Week 3
Straight-Line
Assimilation Theory
SOCI 231
Lecture I: September 16th
A Quick Reminder
Response Memo Deadline
Your first response memo—which has to be between 250-400 words and posted on our Moodle Discussion Board—is due by 8:00 PM today.
The Final Roster
Look around the room.
These are your colleagues for the semester.
The Final Roster
Time for some introductions.
You’re All Invited
This Week’s Focus —
Straight Line Assimilation Theory
A Conceptual Sketch
Straight-Line Assimilation
The Social Systems of
American Ethnic Groups
The Melting Pot in Yankee City
Warner and Srole’s (1945) classic treatise took place in Yankee City
The Melting Pot
This book tells part of the magnificent history of the adjustment of the ethnic groups to American life. What has happened in Yankee City illustrates much of what has happened and is happening to the “minority groups” all over America. Each group enters the city at the bottom of the social heap (lower- lower class) and through the several generations makes its desperate climb upward. The early arrivals, having had more time, have climbed farther up the ladder than the ethnic groups that followed them.
(Warner and Srole 1945, 2, EMPHASIS ADDED)
Disparate Outcomes
Many of the children’s children of the early arrivals have ceased participating in the ethnic life of their ancestors and have disappeared in the larger American world. Others are on their way to assimilation. Some, partly through frustration in not gaining easy acceptance into the common life of Americans and partly through clinging to the ways of their fathers, have constructed separate social worlds of their own.
(Warner and Srole 1945, 2–3, EMPHASIS ADDED)
A Question
What do these two excerpts reveal about Warner and Srole’s (1945) theory of assimilation?
The American Ethnic Group
The roots of the minorities of Europe are buried deeply in the soil of the dominant country. Often the history of the subordinate group in a region is more ancient than that of the dominant one. In the United States … [b]oth the immigrant and host societies know that the so-called “old-American” culture is itself new and ultimately “immigrant.” This feeling creates a certain toleration in the attitude of the host society.
(Warner and Srole 1945, 283, EMPHASIS ADDED)
A Question
Once again: do these stylized contrasts (U.S. vis-à-vis Europe) still resonate in the present day?
Instutitional Underpinnings of Assimilation
Political Structure
The forces which are most potent both in forming and changing the ethnic groups emanate from the institutions of the dominant American social system. Our political organization permits all adults to be equal within its structure. Although at first this equality is largely theoretical, it gives the ethnic members an attainable goal as the political success of the Irish, Germans, Scandi navians, and Italians demonstrates.
(Warner and Srole 1945, 283, EMPHASIS ADDED)
Instutitional Underpinnings of Assimilation
Economic Structure
Our developing industrial and factory economy with its own hierarchy permits and demands that ethnic members move up and out of their ethnic subsystems into the common life of America.
(Warner and Srole 1945, 283, EMPHASIS ADDED)
Instutitional Underpinnings of Assimilation
School System
The public school teaches the people to adjust to the central core of our life, provides them with technical skills for their own advancement, and gives them some of the power necessary to become upward mobile in our class order. The school, in belief and partly in practice, expresses the basic principles of American democracy where all men are equal; when the school cannot make them equal it struggles to make them culturally alike.
(Warner and Srole 1945, 283–84, EMPHASIS ADDED)
Instutitional Underpinnings of Assimilation
Marriage and Family
The American family system breaks down and builds up ethnic subsystems. The ethnic parent tries to orient the child to an ethnic past, but the child often insists on being more American than Americans. Marriage also may maintain or disrupt the ethnic way of life. At marriage an individual may move out of his ethnic group into that of his spouse; or an individual who has become partly American may re-identify with his ethnic group and be come more ethnic than in the past.
(Warner and Srole 1945, 284, EMPHASIS ADDED)
Instutitional Underpinnings of Assimilation
Social Networks
Cliques and associations also operate to increase or decrease ethnic identification. If the child in school becomes a part of an American clique he is likely to move rather rapidly into the American way of life. On the other hand, if he is rejected and forced to participate in ethnic cliques he may become closely identified with the cultural group of his parent. This is also true for adult cliques and for adult associations.
(Warner and Srole 1945, 284, EMPHASIS ADDED)
Instutitional Underpinnings of Assimilation
Class System
Our class system functions for a large proportion of ethnics to destroy the ethnic subsystems and to increase assimilation. The mobile ethnic is much more likely to be assimilated than the non mobile one. The latter retains many of the social characteristics of his homeland.
