by Paul D. McInerny
As a prelude to what you are about to read, the following may sound like the ranting of an ultra-conservative, paranoid, white male who is a card carrying member of the Tea Party, KKK and the Aryan Brotherhood. I concede that I am a white male.
Our Sunday paper carries the comic strip Baldo which I enjoyed reading, primarily because of the quality of the art. The story centers on the Bermudez family and normally covers non-political subjects. Until recently, it was one of my favorites.
This past Sunday (July 20, 2010) Baldo and his family sat at the dinner table and had the following discussion:
Graci: Papi, what is cultural assimilation?
Papi: Hmmm…let me try to explain.
Acculturation is where a group of people, usually ethnic minorities, keep some parts of their culture while adapting parts of the dominant culture.
In assimilation, a group is completely absorbed into the dominant culture, giving up their customs and traditions over time. The smaller group eventually becomes indistinguishable from the dominant group.
The next panel shows comic characters from other strips such as Lucy, Blonde and the dad from Family Circle, all sitting together. Not coincidentally, all the characters were Caucasian. Baldo and Gracie are seen thinking and reflecting that assimilation would mean becoming Caucasian in appearance.
Graci: I think I prefer acculturation
Baldo: Can you pass the jalapeno jam?
What disturbed me was that, according to the illustrators of Baldo, Hector D. Cantu and Carlos Castellanos, to assimilate in America, one had to be “indistinguishable from the dominant group” in this case, Caucasians.
Perhaps I am being overly sensitive, but allow me the opportunity to explain my sensitivity complex. In recent news, there was a video of King Samir, a member of the New Black Panther Party advocating the killing of “cracker babies.” This was the same member, who in November 2008 stood in front of a polling booth with a club yet, the justice department declined to prosecute (see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neGbKHyGuHU).
Although New Black Panther Party Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz denounced the actions of a single member of his organization, in a July 9, 2010 interview, he stated, “King Samir is back in our organization, and in good standing within our organization.”
I recall the story where Congressmen Andre Carson and John Lewis claimed racism against the Tea Party. Seems the good congressmen “staged a walk through the Tea Party crowd in front of the capitol the day before the health care vote and claimed they were threatened by a violent mob and were subjected to the vile N word slur fifteen times.” Writer Andrew Breitbart offered a $100,000.00 reward he would donate to the United Negro College Fund if anyone could produce video or audio evidence that this actually occurred. Despite the number of cell phones with camera’s and recorders and the presence of news media, no evidence was ever presented.
Then there was the MSNBC attempt to show racism at a Tea Party meeting because one member had what appeared to be an assault rifle strung across their back (turned out the member was an African-American).
OK, thank you for allowing me to vent and explain my delusions of persecution. I was a bystander in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s and remember well the struggle and sacrifice of the activists, both of color and well, non-color. I know from my service in the army and a 30-year career in law enforcement that bias and prejudice are not exclusive to any particular race, but normally the Sunday comic strips allow me to escape the madness. I also know, as Columnist Tommy Christopher wrote, “The idea that whites are being persecuted is an irresistible notion to many Americans, an absolution from the need to take the full measure of our nation’s complicated racial history.”
I now return to Baldo. Gracie’s question to her father had to do with assimilation and so I thought I would turn to Merriam-Webster for guidance. The dictionary defines assimilate as the following:
a: to make similar
b: to alter by assimilation
c: to absorb into the culture or mores of a population or group
I identified three key words from Merriam-Webster: similar, alter and absorb. From the definition of assimilate, the words “similar” and “alter” do not imply the total abdication of one’s culture for another. In fact, the word similar is defined in part as;
1: having characteristics in common: strictly comparable
2: alike in substance or essentials.
To take components from one culture and alter or make them similar to another culture does not make them indistinguishable. In fact, the components from one culture can have the same characteristics or be alike in substance.
