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Assimilation is complicated
Aug. 31st, 2021 05:56 pmCensus shows US is diversifying, white population shrinking:
There are people who think they can distinguish between upstanding US citizens, and morally bankrupt immigrants, by sight -- or barring that, by genetic code. These people are called racists. I assume any reader of these words is sensible enough to dismiss their views.
There is another group of people who think that even if there aren't genetic differences between immigrants and non-immigrants, there are cultural signifiers that differentiate them, and those cultural signifiers - like religion, mode of dress, accent, musical tastes, hobbies, sexual preferences - are enough to distinguish the people who will become "good" citizens from the people who will corrupt and destroy the country. The people in that group are called bigots. Their misconceptions are more difficult to disprove than the mere racists, because their arguments aren't about immutable genetic code but about outward behavior: The cultural signifiers of immigrants are seen as proof that they will destroy their new country just by being themselves.
There was a book in Germany published a few years back that talked about the real core of this problem, which is cultural transference -- something related to, but not the same as, assimilation. I can't remember the name of the book, but it caused a stir because it appeared to advocate for the closing of German borders against immigrants, because the German government and people had essentially failed to do enough outreach to the migrant population living in Germany to integrate them with German culture. Instead they were living in ever-expanding pockets of culture that had been imported from abroad and were kept separate by language and geographic and regulatory borders. The loudest critics of the book - who generally had not even bothered to read it - dismissed it categorically as an endorsement of racism. But it was really about a failure of native Germans to deliver on their own lofty ideals.
Setting aside the repulsive red herring of genetics and race, and referring instead to ethnic groups, there are examples of this same scenario all over human history. There are several in my own personal family history, in fact, and wherever it appears the scenario raises difficult questions.
My grandfather's family is from Russia. His father migrated to the US from a tiny village on the Volga river called Dreispitz (long since destroyed). You'd think that would make him Russian. But the village was full of Germans who had been brought there generations before by Catherine The Great: She wanted the Volga river occupied to defray invasion from the south, so she promised that settlers there would be left alone, taxed lightly, never conscripted, and given religious freedom. A horde of Germans answered that call. But the catch was, they were strictly forbidden from interacting with other Russians or they would lose all their privileges.
Well, Catherine died, and subsequent leaders eroded the privileges anyway, and things went to hell. With anti-German sentiment growing ever worse in the lead up to World War I, my great grandfather took his wife and three children and traveled 1000 miles west via oxcart and on foot to St Petersburg, and from there to Germany, and from there to the US. Their fourth child was born below decks on the boat crossing the Atlantic.
So, are my ancestors Russians? Not exactly, even though they all spent two or three generations living in Russia. They absorbed almost nothing of Russian customs or culture there and didn't intermarry with Russians. And they were eventually made a target for exactly that: Most Russians called them spies for Germany, and most Germans called them spies for Russia. The fact that they could be distinguished that way led directly to the eventual eradication of their settlements: After World War II, Stalin decided that they were an abomination, and broke up the families that remained and confiscated their land, sending the men to labor camps, and the women to ... well, God knows where. There are no records.
These people were welcomed into the country, and then actively prevented from assimilating in either direction, and eventually the simple fact that they could be distinguished was used as an excuse to exploit them.
When my grandfather arrived in Oklahoma he spoke only German. He only survived because there was a network of German migrants already established, who could point him in the right direction and protect him from thieves. He and his wife eventually began developing their own land. They spoke German at home, and then those who could go to school - the young children mostly - learned English at school. At first there were schools set up by the German migrants for themselves but anti-German sentiment was growing in the US too, and many states, including Oklahoma, passed laws that banned the teaching of it. In 1917, German was the second most commonly-spoken language in the US. Fast-forward a mere half century, and the language was eradicated.
Assimilation, partly by economic force, and partly by threat and abuse, basically removed the signifiers that made the Germans into a target in the United States. My grandfather even changed the spelling of his name to make it look less German. (And that was relatively mild: Many immigrants simply lost their family names altogether.) So when assholes look around now for a scapegoat to call anti-American and lacking in American values, well, they can't detect any Germans.
If there was still an easy way to tell a German from a Frenchman from an Italian from an Englishman here, you can absolutely bet that morons all across the nation would assume there was some significant genetic difference between them to explain what they were seeing, and then use that to justify violence, disenfranchisement, and so on*.
When I think about this, I feel deeply conflicted. A small but important handful of basic moral values in my family were carried over from those German immigrants on my father's side and the Danish immigrants on my mother's side. They came embedded in my parents and the community they kept. Those values were communicated in turn to me and my siblings. But at the same time, the cultural signifiers - the religion, the long-term family history, the names, the music, the literature, even the language of my ancestors - were stripped away. On the one hand, that process of stripping was what has allowed me to pass as 100 percent American for my entire life. On the other hand, I lament the loss of traditions that were apparently quite wonderful and could have been part of my own life and identity but were abandoned simply because bigots surrounding my ancestors found them weird and threatening.
