherent superiority of American culture over immigrant culture.  The reason that immigrants needed to assimilate was because their culture was deficient.

There were also progressive Mexican-American groups that emerged in the 1920s.  Groups like Order Sons of America and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) continually encouraged their members to aspire to “100% Americanism.”  Many of these groups adopted English as their official language and required members to be U.S. citizens.  It was a way to prove that they were “true and loyal citizens,” as the LULAC constitution stated.  Of course, many of their efforts were ignored and ethnic Mexicans were still subject to Jim Crow style segregation in Texas and other places in the Southwest well into the 1950s and 1960s.  Nonetheless, these groups of American Progressives helped establish that in the process of becoming American, people needed to discard much more than retain their previous culture, that there was something about their being, not their legal status, that made them un-American.

The next major development in the connection between immigration and assimilation was the emergence of modern immigration history with the publication of Oscar Handlin’s The Uprooted in 1951.  It was a foundational text that argued “Immigration altered America.  But it also altered the immigrants.”  The Uprooted in 1951 was a nuanced text that was not a blind celebration of immigrant optimism and American exceptionalism.  Handlin wrote that the cutting of old world roots was difficult and damaging.  In the disruptive nineteenth century, people were uprooted from the fixity of community and culture and transplanted in new soil.  They tried to grow new roots in American soil but were considered weeds to be pulled by those who came before.    In the subsequent decades, however, Handlin’s subtlety was stripped.  His exclusive focus on European immigrants and his focus on the Northeast gave a skewed understanding of immigration and its role in the U.S.  By the mid twentieth century, most European immigration slowed to a trickle, yet immigration from Mexico and, later, Latin America continued to increase throughout the century.  Juxtaposed with these “new” immigrants, the previous European immigrants were the ideal model and the newer immigrants were disrespecting a time-honored American tradition that was never historical reality, only nationalistic myth.

So what do we mean when we talk about assimilation?  It is a complicated historical concept and process.  It is a concept born of the difficulties of respecting ethnic diversity and the needs of national unity.  Today, the contemporary concept of assimilation is a contradictory idea that confounds multiple issues.  It is an ideological exchange in connotations.  [tweet_dis] Assimilation connects national myth, misunderstands U.S. history, expresses contemporary economic and racial anxieties, and is built upon a shaky foundation of white supremacy and cultural deficiency theory.[/tweet_dis]  In common usage, assimilation assumes that America and Americans are one singular static entity—something that has never changed and will never change.  Ironically, those who use this idea already acknowledge that the nation is changing and they are upset about it.  Their ahistoricism betrays them.  The America of their past, of the days gone by, it never existed. The country they want to take back was never there.  They are grasping at a ghost of an idea and trying to turn that into policy.

This article was originally published in Commentary y Cuentos.


Aaron E. Sanchez is the editor of Commentary and Cuentos, a blog focused on issues of race, politics, and popular culture from a Latino perspective. The posts place these issues in historical, cultural, and intellectual context to better understand our present. Aaron received his Ph.D. in history from Southern Methodist University. He is a happy husband, proud father, and an avid runner.

[Photo by Grand Canyon National Par/Flickr]
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