Pluralism and Assimilation: Two Ways of Looking at the Same Coin - Essay Example

Pluralism and Assimilation: Two Ways of Looking at the Same Coin The immigrant experience has helped to largely define much of the past century within the United States and elsewhere around the world. To this end, how host cultures and peoples understand and view the incoming groups is a large factor in the overall level of welcome they receive and what mores and norms of the host/accepting country they are expected to adopt. To this end, two distinctive ways of thinking have developed and have formed within their ranks nouns which seek to describe the key virtues that each group espouse. These nouns are pluralism and assimilation. To such an end, this brief essay will attempt to compare and contrast these two and understand them as a function of what model would likely work best for the United States going forward from the year 2012. Firstly, the word assimilation is a touchy subject that has a host of connotations and denotations that cannot all be expressed in a paper of such brevity. However, suffice it to say that this term has mostly defined the immigrant experience of the not so distant past. In this way, it was incumbent upon the immigrant to work to quickly throw away and/or lose all of their prior identifying cultural qualities and subscribe to what some have referred to as a “least common denominator” which closely mirrored a Anglo-Saxon culture that was very much evidenced throughout the United States the better part of the past 200 years. This model in and of itself is not “evil” or “wrong”; yet, it does entail a degree of cultural hubris. In necessitating a newcomer to divest himself/herself of all uniqueness and work to mirror the culture of the host as rapidly as possible, it is plainly evidence of a model that believes in a high level of cultural superiority (if not racial superiority) of the host and demands that all new-comers adopt the same way of thinking. The term is of course linked to the very American traditional idea of the “melting pot”. Such a belief requires that upon entry into the crucible, the immigrant’s own unique culture, heritage, and in some instances – even religion – will melt down and work to congeal itself with the rest of those that have come before him/her. Although idealistic in nature, the “melting pot” in practice has never existed. Rather, it is evidence of a belief system that although striven for – was never actually realized. Evidence of such a long-standing problem is of course seen in the hundreds and even thousands of conflicts between new immigrants and slightly older immigrants throughout the many cities on the Eastern seaboard and beyond. Rather than being greeted by an idealistic society that placed strong emphasis on cooperation, the immigrants were invariably greeted with the understanding that action required political power and the critical mass of the people to bring about. Indeed, rather than a “melting pot” of assimilation, the United States can much more appropriately be defined as a “tossed salad” of identities. The concept of the “tossed salad” segues perfectly into the next set of points that this author intends to make concerning the second noun with which this analysis will consider: that of the concept, understanding and belief in “pluralism”. Pluralism is an inherently more liberal concept than as assimilation. Rather than requiring all members of a given group or society to strive towards a least common denominator, pluralism allows for deviations among groups and among individuals. Even more so, pluralism not only allows this but celebrates this level of diversity as beneficial to all members of a given society. Since the term engenders many aspects of a multi-cultural worldview, it has of course come into greater and greater appreciation by the New Left and the mainstream of the nation within the period of around the past 30 years or so. Pluralism engenders the “tossed salad” as it allows there to be key differences between the compositional members of the whole. Naturally, if one examines these two terms from a logical standpoint, it is clear that pluralism has the more rational and practical application than does that of assimilation. Although assimilation is a convenient term that demands actions on the part of the alien, it is almost never realized due to the fact that it is neither wanted nor desired by the assimilating entity to actively seek to throw away many integral components of personality and world view away. Furthermore, plurality does not denote that the individual will be able to ascribe to key elements of the given group they are attempting to integrate with; rather, it merely notes that key elements of their own cultural background, religion, language, world view etc will be retained and will likely serve to add useful elements of diversity to the culture they are within. Similarly, with respect to which of these terms best and most adequately describes the way in which cross-cultural interaction and coalescence will take place in the year 2012, this author would have to infer that pluralism is the most meaningful and applicable means of convergence of culture. Whereas assimilation has been proven to be less than effective in either encouraging cultural change and/or engagement, it necessarily requires a degree of cultural superiority that demands that all other interpretations of culture and morality yield way to its own (Prozorov 101). Furthermore, such a model is not in keeping with a less traditional and more multicultural society that our current nation experiences. Rather than seeking to push onto new groups of immigrants a false sense of necessity to yield their own virtues and unique cultural traits to a standardized interpretation of “American culture”, it is far more reasonable and logical to assume that the superior practice would be to allow a type of pluralism to affect the process. In this way, the cultural transmission goes both ways. Rather than merely requiring the immigrant to bend themselves to the mold of what a member of “American” culture should be, the pluralist approach allows for the immigrant to both learn from and educate those around them as to the unique cultural heritage and useful/unique practices and thought processes they have to bring to the table. In this way, a type of two-way dialogue and transmission of ideas, ideals, culture, and beliefs can readily be undertaken between all participants within such a process. In conclusion, the debate of assimilation versus pluralism is one that will continue for many years to come. This is due not to the fact that the debate between which is a more effective model has not been resolved; rather, it is the result that key members of society continue to cling to a nationalist interpretation of how they view the world. As such, this interpretation demands that all those who would seek to become Americans themselves must necessarily undertake the same process of assimilation as have the countless thousands before them. In this way, the argument for assimilation is weakened by the fact that it almost entirely rests its case on an idealistic interpretation of a past history that never existed. Similarly, those that accept and seek the United States and others to adopt a more pluralistic society have come to the realization that pluralism and its component parts can serve to enrich the host nation as well as the entering immigrant. Moreover, such a process necessarily engenders aspects of assimilation as it is only logical and understandable that the cross-cultural transmission will have a normative effect on the immigrant as well. Reference Prozorov, Vladimir. "The Enigma Of Ethnicity." American Studies International 40.3 (2002): 101. Academic Search Complete. Web. 19 Nov. 2012. Read More