Assimilation and Ethnicity

Assimilation and Ethnicity

1 Think, too, of the role that the church played. Everyone in America was supposed to have some kind of religion; the immigrants fit in by almost immediately transplanting the one they had brought over. Many of them had belonged to the established church of their respective countries; here they learned the American maxim that it was to their advantage to sustain the ancestral faith through their own efforts. There were many ways of discovering the value that Americans placed on voluntarism and pluralism.

2 None of this is meant to say that the ethnic group was the sole agent of acculturation. For every parochial institution, save the church, there was a competing public one, from schools to banks. Then, too, great public events, including wars, drew immigrants into American life. Beyond everything else, there were always pressures from the outside to learn English. Yet the fact remains that also from within their respective ethnic group, itself an American artifact, immigrants took important steps towards becoming Americans. Crevecoeur saw as much in 1782.

3 In coming back to crevecoeur, we come back to the question: who are we? Is the American a product of the melting pot? Well, yes, to the extent that hardly anyone of any descent is the same as his original ancestors in this country. When the melting—pot idea caught the public fancy before world warⅠ,however, it held that intermarriage would result in a single American stock. That fusion has yet to take place, notwithstanding a great deal of intermarriage.

4 According to a U.S. Bureau of Census survey of 1979, eighty—three million American reported that they descended from “multiple ancestry groups,” and ninety—six million from a “single ancestry group.” The returns broke down, respectively, to 46 and 54 percent. What is less clear from the bureau’s survey is why thirty—seven million American chose not to answer whether they belong to one or the other category. Perhaps many of them considered themselves American in origin and nothing else.

5 In any case, it is incorrect to state flatly, as have two celebrated students of the subject, that the “point about the melting pot…is that it did not happen.” Tens of millions of men and women can testify through personal experience that it did happen, and is still happening, to themselves and their families. What is more, in recent years the incidence of intermarriage has shot up in groups where once it had been miniscule. Among Jews, for example, the current rate is 30 percent. It runs as high as 40 percent for Mexican Americans, and 60 percent for Japanese Americans.

6 But if applicable to many individuals, the melting pot falls down as a description of America as a whole. It ignores the persistence of ethnicity. It denies the legitimacy, and value, of ancestral groups. It underestimates the strength of family, religious, ethnic, and racial constraints against intermarriage. It depreciates marrying inside the group. Were mixed ancestry the sole measure, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a fourth—generation Bostonian of unmixed Irish—Catholic parentage, would have been an inadmissible American type.

7 Nor does the currently favored theory of cultural pluralism provide an adequate answer to the question first posed in 1782. Although the United States is indeed pluralist, it is not the “commonwealth or federation of national cultures,” that the father of culture pluralism, Horace Kallen, hoped it would become. Like Israel Zangwill, who popularized the metaphor of the melting pot, Kallen claimed too much for his metaphor of the United States as a harmonious orchestra of foreign—language groups.

8 Except in scattered pockets, no major group of the past managed to transmit its language to a sizable number of descendents beyond the second generation. Today’s Hispanic newcomers, particularly from neighboring Mexico, hope to succeed where others failed. Easy and frequent travel between the United States and Mexico favors that ambition. Also, in 1968 the federal government sanctioned, for the first time in American history, bilingual education in the public schools.

9 What remains to be seen is the degree to which Spanish will challenge the hegemony of English. Already a reaction has set in. ten years after the passage of the 1968 law, it was amended to stipulate that bilingual education was not being funded as an end itself, but as a means to enable foreign—speaking youngsters deficient in English to become proficient in it. Congress acted on a widely held belief in the country that although no federal statute ever declared English official, it is in fact the language of the United States. As for the intergenerational continuity of various ancestral tongues, that is a matter for voluntary effort by interested parties, not state intervention.

10 Perhaps no summing up, metaphorical or otherwise, can do justice to the complex interplay between immigration and the national character. Still, with respect to the ethnic identification among individuals, there is a configuration now as in the past. Beyond the affiliation that others might ascribe to them, immigrants and their descendants fall into one of four categories:

11Total Identifiers live out their entirely within the ethnic group. They reside

with their own kind, go to school with their own kind, work with their own kind, pray with their own kind, eat food of their own kind, relax with their own kind, marry their own kind, and vote and campaign for their own kind. The persons who do so willingly constitute a tiny fraction of the population. More commonly, total identifiers are recent immigrants who, for reasons of poverty and prejudice, have no choice but to live completely by themselves.

