I can’t think of a time when I myself have been pressured to act more American but I have definitely seen it in my classmates and friends. I attended an elementary school in Kensington with a large population of Middle Eastern students. However, I was placed in PS 230’s “Gifted and Talented Program” which was predominantly white with a couple Asian, Hispanic/Latino, and black kids. Every other class had a fairly even mix of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Asian, Hispanic and Latino students with one or two white and black students. I felt comfortable in my class and didn’t tend to socialize with kids from other classes during lunch or recess. I watched hundreds of foreign-born students line up for free lunch while my class ate sandwiches and drank juice boxes out of their lunch boxes. In the yard, I watched them stand by observing our games of Four Square and Cops and Robbers, jealous that they hadn’t received an invitation to play. I think the pressure for them to become “American” resided mostly in the social situations and experiences they were lacking in rather than a pressure imposed by a person or group of people, though this group could be considered the group of “gifted and talented” students. Their feeling of the need to “Americanize” came from wanting to belong, as children naturally do. While racial and cultural discrimination of these students was not common, they did not nearly exhibit all the qualities of assimilation that Gordon discusses such as intermarriage (obviously because they are too young) but also entrance into cliques and clubs. Over my six years in the gifted program, I made several friends outside my class. However, though befriending them meant inviting them to our social cliques, we were physically separated for most of the day and I never saw them outside of the school setting. Obviously, this is the impact of “Americanization” in a relatively small community, but it is a community that is capable of being heavily impacted because of the age of the group – children.

It is also true that while “fusion” and “interbreeding” may not have taken place at PS 230,  there was a fair amount of “interchange” and a crossing over between my class and the majority of “minority” students. I admired the cultural parties other classes would throw to celebrate a birthday or conclude a unit. I began to learn what home life was like for some of the foreign-born students who spoke another language in the background when I called them for homework help or just talked about their family. (From this it was clear that there had not yet been a “change of cultural patterns to those of the host society” or a “development of sense of peoplehood based exclusively on the host society.”) I’m not even sure if we took from them but as young people, we were educated in a place that was accepting and respectful of many cultures even if they were not blended into one with lost identities. My experience probably most relates to the Uncle Sam’s Thanksgiving political cartoon with the gathering of people from all religions, cultures and countries and the sharing of stories at the table.

In terms of representing “Americanization” and more generally assimilation and acculturation in the media, its presence has great significance. Gerstle discusses the importance of film in allowing Irish immigrants “both to explore and to distance themselves from black culture.” Many people do not realize this connection between the two minorities in the 1940s. In this sense, the films were a tool in promoting ethnic assimilation while still reinforcing the racial division of the white from the black. We see these themes in movies today. Some are historical films that teach viewers about how America used to be and can provide for comparison to today. Others are stories with a strong message about diversity, immigration, ethnocentricity or other similar themes. What a person chooses to accept based on their preferences can form a collection of ethnocentric media or diverse media. While it is true that some forms are popularized on purpose, it is up to the individual to show how they respond to the presence of different cultures and the results of these different cultures.

-Lucy Snyder