Indeed. Do I want immigrants to start acting like Ozzy and Harriet? No. Do I want them shut up in their own enclaves so they won’t spread cultural contamination? No—no more than I’d agree with them shutting themselves out so those degenerate Yankees won’t affront their purity. I want them to* join in*—America is very much a composite country, and I want to keep on adding to it. To take the best of what comes to us, and adopt it as our own.
To add another scifi quote, "If we all reacted the same way, we’d be predictable, and there’s always more than one way to view a situation. What’s true for the group is also true for the individual. It’s simple: Overspecialize, and you breed in weakness. It’s slow death. "
[ul]
[li]Learn English? Yes.[/li][li]Adopting manners? Lack of manners never helped anybody.[/li][li]Acting as the American Middle Class? I’d hope they had better manners than that![/li][li]Mostly–keep what is helpful from the US, in dealing with others here in the US, & dump the rest.[/li][/ul]
Ethnic minorities keeping some of their own cultural traits? It’s chutzpah, dawg, that’s what it is. Now shaddup and give me another pilsener, another slice of pizza, and some of those nachos.
This, and Even Sven, said what i think exactly. This is something that happens naturally and inevitably, and efforts to speed it up tend to fall somewhere on the “useless–>inhumane” spectrum.
How do American middle class people act in public? I wanna know, because I’m not too sure I want the newcomers acting like fat, sloppy, rude, loudmouths…
I think it should be able to work itself out naturally, and would. But the depends, I think, on making sure that no one culture is able to immigrate in large waves. There are more than a couple of areas in the U.S.—hell, in CA alone—where you can go about your life as if you were living in Mexico or other Spanish-speaking society from points south.
Yeah, so what, Magellan. Same thing’s been true in Chinatowns the country over, and up in Wisconsin, people used to spend their whole life speaking German.
I wasn’t joking: by the third generation, there being no excluding factors, they become assimilated.
(The model still works for black Americans, provided you use the launching mark as the Civil Rights Movement.)
Yes, and in the 19th century, there were plenty of newspapers written in Italian in US cities, and there were plenty of people terrified of how Italians would never assimilate. They, too, were wrong. It doesn’t depend on making sure that people don’t immigrate in large waves: it depends on three generations passing.
First generation: keep the culture of their childhood toa large degree. Often monolingual.
Second generation: Mix home culture and school culture/peer culture, but lean heavily toward the latter. Often bilingual, very rarely monolingual in parent’s language.
Third generation: Very strongly assimilated. Often monolingual in local language.
That’s how it’s worked in our country for always, and that’s probably how it’s worked since there have been cities.
Again, what do I care? There are other parts of California where you can go about your life as if you never left the summer of love. If you want to act like a hippy or a Mexican, go for it. Have fun! Neither Spanish nor love beads can hurt me.
Yeah, I don’t worry about the slow, mild Hispanicization of the US as much as I worry about those who fear it. I think we should be teaching both languages in school, & embrace our position in both the Anglosphere & Latinoamérica.
And assimilation goes both ways in the best cases. It’s useful to adopt technologies without regard to their origin. Food is a technology. So’s clothing. So’s science. Should we ignore modern science & philosophy as “too German”?
Re English:
Only if we want immigrants to have opportunities to go to the better colleges, get a great job, and be successful should be encourage them to master English.
If we want immigrants to be marginalized, we encourage them, or demotivate them so they do NOT learn English.
Re manners:
America is a big place with diverse “manners”, depending where you go.
If you are living in a place where adapting to the local “manners” will assist your immigrant family to succeed, then go for it.
Unless, you don’t want to. In that case, accept the consequences.
Re acting in public:
If by this you mean following the laws, being respectful of others, then sure, why not?
American culture is already diverse. Even among the middle class. Your phrasing “the same as” is an impossibility.
