The worst thought crime is the one you don’t realize you are committ⭕ing.
So it was with♚ NBC News legend Tom Brokaw, who didn’t undꦏerstand that assimilation is now a third rail of American politics.
He caused a furor with comments on “Meet the Press”♛ over the weekend, including his statement that “the Hispanics should work harder at assimilation.”
The ꦚcondemnations were swift. And they were a sign that being a beloved media figure, who has never before said anything that could be considered bigoted, is no defense when the furies descend.
It was Presidential Medal of Freedom to white hood in one sound bite. A group called Latino Vic🍌tory hit Brokaw for allegedly giving “credence to white supremacist ideology.”
Typically, his apologies were deemed in𒅌sufficient and part and parcel of the orig💞inal offense.
Let’s stipulate that using a definite article to refer to any minority group will always strike people as tone deaf, but what Brokaw was getting at — the importance of assimilation to cultꦿural cohesion — should be un🃏controversial.
It isn’t anymore. The head of the National Association of Hispanic J♈ournalists rejected the very idea of assimilation, which he decried as “denying one culture ༺for the other.” It is astonishing that in that formulation “the other” is American culture. We are perhaps the only nation in world history that has sought to “otherize” its own culture.
It has also been a trope to accuse Brokaw, as Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro did👍, of xenophobia. But saying im💞migrants should assimilate is the opposite of xenophobia — it is an expression of a belief that they can be and should be fully part of the American mainstream.
The old American ideal of the melting pot is that immigrants become wholly American (learning the language, embracin🐎g the folkways and traditions, becoming deeply patriotic), but also make a distinctive contribution to our national culture, which is organic and open to a variety of influences. It is wrong to view this dominant culture as hateful or exclusionary.
As Michael Lind wrote in his brilliant 1995 book, “,” “the common culture of the American nation is a unique blend of elements contributed by Algonquian Indians and Midwestern Quakers and black Americans and Mexican mestizos and New England patricians. The national culture is not a whi𝕴te culture; black Americans have shaped it far more than the most 🔯numerous white immigrant group, German-Americans.”
In his🐭 comments, Brokaw focused on assimilation aღs a function of individual effort on the part of immigrants. The real problem is that we have fashioned an immigration system that isn’t geared toward assimilation.
In 1920, when we were absorbing another historic wa❀ve of immigrants, the newcomers were evenly distributed across nationalities.ܫ No single group predominated. In contrast, the wave of the last few decades has been heavily tilted toward Mexico in particular and Latin American countries in general.
By 1924, wꦑe had also reduced the overall number of immigrants, facilitating the breakup of ethnic communities and a de-emphasis on ethnic identity.
We have never tapped the brakes on the current wave. A National Academy of Sciences study noted that Spanish-speaking immigrants are acquiring English more slowly than other immigrant groups: “A major reason is the large🌱r size and frequent replenishment of the Spanish-speaking pop🐟ulation in the United States.”
Reducing levels of immigration would aid in assimilation,🐼 if that is still considered a universally desirable goal.
In the play that gave us the phrase the melting pot, Israel Zangwill wrote, “Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm and the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cros🧔s — how the great Alchemist 🍨melts and fuses them with his purging flame!”
The Brokaw controversy is a 🅠sign that the great Alchemist may soon be looking for work.