(Warner and Srole 1945, 284, EMPHASIS ADDED)
Constraints on Assimilation
According to Warner and Srole (1945)
Cultural Distance
Racial Difference
Interactions Between Racial and Cultural Differences
Constraints on Assimilation
According to Warner and Srole (1945)
These factors yield a matrix of assimilatory possibilities or pathways for different “ethnic groups.”
Constraints on Assimilation
According to Warner and Srole (1945)
So-called ethnic groups that are more socially distant from the American core should take more time to assimilate.
The Straight-Line Thesis
The future of American ethnic groups seems to be limited; it is likely that they will be quickly absorbed. When this happens one of the great epochs of American history will have ended … [T]he force of American equalitarianism, which attempts to make all men American and alike, and the force of our class order, which creates differences among ethnic peoples, have combined to dissolve our ethnic groups.
(Warner and Srole 1945, 295–96, EMPHASIS ADDED)
The Straight-Line Thesis
Despite the uncertainty about the prospects for assimilation of nonwhites and some Jews, … (Warner and Srole’s) assumption that assimilation was the point on the horizon toward which all groups were moving, albeit in some cases with glacial slowness, was unquestioned.
(Alba and Nee 2003, 21, EMPHASIS ADDED)
Group Discussion I
Concretizing the Straight-Line Metaphor
In groups of 2-3, discuss why Warner and Srole’s (1945) treatment of assimilation is associated with the straight-line metaphor.
Assimilation in American Life
The Canonical Treatment
The problem of disentangling the strands associated with assimilation to reveal its distinct elements and thereby fashion a set of operational concepts with analytic value in a broad range of research settings was not solved until Milton Gordon’s Assimilation in American Life (1964).
It is with his book that a canonical account takes on a sharply etched conceptual profile.
(Alba and Nee 2003, 23, EMPHASIS ADDED)
The Nature of Assimilation
With regard to the term “assimilation” … there is a certain amount of confusion, and there is, further, a compelling need for a rigorous and systematic analysis of the concept of assimilation which would “break it down” into all the possible relevant factors or variables which could conceivably be included under its rubric. Such an analysis … will be attempted here.
(Gordon 1964, 61, EMPHASIS ADDED)
Existing Understandings (Pre-1964)
In the third chapter of Assimilation in American Life, Gordon (1964) begins with a broad overview of how scholars conceptualized assimilation1 in the midcentury.
Existing Understandings (Pre-1964)
To this end, he reviews definitions proffered by:
The Social Science Research Council’s Subcommittee on Acculturation
Robert E. Park and Ernest W. Burgess
Edward Byron Reuter
Henry Pratt Fairchild
Brewton Berry
Joseph H. Fichter
John Cuber
William S. Bernard
Towards a Synthesis
Gordon’s (1964, 68) goal is, in part, to integrate these definitions in an effort to concretely “specify the major variables or factors” undergirding assimilation in America.
The Assimilation Variables
A Stylized Exmaple
Imagine a relatively homogeneous (fictional) country, Sylvania.
The Assimilation Variables
A Stylized Exmaple
“Into this country, through immigration, comes a group of people who differ in previous national background and in religion and who thus have different cultural patterns from those of the host society. We shall call them the Mundovians”
(Gordon 1964, 69, EMPHASIS ADDED)
The Assimilation Variables
A Stylized Exmaple
Let’s assume that in one generation, second generation Mundovians have:
Wholly adopted the cultural patterns of Sylvanians.
Stopped identifying as Mundovian.
Adopted the Sylvanian religion.
Exited ethnically Mundovian organizations.
Were accepted, without prejudice, into the social networks of Sylvanians.
Often married “ethnic” Sylvanians.
Reported no value conflicts with other Sylvanians.
The Assimilation Variables
A Stylized Exmaple
“Such a situation would represent the ultimate form of assimilation—complete assimilation to the culture and society of the host country.”
(Gordon 1964, 69, EMPHASIS ADDED)
The Assimilation Variables
A Stylized Exmaple
Looking at this example, we may discern that seven major variables are involved in the process discussed—in other words, seven basic subprocesses have taken place in the assimilation of the Mundovians to Sylvanian society.
