sylvanians and mundovians – long in disgrace, assimilation theory is now back in style
TRANSCRIPT
Sylvanians and Mundovians – Long in Disgrace, Assimilation Theory is Now Back in Style.
By Alvaro Lima1
In his book Assimilation in America Life, Milton Gordon sets out to perform a
rigorous analysis of the assimilation process. To that end, he asks the reader to
imagine a hypothetical host country, which he names Sylvania, a country in which
“all its members are of the same race, religion, and previous national extraction.”
Sylvania also has a population with a “relatively uniform cultural behavior except
for social class divisions.” Along, through immigration, come the Mundovians, a
group of people with a different national background, religion, and culture. Gordon
invites us to further imagine that “within the span of another generation, this
population […] has completely taken on the cultural patterns of Sylvanians, has
thrown off any sense of peoplehood based on Mundovian nationality, has changed
its religion, […] has eschewed the formation of any communal organization made up
principally or exclusively of Mundovians, has entered and been hospitably accepted
into the social cliques, clubs, and
institutions of the Sylvanians at various
class levels, has intermarried freely and
frequently with the Sylvanians,
encounters no prejudice or
discrimination […] and raises no value
conflict issues in Sylvania public life.” For
him, this would represent the “ultimate
form of assimilation.” Assimilation theory is born in its purest form! Two
homogeneous peoples meet each other and the immigrant group surrenders its
national background, culture, and religion, adopts those of the host society, which
happily embraces them in their lives and homes.
1 Alvaro Lima is Director of Research for the Boston Redevelopment Authority.Photo: “The Ford English School Graduation Ceremony,” Peter Freese, ed. From Melting Pot to Multiculturalism: E pluribus
unum? – Resource Book. (München: Langenscheidt, 2005), 88.
Later, Gordon invites us to go back to Sylvania and imagine an immigration of
Mundovians yielding a completely different outcome. Now, the Sylvanians accept
many of the behaviors and values of the Mundovians, as the Mundovians change
many of their ways to accommodate the Sylvanians. This process, according to
Gordon, gives rise to a “new cultural system […] which is neither exclusively
Sylvanian nor Mundovian but a mixture of both.” Assimilation theory encounters a
great ally - the concept of the “melting pot.” Here also, in its purest form, before the
stock became Sylvanian-conformity.
For more than a century, these metaphors have dominated academic, policy,
and practice debates about how to conceptualize what Gordon called the “meeting
of peoples.” Following Gordon’s assimilation model, a great deal has been written
about that process with some variations regarding its linearity, scope, phases, and
sequence. Discussions focused also on the fact that some understood it to be a
process while others contemplated it as a desirable
goal.
History, however, produced a different
scenario. The encounter of Sylvanians and
Mundovians inspired by Sylvanian nativist policies
limited the number of Mundovians entering
Sylvania and erected barriers to non-Mundovians.
Others, following Sylvania’s liberal traditions, tried
to help Mundovians to acquire good manners,
habits, and attitudes compatible with Sylvanian’s
traditions. Years later, Sylvanians woke up to an unhappy reality. Mundovians were
not assimilating as fast as desirable, their children and their children’s children
sometimes retrieved old Mundovian cultural traits. At the same time, Sylvanians lost
control of their borders and, not only more Mundovians entered the country than
the stipulated quotas, but also other people with different cultures entered in large
numbers. To complete this scenario, Sylvanians-of-color, a segment left out of
Photo: “The Ford English School Graduation Ceremony,” Peter Freese, ed. From Melting Pot to Multiculturalism: E pluribus
unum? – Resource Book. (München: Langenscheidt, 2005), 88.
Gordon’s scenarios, began to fight for their civil rights. Assimilation theory entered
in crises. As some Sylvanian intellectuals discovered, ethnicity is not a residual
social category that gradually disappears but rather a social mechanism that could
be called into being rather quickly.
In their influential study “Beyond the Melting Pot,” Glazer and Moynihan
(1970) concluded, “the point about the melting pot is that it did not happen.” Anglo
and non-Anglo Americans are still around after all these years albeit hyphenated.
American culture has
splinted into many
segments. The
American economy has
taken an hourglass
shape making it more
difficult for new
immigrants to find
decent jobs. The gaps
between rich and poor Americans widened, creating an underclass. New
immigrants, particularly non-white immigrants, instead of melting into American
society are confronted with institutional discrimination and segregation joining the
poor minorities in their low-income neighborhoods. Their children, seeing their
parent’s situation, are increasingly aware of discrimination against them create
their own new subcultures. On the other hand, immigrants with high levels of
education enter American mainstream labor market integrating economically
without assimilating.
America is in need not of new metaphors but a clear framework for
integration. The starting point should be the abandonment of Anglo-conformity.
Why should we be so concerned with the disappearance of difference? Why couldn’t
we define immigrant integration as the process whereby immigrants converge
around the mean for the native-born? That is, immigrant’s education attainment,
Photo: “The Ford English School Graduation Ceremony,” Peter Freese, ed. From Melting Pot to Multiculturalism: E pluribus
unum? – Resource Book. (München: Langenscheidt, 2005), 88.
income levels, occupational prestige, legal rights, and other indicators of equal
opportunity, increasingly approximate those of the native-born.
Photo: “The Ford English School Graduation Ceremony,” Peter Freese, ed. From Melting Pot to Multiculturalism: E pluribus
unum? – Resource Book. (München: Langenscheidt, 2005), 88.