I do not think that assimilation is a necessary process. Furthermore, I think that there are different degrees of assimilation. It is possible to assimilate to a new culture without losing your own culture and identity; however, in the context of Native Americans I think that any form of assimilation was and is unnecessary. Unlike immigrants who choose to move to the United State today, the Native Americans lived here and America was their home and land before it became colonized. I think that today when people immigrate to the United State a certain degree of assimilation is often necessary in order to adjust to living in a new country. Nonetheless, keeping your ethnic identity and appreciation for your culture is paramount whenever experiencing any radical change in where you live and the culture you are immersed in. I think that regardless of whether or not people choose to assimilate and to what extent, forced assimilation is always an appalling practice.

            In Ethnicity and Immigration, it is declared that, “the reservation policy aimed to ensure that Native Americans would be systematically educated and ‘civilized’ into the American way of life” (53). Ultimately white Americans thought that the Native Americans needed to be civilized because they, “defined Native Americans as racially inferior, savage, childlike, and in need of radical readjustment to the ‘better’ life of the dominant culture” (53). The whole concept that the Native American needed assimilating was based solely on the idea that American culture was seen as dominant and more advanced. Just because one culture does not choose to live their lives a certain way, does not mean that they are “savage”. I think that too often less advanced is automatically seen as worse; however, the Native Americans had their own advancements and social structure that allowed them to flourish as they were. I feel that there is an overwhelming tendency to automatically classify the unknown and the Other as inferior to what is known. Because of this tendency people assume that assimilation of the less dominant culture is best.

            Although Native Americans were subjected to forced assimilation, they never stopped their attempt, “to save and restore the sense and fact of community against all the pressures of the colonial system” (54).  For Native Americans, assimilation meant the complete loss of their ethnic identity. To this day, Native Americans are still trying to restore the part of their identity that was lost. Later in the chapter the importance of storytelling in passing culture from one generation to another is expounded upon. Native American stories are one way that their cultural identity has been preserved, at least to some extent. Today, I think that it is possible to assimilate without such a thorough loss of individuality. Ultimately, I do not think that losing your ethnic identity and assimilating are mutually exclusive. So, although assimilation is not necessary, if it is chosen it does not mean that you have to give up part of yourself. Overall, I think this concept is similar to W E B Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness and his ultimate goal of morphing the two identities into the best of both. In my opinion it is possible to combine two ethnic identities.

I think assimilation is something that is bound to happen since mankind is a type of animal that lives in groups. Other people’s behavior will more or less affect you. If they can affect they will eventually affect you and change you. People wants to get the feel of being accepted by the people surrounded them, and that’s the fundamental reason why they are trying to act, talk, and think like the people around them. “The experience of Native Americans demonstrates the extreme workings of assimilation theory, or the ‘melting pot’, and how in many cases it meant ‘renouncing – often in clearly public ways – one’s subjectivity, who one literally was: in name, in culture, and, as far as possible, in color.” (page 59) In here, the author of the book believes that assimilation means to give up your own original culture so as to fit in in the new environment that you are in. That would be the cost of one trying to fit in – to lose something that he or she originally has. In simple words, you would have to compromise. I have this American born Chinese friend. He is very dedicated in making himself more of an American and less of a Chinese. He dresses like an American with the frat boy preppy style and rejects to dress like a Chinese international student. He grows really long hair to prove to people that he is not from China but from America (since most male Chinese international students don’t grow long hair because of the school policy back home.) He definitely adopts some good American personality in him like being aggressive and outgoing. But at the same time he gives up some Chinese virtues and picks up some bad American traits like untrustworthiness and selfishness.  

“White Americans in positions of cultural power defined Native Americans as racially inferior, savage, childlike, and in need of radical readjustment to the ‘better’ life of the dominant culture. These stereotypes formed a way of seeing and speaking about Native Americans, a discourse, that contributed greatly to the consensus for their deconstruction.” (page 53) In here the author argues that the superiority of white Americans gives them the power to define other race and other race’s stereotypes. Telling what other races should do or telling what other countries should act is a very classic American behavior in the world today. American has been telling China to give up communism and to adopt capitalism for about 40 years. Thank god we did not. They have been telling the world to adopt its ‘superior’ democratic government system. But what has happened to the countries that listened to what America wants them to do? Libya once the wealthiest country in Africa has now became a warzone. Iraq is also one of the wealthiest country in the past. Now its citizens have to run away from its own country because of wars. This is just the snippets of what has happened. Take a look at the current United States president then you know the system they have been praised for is a joke.

