Historically in American society, ethnicity was something to be overcome. America’s dominant Anglo-Protestant groups expected the immigrant to “melt” or, more accurately, to assimilate to their norms, values and cultural styles. This metamorphosis was encouraged not only by routine discrimination against those whose accents, names, or styles of dress revealed the taint of another heritage, but
... [Show full abstract] sometimes also by more forceful pressures, such as the many Americanization movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the anti-hyphen and prepardness movements associated with World War I. However, such pressures were seldom needed to spur most immigrants toward assimilation and, indeed, they were usually nurtured much more by the insecurities of America’s dominant groups than by the recalcitrance of its ethnic minorities. This is not to suggest, of course, that the various ethnic and racial peoples in America were possessed of some uniform orientation toward assimilation.