Type: Research
Pages: 2 | Words: 580
Reading Time: 3 Minutes

Assimilation is an inevitable process that minorities have to go through to achieve success in American society. It is a necessary mixing of cultural and social terms of minorities with the dominating society. A greater part of success depends upon the question whether or not the person succeeds in assimilation. This dependence is the result of extraordinary economic opportunities and social mobility in the U.S. Politics and public opinion also play a role in the assimilation of foreigners in the American social system. Historically there were developed two approaches to assimilation.

The first approach — the tradition of “a melting pot” considers assimilation as the process by which groups and cultures merge in the nation as a whole, creating new people and new civilization. The second one involves the assessment of culture of the dominant group as superior, which should completely displace minority culture via assimilation. If a person wants to succeed in American society, there is no other way, but to become an American in all the possible ways. This means speaking the language, to follow the traditions and be involved as much as possible.

There are some pros and cons of assimilation. The positive moment is that it becomes easier to understand the surrounding world when a person assimilates in the society. Another point is that one becomes a part of the dominant group and feels like a part of the whole, what is important for the personal confidence and fulfilling the desire of belonging. It becomes easier to orient in the society for those who assimilate. The negative side of assimilation is that the very own traditions and culture vanish and then totally disappear in direct dependency of the level of mixing with another culture.

Richard Rodriguez gives a point of view that assimilation is a normal process that people are afraid of and try to fight severely. But the fact is obvious: all people who live in a certain society are inevitably going to be assimilated into the dominant culture’s society. Although some minority groups try to fight this process and confront themselves with the rest of the society, but the fact they do that, already says a lot about their integration and assimilation.

The major reason of that is this small part of people remains being minority, but they lose their individuality, and have no future being without their own culture and being double faced people. There is an idea that successful people who belong to minorities do not have moral rights to be successful, and have the same privileges as people from a dominant society. There will always be a confrontation on the part of the rest of the minority group towards the person who tries to be like the greater part of the society as much as possible. Rodriguez’ arguments are quite strong, and it is possible to agree with the fact there is no need for people to settle their minds and to be happy knowing they are different, and they are “okay” with that at the same time.

The writer sounds very confident and content with his point of view, and he would not make his answer different under the influence of different minority groups like gay or Chicanos.

Richard is very content with his thoughts, and this is based on the fact that he found himself to be in favor of assimilation and was not afraid of it, and through this he managed to have his culture as an intimate part of himself and his family.

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