FRians – Today we have Part II of Stephen’s (all together now: “Thanks, Stephen!”) “Assimilation is Voluntary” article. If you missed Part I, check it out here.
Without further adieu, here is part twieu. (Hahaha I crack me up.)
Perhaps, we ought to look at the other part of the nature of assimilation itself. Merely because one desires to abandon their previous culture, or even if they want to abandon their previous philosophy and religion, that will not necessarily be sufficient to be accepted by the culture and society of which you want to be a part.
As much as assimilation is a voluntary choice on the part of the individual wanting to become an integral part of a new society, that society also has to choose to accept the individual as one of their own.
Many cultures have an exclusionary vision of their culture and their society, and yes, often that view of their society is intimately tied to the ethnicity of the majority of that society. It varies by how those members of society identify the core nature of their society.
As mentioned previously, Jews and Gypsies experienced the collective exclusion from other peoples and nations, often in the form of a forced formal separation, as is typical of any wandering group of nomadic people. It is not entirely unreasonable.
History has shown many nomadic people to become a hostile invasion or usurpation force which has destroyed nations and empires. The then nomadic tribes of the Goths and Visigoths were given sanctuary within the Roman empire only to rise up and conquer the nation.
The nomadic hordes of the Mongols, Turks, and Mygars swept through Persia, Anatolia, the steps of Russia, and into the German forests destroying and sweeping aside civilizations as they went. However, the Turks did not immediately take over, but built their power under the noses of the Byzantine empire.
Archeology even shows that the real ancient history of those who would later become known as Jews appears to have begun with the settling down of various nomadic Canaanite tribes after the economic and military collapse of the Phoenician empire.
Whatever qualities bring together people under the concept of a single people, makes it hard for those without those qualities to be accepted by those people as one of them, to assimilate into that society.
Whereas if there exists no desire to assimilate, assimilation shall not occur; it is not sufficient to desire to assimilate, there can be no assimilation without also acceptance.
Go to live in Japan, adopt their customs, learn their language, dress, act, and believe like them, and twenty years from now, you will still be a gaijin, a foreign devil. Perhaps, after a few generations, your family may come to be fully accepted.
While Germany may think of themselves as one people united by ethnicity, their neighbors, the French, being naturally composed of Celts, Norse, Franks, Provincials, Basque, Aquitanians, Corsicans, and Burgundies, identify themselves through their culture more than their ethnicity.
European nation states formed along geographic boundaries more often than along ethnic boundaries, though those also occurred. Geography would thus play a large part in how Europeans would view the concept of nationality itself, as the European often came to view themselves through the identity of the nation which controlled their territory as they collectively sought greater security through the very concept of the nation state.
Places like Rwanda were later created under the concept of the European nation state, the distinction between Hutu and Tutsi, or tribal ethnic identities were ignored, not because of a desire to cause conflict but rather a desire on the part of the Europeans to impart the lessons they had learned about the stability of the nation state ideal to limit conflict.
In the colonial era, this European model which had been instrumental in bringing about a modicum of peace and stability throughout Europe would be imposed upon many areas of the world and upon people who had entirely different concepts of what made a people into a separate and distinct society.
The American experiment was built upon an entirely novel concept of the nation state formed neither based upon shared geography nor a shared ethnicity, but rather a shared philosophy. That philosophy being sprung from the Age of Enlightenment which expounded upon the then current philosophical culture of the United Kingdom without the archaic trappings and vestments held over from antiquated aristocratic ideal of the feudal days of monarchy.
Built upon the Protestant philosophical principle of the divine dignity of the individual, endowed by the Creator with individual rights and liberty, assimilation into this new experiment meant an acceptance and an adherence to that philosophy without regard to one’s national or ethnic ancestry.
However, like any nation or people, assimilation is not assured and those bringing with them antithetical ideologies are not going to integrate with the American society. Thus, there have often been voiced concerns that one group or another may not be capable of being assimilated into America whether based in religion, ethnicity, or philosophy.
Every nation’s identity is unique, and necessarily fragile by definition, but the vulnerability of that national identity depends upon the nature of that identity’s definition.
A people who identify their nationality based upon ethnicity will become weak and vulnerable as that ethnicity itself comes under attack, corruption, or division.
Hitler noted this tension and division in his native Austria-Hungary, which was comprised of three groups all of which formed their identity along ethnic lines of Germanic, Slavic, or Czech. He saw such a nation as fated to break apart as unsustainable which fostered such divided identities.
Such ethic division never really affected France, but now that it’s cultural identity is threatened with increasing Islamification, we are beginning to see cracks in the cultural integrity of France itself.
America sees division ideologically and philosophically more in recent years than anytime in its past, and is perhaps more divided philosophically now than it was even during the Civil War. A nation built upon philosophy has become a nation of divided philosophy.
To paraphrase President Lincoln: “‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half [socialist] and half [capitalist]. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”
I find it interesting to observe that any nation’s weakness is the very thing which binds it together as a nation in the first place. Further the destruction of that nation is the assimilation of that which is contrary, or antithetical, to that nation’s very definition of its own identity.
Foreigners who come to this nation, must be viewed from the perspective of adhering to, or opposing, the foundational principles of the nation, being a nation built upon such philosophy.
Just as it is increasingly difficult for the individual, as discussed in the first part of this, to assimilate to a culture the more removed it is from his own background and nature; it becomes increasingly difficult for any nation to absorb those foreign entities the further removed they are from that host’s nature.
One other factor must needs be addressed, that of the enclave, the isolated sub-group which maintains its separate identity from the larger culture or people.
One can imagine how difficult it is to move to a foreign nation, to immerse oneself in the people and culture trying to assimilate. Now imagine that you move to that same foreign nation, but rather than immersing yourself into that culture, you find yourself surrounded by throngs of people native not to your new culture but the same culture you just left.
You are in an enclave, and everyone in that enclave shares the same cultural background, mores, behaviors, and expectations as everyone else in the enclave. It is a culture transplanted, and being transplanted, it surrounds and insulates the individuals trapped within that bubble.
How does one assimilate with that culture on the other side of the bubble? The immigrant is no longer a part of the larger culture even if they want to assimilate, they merely visit that culture from their enclave, like a vacationer. They remain immersed in their native culture.
If that group, the enclave, does not have that same desire to integrate as the individual, then such group becomes an opposing force. In order to integrate the individual would have to oppose their own group at every turn, or physically remove themselves from their bubble.
Now, imagine an immigration policy which places immigrants or refugees in such enclaves, in cultural isolation or quarantine. Assimilation becomes exponentially harder for both sides of the equation, the individual and the society, because of the segregation effect of the enclave.
The same effect can be seen in sub-cultural or counter-cultural groups within a society, the isolation and division of groups. It does not require a foreign enclave if the people of a society separate themselves into such enclaves voluntarily.
There is also another definition of a more literal, or rather physical, form of assimilation to become incorporated or part if a greater whole. This is the definition of assimilation seen on the science fiction show “Star Trek”, were the cultural problems of integration are simply eliminated and bypassed by reprogramming the creature’s brain. In the real world, we cannot simply take people apart and reprogram them with integrated circuits.
Assimilation is voluntary. It is voluntary on part of the individual wanting to become part of a new culture. It is voluntary on the part of the culture wanting to accept an individual into the group. It is voluntary on the part of the sub-groups wanting to allow the individual and society to integrate.
We like to think our choices matter, and they do. However, our choices are not made in isolation, rather the effect of our choices depend largely on the choices others also make.