To the question of whether or not I believe assimilation is a necessary process, regardless of the consequences, I believe I fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of opinion. I do believe wholeheartedly that in order for two groups to coexist, they have to respect each other. Things like language, culture, religion, and law practices all play a role in joining the groups, and certainly make things like business and trade more efficient and easy, but they are not necessarily mandatory for simple coexistence. If one group wishes to become a part of the other, then I believe that it is the responsibility of the group members wishing to join to introduce themselves into the culture and decide the extent to which they are interested in adopting their ways. Assimilation, in my opinion, does often require one to give up some parts of their old culture, but I do not believe that one has to completely abandon their old ways and their old life to be part of a new culture. The author observes “Assimilation could not, according to this logic, cope with the presence of the Native Americans whose customs and traditions were too alien, too different to become merged with the new American self”, in reference to a previous work which claimed essentially that natives were too savage to become part of the new society as they were. I feel that this sentiment, clearly, was incorrect, and that although there were massive cultural differences, neither could accurately judge the other because they did not understand one another.

I happen to have a unique experience with Native American culture as I grew up in the middle of a Hoopa territory in northern California. Because of this, I went to school with many Native Americans and through this I was able to gain a deeper understanding of both the differences and similarities between myself and many of my classmates. One example that I did not realize at the time was that we never observed Columbus Day, we had school just like any other day. Now looking back on it I realize the reason that we didn’t was because so many lives just in my area specifically had been affected by him (and what was to come after) and it not only was not celebrated, but would have been disrespectful to celebrate. Looking back it was easy to see the line between the culture that we all shared versus the Native American culture surrounding me. While the difference was there, unspoken and relatively minimal, but there all the same, it was clear to me that as a local culture, we had no problem functioning and even thriving despite the fact that both groups celebrated their own, vastly different, cultures. My personal experience further conveys my point that one does not need to completely revoke their original culture in order to be a part of another one.

On page 52 the author writes, “In the case of the Native Americans, assimilation, as Crevecoeur testifies, seemed impossible”. I find this to be particularly interesting simply because, if assimilation seemed impossible, and settlers were starting completely fresh, why did they follow the steps of previous leaders when that was exactly what they were trying to escape? I do not believe that assimilation, to the extent that the first European settlers turned American colonists took it to is at all necessary. I feel that the idea of assimilation to such an extent completely contradicts everything that the settlers claimed they were searching for. They were often fleeing persecution (religious or otherwise), and the first thing they do when they are faced with adversity in the new land, is persecute against it.

The reading for this week centered around the Native American imposed “Americanness” and their on going battle to hold tight to their own set of values and cultural practices. It is America’s identificationof melting pot that encofrces an idea of cultural assimilation. Cultural assimilation, as practiced in America, is the act of stripping away individuals own language, practices, and beliefs to adopt the collective, homogeneous identity of the greater population (the colonizer). This idea was extremely popular in the United States uniting the 1960s multiculturalism movement. An excerpt in the test from a 1988 work by Peter Marin talks of “ghost values” or “the generational legacy, a certain residue, a kind of ash” that is carried and passed to each member of the family. The excerpt explains the native Americans attempt at reclaiming their “ghost values” which were once stripped from them by the American government through things such as re-education.

Native American culture was deemed to polar opposite of the Western European culture of the colonizer. So instead of blending aspects into the collective “melting pot” the colonizer attempted to eradicate it all together. A particularly strong and harsh philosophy of a re-education school was “kill the Indian, save the man”. This assumes that the Native American is the anti-civilized, like a parasite needed to be extracted from its host immediately. This is how the colonizer went about treating Native American culture. Through extreme amounts of adversity, native Americans were able to bring with them their “ghost values”

Throughout the 20th and 21st century Native Americans worked to reinstate the prescience of their values into their own communities. It was never the goal of the Native Americans to bring their beliefs into pop culture, but to be allowed to openly preserve and honor them. It is these “ghost values” passed by generation to generation of a courageous and fearless warrior that gave the modern Native American the ability to “encounter their enemies with the same courage in literature as their ancestors once evoked on horse, and they create their stories with a new sense of survivence and counter the manifest manner said of domination.”(Vizenor 1994). They began to open,y protest and write of their oppression and cultural smothering. It was this mixture of ghost values and new found voice that created the “post Indian” who fights the stereotype of what it means to be Native American without giving into American mainstream culture which was once forced on them. A ghost values spoken of frequently in the excerpt is the tradition of story telling. Leslie Mormon Silkos wrote in 1977 that to “destroy the stories is to make Native Americans defenseless”.

