Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
I've always thought the white ethnic immigrant groups (Jews, Italians, Polish, etc) would have kept their stigma in relation to a WASP elite had the government not restricted immigration, similar to how Mexicans have retained a stigma despite having been in the US for many decades.
The immigration restrictions meant that those communities were not refreshed by new blood from the old country, so their cultures assimilated more quickly into American culture at large. By 1940, most white ethnics under the age of 20 had been born in the US, and of course the shared sacrifice of WWII helped bridge divides between those youngsters (who were draft eligible) and their WASPy counterparts.
By the postwar era, most people of European descent (within metropolitan areas) considered themselves to be part of the same racial group.
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There are still plenty of white ethnic groups that identify with their Old World cultures, especially in places like Chicago, NYC etc. And do you, count for example, 1980s immigration from say, Eastern Europe, as "refreshing" the old Polish community? Even people with more distant immigration histories actually have ways of keeping touch with the old culture, though not everyone chooses to do so. I have met so many born-and-bred New Yorkers and Chicagoans who've been to Italy, Poland, Greece etc., and even smaller town midwestern and northeastern US cities have more people who've traveled to Europe than I had expected.
And also, it wasn't a one way street of WASPs absorbing the white ethnics -- eventually many of the white ethnics' own cultures started to become seen as part of American culture -- Italian cuisine like pizza, Jewish American humor, and Yiddish slang words etc. etc.
Even today, it's not a one way street of assimilation (although obviously the immigrants absorb much more of the pre-existing cultures than the pre-existing residents absorb of the immigrant culture), many examples of things brought by the newer wave of immigration, stuff sold at NYC bodegas, K-pop, yoga are not seen as odd things coming from "foreign" lands anymore but part of the US landscape for some people.
I really don't think that today's immigration differs that much from the old. It's just that we're in the midst of it so it seems like the assimilation process hasn't finished (nor have the native-born fully become familiar with the newcomers in all parts of the country yet), but people would have said the same about past waves while they were at their peak.
I will say that I do agree when people said cultures could be more unified within one country like the US when there were more common events uniting the nation, like drafts in wartime, or common media like when there were only a few common channels on TV whose references everyone got. But whether that's a good thing is a matter of opinion. You can have diversity of cultures, media, experiences through many ways, whether it's the immigrant communities themselves bringing it, their children diversifying the local culture, or even just the native-born people developing subcultures, like the human race has always done.
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