Description of the birth, death and the reborn of assimilation theory.

1. Photo: “TheFord English School Graduation Ceremony,” Peter Freese, ed. From Melting Potto Multiculturalism:E pluribus
unum? – Resource Book. (München: Langenscheidt, 2005), 88.
Sylvanians and Mundovians – Long in Disgrace,AssimilationTheory
is Now Back in Style.
By Alvaro Lima1
In his book Assimilation in America Life, Milton Gordon sets out to perform a
rigorous analysis of the assimilation process. To that end, he asks the reader to
imagine a hypothetical host country, which he names Sylvania, a country in which “all
its membersareofthe same race,religion, and previousnational extraction.” Sylvania
also has a population with a “relatively uniform cultural behavior except for social
class divisions.” Along, throughimmigration, come the Mundovians,a groupofpeople
with a different national background, religion, and culture. Gordon invites us to
further imagine that “within the span of another generation, this population […] has
completely taken on the cultural patterns of Sylvanians, has thrown off any sense of
peoplehood based on Mundovian nationality, has changed its religion, […] has
eschewed the formation of any communal organization made up principally or
exclusively of Mundovians, has entered and been hospitably accepted into the social
cliques, clubs, and institutions of the
Sylvanians at various class levels, has
intermarried freely and frequently with
the Sylvanians, encounters no prejudice
or discrimination […] and raises no value
conflict issues in Sylvania public life.” For
him, this would represent the “ultimate
form of assimilation.” Assimilation theory
is born in its purest form! Two homogeneous peoples meet each other and the
immigrant group surrenders its national background, culture, and religion, adopts
those of the host society, which happily embraces them in their lives and homes.
1 Alvaro Lima is Director of Research for the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

2. Photo: “TheFord English School Graduation Ceremony,” Peter Freese, ed. From Melting Potto Multiculturalism:E pluribus
unum? – Resource Book. (München: Langenscheidt, 2005), 88.
Later, Gordon invites us to go back to Sylvania and imagine an immigration of
Mundovians yielding a completely different outcome. Now, the Sylvanians accept
many ofthe behaviorsandvaluesofthe Mundovians,asthe Mundovianschangemany
of their ways to accommodate the Sylvanians. This process, according to Gordon,
gives rise to a “new cultural system […] which is neither exclusively Sylvanian nor
Mundovian but a mixture of both.” Assimilation theory encounters a great ally - the
concept of the “melting pot.” Here also, in its purest form, before the stock became
Sylvanian-conformity.
For more than a century, these metaphors have dominated academic, policy,
and practice debates about how to conceptualize what Gordon called the “meeting of
peoples.” Following Gordon’s assimilation model, a great deal has been written about
that processwith somevariations regarding its linearity, scope,phases,andsequence.
Discussions focused also on the fact that some understood it to be a process while
others contemplated it as a desirable goal.
History, however, produced a different
scenario. The encounter of Sylvanians and
Mundovians inspired by Sylvanian nativist policies
limited the number of Mundovians entering
Sylvania and erected barriers to non-Mundovians.
Others, following Sylvania’s liberal traditions, tried
to help Mundovians to acquire good manners,
habits, and attitudes compatible with Sylvanian’s
traditions. Years later, Sylvanians woke up to an
unhappyreality. Mundovianswere not assimilating as fast as desirable, their children
and their children’s children sometimes retrieved old Mundovian cultural traits. At
the same time, Sylvanians lost control of their borders and, not only more
Mundovians entered the country than the stipulated quotas, but also other people
with different cultures entered in large numbers. To complete this scenario,
Sylvanians-of-color, a segment left out of Gordon’s scenarios, began to fight for their

3. Photo: “TheFord English School Graduation Ceremony,” Peter Freese, ed. From Melting Potto Multiculturalism:E pluribus
unum? – Resource Book. (München: Langenscheidt, 2005), 88.
civil rights. Assimilation theory entered in crises. As some Sylvanian intellectuals
discovered, ethnicity is not a residual social category that gradually disappears but
rather a social mechanism that could be called into being rather quickly.
In their influential study “Beyond the Melting Pot,” Glazer and Moynihan
(1970) concluded, “the point about the melting pot is that it did not happen.” Anglo
and non-Anglo Americans are still around after all these years albeit hyphenated.
American culture has
splinted into many
segments. The
American economy has
taken an hourglass
shape making it more
difficult for new
immigrants to find
decent jobs. The gaps
between rich and poor Americans widened, creating an underclass. New immigrants,
particularly non-white immigrants, instead of melting into American society are
confronted with institutional discrimination and segregation joining the poor
minorities in their low-income neighborhoods. Their children, seeing their parent’s
situation, areincreasingly awareof discrimination against them createtheir own new
subcultures. On the other hand, immigrants with high levels of education enter
American mainstream labor market integrating economically without assimilating.
America is in need not of new metaphors but a clear framework for
integration. The starting point shouldbe the abandonment ofAnglo-conformity. Why
should we be so concerned with the disappearance of difference? Why couldn’t we
define immigrant integration as the process whereby immigrants converge around
the mean for the native-born? That is, immigrant’s education attainment, income
levels, occupational prestige, legal rights, and other indicators of equal opportunity,
increasingly approximate those of the native-born.

4. Photo: “TheFord English School Graduation Ceremony,” Peter Freese, ed. From Melting Potto Multiculturalism:E pluribus
unum? – Resource Book. (München: Langenscheidt, 2005), 88.