# Should Minorities Be Encourage to Assimiliate **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 13, 2010, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-minorities-be-encourage-to-assimiliate/560511 "2010-11-13T01:17:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Le\_Jacquelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Le\_Jacquelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Le_Jacquelope)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2010, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-minorities-be-encourage-to-assimiliate/560511/81 "2010-11-19T16:24:29Z")
> [@godix](#): > > Statistics and logic. Not speaking English limits job opportunities. Limited job opportunities mean that immigrants are, generally, forced into the lower economic classes and stuck there. OTOH, immigrants who know or learn English have more opportunities and can improve their economic situation more. Statistics do bear this out also. Uhm, if you care to come to Sacramento I could easily show you several highly prosperous communities here full of shopkeepers that do _not_ speak English, or at best speak very broken English. I’d like to see these statistics. > [@](#): > > Also note: there is a difference between encouragement and forcing. As long as no one is flat out required to do it, I see no problem with suggesting they should do it. The problem here is America’s culture is evolving. We’re living in a culture which refused to assimilate into, and which has in fact usurped, previous American cultures. Perhaps these immigrants have something worth adding to our culture? Others have in the past. Which brings up another question… what do we mean by ‘assimilate’? Certainly this does not mean “you leave your culture completely behind and you behave like the dominant white people”… I hope. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2010, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-minorities-be-encourage-to-assimiliate/560511/82 "2010-11-19T16:36:32Z")
[QUOTE=Le Jacquelope] Uhm, if you care to come to Sacramento I could easily show you several highly prosperous communities here full of shopkeepers that do not speak English, or at best speak very broken English. [/QUOTE] So, your job opportunities, assuming you spoke the same language of these prosperous shopkeepers, would be pretty narrow then, yes? You are basically limited to working for these folks or no one. I also know a lot of shopkeepers and some small restaurant owners who don’t speak very good English. A lot of them are in small ethnic communities that cater to those communities. If you encourage immigrants to maintain their own language and avoid even surface assimilation then you are encouraging them to limit their options and be bound to those communities, unable to change or move away. > [@](#): > > The problem here is America’s culture is evolving. We’re living in a culture which refused to assimilate into, and which has in fact usurped, previous American cultures. Culture is always evolving, and incorporating in bits and pieces from smaller groups. However, there IS a general culture, and even if some bits of your own culture are being integrated into the broader whole you STILL need to assimilate into the broader culture or be left isolated. There are currently a lot of Hispanic words integrated into the American language. That doesn’t mean that a native Spanish speaker will be able to communicate with the average American. > [@](#): > > Perhaps these immigrants have something worth adding to our culture? Others have in the past. Of COURSE they do. Sheesh, talk about a straw man. The point isn’t that they have nothing to add, it’s that even when they add to the whole they still need to integrate to that whole if they want to succeed in our society, or they will be left in isolation to the broader community. -XT ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2010, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-minorities-be-encourage-to-assimiliate/560511/83 "2010-11-19T18:41:58Z")
> [@xtisme](#): > > If you encourage immigrants to maintain their own language and avoid even surface assimilation then you are encouraging them to limit their options and be bound to those communities, unable to change or move away. > > -XT Well, their children can. My wife’s family is a case in point. Her parents were poor immigrants from China who came to Chicago in the 1950s. Her father speaks bad English with a strong accent, her mother hardly speaks English at all. Nevertheless they owned several successful Chinese restaurants during the course of their working life, and were able to put all five of their children through college. Those children, my wife among them, are all productive members of American society today, as well as fluently bilingual in Chinese and English. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2010, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-minorities-be-encourage-to-assimiliate/560511/84 "2010-11-19T18:48:17Z")
My own family took it even a step further. I was born in Mexico and moved to the US when I was a baby. Spanish is basically not spoken in my fathers house and the only time I’m exposed to it is when we go back to Mexico or visit some of my older relatives here in the States. My dad made a conscious decision that Spanish wouldn’t be spoken or used in our house, and has worked hard to get rid of even the accent of Spanish in his regular speech. He hasn’t been as successful as he’d like in that regard, but we speak English completely fluently and with only the accent of the South West in our speech. My younger siblings don’t even speak Spanish at all, and I’m hardly fluent in it anymore, since I hardly ever use it. My own kids and those of my older siblings had to learn Spanish in school just like everyone else. While I’m not saying this is the model that everyone should use (my dad is, frankly, a maniac about some things), it has been helpful, since my brothers and sisters and I have been markedly more successful than the families of my dads brothers and sisters who were less manic about such things…and certainly more successful than the vast majority of the folks I grew up with in South Tucson. -XT [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/should-minorities-be-encourage-to-assimiliate/560511.md?page=4)