Assimilation in American Life - Essay Example

 Some of the Native Americans had forsaken their cultural identity to embrace the immigrants since they were attracted to their culture. The melting pot theory assumes that the assimilation of the immigrants had the effect of liberating and fusing them into a mixed race that would be superior to their original individual cultures. The melting pot theory in the United States was marked by the melting of different cultures through intermarriages among different ethnic groups. A lot of intermarriages in America are between the natives and the other white immigrants as opposed to the intermarriage between African-Americans and white Americans.

Cultural pluralism arises when smaller groups within a larger society maintain their unique cultural identities, values, and beliefs which become accepted by the larger culture as long as they are in line with the provided laws and values of the greater society. In this context, ethnic groups co-exist side by side while at the same time showing respect for other cultures that exist around them. Ethnic groups in America should be free to engage in the activities of society’s major activities while at the same time able to retain their ethnic heritage and identity. Thus the main strength of this theory is that it allows ethnic groups to retain their cultural ideologies  

Anglo-conformity theory assumes that there is complete assimilation of the culture of the minority groups into the Anglo patterns of the major cultures. It has to do with conformity to fixed standards, regulations, and requirements to feel part of a given society. This theory advocated for the immigrants to learn the English language adaptation to norms, values, and ideologies to conform to the integral Anglo-American society as well as the greater Anglo-Saxon community. The United States came up with various concepts in a bid to explain what was meant to be called an American. Anglo-conformity offered an opportunity for the immigrants to pursue their quest of becoming Americans. Therefore, the immigrants had to change their way of life to accommodate new ideologies such as civil rituals, the English language, and other aspects of American culture. The weakness of this theory is that it ruins the patterns of life of a given ethnic group as they seek to conform to another culture which in essence demeans a particular group.

The theory that has remained relevant in modern-day America is the melting pot. This is evident in the increase in the number of intermarriages among different ethnic groups in America as well as with naïve Americans. This was made possible by the Supreme Court decision of 1967 which legalized interracial marriages and abolished any law that prohibited cross-racial marriages. Many African immigrants are getting into marriages with Native Caucasian Americans.