But it's not all bad here in America. The scorecard here is certainly better than it was for my family in Russia and Germany.
It may seem ironic to Europeans, but the Germans who migrated to the US were generally all staunchly anti-racist, and that stuck in the craw of the racist-by-design population that had embraced slavery. Those migrants were on the right side of history. A cultural and legal war spilled out into a literal one. When the North won, and the pre-existing German migrant community my great grandfather joined into was vindicated, it spelled a sea-change for all of America. That change could only happen because there was a certain level of cultural permeability - a willingness to be influenced by new and/or outside ideas - which was something that Catherine The Great back in Russia was utterly opposed to with her Russian/German settlements. The Germans there even brought superior agricultural technology with them and deployed it to become relatively prosperous, but even that technology barely made it beyond their borders. The local Russians suspected it just because it was foreign.
To me, the upshot of all this history and conflict - and missed opportunity as well - is that cultural cross-pollination is a good thing, and that the real differentiation that should be codified into laws and curriculums is at the level of ethics and morals, NOT the level of customs -- however tempting it may be to think that specific customs are essential vehicles for specific ethics and morals.
E.g. a given ethnic group is not necessarily more moral for praying in a church versus praying in a synagogue, or for praying at all. It's more moral for the principles that it teaches, specifically for how well it respects humans as the agents and arbiters of morality, by embracing free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of choice, democracy, rule of law (rather than by god or king), education, truthfulness, and - perhaps not a perfect fit but one I'm adding anyway - the scientific method.
So the question for all of us who believe in those principles is, how do we make sure that they continue, across and through all current ethnic divides? The goal of spreading those principles -- that's worthy, and what truly matters. The goal of preserving a certain skin color or appearance or cultural trend will always be a red herring.
-;-;-
"The U.S. became more diverse and more urban over the past decade, and the white population dropped for the first time on record, the Census Bureau said Thursday as it released a trove of demographic data that will be used to redraw the nation's political maps."
There are people who think they can distinguish between upstanding US citizens, and morally bankrupt immigrants, by sight -- or barring that, by genetic code. These people are called racists. I assume any reader of these words is sensible enough to dismiss their views.
There is another group of people who think that even if there aren't genetic differences between immigrants and non-immigrants, there are cultural signifiers that differentiate them, and those cultural signifiers - like religion, mode of dress, accent, musical tastes, hobbies, sexual preferences - are enough to distinguish the people who will become "good" citizens from the people who will corrupt and destroy the country. The people in that group are called bigots. Their misconceptions are more difficult to disprove than the mere racists, because their arguments aren't about immutable genetic code but about outward behavior: The cultural signifiers of immigrants are seen as proof that they will destroy their new country just by being themselves.
There was a book in Germany published a few years back that talked about the real core of this problem, which is cultural transference -- something related to, but not the same as, assimilation. I can't remember the name of the book, but it caused a stir because it appeared to advocate for the closing of German borders against immigrants, because the German government and people had essentially failed to do enough outreach to the migrant population living in Germany to integrate them with German culture. Instead they were living in ever-expanding pockets of culture that had been imported from abroad and were kept separate by language and geographic and regulatory borders. The loudest critics of the book - who generally had not even bothered to read it - dismissed it categorically as an endorsement of racism. But it was really about a failure of native Germans to deliver on their own lofty ideals.Setting aside the repulsive red herring of genetics and race, and referring instead to ethnic groups, there are examples of this same scenario all over human history. There are several in my own personal family history, in fact, and wherever it appears the scenario raises difficult questions.
My grandfather's family is from Russia. His father migrated to the US from a tiny village on the Volga river called Dreispitz (long since destroyed). You'd think that would make him Russian. But the village was full of Germans who had been brought there generations before by Catherine The Great: She wanted the Volga river occupied to defray invasion from the south, so she promised that settlers there would be left alone, taxed lightly, never conscripted, and given religious freedom. A horde of Germans answered that call. But the catch was, they were strictly forbidden from interacting with other Russians or they would lose all their privileges.
Well, Catherine died, and subsequent leaders eroded the privileges anyway, and things went to hell. With anti-German sentiment growing ever worse in the lead up to World War I, my great grandfather took his wife and three children and traveled 1000 miles west via oxcart and on foot to St Petersburg, and from there to Germany, and from there to the US. Their fourth child was born below decks on the boat crossing the Atlantic.