Baldo illustrators, Hector D. Cantu and Carlos Castellanos, would have one believe that to assimilate is wrong. To underscore their contempt for assimilation, they chose to define assimilation as the inheritance of the physical characteristics of a Caucasian. Baldo and his family soundly reject the concept of assimilation in favor of acculturation. So I turned once again to Merriam-Webster for assistance in the definition of acculturation:
1: cultural modification of an individual, group, or people by adapting to or borrowing traits from another culture; also: a merging of cultures as a result of prolonged contact
The word modification is synonymous with alter, which appeared in the definition of assimilation. Neither assimilation nor acculturation provides a choice of one culture over the other, but rather a merging of cultures. So, I am left wondering why Cantu and Castellanos, two talented illustrators, chose Caucasian comic characters to signify that any notion of assimilation would mean Baldo and his family would no longer be Hispanic.
Now to be fair about this discussion of assimilation, I did indeed find the following definition that would support the notion of Cantu and Castellanos:
A process by which members of an ethnic minority group lose cultural characteristics that distinguish them from the dominant cultural group or take on the cultural characteristics of another group (The Free Dictionary).
I am sure that Native American’s would agree with this definition as a result of the method in which we settled this country, but despite the cruelty and the hardships of reservation life, the Native American was still able to retain ancient customs unique to their culture.
Jingwei, from the City College of San Francisco, Tolerance wrote, “Usually, people who belong to different cultures have different ways to do things and solve problems. If people don't understand cultures other than their own, they may not understand what other people are doing or why they do in different ways. That's the misunderstanding between races. Conflicts emerge. Therefore, immigrants' assimilation into new cultures is very important to the society.”
12 years ago, William Branigin of the Washington Post, did a story on assimilation and interviewed Maria Jacinto. Jacinto became a U.S. citizen, but said she did not feel like an American. In fact, she was resistant to the idea of assimilating into U.S. society. "I think I'm still a Mexican," she said. "When my skin turns white and my hair turns blonde, then I'll be an American."
When her skin turns white and her hair turns blonde then she will be an American?! She is a citizen of the United States, yet considers herself a Mexican. In almost any city in America, local governments pride themselves on their diverse population. Cultural diversity is a descriptive title to recognize the multiple ethnic composition of a company or a city.
Tory King wrote about the Irish assimilation into American Culture during the 19th and 20th centuries and noted it was anything but easy. Irish immigrants, especially Irish Catholics were regarded as inferior to their Protestant counterparts already established in the United States. Irish Catholic immigrants were considered unskilled and worked in manual labor positions. The result was a general disdain for both Ireland and anything Irish and it is from this cultural and political attitude that the infamous phrase arose: “No Irish need apply” (BellaOnline, The Voice of Women).
Hispanics and Irish were hardly unique in the challenges of assimilation. Asians, particularly American born Japanese, had a difficult time following December 7, 1941. The prevailing attitude was American born Japanese would be loyal to Japan, even though many had never been to Japan.
From Asian-Nation: One reason why some immigrants assimilate faster than others is because of class differences. Some ethnic and immigrant groups on the whole have higher levels of education, job skills, and English proficiency than others. This in turn gives them specific advantages in achieving socioeconomic success faster than others by allowing them to get jobs that are higher-paying, more stable, and that offer higher status. As a result, they are able to achieve socioeconomic mobility and success faster than other groups ("Assimilation & Ethnic Identity" Asian-Nation: The Landscape of Asian America.
Peter D. Salins, Reason Magazine, wrote that in America, assimilation does not necessarily mean repudiating immigrant culture. Assimilation, American style has always been much more flexible and accommodating and, consequently, much more effective in achieving its purpose--to allow the United States to preserve its "national unity in the face of the influx of hordes of persons of scores of different nationalities," in the words of the sociologist Henry Fairchild.
Or, as our national motto so eloquently reads, “E Pluribus Unum (From Many, One).
Assimilation is not evil. It does not mean one becomes blonde haired and blue eyed. It does not mean being indistinguishable from each other. It does not mean having one religion or a master race. Perhaps the illustrators of Baldo should have shown a more diverse group in the panel and included comic strip characters from Watch Your Head, Candorville, The Boondocks, or Luther.
