Assimilation

No one questions, of course, that the United States, and the British colonies before the formation of the American government, almost always welcomed European Caucasians as future citizens. In the colonial era there was an incessant call for additional laborers. And although much of the need was filled by black Africans, white people had no desire to intermingle with them socially or on an equal basis. Since the way to assimilate in American society requires marriage with a member of the dominant culture, and adoption of the folkways and mores of that culture, any non-Caucasian could not be considered. Nonwhites could not become white, and prejudice prevented most white people from marrying people of any other skin color.

Starting in colonial America, however, the standards for assimilation included adoption of the religion and language of the community. Most of the Pilgrims, Puritans, and others who traveled to the southern part of what is now the United States were Protestants. Catholics were feared because they were viewed as subject to the "tyrannical dictates" of the pope in Rome. The epithet "Jews, Turks, and Infidels" assumed inferiority, non-Protestant faiths, and lack of the attitudes and characteristics required of all Americans.

These views did not prevent Catholics and Jews from coming to the colonies, but these groups were rarely accepted as equals by members of the dominant culture. It is true, also, that some Protestant denominations, such as Quakers and Huguenots (French Protestants), were also looked down upon. Once they changed their denominations, however, they had the option of blending with members of the dominant culture. Some accepted the colonial demand for assimilation into a more mainstream Protestant denomination. This choice, however, was usually made by their children or grandchildren. Moreover, other European immigrants could either conform to American values or choose to remain with people of similar backgrounds. The latter was not acceptable to the colonists; it concerned members of the dominant culture. Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) warned fellow Pennsylvanians in the eighteenth century about the Germans in their midst:

Why should the Palentine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together, establish their Language and Manners, to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglyfying them? (Dinnerstein et al., 1999, p. 7)

Franklin's thoughts reflect not only the values of people of his own time but also those of Americans throughout the centuries. As a result of their anxiety about maintaining the dominant culture, colonists feared new immigrants who might undermine it with their own preferences. Often individuals, some of whom had been here perhaps for less than one generation, expressed the most hostile feelings about the new immigrants. Subsequent generations in the United States also frowned on newcomers with different backgrounds. Only foreign-born Protestants who spoke English were easily accepted without criticism by Americans.

From the colonial era stereotypical impressions of almost every group became part of the thought and expression of members of the Anglo-American culture. Descendants of the English regarded Germans as fat, stupid, and drunk; Jews and Quakers as clever and wealthy; Scots-Irish as violent and drunk; and French, Spaniards, and other "papists" as "hot-blooded lovers" and "slaves" of tyrannical rulers in the Catholic Church. Nineteenth-and twentieth-century immigrants like the Irish, the Poles, and the Jews were similarly branded with epithets Americans fantasized.