Assimilation

“ The racial element in ethnical assimilation is gradually modified by the imperative adjustment of the immigrant to his new conditions of life. For the observer and student of history there is nothing more instructive and, at times, more pathetic than that borderland which lies between what has been and what is to be in the life of the immigrant. This violent breaking away from the past and gradual assimilation with the present has its dangers. Unknown and occult factors are at work with the blood of several generations, pulsating in the veins of the new Canadian. ”

“ The term amalgamation may be used for that mixture of blood which unites races in a common stock, while assimilation is that union of their minds and wills which enables them to think and act together. ”

“ It goes without saying that the development of American ideas and standards in an immigrant foreign population will be inversely proportional to the density and homogeneity of that population in any section. Intermixture is the secret of assimilation. And assimilation is the test of desirable immigration. But not alone is the social and economic advance of the immigrant determined by his relations with Americans, for it is just, as true that the immigrant will affect the standards and ideals of the American. ”

“ Another and a different notion of assimilation or Americanization is based on the conviction that the immigrant has contributed in the past and may be expected in the future to contribute something of his own in temperament, culture, and philosophy of life to the future American civilization. This conception had its origin among the immigrants themselves, and has been formulated and interpreted by persons who are, like residents in social settlements, in close contact with them. ”

“ At the outset it may be said, then, that assimilation rarely becomes a problem except in secondary groups. Admission to the primary group, that is to say, the group in which relationships are direct and personal, as, for example, in the family and in the tribe, makes assimilation comparatively easy and almost inevitable. ”

“ Striking differences of racial types, the preceding isolation which caused devastating epidemics in the newly discovered countries, and the greater advance in civilization, made assimilation much more difficult. The rapid dissemination of Europeans over the whole world destroyed all promising beginnings which had arisen in various regions. Thus no race except that of eastern Asia was given a chance to develop an independent 17civilization. ”

“ And when attention is directed to the slums, the question of assimilation becomes almost a mockery. These matters are so obvious as to be almost an axiom, and even the adherents of the “liberal” policy of immigration have come to lay little stress in their arguments upon the assimilation of the first generation. The attention of all is turned to the children of the foreign-born—the immigrants of the second generation.
Judged by the superficial tests upon which reliance is generally placed, the native-born children of foreign parents seem to be very well assimilated. ”

“ We found that the tendency, reprehensible and paradoxical as it might be, has been for the national clusters of immigrants, as they became more and more firmly established and more and more prosperous, to cultivate more and more assiduously the literatures and cultural traditions of their homelands. Assimilation, in other words, instead of washing out the memories of Europe, made them more and more intensely real. ”

“ The charge that our immigrants are not completely assimilated, or are not assimilated at all, is one of the most frequent and gravest complaints made against our present immigration situation. It is made to include—as, indeed, it rightfully does in a sense—all the other arguments against immigration. The term 398assimilation is almost unfailingly suggested by the mere mention of immigration. But assimilation is a big word, and needs to be used with great caution and understanding. ”

“ Secondly, as has been pointed out, immigration is distinctly a modern movement, and history furnishes no parallels, but only more or less remote analogies.
The opinion of the average American citizen, based perhaps upon prejudice or conviction, rather than reasoning or investigation, is probably that a certain degree of assimilation is essential to the welfare of the American nation, and that the nearer the approach to complete assimilation, the better. ”

“ It must also be considered that in several 13regions, particularly in America and in parts of Siberia, the primitive tribes are swamped by the numbers of the immigrating race, which is crowding them so rapidly out of their old haunts that no time for gradual assimilation is given. In olden times there was certainly no such immense inequality in numbers as we observe in many regions nowadays.
We conclude, therefore, that the conditions for assimilation in ancient Europe were much more favorable than in those countries where in our times primitive people come into contact with civilization. ”

“ A nation may, like the United States, be composed of parts of various other nations, but they must be of a common race and civilization. The history of the Indians and the negroes in America too plainly demonstrates the truth that, where the races are different and the societies have different civilizations, rapid assimilation is impossible. As long as such a difference exists there will be a conflict, which can be ended only by the slow process of assimilation by variation of race, or by the extermination of the weaker. ”

“ THE miracle of assimilation wrought upon the older type of immigration, gives to many of us, at least the hope, that the Slavs, Jews, Italians, Hungarians and Greeks will blend into our life as easily as did the Germans, the Scandinavians and the Irish.
The new immigrant, or the new American, as I call him, is however in many respects, more of an alien than that older class which was related to the native stock by race, speech, or religious ties. ”

“ It must be confessed that, under present conditions, the outlook for the complete assimilation of our foreign population, even in the second generation, is far from bright. Even Miss Balch’s thoughtful and sympathetic 413chapter on assimilation, though written in an optimistic spirit, makes it plain that there are many and grievous difficulties, and leaves one with a somewhat gloomy feeling at the close. Professor Sumner used to say that the United States had no claim to the name of nation, because of the diverse population elements—foremost among them the negro—which it contains. ”

