The Role of Cultural Inertia in Reactions to Immigration on the U.S./Mexico Border

Abstract

Assimilation and multiculturalism are often contrasted as opposite interethnic ideologies about cultural integration. Here, we address models of assimilation and multiculturalism and how group identity influences attitudes toward immigrants. One overlooked issue concerns the dynamic processes involved in integration. It is proposed that cultural inertia, defined as the desire to avoid cultural change, or conversely, to continue change once it is already occurring, can account for a number of seemingly discrepant findings. In particular, cultural inertia predicts that majority groups should prefer assimilation type models, whereas minority groups should prefer multicultural models. Resistance to change is the mediating process. Cultural inertia is used as a model to understand discrepant attitudes toward assimilation and multiculturalism across different groups.

“Reasonable suspicion” about tough immigration legislation: Enforcing laws or ethnocentric exclusion?

“…Like ethnocentric immigration legislation, these policies reproduce White cultural privilege via an assimilation model that requires cultural others to conform to Anglocentric and Eurocentric standards (see Dovidio et al, 2010;Zarate & Shaw, 2010;Zarate & Quezada, 2011). The present research resonates with work on the construction of Whiteness and "possessive investment in Whiteness" (Lipsitz, 2006) and illuminates how public policy can reproduce systems of power that protect the privileges of Anglo-or Eurocentric groups.…”

The Relation of Drug Trafficking Fears and Cultural Identity to Attitudes Toward Mexican Immigrants in Five South Texas Communities

“…Comments such as “they come here to break the law” and “they do not care about the education of their children or about making an honest living” were common. Our findings support previous work by Ybarra and Stephan (1994) on the relation between perceived threat and prejudice, and by Zarate and Shaw (2010) on the moderating effect of degree of perception of similarities to and differences with the newcomers on the positive or negative attitudes in turn expressed toward them.…”

Cultural inertia: The effects of cultural change on intergroup relations and the self-concept

“…Cultural inertia predicts that, for ethnic minorities, prejudice toward an immigrant group is reduced when people believe that a culture is already changing. Following a multicultural model of integration, as different ethnic groups merge, each cultural group retains basic norms of their culture (Zárate & Shaw, 2010). A multicultural ideology would contend that diverse cultural norms and styles should be celebrated.…”

“…Multiculturalism and assimilation ideologies make recommendations regarding how to manage one's cultural identity, but their implications are different for members of cultural minority and majority groups (Zárate & Shaw, 2010). For minority groups, assimilation means that minorities must change to accommodate the dominant majority culture and that the dominant culture will not accept the minority culture.…”