THE RACIAL UNCONSCIOUS OF ASSIMILATION THEORY¹

Abstract

In the past two decades, migration scholars have revised and revitalized assimilation theory to study the large and growing numbers of migrants from Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean and their offspring in the United States. Neoclassical and segmented assimilation theories seek to make sense of the current wave of migration that differs in important ways from the last great wave at the turn of the twentieth century and to overcome the conceptual shortcomings of earlier theories of assimilation that it inspired. This article examines some of the central assumptions and arguments of the new theories. In particular, it undertakes a detailed critique of their treatment of race and finds that they variously engage in suspect comparisons to past migration from Europe; read out or misread the qualitatively different historical trajectories of European and non-European migrants; exclude native-born Blacks from the analysis; fail to conceptually account for the key changes that are purported to facilitate “assimilation”; import the dubious concept of the “underclass” to characterize poor urban Blacks and others; laud uncritically the “culture” of migrants; explicitly or implicitly advocate the “assimilation” of migrants; and discount the political potential of “oppositional culture.” Shifting the focus fromdifferencetoinequalityanddomination, the article concludes with a brief proposal for reorienting our theoretical approach, fromassimilationto thepolitics of national belonging.

The chromatic norm image: skin color as mathematically significant somatic trait

“…29 To the extent Hispanics cannot conform naturally to idealized light skin they compensate in their behavior. 30 The aforementioned Brazilian anecdote illustrates the potency of race implied by skin color. In Brazil to be "Black" is to belong to a race defined as an urban, criminal underclass.…”

La incorporación espacial de los migrantes bolivianos en la Ciudad de Córdoba

“…El componente clave en esta dinámica está dado por un elemento central: las sucesivas generaciones son el motor de cambio hacia una mayor fusión con los patrones de la sociedad de destino. La clásica teoría de la asimilación en sus aspectos generales fue objeto de profundas críticas (JUNG, 2009).…”

Table of Contents

“…e third pattern is selective acculturation, whereby immigrants retain certain cultural values and practices while engaging in selected Immigrant Students and Higher Education mainstream practices of the host society (Portes and Rumbaut, 1996;Portes and Zhou, 1993;Zhou, 1997). While segmented assimilation theory has been helpful in highlighting the process by which fi rst-and second-generation immigrants incorporated into American society, the theory itself is not without criticism (see Jung, 2009). Some scholars argue that the terms assimilation, acculturation, and adaptation implicitly refer to Americanization or cultural separation, grounded in the notion of similarity-"to assimilate is to become less diff erent" (Jung, 2009, p. 381).…”

“…Some scholars argue that the terms assimilation, acculturation, and adaptation implicitly refer to Americanization or cultural separation, grounded in the notion of similarity-"to assimilate is to become less diff erent" (Jung, 2009, p. 381). In other words, this theory might separate minority immigrant culture from the mainstream American values in a way that suggests it is negative, inferior, or defi cient (Jung, 2009;Oh and Cooc, 2011).…”