Assimilation In America

An immigrant country for immigrants founded by immigrants, America was destined the melting pot of all religion, race, and culture. During the decades of fresh new freedom, rush of the west, industrial and political machines, and the hustling, bustling new America, the country’s identity was not yet established or important. The ideal American at the time was the kin of her founders, white and protestant, the first immigrants, the true natives, and the powerful. Many believed it was the duty of the ideal American to help those who did not meet the definition, thus beginning the age of assimilation. Sometimes assimilation is deeply rooted in the fear of the foreign and the desire to transfer one’s own identity and beliefs to a seemingly inferior

While some believed the practice was unjust, others believed it was a charity and noble. Noble as the intentions might be, not unlike those of Jane Adams, there is yet a hint of selfishness in “the charity of assimilation”. An underlying itch that the goal is to force a group of people to abandon their identity and to embrace yours, seen more clearly in the Indian boarding schools. The selfish nature of reform by a new, shared identity, forces the word assimilation in this context, to leave a bad taste in the mouth. Some might argue the success should be measured by whom it benefitted, while others argue that it should be measured by strictly the outcome. One’s underlying opinion of whether reform is selfish or altruistic and whether intentions or outcome hold more importance than the other, ultimately are the factors that form one’s view of assimilation. Reminiscing on American assimilation from the lofty seat of the twenty-first century, there is a subtle, overarching sense of discontent, malice, even failure due to the often-unwelcome

As almost exclusively holding all governing positions of the free world, the superiority complex of the white population was not a mindset, it was an unquestioned lifestyle and as the superior race it was their duty to serve the inferior races and cultures. “Go, bind your sons to exile // To serve your captives’ need” in a falsely noble command to set aside one’s to aid the needy, underneath is the inclination that is not merely a duty of the superior race, it is the burden, “The White Man’s Burden” . Traced through the assimilation attempts of sharecropping and the Freedman’s Bureau, Native American boarding schools, and early American imperialism. At the center of each of these attempts is the powerful white community fulfilling their duty as the supreme race, however the outcome and general consensuses lie in the method of assimilating and the underlying goal. Is fulfilling the white man’s burden a philanthropic and noble venture, or is it yet another gross manifestation of “white