Assimilation processes in the USA (the government politics, problems and solutions)

Assimilation – is the process by which various ethnic groups have been made a part of common cultural life with commonly shared values.

There are different opinions of scholars about the degree of assimilation in the USA. Some have described the USA as a “melting pot” where various ethnic groups have been combined into one culture. Others call the USA as a country where the various groups have remained distinct and different from one another.

An enormous amount of racial and ethnic assimilation has taken place in the USA, yet some groups continue to feel a strong sense of separateness from the culture as a whole. The only group of white belonging here is American Jews. At the same time they have a strong sense of being a part of the larger Am. culture in which they have achieved competitive success in almost every field. 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 Am. culture.

To be easily assimilated immigrants should possess several characteristics: English-speaking, Western-European (in terms of values) and Protestant or at least Christian middle class. Immigrants who possessed these characteristics were accepted. But the large number of immigrants with significantly different characteristics tended to be viewed as a threat to Am. values and the Am. way of life.

The government policy in terms of racial assimilation is the following: the government promotes rich racial diversity, it enforces race mixing through media, the antidiscrimination laws were established (“fair-housing”), and there is the prosecution of any hint of hate speech against minorities.

Assimilation process faces some problems such as: the majority of immigrants are non-white, so today there is the problem of anti-white racism (reverse discrimination). Very often whites view immigration as an assault against western culture. Racial prejudices of whites towards non-white minority (whites can abandon the places, if they live near by the blacks). The attitude of some minorities to assimilation is clearly not to adopt American culture, but instead that Am should assimilate theirs. The language problem exists in the USA.

There are solutions to the mentioned problems: 1)to offer citizenship classes to teach immigrants some basic Am values and beliefs; 2) to take care of some practical problems (the professional training courses, arranging of housing accommodation; giving some welfare benefits); 3) providing English language courses for adults and bilingual education for children.