12 Partial Identifiers take their ethnicity in measured and selective doses. It is usually most important to them in primary associations, but they are apt to define themselves in non—ethnic terms at work, in the community, or at college. The more such individuals play autonomous roles, the more they see themselves as being more than solely ethnic. They constitute a majority of American who retain ties to their ancestry.

1.然而,还有更多的话要说。废除国家起源的计划似乎表明,美国人认为自己是美国人。对于很多人来说这是事实，但不是绝对。许多人认为自己既是美国人又是这个种族中的一员。

2.共和国的创始人意识到这种现象在他们那个时代已存在。有的同意，有的不同意，还有些人保留自己的意见。在任何情况下,没有人认为这个主题会对构成干预。国家默默地承认种族关系,宗教信仰,它通常是联盟的,或是一个个人选择的问题。

3. 因此,在美国成立之前，每个新的团体都形成了自己的组织。这种情况仍在继续,在最后抵达的移民中可以看到 ,他们还没有时间来建造自己的机构。相反,像马恩岛和苏格兰-爱尔兰这样强有力的组织消失了。很显然,每一个民族都有自己的历史,用原住地，定居面积,时间,环境,和别人的关系来计算。

4. 然而,可以进行总的概括。首先,他们似乎是与苏联、捷克斯洛伐克、南斯拉夫一同存在。这样的国家,有一个或两个联合的民族。而美国却不是，对于民族群体不给于法律的认可，也没有合法的土地居住，更失去了他们的母语。

5. 所有这些也许是公共所希望的。但以前的，在1818年却被废除了,其中包括一份来自纽约和费城书关于爱尔兰社会对西方土地的使用,国会建立联邦的原则是不会协助海外集团来改造自己的国土导致人民背井离乡。爱尔兰被认为允许这么做,德国可能会是下一个,其次是其他群体。结果将使联邦成为民族的联盟。

6. 第二个普遍化是伦理集团助手成员融入美国。它通过不同的机构。移民人进入商业银行提供资本;建筑物和贷款协会提供抵押贷款的业主,社会保险有利于家庭的疾病，事故和死亡;与此同时,移民新闻告知读者在美国发生的一切;然而,,政治教条教自己意识到投票的权力,而权力很少存在于古老的国家。

7同时也考虑到教会所起的作用。在美国每个人都应该有某种宗教信仰;几乎迁移过来的移民也立即融入进他们了。他们中的许多人曾属于各自国家的国教,在这里他们学习美国

的格言,这也是他们的优势，通过他们自己的努力来维持祖先的信仰。从许多发面可以发现美国人把价值放在唯意志论和多元化上。

8这并不是意味着说民族文化适应的独家代理。对于每一个狭隘的机构,拯救教会,要从一个公开竞争开始,从学校到银行。然后,伟大的公共活动,包括战争、移民到美国生活。这些都超越一切,总是有压力从外面学习英语。然而，事实是，同样来自在各自的族群，本身就是一种美的神器，移民迈出重要步伐迈向美国人。克雷弗克看到尽可能多的在1782年。

9就克雷弗克看来,我们回到了一个问题:我们是谁? 美国大熔炉的产物吗?嗯,是的,在某种程度上,几乎没有人的血统是一样的他最初的祖先在这个国家。当熔炉的想法引起了公众幻想在第一次世界大战之前,然而,它认为异族婚姻会导致一个美国证券。融合尚未发生,尽管大量的异族婚姻存在。

10根据美国1979年人口普查的调查,八千三百万年美国的报告说,他们是出自“多个祖先群体,”和九千六百万年的“单一祖先。”回报了，分别为46和54个百分点。不太清楚是什么局的调查是三千七百万年美国为什么选择不回答他们是否属于一个或另一个类别。也许很多人认为自己是美国血统。

11在任何情况下，直截了当的断定它是错误的主因是因为针对“大熔炉的观点说是它是不存在的。” 成千上万的男人和女人可以通过个人经验证明,确实发生了,并仍在发生在他们自己和他们的家庭中。更重要的是，近年来通婚的发病率已经飙升在这里曾经有过微乎其微的群体。在犹太人中，例如，按照目前的速度是30％。它运行高达40％的墨西哥裔美国人和60％的日裔美国人。