(Gordon 1964, 69–70, EMPHASIS ADDED)
The Assimilation Variables
| Subprocess or Condition | Type or Stage of Assimilation | Special Term |
|---|---|---|
| Change of cultural patterns to those of host society | Cultural or behavioral assimilation | Acculturation |
| Large-scale entrance into cliques, clubs, and institutions of host society, on primary group level | Structural assimilation | None |
| Large-scale intermarriage | Marital assimilation | Amalgamation |
| Development of sense of peoplehood based exclusively on host society | Identificational assimilation | None |
| Absence of prejudice | Attitude receptional assimilation | None |
| Absence of discrimination | Behavior receptional assimilation | None |
| Absence of value and power conflict | Civic assimilation | None |
Group Discussion II
Park’s Vision of Mundovian Assimilation?
We will return to Gordon’s (1964) seminal book on Wednesday.
For now, get into groups of 2-3 and discuss how Robert E. Park would have described the incorporation of Mundovians into Sylvania.
Lecture II: September 18th
Temperature Check
How are things going?
Back to Gordon
The “Core Culture”
In the case of Mundovians in Sylvania …
[T]here has been assimilation in all respects to the society and culture which had exclusively occupied the nation up to the time of the immigrants’ arrival. In other instances there may be other subsocieties and subcultures already on the scene when the new group arrives but one of these subsocieties and its way of life is dominant by virtue of original settlement, the preemption of power, or overwhelming predominance in numbers.
(Gordon 1964, 72, EMPHASIS ADDED)
A Question
Are there any subsocieties in America today?
The “Core Culture”
A New Term
In both cases we need a term to stand for the dominant subsociety which provides the standard to which other groups adjust or measure their relative degree of adjustment. We have tentatively used the term “host society”; however, a more neutral designation would be desirable.
(Gordon 1964, 72, EMPHASIS ADDED)
The “Core Culture”
A New Term
A. B. Hollingshead, in describing the class structure of New Haven, has used the term “core group” to refer to the Old Yankee families of colonial, largely Anglo-Saxon ancestry who have traditionally dominated the power and status system of the community, and who provide the “master cultural mould” for the class system of the other groups in the city. Joshua Fishman has referred to the “core society” and the “core culture” in American life, this core being “made up essentially of White Protestant, middle-class clay, to which all other particles are attracted.”
(Gordon 1964, 72, EMPHASIS ADDED)
The “Core Culture”
A New Term
If there is anything in American life which can be described as an over-all American culture which serves as a reference point for immigrants and their children , it can best be described, it seems to us, as the middle-class cultural patterns of, largely, white Protestant, Anglo-Saxon origins, leaving aside for the moment the question of minor reciprocal influences on this culture exercised by the cultures of later entry into the United States, and ignoring also, for this purpose, the distinction between the upper-middle class and the lower-middle class cultural worlds.
(Gordon 1964, 73, EMPHASIS ADDED)
The “Core Culture”
A One-Way Street
The qualitative record of achievement in industry, business, the professions, and the arts by Americans whose ancestors came from countries and traditions which are not British, or in many cases not even closely similar to British, is an overwhelmingly favorable one, and with reference to many individuals, a thoroughly brilliant one.
The “Core Culture”
A One-Way Street
[H]owever … with some exceptions, as the immigrants and their children have become Americans, their contributions, as laborers, farmers, doctors, lawyers, scientists, artists, etc., have been made by way of cultural patterns that have taken their major impress from the mould of the overwhelmingly English character of the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture or subculture in America, whose dominion dates from colonial times and whose cultural domination in the United States has never been seriously threatened.
The “Core Culture”
A Counterfactual
Let’s imagine another outcome for Mundovians in Sylvania where —
Sylvanians adopted many of the Mundovians’ cultural patterns.
The Mundovians changed many of their ways pursuant to Sylvanian customs and traditions.
A new, syncretized cultural system emerged that is not reducible to Sylvanian or Mundovian cultural elements—but a mixture of the two.
Here, we have a realization of the melting pot “goal-system.”
A Question
What does the melting pot thesis refer to?
The “Core Culture”
A Counterfactual
Whether such a process as just described is feasible or likely of occurrence is beside the point here. It, too, is an “ideal type,” an abstraction against which we can measure the realities of what actually happens. Our point is that the seven variables of the assimilation process which we have isolated can be measured against the “melting pot” goal as well as against the “adaptation to the core society and culture” goal.
