Pluralism vs. assimilation

Significance:Pluralism promotes the maintenance of the separate identities of ethnic and other cultural groups, while assimilation stresses the merging of groups into a single, shared culture. The latter generally involves the adaptation by minorities of the culture of the society’s dominant group.

The Great Seal of the United States and several American coins carry the Latin motto E pluribus unum, or “One composed of many”—a social paradox that lies at the heart of the controversy over pluralism and assimilation.

These two terms represent contrasting views on the question of whether American society should perpetuate its diverse cultural and ethnic patterns or, rather, should blend homogeneously into a single culture with a common set of social practices. Those who favor pluralism want the distinctive features of the multiple social subgroups to flourish; those who favor assimilation think that all subgroups should move toward merging with the United States’ traditional culture, which uses the English language and historically has been most heavily influenced by European—particularly British—social patterns. Pluralists fear that assimilation leads to a crushing social conformity, while assimilationists fear that pluralism leads to the social disintegration of the nation.

The terms used in this debate have many variants. Approximate synonyms for pluralism include “multiculturalism” and “cultural pluralism.” The term “segregation,” though it carries many negative connotations because separateness was once legally enforced on African Americans, also describes extreme pluralism, since absolute pluralism would keep ethnic identities separate and intact. Hardly any theoretical academicians favor this extreme. However, some members of racial and ethnic subgroups fiercely defend their own social patterns and unique attributes, effectively accepting self-segregation as an ideal. The idea that Black people, for example, comprise a “separate nation” follows the teachings of the Nation of Islam.

Assimilation

Assimilation—also sometimes called “depluralization,” “amalgamation,” “acculturation,” and “Americanization”—is nearly synonymous with what in the 1960s was promoted as social integration. This was a process by which people of color (especially African Americans) could move into the dominant culture and enjoy its socioeconomic advantages. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, led by leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., advocated assimilation as a means to achieve a just society that deemphasized ethnic differences and removed class and racial barriers to progress. Most White liberals and social planners supported social integration. Yet by 1990 the various experiments (and many failures) at making it work—notably compulsory busing as a means of achieving educational assimilation—had created widespread skepticism that social unity could be achieved. Some observers had come to doubt that a single society with common customs was even a worthy goal. Meanwhile, the economic gap between middle-class White Americans and the poorer classes—containing high percentages of Black and Hispanic people—had widened.

Through most of the nation’s history, Americans have viewed their country as a cultural “melting pot,” and a pattern of cultural assimilation has been taken for granted. Second-generation immigrants—often White Europeans—generally drifted away from their cultural heritages, learned English, and moved into the social and economic mainstream. The myth grew that the United States had an amalgamated culture.

Rise of Pluralism

Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, however, vocal minorities launched the “new ethnicity” movement to gain respect for their native cultures and ethnic identities and to question the traditional patterns of assimilation. Hispanic Americans joined in, as that group grew numerically in the Southwest and in many American cities. American Indians found leaders to voice their protests against the cultural majority. The Black ethnocentrism of the 1970s had rediscovered the African heritage and promoted Black pride. In 1977, Alex Haley’s immensely popular book Roots: An American Saga (1976) was turned into a television miniseries; the book and series helped give African Americans a sense of collective identity—a shared story of suffering and survival to replace old cultural insecurities and negative images. By the late 1970s, many subgroups of Americans were vocal about expressing their own unique identities as well as their own grievances and political demands.

The traditional American ethos of the melting pot came under fire from feminists, the LGBTQ community, and other groups, including people with disabilities. They claimed that the dominant American culture had discriminated against them and had never let them assimilate; therefore, the way to meet their goals was to emphasize their differences. Increasing attention was paid to the idea that the American melting pot, rather than creating a unique society by melting many cultures into a new, synthesized culture, actually forced other cultures to acculturate to the ways of the dominant culture, which was largely of Anglo descent. The term white Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) became an increasingly pejorative tag. Among the political ramifications of this perception was the fact that the US Congress was increasingly seen as a club of privileged White males who did not represent the American people. President Bill Clinton, after his 1992 election, vowed to make his administration “look like America,” thereby acknowledging the popular appeal of social pluralism.

One clear irony of the movement toward pluralism in the late 1980s and 1990s was that, in the 1960s, assimilation had been essentially a liberal movement aimed at social reform. Yet by the early 1990s, the idea seemed conservative and, to many liberals, an outmoded idea. The new liberal position was to accept and respect ethnic and cultural diversity.

Context

Except for American Indians, the United States is a “nation of immigrants,” so every American has a “first” culture demanding some degree of recognition. Thus, despite the “melting pot” myth, pluralism was not really new in 1970. African Americans had always been mostly segregated, because of White racist policies as well as immigration patterns, and maintained their own social patterns. Forced onto reservations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, American Indians had also held on to vestiges of their heritages. Neither of these groups had been able to participate in the American dream of upward mobility. American Jews, though often economically successful, had also faced discrimination and traditionally maintained a social separateness. Every large American city had its “Little Italy” or “Chinatown”; ethnic sections and suburbs had always existed, proliferating as new groups of immigrants such as Middle Easterners and Asian Indians settled in the country. Separate religious sects such as the Mennonites and the Amish had also refused assimilation. Though many other Americans paid only lip service to the “hyphenated” part of their self-definitions, a widespread sense of heritage persisted among large numbers of individuals.

The 2020 US census showed a mosaic of racial and ethnic groups in the United States, with African Americans comprising 12.4 percent of the population; Hispanics, 18.7 percent; Asian Americans, 6.0 percent; and American Indians and Alaska Natives, 1.1 percent. The census also revealed a multiracial population that was growing at an increasingly significant rate, with 33.8 million people reporting multiple races in 2020—an impressive 276-percent increase over 2010. The projection is that by 2045, racial and ethnic subgroups will make up more than half of the country’s population. It appears that “managing” pluralism so as to take full advantage of diverse cultural strengths while avoiding ethnic splintering of the country will be the greatest social challenge of the twenty-first century.

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