INTERRACIAL VOICE

Essay

Some Thoughts on Assimilation and Skin Color
By Frank Montalvo

Milton Gordon's classic view in Assimilation in American Life (1964) of behavioral and cultural learning during acculturation on the one hand and acceptance into friendship groups and as partners in marriages between ethnic groups on the other provide a way to rethink assimilation.

Acculturation and assimilation are distinct but interrelated processes where constant negotiation takes place between the outsider's efforts to belong and the insider's criteria for membership. The acculturation process is dual edged where retention of ethnic culture and loyalty can vary independently from identifying with the dominant culture. From a minority-group member's point of view it might be considered a win-win outcome when one can identify closely with the ethnic culture and at the same time feel accepted and comfortable with majority ethnic-group members. It can also result in zero-sum when total cultural absorption into the host society accompanies loss of ethnic identity and rejection of cultural ties.

Assimilation can be operationalized as gatekeeping where members of the host/majority society are insiders who identify, recruit and induct selected outsiders to participate in primary groups, such as cliques and families, and in the formal institutions of the powerful, dominant ethnic group. A person can acculturate to the point of learning to think and act like members of the dominant group, but he or she has little say as to whether this is sufficient for acceptance as a candidate for assimilation. Assimilation is therefore beyond the individual's control and within the command of society's ingroup members. Thus, the extent of acculturation usually exceeds a person's degree of assimilation.

On an individual level, acculturation is sensitive to motivation that varies according to the person's perception of the benefits and costs of assimilating and their evaluation of their potential candidacy. The rewards of assimilation become the incentives for acculturating: enhanced life chances and educational and employment opportunities are improved by social acceptance, respect, empowerment, residential mobility, influential friends, interethnic courtship and marriage, insider information and word-of-mouth advice on finances and business deals. Besides tangible rewards, assimilation also includes an important psychic benefit derived from White entitlement: that one does not have to be concerned every day with the social consequences of one's ethnicity and race. But the induction process often brings psychic costs as well that are associated with ethnic group loyalty: acculturation often includes pressure to accept the public stereotypes of one's own group as a way of creating social distance and withdrawal from the ethnic peer group and its influence. Also, as proof of one's unquestioned loyalty to the dominant group, the convert must join in scapegoating the ethnic group with insider jokes and ridicule.

"Becoming like them," however, is not always sufficient for acceptance into the inner circles that involve intimacy, courtship and marriage, especially for "people of color." Assimilation is selective and gatekeepers choose carefully. Race and ethnic appearance are among the factors influencing the assimilation potential of minority individuals. On a collective level, skin color has affected the assimilation potential of mixed-race Latinos, whose three major groups present different social integration patterns based on the nature and extent of their racial mix.

Assimilation is marked by marginalization and segregation of the Latino population not only vis-a-vis the majority culture but from within. Over generations, the skin color and social class connection has become firm in San Antonio, Texas for Mexican Americans, 80% of whom are considered mestizos, a mix of Indian and White. A study in the early 1980s revealed that the observed phenotype becomes noticeably lighter in San Antonio as one moves from low-income barrios, where 46% of Chicanos surveyed were dark, through transitional neighborhoods (27% dark) and to the assimilating affluent suburbs, where only 18% of them were dark. More marked is the historical residential segregation of White and Black Puerto Ricans into White and African American sections of New York City where they are considered more assimilated than the racially ambiguous Puerto Ricans who live in their distinct ethnic community. In both cases the groups have a large, blended category of over 40% that is not seen as White, Black or Indian. The category creates an avenue for assimilation based on the skin color continuum for Chicanos and a third avenue of integration for Puerto Ricans. By contrast, Cuban Americans, who claim to be only 13% mixed race and share the African-White mixture of Puerto Ricans, assimilated into a racial divide in Miami, Florida. Black Cubans live in or near segregated African American neighborhoods separated from the much larger White Cuban population (over 80%), which resides in "the Cuban section of town." Integration into the Anglo sectors is not significant among the politically empowered Cubans.

Having a better understanding of the acculturation-assimilation dynamics helps us to distinguish between those actions that we can take to improve our lives and maintain community integrity as a source of strength, and those that are up to others to take to improve relationships and equality. Whiteness is a responsibility. I used quotes around 'people of color' because I regard white skin as a color that provides real social advantage that many deny, hide and protect in self-interest or as an embarrassment of riches. By excluding Whites from 'people of color' we participate in the subterfuge that whiteness is invisible, benign and carries little social obligation. This is as true within as between ethnic groups. Skin color has social consequences that we can not wish away with a snap of the finger. It takes hard work.