So, are my ancestors Russians? Not exactly, even though they all spent two or three generations living in Russia. They absorbed almost nothing of Russian customs or culture there and didn't intermarry with Russians. And they were eventually made a target for exactly that: Most Russians called them spies for Germany, and most Germans called them spies for Russia. The fact that they could be distinguished that way led directly to the eventual eradication of their settlements: After World War II, Stalin decided that they were an abomination, and broke up the families that remained and confiscated their land, sending the men to labor camps, and the women to ... well, God knows where. There are no records.
These people were welcomed into the country, and then actively prevented from assimilating in either direction, and eventually the simple fact that they could be distinguished was used as an excuse to exploit them.
When my grandfather arrived in Oklahoma he spoke only German. He only survived because there was a network of German migrants already established, who could point him in the right direction and protect him from thieves. He and his wife eventually began developing their own land. They spoke German at home, and then those who could go to school - the young children mostly - learned English at school. At first there were schools set up by the German migrants for themselves but anti-German sentiment was growing in the US too, and many states, including Oklahoma, passed laws that banned the teaching of it. In 1917, German was the second most commonly-spoken language in the US. Fast-forward a mere half century, and the language was eradicated.
Assimilation, partly by economic force, and partly by threat and abuse, basically removed the signifiers that made the Germans into a target in the United States. My grandfather even changed the spelling of his name to make it look less German. (And that was relatively mild: Many immigrants simply lost their family names altogether.) So when assholes look around now for a scapegoat to call anti-American and lacking in American values, well, they can't detect any Germans.
If there was still an easy way to tell a German from a Frenchman from an Italian from an Englishman here, you can absolutely bet that morons all across the nation would assume there was some significant genetic difference between them to explain what they were seeing, and then use that to justify violence, disenfranchisement, and so on*.
When I think about this, I feel deeply conflicted. A small but important handful of basic moral values in my family were carried over from those German immigrants on my father's side and the Danish immigrants on my mother's side. They came embedded in my parents and the community they kept. Those values were communicated in turn to me and my siblings. But at the same time, the cultural signifiers - the religion, the long-term family history, the names, the music, the literature, even the language of my ancestors - were stripped away. On the one hand, that process of stripping was what has allowed me to pass as 100 percent American for my entire life. On the other hand, I lament the loss of traditions that were apparently quite wonderful and could have been part of my own life and identity but were abandoned simply because bigots surrounding my ancestors found them weird and threatening.
But it's not all bad here in America. The scorecard here is certainly better than it was for my family in Russia and Germany.
It may seem ironic to Europeans, but the Germans who migrated to the US were generally all staunchly anti-racist, and that stuck in the craw of the racist-by-design population that had embraced slavery. Those migrants were on the right side of history. A cultural and legal war spilled out into a literal one. When the North won, and the pre-existing German migrant community my great grandfather joined into was vindicated, it spelled a sea-change for all of America. That change could only happen because there was a certain level of cultural permeability - a willingness to be influenced by new and/or outside ideas - which was something that Catherine The Great back in Russia was utterly opposed to with her Russian/German settlements. The Germans there even brought superior agricultural technology with them and deployed it to become relatively prosperous, but even that technology barely made it beyond their borders. The local Russians suspected it just because it was foreign.
To me, the upshot of all this history and conflict - and missed opportunity as well - is that cultural cross-pollination is a good thing, and that the real differentiation that should be codified into laws and curriculums is at the level of ethics and morals, NOT the level of customs -- however tempting it may be to think that specific customs are essential vehicles for specific ethics and morals.
E.g. a given ethnic group is not necessarily more moral for praying in a church versus praying in a synagogue, or for praying at all. It's more moral for the principles that it teaches, specifically for how well it respects humans as the agents and arbiters of morality, by embracing free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of choice, democracy, rule of law (rather than by god or king), education, truthfulness, and - perhaps not a perfect fit but one I'm adding anyway - the scientific method.
So the question for all of us who believe in those principles is, how do we make sure that they continue, across and through all current ethnic divides? The goal of spreading those principles -- that's worthy, and what truly matters. The goal of preserving a certain skin color or appearance or cultural trend will always be a red herring.
-;-;-
* To any boneheads who still think that civilization is a matter of breeding, I hand you a simple question: You all think that anyone marrying outside of your chosen race - "white people" let's say - is a dilution. But how do fight on the other front: How do you make "white people" more "white"? Is it a matter of geography? 'Cause then every single American would be disqualified. This is not the homeland of white people. Is it a matter of skin tone? Well you better start standing white people next to each other and killing the one that's less white, even by a tiny bit. Eventually you will be left with one single breeding pair. They will be the whitest people of all. And then ... whoops, you have no one to breed their children with. If you think things got gross in the European monarchy, get ready for a whole new level of gross!