Though the values and cultural practices of a people can be restored and preserved through word of mouth, many aspects cannot be. One of the greatest thefts of mankind is the white colonizers grabbing of Native American lands. Native American culture is connected deeply to respect of Mother Nature. Corporate America stole, and continues to steal native lands for economic gain. We continue to grab land, even though many tribes live in plots they were forcibly relocated to, by an earlier act of greed by America.

When doing this reading, I can’t help but think about the lack of representation that I have seen in the media in recent years. I know that there are more Native American creatives who are starting to release more art into the world, such as Sherman Alexie. He’s released many different pieces of writing, one of his most popular being “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”. This novel is interesting because it is somewhat auto-biographical, with much of the story being based on his own life. This piece is also interesting because its audience is young adult readers. I think, when it comes to representation of Native Americans, it is only always partly accurate representations of Native Americans. People’s perceptions of Native Americans have stayed relatively the same, but with more and more Native American creatives starting to release their work, these perceptions may be able to be changed. Thinking about how people’s perceptions are influenced, it is critically important that we allow everyone, of every race, gender, sexuality, and background to be able to state their truths. By allowing people of many different backgrounds to tell their own stories, the inaccurate and unfair perceptions that many people have about certain groups, such as Native Americans, may be able to be changed.

Allowing people to be able to express themselves is easier said than done. People have always talked about how incredible America is due it its inclusivity and the ability for people to be a part of many different backgrounds. “Not subjected to one version of identity, these Americans move between two (or more), with different languages, customs, traditions, and values. This hybrid view of of ethnicity runs through many of the texts we will examine in this chapter, from Native Americans  to Jewish Americans, who have in different ways struggled with their own positions and identities, within the nation,” (51). This statement, however, has never been completely true. There are people who are a part of two (or more) different identities who have been discriminated against in the entire lifetime of America. In today’s society, we are starting to see more groups of people being represented in art and other creative outlets because the identities, such as gay, black, transgender, Native, that had been the reason that they were being excluded were beginning to be accepted into society, which then allowed them to be who they are freely and talk about their identities proudly.

Sherman Alexie is able to talk about his background and his identity as a Native American man because people that belong to the majority are starting to open their minds and rid of some of the discrimination that was instilled upon them from childhood. If this had been 70 years ago, however, Alexie most likely wouldn’t have been able to express himself creatively because the majority wouldn’t have been open to hearing about it. As a country being built on the backs of people who come from so many different backgrounds, there was a long period of time where the majority of people in the United States wanted everyone to conform a specific group. “Ethical uniformity was the underlying intention of the reservation system and the establishment of Indian schools, like the Carlisle School started in 1879 with a philosophy of ‘Kill the Indian and save the man’. Both worked towards de-Indianisation and the ideology ‘one country, one language, and one flag’” (54). This belief, sadly, is still around today and we see it a lot in our daily lives. There are people who immigrated here who still speak their home language and are constantly told, “You live in America, so speak English.”

As a country that has constantly prided ourselves on our variety of backgrounds and openness to so many different groups of people, we are very quick to tell them to assimilate. Many people came here because they wanted to be Americans, but it is completely unfair to ask them to lose every bit of their home country and every bit of their background. In America today, there are so many groups of people who identify with two or more different groups. We label them using these groups, such as Native American, African American, Jewish American, Mexican American. With these labels should also come the understanding that people who choose to be a part of several different groups are also allowed to carry with them the different cultures, languages, traditions, and values of every group they identify with. Assimilation is a way to make everyone the same, but one of America’s biggest sense of pride is the fact that everyone is different. Why should we encourage people to all be the same, when we boast about everyone being different?

