James has described the way in which the attitude of the person changes toward certain subjects, woman's suffrage, for example, not as the result of conscious reflection, but as the outcome of the unreflective responses to a series of new experiences. The intimate associations of the family and of the play group, participation in the ceremonies of religious worship and in the celebrations of national holidays, all these activities transmit to the immigrant and to the alien a store of memories and sentiments common to the native-born, and these memories are the basis of all that is peculiar and sacred in our cultural life.
As social contact initiates interaction, assimilation is its final perfect product. The nature of the social contacts is decisive in the process. Assimilation naturally takes place most rapidly where contacts are primary, that is, where they are the most intimate and intense, as in the area of touch relationship, in the family circle and in intimate congenial groups. Secondary contacts facilitate accommodations, but do not greatly promote assimilation. The contacts here are external and too remote.
A common language is indispensable for the most intimate association of the members of the group; its absence is an insurmountable barrier to assimilation. The phenomenon "that every group has its own language," its peculiar "universe of discourse," and its cultural symbols is evidence of the interrelation between communication and assimilation.
Through the mechanisms of imitation and suggestion, communication effects a gradual and unconscious modification of the attitudes and sentiments of the members of the group. The unity thus achieved is not necessarily or even normally like-mindedness; it is rather a unity of experience and of orientation, out of which may develop a community of purpose and action.
3. Classification of the Materials
The selections in the materials on assimilation have been arranged under three heads: (a) biological aspects of assimilation; (b) the conflict and fusion of cultures; and (c) Americanization as a problem in assimilation. The readings proceed from an analysis of the nature of assimilation to a survey of its processes, as they have manifested themselves historically, and finally to a consideration of the problems of Americanization.
a) Biological aspects of assimilation.—Assimilation is to be distinguished from amalgamation, with which it is, however, closely related. Amalgamation is a biological process, the fusion of races by interbreeding and intermarriage. Assimilation, on the other hand, is limited to the fusion of cultures. Miscegenation, or the mingling of races, is a universal phenomenon among the historical races. There are no races, in other words, that do not interbreed. Acculturation, or the transmission of cultural elements from one social group to another, however, has invariably taken place on a larger scale and over a wider area than miscegenation.
Amalgamation, while it is limited to the crossing of racial traits through intermarriage, naturally promotes assimilation or the cross-fertilization of social heritages. The offspring of a "mixed" marriage not only biologically inherits physical and temperamental traits from both parents, but also acquires in the nurture of family life the attitudes, sentiments, and memories of both father and mother. Thus amalgamation of races insures the conditions of primary social contacts most favorable for assimilation.
b) The conflict and fusion of cultures.—The survey of the process of what the ethnologists call acculturation, as it is exhibited historically in the conflicts and fusions of cultures, indicates the wide range of the phenomena in this field.
(1) Social contact, even when slight or indirect, is sufficient for the transmission from one cultural group to another of the material elements of civilization. Stimulants and firearms spread rapidly upon the objective demonstration of their effects. The potato, a native of America, has preceded the white explorer in its penetration into many areas of Africa.