Word: assimilationist
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...Rising Down,” Roots MC Black Thought says “They can never take the pen away / I’m LeRoi Jones.” But if these guys are aiming to please Amiri Baraka, they’re probably missing their mark. Assimilationist tendencies aside, the Roots have done little over the years to play down their representational politics. Just look at the group’s name, or the title that Tariq Trotter self-consciously adopted years ago (to wit: freestyle track “@ 15” features the lyrics...
...Jules Feiffer, World War II-era superheroes embodied the American dream shared by the countless foreigners. "It wasn't Krypton that Superman came from; it was the planet Minsk or Lodz or Vilna or Warsaw," wrote Feiffer in his essay The Minsk Theory of Krypton. "Superman was the ultimate assimilationist fantasy...
...Asians but for any immigrant community, it is difficult to tread the line between ethnic assimilation and self-preservation. Academics have attempted to describe and define this tension in many ways, most famously with the metaphor of the American “melting pot.” A crude assimilationist model of this ideal might have us believe that foreigners arrive in the United States via some sort of cultural liquidation sale, ready to absorb into a gloopy, grey and nondescript soup characterized primarily by football, Big Macs and turkey stuffing. A more preservationist version might resemble throwing a sack...
...course, on the other hand, many Asians also fail to fit a purely assimilationist model. The Chinatowns, Koreatowns and Japantowns that have sprung up in major cities nationwide attest to the spirit of ethnic cohesion and preservation, especially among the most recent arrivals who want to reside close to people of similar backgrounds. Asian soft culture is even infiltrating the American fabric in turn, one greasy Chinese take-out restaurant at a time. However, ethnic enclaves and organizations do not explain why white, American culture has quite so much influence in shaping the values and thoughts of subsequent Asian immigration...
Indeed, this danger makes the logic of hyper-assimilationist Asian Americans very fatally flawed. For them, and for me, mainstream American values become a baseline assumption, instituted and enforced by pressures of environment. An understanding of prior values and circumstances is rarely given extensive thought...