Americanization Today

Mariama Diallo

To face the fact that our aliens are already strong enough to take a share in the direction of their own destiny, and that the strong cultural movements represented by the foreign press, schools, and colonies are a challenge to our facile attempts, is not, however, to admit the failure of Americanization. It is not to fear the failure of democracy. It is rather to urge us to an investigation of what Americanism may rightly mean. It is to ask ourselves whether our ideal has been broad or narrow--whether perhaps the time has not come to assert a higher ideal than the "melting-pot" Surely we cannot be certain of our spiritual democracy when, claiming to melt the nations within us to a comprehension of our free and democratic institutions, we fly into panic at the first sign of their own will and tendency. We act as if we wanted Americanization to take place only on our own terms, and not by the consent of the governed. All our elaborate machinery of settlement and school and union, of social and political naturalization, however, will move with friction just in so far as it neglects to take into account this strong and virile insistence that America shall be what the immigrant will have a hand in making it, and not what a ruling class, descendant of those British stocks which were the first permanent immigrants, decide that America shall be made. This is the condition which confronts us, and which demands a clear and general readjustment of our attitude and our ideal.

This paragraph forces us to rethink what Americanization is. The early immigrants (Anglo Saxon) thought of Americanization as assimilation and many social institutions were created to support that ideal. In contrast, the experience and reality of new immigrants in the United States has shown that Americanization does not necessarily mean assimilation. This due mainly due to a more diverse group of immigrants that are now coming in the United States. The fact that the majority if not all the early migrants in America were Christians made it easier to define it then.

With today’s diverse immigrants, the social and political development of the last few decades, Americanization has actually become an ideal; the ideal of freedom and the right to be whoever you want within the limit of the constitution which guarantees those freedoms. New immigrants are able to keep their cultures and traditions while respecting the constitution that afford them that right and pledging to the flag. It is this diversity and the ingenuity of the constitution written by our founding fathers that makes America the greatest country and democracy in the world.