This past Sunday David Leonhardt wrote a great opinion piece in the New York Times about immigration reform and acculturation. In it, Leonhardt draws a parallel between 19th Century American skepticism about Germans assimilating into American culture to similar skepticism today about Hispanic immigrants.
Leonhardt is correct about these 19th Century fears about immigrants and assimilation. In fact our lexicon of Polish jokes can be attributed to the influx of Eastern Europeans during the early 1900s many of whom had no choice but to take low-level service jobs as domestics - the jobs "white" people didn't want.
At that point in time, neither Eastern European immigrants nor Jews were considered "white" - a term reserved only for descendants of the "Nordic Race" - ie Anglo-Saxons from Northern Europe.
What we generally call "assimilation" truly begin after the Great Depression, and after WWII in particular.
During these periods of time government-sponsored social programs were put in place specifically aimed at giving the masses the capital and skills required to be self-sufficient. "Self-sufficient" meant having a skill that was salable on the job market, and that practicing that skill would earn you enough money to purchase property - which was the main way of passing your wealth onto the next generation.
New Deal programs, along with the GI bill, removed many of the social barriers that stood in the way of Eastern Europeans, Germans, Italians, Irish and Jews becoming self-sufficient on their own.
Leonhardt is correct about these 19th Century fears about immigrants and assimilation. In fact our lexicon of Polish jokes can be attributed to the influx of Eastern Europeans during the early 1900s many of whom had no choice but to take low-level service jobs as domestics - the jobs "white" people didn't want.
At that point in time, neither Eastern European immigrants nor Jews were considered "white" - a term reserved only for descendants of the "Nordic Race" - ie Anglo-Saxons from Northern Europe.
What we generally call "assimilation" truly begin after the Great Depression, and after WWII in particular.
During these periods of time government-sponsored social programs were put in place specifically aimed at giving the masses the capital and skills required to be self-sufficient. "Self-sufficient" meant having a skill that was salable on the job market, and that practicing that skill would earn you enough money to purchase property - which was the main way of passing your wealth onto the next generation.
New Deal programs, along with the GI bill, removed many of the social barriers that stood in the way of Eastern Europeans, Germans, Italians, Irish and Jews becoming self-sufficient on their own.
The way in which these programs were administered, in conjunction with the drawing of racially segregated neighborhoods drawn up by the Federal Housing Authority, excluded Blacks from this skill-to-property-ownership cycle.
I've spent the last year of my career as a planner focusing on diversity advertising - or ethnocultural targeting as I prefer to call it. Working in this specialized area of the industry, one hears constant chatter about assimilation.
But I cannot help but wonder if such discussion is relevant in the 21st Century given the fact that the US is no longer an Anglo-Saxon-dominated US, but rather an ethnoculturally diverse US.
Absent a dominant enthocultural majority, what exactly is it that there is to assimilate into?
I'm looking forward to exploring this, and other related topics in this blog.
I've spent the last year of my career as a planner focusing on diversity advertising - or ethnocultural targeting as I prefer to call it. Working in this specialized area of the industry, one hears constant chatter about assimilation.
But I cannot help but wonder if such discussion is relevant in the 21st Century given the fact that the US is no longer an Anglo-Saxon-dominated US, but rather an ethnoculturally diverse US.
Absent a dominant enthocultural majority, what exactly is it that there is to assimilate into?
I'm looking forward to exploring this, and other related topics in this blog.
