IN THE UNITED STATES

So in this continent, the energy of Irish, Ger­mans, Swedes, poles and all the European tri­bes, of the Africans, and of the Polynesians — will construct a new race, a new religion, a new state.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A man who is now a citizen of the United States was describ­ing his escape to several American friends. He had been a musici­an in the state orchestra and was on tour in America when he de­cided to stay. "It was something I had planned for many years,' he explained. "Life had become unbearable and I had friends in Japan and in many European countries. There were several count­ries where I could have been very happy and had opportunities to play in orchestras".

"Then why did you choose the United States?" his American friend asked. "Oh", he said, "because in America, everyone came from another country. Here I fit in— I can be an American and not a foreigner".

Melting Pot or Salad Bowl

The population of the USA includes a large variety of ethnic groups coming from many races, nationalities, and reli­gions. The process by which these many groups have been made a part of a common cultural life with commonly shared values is call­ed "assimilation". Scholars disagree as to the extent to which assimilation has occurred in the United States. Some have descri­bed the United States as a "melting pot" where various racial and ethnic groups have been combined into one culture. Others are in­clined to see the United States as a "salad bowl" where the vari­ous groups have remained distinct and different from one another while living in the same country.

The truth probably lies between these two views. An enormous amount of racial and ethnic assimilation has taken place in the United States, yet some groups continue to feel a strong sense of separateness from the culture as a whale.

Generally speaking, whites from different national and religi­ous backgrounds have been largely assimilated into the larger Am­erican culture. American Jews are the only group of whites who retain a strong sense of separateness from the larger culture. This results from a long history of persecution in the Christian countries in Europe, the weaker forma of discrimination and anti-Jewish feeling that exist in the United States, and their own strong feeling of ethnic pride. Yet along with their sense of separateness, at the same time American Jews have a strong sense of being a part of the larger American culture in which they have achieved competitive success in almost every field. Therefore un­like other groups of white Americans, the Jews have a feeling of being separate that remains as strong as the feeling of being as­similated into the larger American culture.

The Establishment of the Dominant Culture

The process of assimilating a large number of white ethnic groups Into American life did present problems. At the time of the American Revolution the population was largely English in origin. Protestant, and middle class. These characteristics became the st­andard for judging other groups. Those having a different religi­on such as the Irish Catholics or those speaking a different lan­guage such as the Germane, Dutch, and Swedes, were in the minori­ty and would bе disadvantaged unless they became assimilated. In the late 1700a this assimilation occurred without great difficul­ty. According to two historians, "English, Irish, German, … Dutch, Swedish - mingled and intermarried with little thought of any difference.

The dominant American culture, therefore, grew out of the na­tion's early history. It was English-speaking, Western European, Protestant, and middle class in character. The assumption was made that immigrants having these characteristics- would give the strongest support to the basic values of the culture such as freedom, equality of opportunity, and the desire to work hard for a higher material standard of living.

The Assimilation of Non-Protestant and Non-Western Europeans

As is the ease in many cultures, the degree to which a minori­ty group was seen as different from the characteristics of the dominant majority determined the extent of that group's accep­tance. Immigrants who were like the earlier settlers were accept­ed, The large numbers of immigrants with significantly different characteristics tended to be viewed as a threat to basic Americ­an values and the American way of life.

This was particularly true of that immigrants who arrived by the millions during the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen­turies. Most of them came from poverty-stricken nations of southern and eastern Europe. They spoke languages other than Eng­lish, and large numbers of them were Catholics or Jews.

Americans at the time were very fearful of this new flood of immigrants, They were afraid that these people were so accustom­ed to lives of poverty and dependence that they would not under­stand such basic American values as freedom, self-reliance, and competition. There were so many new immigrants that they might even change the basic values of the nation in undesirable ways,

Americans tried to meet what they saw as a threat to their values by offering English instruction for the new immigrants and citizenship classes to teach them basic American beliefs. The immigrants, however, often felt that their American teach­ers disapproved of the traditions of their homeland. Moreover, learning about American values gave them little help in meeting their most important needs such as employment, food, and a place to live.

Far more helpful to the new immigrants were the «political bosses" of the larger cities of the northeastern United States, where most of the immigrants first arrived, those bosses saw to many of the practical needs of the immigrants and were more ac­cepting of the different homeland traditions. In exchange for their help, the political bosses expected the immigrants to keep them in power by voting for them in elections.

Many Americans strongly disapproved of the political bosses. This was partly because the bosses were frequently corrupt; that is, they often stole money from the city governments they controlled and engaged in other illegal practices. Perhaps sore important to disapproving native Americans, however, was the fact that the bosses seemed to bе destroying such basic Americ­an values as self-reliance and competition.

The bosses, it seemed, were teaching the immigrants to be de­pendent on them rather than to rely on themselves. Moreover, the bosses were "buying" the votes of the immigrants In order to give themselves a monopoly of political power in many large cities. This practice destroyed competition for political office, which, Americans viewed as an important tradition in politics just as it was in other facets of American life.

Despite these criticisms, many scholars believe that the poli­tical bosses performed an important function la the late nine­teenth and early twentieth centuries. They helped to assimilate large numbers of disadvantaged white immigrants into the larger American culture. The bosses helped the first generation of im­migrants to get a start in a strange new land. The bosses also helped the sons and daughters of these immigrants find jobs. The second generation, of coarse, had the advantage of learning Eng­lish as their native language.

The fact that the United States had a rapidly expanding eco­nomy at the turn of the century вайе it possible for these new immigrants, often with the help of the bosses, to better their standard of living in the United States. As a result of these new opportunities and new rewards, immigrants саше to accept most of the values of the larger American culture and were in turn ac­cepted by the great majority of Americans. For white ethnic groups, therefore, it is generally true that their feeling of being a part of the larger culture— that is, "American" — is much stronger than their feeling of belonging to a separate ethnic group — Irish, Italian, Polish; etc.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 1579