Assimilation is not a necessary process for becoming an American. Assimilation entails that one basically gives up their culture and traditions from their past life and adopts a completely new one. For a country that prides itself on diversity and individuality, the concept of stripping oneself from their previous life makes little sense considering,  “America was a country that did not have at its center the idea of exclusion,” (pg. 51). Even if this wasn’t a common idea of America, diversification still has a huge factor on the country as a whole. New ideas, science, and technology, can be shared and lead to a vast variety of knowledge. Assimilation should never be considered no matter the losses or gains at the expense of ethnic identity. The freedom for individuals to choose how to live their life appears as a far greater concern to american culture than a homogeneous one.  Differences is what instills tolerance, and that is something such diverse countries as the US have to learn to accommodate and accept. Ethnic identities are also very important because it is a part of a culture that could possibly be erased otherwise. For instance, native people keeping up these traditions is what keeps their past native american life alive. An important term from the reading was the idea of plural identity. The article defines it as “not being subjected to one version of identity,” (pg. 53). This is an important concept because it emphasizes the fact that one cannot pick and choose the part of their background they want to portray. This reminded me of Of Our Spiritual Strivings by W.E.B Du Bois, and how an African American cannot take the African out of the Americanness, neither the American out of the Africannes. This is similar for the Native Americans. The combination of cultures is just as important to immigrants and natives as the American culture, and some could even argue it is what makes up a true American culture. American Indian history and culture teaches us lessons that can help reduce the enormous potential for ethnic and religious conflict in today’s world. This lesson is that countries cannot eliminate what is different about a group of people and then expect there to be an understanding community. Recognizing others’ differences should be considered a strength and something many countries around the world need to do. America is still learning this lesson today as people become more and more ignorant about the Native American culture. For instance, a high school in Kentucky went to DC where they harassed and insulted a Native American man in the middle of a ceremony. The boys were recorded yelling things like “Build the wall!” conveying the lack of knowledge of other cultures Covington Catholic High had taught them. Not letting the world experience these other cultures leads to people not learning about them and for ignorance to grow into dangerous territory. Society’s perceptions of Native Americans should be one of respect considering their land was stolen from them, but instead in this day and age people continue to destroy and steal their land for oil, and disrespect and tell them to leave the country they were in first. Assimilation overall leads to ignorance and ignorance is never okay.

After reading “Ethnicity and Immigration,” I have really started to think about the idea of assimilation and how much it has influence history. So many Americans used to insist that assimilation was the best option for America. In fact, every immigrant was expected to leave behind all of their ethnic differences. Assimilation was the idea that every ethnic group was expected to convert themselves into a new, shared American national identity. These immigrants were taught to form new, united American beliefs and values that would dominate over any belief or value that they previously held. When you first think about this the thought process makes sense. What is the harm in having every American be on the same page and think the same about everything? If everyone had engrained in them the same beliefs and ideas and same ways of going about it all, then a lot of productive things would get done that would benefit the country. The part where you start to think that this whole assimilation thing isn’t a great idea after all, is when you realize how difficult it would be and how much conflict would arise between groups of people. Not everyone is going to agree to just drop everything that they know and take up new unknown beliefs and values. Therefore, the losses would weigh heavier than the gains.

            Despite this American expectation of assimilation, I believe that it is impossible to assimilate every human in America to one shared American culture that is based off of certain beliefs, values, ways of life, and attitudes. It wasn’t possible before, and it never will be possible. Simply put, we are all too different. To this day, America is a prideful, blue collar country. Does this mean that everyone in this country works their tails off and has the “American work ethic?” No, of course not! Bottom line is that the history of America is immigrants. With immigrants, comes a vast variety of ways of life and beliefs. The Native American’s resistance to assimilation is a great example of how it is not possible to merge a huge variety of beliefs, values, and ways of life into one of which is completely different from the latter.

            Turner, who wrote “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” claimed that the Native Americans were an ‘obstacle’ in the way of achieving American national identity. Turner said, “Assimilation could not, according to this logic, cope with the presence of the Native Americans whose customs and traditions were too alien, too different to become merged into the new American self.” Native Americans were identified as those who were controlled by their animal desires, who lack morals and have no way of processing the idea of laws. This physical difference in attributes made it impossible for Native Americas to assimilate into a society that emphasized settlement and government. Therefore, a lot of effort would be put into this American national identify that was so difficult to impossible to make happen.