How did forced assimilation get into the discussion? Forced assimilation of indigenous people is illegal under international law. I don’t know about other minorities. The heading of the thread says, “minorities”, but the OP’s statement mentions only immigrants. There are non-immigrant minorities, I just thought I’d point that out.
I like the suggestion about members of the majority learning immigrants’ languages (Spanish, or whatever). Foreign language study and learning about other customs and world views is very enriching. It’s important and useful in today’s globalized economy. Many universities have an ethnic studies requirement. That requirement is there for a reason. The better we understand each other as peoples, the better we’ll be able to get along, and the more harmonious the world will be.
I mean like when men pin their preteen daughters down and “circumcise” them with broken glass.
If you are making the point that circumcision as it is practiced on male infants in the West is mutilation, I would have to agree. As far as I can tell it seems to be common for cultural reasons. However, when it happens in the West, it isn’t an assimilation issue.
Heck, in the 19th century the Know Nothing Party got terrified of the waves of Irish immigrants and they spoke English. (Although they were damn Papists.)
Don’t you find it ironic as all get out that the very same people who are all " they need to learn English and “assimulate”" are the very same people who lamet losses of places like Little Italy or the towns where people only spoke French or Swedish or Welsh. Or they would KILL to have their kid bilingal in another language?
Now someone stop me if history says I am wrong here.
“American culture” is defined by a class of people descended largely from immigrants to this continent; many (but not all) of these immigrant ancestors came here to invade the continent and displaced the original inhabitants by means of disease, rape and/or mass murder (anyone want to say that history contradicts me on this?); and furthermore, American culture is in fact evolving (perish the thought!!).
Okay, with that having been established… why didn’t the settlers who came to America assimilate into the Native American culture? They came here and forced the natives to accept their invader culture; but now the new (fraudulently) self-described “natives” of America don’t want anyone coming along to change anything.
When people talk about “assimilate” that comes across as nothing more than a code word for “act white, talk white, and worship the white-is-alright mindset”. Back in the day this is what got us “victory relish” and nowadays this is what gets us things like racial profiling (of non-whites): if you don’t look and act the norm you are not American.
Ah yes, I know: conquerors keepers, conquered weepers?
It’s not “in the West”. It’s “in North America”. In Western Europe, non-Jewish and non-Muslim male infants are usually not circumcised, and I believe that Western Europe is just as much “the west” as USA and Canada are.
There was no real single american indian culture. The closest thing to it would have been the loose coalition of tribes roughly called the 5 Nations which existed basically in New York State and lopping into a small area of Canada, Vermont, Massachusets, Connecticut and Pennsylvania as tribes moved around their normal ranges. It was more a NATO type organization, not a single entity like the Mass Bay Colony.
We did what the indians themselves were doing anyway. If you look into the history of just New England itself, tribes had a much different viewpoint of land ownership, and did war between each other for control of areas to use the resources present. As a rough example, the tribe that currently lives on the reservation that is where Foxwoods Casino is presently located isn’t the tribe that was originally there 300 years ago. There are 2 federally recognized tribes in CT now, Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot. Historically there were Mahican, Mohegan, Minisink, Pequot, Nipmuk and Quiripe [all subsets of Alagonquin] <only reason I know this stuff is mrAru is some ineffable tiny part Mahican thanks to a mahican woman marrying some ancestor back in the late 1600s. geneology is interesting>
Besides, it really doesnt matter. After 200 years of WASP domination, we are the dominant culture of the US - with admixtures of new cultures coming in from 1850 through 1950 and blending into our little melting pot, what we have is the dominant culture. English is the generally accepted unofficial working language of hte government [a predominant amount of governmental paperwork has always been done in english, the originating documents of our government are in english] and it was an afterthought to start adding documentation in additional languages, and it took special legislation to add documentation in additional languages. People looking to move into this country need to suck it up and learn english, and adopt the societal norms of behavior that conform to the general culture. What they do in their own homes as long as it breaks no laws is moot.
By the way, I am functional in 2 languages besides english. Suck it up.
