Abstract
The American people, and most of the world, think of the United States as a nation that has welcomed and assimilated immigrants. That image is only partially supported by facts. Until at least the 1960s, the melting pot was really a mold of conformity to the norms established by White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP) culture. Immigrants from England nearly instantly became American. Those from continental Europe found their labor welcome, but otherwise often initially encountered resistance to everything else about them. Yet, as “free White people,” the possibility of becoming American often became a reality. For people who were non-White, the barriers were far more substantial, and even many Europeans, especially southern and eastern Europeans, were largely excluded from completely becoming American until after World War II, when the United States began to allow more immigrants to enter the country, and when once again their labor became highly valued. Beginning in the 1960s, to a degree never previously encountered in US history, some in the United States celebrated the diversity that immigrants brought with them and encouraged immigrants to become American without surrendering selective aspects of their homeland heritage. At the same time, others continued the nativist, anti-immigrant ways that have deep roots in American history and expressed concerns that these new immigrants did not want to, and could not truly, become American. America is at a crossroads now where the second generation of the latest wave of primarily non-Europeans is attaining adulthood. For those immigrants from non-White backgrounds, such as Black and Latino/Hispanic immigrants, it is unclear if they can ever be accepted or seen as simply “American” or whether they will become African American or Latino American, as posited by segmented assimilation theory. The emerging ethnographic realities indicate that they are becoming American in complex ways that can be conceptualized as multiple identities, rather than the simple divisions among assimilation, biculturalism, and cultural maintenance. What identities immigrants and their offspring adopt reflect how America has treated them, their parents’ efforts to maintain some of their heritage, and increased opportunities to live at least part of their lives transnationally across borders.
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Stepick, A., Dutton Stepick, C., Vanderkooy, P. (2011). Becoming American. In: Schwartz, S., Luyckx, K., Vignoles, V. (eds) Handbook of Identity Theory and Research. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7988-9_37
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