(Gordon 1964, 74, EMPHASIS ADDED)
The “Core Culture”
Gordon’s Thoughts on the Melting Pot
[R]ather than an impartial melting of the divergent cultural patterns from all immigrant sources, what has actually taken place has been more of a transforming of the later immigrant’s specific cultural contributions into the Anglo-Saxon mould. As George Stewart has put it, a more accurate figure of speech to describe the American experience would be that of a “transmuting pot” in which “as the foreign elements, a little at a time, were added to the pot, they were not merely melted but were largely transmuted, and so did not affect the original material as strikingly as might be expected.”
(Gordon 1964, 127–28, EMPHASIS ADDED)
The “Core Culture”
Gordon’s Thoughts on the Melting Pot
Both structurally and culturally, then, the “single melting pot” vision of America has been something of an illusion—a generous and idealistic one, in one sense, since it held out the promise of a kind of psychological equality under the banner of an impartial symbol of America larger than the symbols of any of the constituent groups—but one which exhibited a considerable degree of sociological naiveté.
(Gordon 1964, 129, EMPHASIS ADDED)
The “Core Culture”
Gordon’s Thoughts on the Melting Pot
Given the prior arrival time of the English colonists, the numerical dominance of the English stock, and the cultural dominance of Anglo-Saxon institutions, the invitation extended to non-English immigrants to “melt” could only result, if thoroughly accepted, in the latter’s loss of group identity, the transformation of their cultural survivals into Anglo-Saxon patterns, and the development of their descendants in the image of the Anglo-Saxon American.
(Gordon 1964, 129, EMPHASIS ADDED)
The “Core Culture”
Gordon’s Thoughts on the Melting Pot
“Culturally, this process of absorbing Anglo-Saxon patterns has moved massively and inexorably, with greater or lesser speed, among all ethnic groups.”
(Gordon 1964, 129, EMPHASIS ADDED)
Applying the Seven Variable Scheme
| Group | Cultural | Structural | Marital | Attitude Identificational | Attitude Receptional | Behavior Receptional | Civic |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Black | Variation by class | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Jewish | Substantially Yes | No | Substantially No | No | No | Partly | Mostly |
| Catholics (excluding Black and Spanish-speaking) | Substantially Yes | Partly (variation by area) | Partly | No | Partly | Mostly | Partly |
| Puerto Ricans | Mostly No | No | No | No | No | No | Partly |
Relationships Among Assimilation Variables
1 ) [C]ultural assimilation, or acculturation, is likely to be the first of the types of assimilation to occur when a minority group arrives on the scene; and 2) cultural assimilation, or acculturation, of the minority group may take place even when none of the other types of assimilation occurs simultaneously or later, and this condition of “acculturation only” may continue indefinitely.
(Gordon 1964, 77, EMPHASIS ADDED)
Relationships Among Assimilation Variables
As we examine the array of assimilation variables again, several other relationships suggest themselves. One is the indissoluble connection, in the time order indicated, between structural assimilation and marital assimilation. That is, entrance of the minority group into the social cliques, clubs, and institutions of the core society at the primary group level inevitably will lead to a substantial amount of intermarriage.
(Gordon 1964, 80, EMPHASIS ADDED)
Relationships Among Assimilation Variables
According to Gordon (1964), marital assimilation leads to —
- Loss of ethnic identity and the emergence of identificational assimilation.
- Then, the disappearance of prejudice and discrimination — markers of attitude receptional assimilation and behaviour receptional assimilation.
- As well as the disappearance of value conflicts—i.e., civic assimilation.
Relationships Among Assimilation Variables
We may state the emergent generalization … as follows: Once structural assimilation has occurred, either simultaneously with or subsequent to acculturation, all of the other types of assimilation will naturally follow.
(Gordon 1964, 81, EMPHASIS ADDED)
Group Discussion III
Applying Gordon’s Framework
In groups of 2-3, discuss how you would measure each aspect of assimilation using Gordon’s (1964) analytic scheme.
Group Discussion IV
Summarizing the Straight-Line Perspective
In groups of 2-3 —
Draw on the work of Warner and Srole (1945) as well as Gordon (1964) to summarize the straight-line treatment of assimilation.
Then, offer some criticism. To this end, draw on insights from Martinez (1999) or Cornell and Hartmann (2007).
More generally, discuss how—and if—we can develop a model of assimilation without a core reference group.
See You Monday
References