            The reservation policy was one of these key efforts that the whites put into place to educate and teach these Native Americans how to live the American way of life. In this reading, these reservations were compared to prisons in the way that they were used to isolate these people into an area that only inflicted Americanness on them. Such an atmosphere would surely breed those people with merged values and beliefs, right? No, instead these Native Americans became angry and started protesting. The reading said that the purpose of these protests were so that “’Indian voices are not lost in the ‘bureaucratic and political maze in which Indians [were] trapped’.” These Native Americans were not blind to the fact that the whites were trying to rid them of every bit of inherited knowledge and ways of life that they attained from their ancestors. That being said, they put up a fight and let their voices be heard. Not only is it extremely difficult to physically merge every ethnicities’ values and principles into one, but opposition is bound to arise. Just as these Native Americans acted out, there are bound to be people a part of other ethnicities that will oppose the idea of leaving behind all of their old ways to become something entirely new. In conclusion, I believe assimilation is something very difficult and a lot of times the losses outweigh the gains, but assimilation should be done to instill the same beliefs and values in people. I do not agree that whites should try and make the immigrants forget their cultures, but all of these immigrants should have a merged belief system that represents an American national identity. America runs best when everyone believes and fights with the same values.

As I read Du Bois’ work I am struck by the duality in his writing and the conflict that he experiences as an African American. What spoke to me the most was this quote: “He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.”

Now this quote summarizes how I think a lot of immigrants feel about becoming new Americans. They are treated with contempt, hate, and discrimination, and yet they strive to be Americans. However, they refuse to let go completely of their heritage and culture because they recognize it as a key aspect of who they are and something of value. They believe in what they have to offer to America as well. So the minority’s job becomes to convince those around them that they are valuable. And to accomplish that they must achieve the most and work the hardest in hopes of presenting indisputable evidence that they are worthy.

Now one must recognize that as we draw such similarities, that the experience of the African Americans in the United States is unequivocal to that of most other minorities. Because as immigrants come from other lands to seek a better life in America and become new Americans, the conditions under which African Americans gain their title are very different. Slavery was not created to give Africans a better opportunity in life.

And therefore it becomes especially heartbreaking to read Du Bois’ words as he speaks of the self criticism experienced by the black community and how the multitude of forces that serve to ingrain those doubts. You see how even as they strive for freedom and their rights as ultimate goals, there are periods in which the doubt creeps in and eats away.

Throughout this text, we see a common theme. This common theme was a theme throughout the entirety of the early years of America. This theme was the feeling of the “United” States of America towards African American citizens. The reason that I have placed quotations around the word “United” is because at this time, and it could even be argued today, that we are not one united nation. Instead, it seems like we are more like a hierarchy of races and identities. We are all individuals fighting to be on to through our wealth and glory. It has never been an even playing field for all people in this country. There is a very small number of people who have always had the rights and freedoms that they were promised when coming into the “United” States of America.

When reading, we realize just how hard De Bois had to fight to get the things he wanted out of life. He fought to get into school, he fought to get the grades he wanted and even when you look past the normal struggles of a college student, you see even more that the black students had to take on. It says in the reading that he could not even be on Harvard’s campus after 6 pm. These kinds of situations highlight the feelings towards blacks as well as other immigrants. They are forced to work much harder to achieve an equal playing field and then they must do more and more to do the work that they originally desired to do in the first place. It’s a cycle that began with the people in power claiming them as property and claiming the right to use them how they please. But as these people went from being African slaves to being African Americans, they also gained the right to fight back at the claims that the white man controls them. I believe this is where a lot of the animosity between races took a foothold. The Blacks were angry about being wrongly enslaved for hundreds of years and the whites, who still controlled the country, were upset because they were made to look like fools on a global stage by the people whom they deemed to be lesser than them.

Overall, I think this passage is a wonderful telling of how a man can go from nothing to fighting against the odds to achieve something that no one thought would be possible. It also gives us great insight on the progress that we have made as a people in America and the work that we still must do to make sure that everyone, no matter their race, gender, ethnic background or sexual preferences, has an equal opportunity to make it, and to feel like they truly belong, in the land that we call the “United States of America”.