“ Nor could there occur in every region or in every period such an inpouring and assimilation of nationalities as is now going on among us; it is only possible under the conditions of civilized life in the nineteenth century, and the historical conditions which have been created here. The wild and uncultivated races of the earth generally are simply maintaining themselves by growth from generation to generation, taking in no immigrants, sending out no emigrants. ”

“ It may, indeed, not be necessary for the welfare of the country that assimilation should be so thoroughgoing as this. It is possible that different racial groups within the body politic do not constitute a menace. But if so, the fact should be stated by saying that complete assimilation is not necessary, rather than by saying that the absence of serious difficulties or evils arising from a composite population is a proof of complete assimilation. ”

“ Industrial Capacities of Different Races.—But, however hard one may work, he can only exercise the gifts with which nature has endowed him. Whether these gifts are contributed by race or by civilization, we shall inquire when we come to the problems of amalgamation and assimilation. At present we are concerned with the varying industrial gifts and capacities of the various races as they actually exist at the time when immigration, annexation, or conquest takes place. ”

“ The Problem of the European Immigrant.—The problem of the European immigrant is one of assimilation. It is difficult because the alien comes in such large numbers, brings with him a different race heritage, and settles usually among his own people, where American influence reaches him only at second hand. ”

“ Outside the economic field, fear of the immigrant is perhaps oftenest expressed in the sociological anxiety concerning assimilation. The question is raised whether so many different races, products of a great variety of physical and moral environments, can possibly fuse into a harmonious nation, obedient to one law, devoted to one flag. ”

“ Assimilation of culture was partly accomplished in slave days, and it will go on. There is no serious conflict between white and colored, when once the question of assimilation is understood. The problem is one of race adjustment. Fifty years have been insufficient to perfect the relations between the two races, but since they must live together, it is desirable that they should come to understand and sympathize with each other, and as far as possible co-operate for mutual advancement. ”

“ Typical of this class of literature is a recent pamphlet upon the subject, which, judging from the excellent biography appended, must be based upon extensive reading; yet the author comes to this conclusion: “Assimilation in the twentieth century is a very different matter from assimilation in the nineteenth. In many respects, the new immigration is as bad as the old was good.” [3]
There are several facts which this author has forgotten, as have those from whom he draws. First, the older immigrant is not yet assimilated. ”

“ In the West national assimilation has been the rule. That is to say, in any of the great divisions of western Europe, though the land may have been settled and conquered over and over again, yet the mass of the people of the land have been drawn to some one national type. Either some one among the races inhabiting the land has taught the others to put on its likeness, or else a new national type has been formed drawing elements from several of those races. ”

“ We are thus brought to the conclusion that the phenomena of our subject manifest a strong tendency to expand to the limits of the geographical area in which they arise, and no farther. Language and blood seem to spill over the edges far more readily than culture, from which we must infer that their dispersion is a by-product of migration, but that these migratory groups seem unable to resist complete cultural assimilation. ”

“ If adventurers of various race and tongue combine themselves together in a colony and take up their abode in some wild country, their speech at once begins to undergo a process of assimilation, which sooner or later makes it one and homogeneous: how rapidly this end shall be attained, and whether some one element shall absorb the rest, or whether all shall contribute equally to the resulting dialect, must be determined by the special circumstances of the case. ”

“ The agencies of assimilation then, in addition to the physical one of race blending, are those things which further contact and association between the newcomer and those who are truly Americans. Professors Jenks and Lauck give a list of such causes or influences. [362] The list might perhaps be amplified, but as it stands it is an enumeration of forces which contribute to interrace association. It is not essential that the influence of the American upon the immigrant be an intentional, or even a conscious, one. Many of the most powerful forces are unobserved. ”

“ We not only have a present nation-size job of assimilation, but we need to prepare ourselves for the problems that will accompany negotiations for peace. We shall have at least three questions of great and far-reaching importance—incoming immigration, outgoing emigration, and citizenship status in America and abroad. ”

“ The outlook for foreign missions would indeed be dark, were it so. The importance of the knowledge of English to our foreign residents must not be underemphasized. The lack of it is an almost insuperable bar to assimilation. But the two should not be confused. Even people whose native tongue is English may need to go through a process of assimilation before they become Americans. ”

“ CHAPTER II THE CELTIC IRISH
From the outbreak of the Revolution until the fourth decade of the nineteenth century there was a lull in immigration. In a lifetime fewer aliens came than now debark in a couple of months. During these sixty years powerful forces of assimilation were rapidly molding a unified people out of the motley colonial population. In the fermenting West, the meeting-place of men from everywhere, elements of the greatest diversity were blending into a common American type which soon began to tinge the streams of life that ran distinct from one another in the seaboard States. ”

“ Analysis of assimilation gives us sequence in one sense, since the parts of the act follow upon one another; but any interpretation which tends to draw a distinct line at any point in the physiological process, or to distinguish between assimilation as active, performed, and growth as passive, suffered, should be avoided. ”

“ In view of this constant differentiation on the one hand, and assimilation on the other, the historical movement has made it difficult to trace race types to their origin; and yet this is a task in which geography must have a hand. Borrowed civilizations and purloined languages are often so many disguises which conceal the truth of ethnic relationships. ”