Assimilation Essays - American Culture, Cultural Assimilation

Immigrants have been seeking refuge in America, for centuries in search of a fresh start, freedom from oppression, and economic prosperity among other reasons. With their new home, it was thought that they should eschew their culture and beliefs to become one and the same. However, one might ask: one and the same to who? While the idea of the melting pot is an amiable concept, it has simply failed to create a ?new race of man? and instead was insistent upon assimilating people of various ethnicities and races into a form deemed acceptable by the dominating Anglo-Saxon man. The ?melting? of various peoples into an American race was not successful for many reasons. First and foremost, there was not a set of guidelines created by all the different types of people that would create a truly new type of person. Contrastingly, only one race was the standard set to which the rest must have adhered to: the white man. For a new ?race? of man to have ever existed, not only would the immigrants have to eschew their culture and beliefs, but also the domineering race. It does not make sense to call something new on the basis of assimilation. The word assimilation implies that something that already exists changes into something else that already exists. How could something be new if it already exists? It can't. Becoming an American was unjustifiably biased by the prevalent race occupying America. The only type of person assimilation had in mind was the white person. Coming to America did not mean becoming an equal to all other Americans. It meant becoming white. If it were so, that assimilation meant becoming equal, the concept of minorities would not exist. Everyone would just be American. Crevecoeur stated that becoming and American meant ?leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners?, the only race that did not give up a single thing was the Anglo-Saxons. In fact, Anglo-Saxons could very well be the sole responsibility for the failure of the melting pot, for they kept to all their prejudices and manners. It was these same prejudices and manners that made all of the immigrants minorities and not equals. However, not everyone sees things the same way. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., for example, is a proponent of assimilation for he is a believer that assimilation's aim was to make life for everyone in America more cohesive. He also believes that education should ignore all of the different race's cultures and adhere to a curriculum that is based entirely on the facts. Unfortunately, I cannot say that educational curriculums are unbiased. For example, in an average high school American History book the murder, arguably genocide of the Native Americans was simply called Manifest Destiny. Manifest Destiny? The idea that ?the United States had the right and duty to expand throughout the North American continent?. This implies that the natives of the country did not have the right or duty to live on their land. It also perpetuates the concept of white supremacy over all and any other that differentiates from themselves. If you moved to another country, would you want to give up everything that you came from, who you are, and what you believe in, as to become a minority when promised equality? The goals that the melting pot held did not deliver. It furthered intolerance of different types of people in favor of the pseudo-ideology that one could become part of the ?American Race? even if they were not white. America would have been a better country for immigrants if differences of culture were accepted and understood instead of trying to make everyone the same. Racism has affected every American minority in a profoundly negative way. Maybe if the basis of being an American originally was to get along with others different than yourself instead of becoming assimilated, many of the racial and ethnic problems that have plagued the country for centuries would not have existed.