The current state of assimilation or coercive assimilation, as it is referred to in this week’s readings, is rather strange. It would seem that because we have become more aware of these pressures that we are trying too hard to avoid such Anglo-centric forces. This awareness pervades advertising, the film industry, as well as the music industry.
When looking through a pamphlet, on the cover of a textbook, at the opening video of a TV program, or at the trailer of an upcoming blockbuster, it is hard not to notice the unusual 1:1 ratio of ethnicities. It is as if we have compiled this checklist of all the peoples that could be a target audience and we are hitting them off one by one.
The obsessive popular culture of our youth has flocked to the music of black people and Latino people – Hip Hop is the biggest moneymaker for today’s music industry. It has become so normal in that record labels seem to believe, “He is black; he must be able to rap!” If anything, I see pressure on white people to act or dress in a certain fashion that has never been traditionally white.
So while I would disagree that popular culture attempts to assimilate other cultures to a white-European culture, I would go so far as to say that it is overly obvious that the aversion to doing so is a conscious one. While fringe groups and bigots maintain outdated nativist standpoints, the popular culture has become stricken with fear of the politically correct and fear of appearing racist.
Furthermore, this lack in coercive assimilation does not suggest that our society, as the Crevecoeur myth establishes, has become fully integrated. We are in the midst of a plurality of cultures in which a complete fusion of cultures has not, and will not occur. I say this not to be overly pessimistic, but to simply be realistic in regards to the perpetuating cycle of peoples to marry within their own group. Until this basic ideal fades (it might not, by human nature), we are doomed to live out our days in separate communities, all the while pretending like we have achieved equilibrium.
Okay, this last point is brilliant, and is necessary when thinking in any broader way about changes in the politics of cultural representation. I’ve got sitcoms on the brain due to another student’s post, so I’ll use them to illustrate. With a couple of notable exceptions (Rosanne; All in the Family; Married With Children), sitcom families have typically been depicted as upper middle-class or wealthy. There’s been a disjunction, in other words, between the actual socioeconomic distribution in the world at large and the one represented on TV. The same principle applies now with regard to diversity on TV. Sitcom kids and young people in magazine ads occupy a sort of parallel universe in which the racial and ethnic divisions that still exist in the country have been magically healed. I think a really interesting question is what this means for attempts to address the root causes of things like residential segregation. Are we less likely to care, or to be aware of the extent of the problem because the families we watch on television reside in integrated neighborhoods?