12但是如果适用于许多个人，熔炉落下作为美国的一个整体。它忽略种族的持久性。

它否认祖先群体的合法性和价值。它低估了通婚的家庭，宗教，民族和种族的实力。它贬值结婚组内。混合血统的唯一措施，总统约翰·菲茨杰拉德·肯尼迪，未混合的爱尔兰天主教血统的波士顿，将是不可接受的美洲型。

13目前也不赞成文化多元主义理论提供一个适当的对这个问题的回答在1782年首先提出的。尽管美国的确是多元化的,并不是“英联邦或民族文化联合会”,文化多元主义之父,贺拉斯Kallen,希望它将成为。像以色列赞格威尔,普及了隐喻的熔炉,Kallen声称对他太多的隐喻的美国成为一个和谐的外语组的乐队。

14除了散落的口袋,没有大型集团过去的成功传输其语言相当数量的后代超过第二代。今天的拉美裔移民,尤其是来自邻国墨西哥,希望在别人失败的地方取得成功。容易和频繁的旅行美国和墨西哥之间的野心。同时,1968年联邦批准,美国历史上第一次,在公立学校教授双语教育。

15西班牙将挑战英语的霸权的程度还有待观察。已经开始有反应。十年后的1968年的法律,这是修改规定,双语教育不是被资助结束本身,而是作为一种方式,使第二代缺乏英语教育的年轻人精通它。国会采取行动在全国广泛持有的信念,虽然英语官方从来没有宣布联邦法律,它实际上是美国的语言。至于各种祖先的代际连续性的舌头,这是一个供感兴趣的志愿工作,没有国家干预。

16也许没有任何结论,隐喻与否,来公正的移民和民族性之间有复杂的相互作用。不过,对于个体之间的民族身份,现在有一个配置已经过去了。他们可能认为他们的归属是超越别人,移民和他们的后代分为四个类别中的一个:

17总标识符活在他们全部的族群中。他们与自己的同类居住，与自己的同类去学校，

用自己的这种工作，祈祷自己的同类，吃自己的同类的食品，放松自己的同类，嫁给自己的同类，投票和竞选自己的同类。心甘情愿这样做的人只占人口的一小部分。更常见的是，总标识符是那些新移民，对于贫困和偏见他们别无选择只能完全依靠自己生活。

18部分标识符通过种族划分来选择。它通常是在小学协会中最重要，但他们倾向于定义自己的非种族方面的工作，在社会上，或在大学。越是这样的人发挥自主作用，更多的他们认为自己是纯粹的多种族。他们占了绝大多数与美国人有联系的人，即他们的祖先。

19 脱离在民族或主导宗教民族社区长大但又不能回家了,因为他们已经别无选择。这些经常出现在学术界，媒体界和艺术界的语言里。他们都是聪明人，换句话说，他们其中的一个政治家曾经写到他们是相同的民族种群。他们坚持是同一个部落是对的。他们有着自己的价值观，英雄自己的担忧，和培养孩子的一套办法等等。然而，不像民族部落的成员，脱离民族的人并不会由共同祖先而联系紧密。

20 一个血统并不能证明他们的混血身份。种族如此完全冲毁,他们有一个艰难的时间的概念。他们中的一些人甚至讨厌它,认为它是一个偏执的标志来解决人们根据他们的起源。这样的美国人,在文字,产品的熔炉。

每一类要求细化。

21 这是很难的地方人们在流体社会和人们自己。也许这就是为什么美国产生比社会异化，无论如何确切地知道他或她适合的地方。然而,那些土地,广大移民背井离乡,在运动。在美国调整他们,后来他们的后代,成形归属感常适合它们的关系

22 还说,现在的文明世界的很大一部分订阅的命题,首先阐述美国,放弃国籍是一项基

本。在美国率先成为世界领先的接收机的满足它的需要移民,然而它也为人类思想——最迟报认为民族行为多变而不是不可改变的。作为美国人的性格有太多的事情,欢迎新人象征着一个新的开始, 重新开始的机会

23 同时,条款成为移民归化公民不需要放弃他们的宗教、语言、记忆、海关、音乐、食物、或其他任何他们愿意保护民俗文化。文化适应的过程,因此,离开房间不同祖先和伦理关系,维护共同的公民文化的价值。像每一个人类的发明,这一个有起起落落,即使国家认同的波动是一个提醒共和国的创始人铰接,基于统一的信仰和多样性应该不仅相互兼容,支持自由。