Quotes About Assimilation

I was born in Australia and am proud of my Australian provenance, but I am now an American. Like so many naturalized citizens, I felt that I was an American before I formally became one.

There are certain situations, when you're in America, when people understand you better without an Australian accent.

I jumped around to different schools so I always had to adapt - remain me but pull from different avenues.

I even pretended years ago to be an African, a half-caste African, but because of my light eyes I did not get away with it, but I dyed my hair black.

I write in English because I was raised in the States and educated in this language.

Growing up, my parents were very much about the Egyptian culture. They never really wanted to assimilate in American culture.

And that is something I've heard from many people who immigrate is that when they go back to their home countries, in a way, they think they're going to be embraced and completely feel like they've come home. This disconcerting thing is when you go back there and you feel more foreign than you ever have.

Work aside, I think would have ended up in the U.S. because I like being here a lot. I really do.

I said that my parents had come from India. They thought America was a place where people were treated equally, and their kids would have an amazing life.

The stories I always see about a first-generation kid trying to erase where they came from, or trying to just be white, I would watch those shows or movies and I was like, 'I don't get this.' This isn't how I feel.

When you just come into a show that's already established, you feel that they're family, and they have a way of doing things and running things.

I couldn't be more American if I tried. I was born in Ethiopia, but I was raised and educated as an American.

Everybody wants to be like everybody else.

I have to learn to talk like the guys down the Hill. The "cats" down the Hill, that is. I have to be hip.

Yang disebut sekolah-sekolah Islam di Inggris menyedot habis energi murid-muridnya dengan memaksa mereka membaca dan mengingat-ngingat ayat Al-Qur'an dalam bahasa Arab, yang maknanya tidak dimengerti oleh para murid maupun guru. Jika memang ada diskusi mengenai Islam, sang Imam (yang terkadang bahkan tidak bisa bahasa Inggris) bebas mendefinisikan Islam sesuai kehendaknya, dan siapa yang bisa membantah?

Because they saw themselves as intellectuals rather than refugees, they were concerned less about preserving their Chinese heritage than with casting their lot with modern America, and eventual American citizenship. It is in connection with these immigrants, not surprisingly, that the term "model minority" first appeared. The term refers to an image of the Chinese as working hard, asking for little, and never complaining. It is a term that many Chinese now have mixed feelings about.

The danger facing American Jews today is not that Christians want to persecute them but that Christians want to marry them.

You, the Spirit of the Settlement ... Not understand that America is God's crucible, the great melting-pot where all the races of Europe are melting and re-forming Here, you stand, good folk, think I, when I see them at Ellis Island, here you stand in your fifty groups, with your fifty languages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds and rivalries...

The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.

Perhaps, for each of them, I also resembled someone who was dead. I had barely arrived at Adelma and I was already one of them, I had gone over to their side, absorbed in that kaleidescope of eyes, wrinkles, grimaces.

It was widely believed that Kennedy's breakthrough to the pinnacle of national power had marked a watershed in Irish-American history, a continental divide on whose broad, grassy forward slope the new breed of assimilated Irishman would henceforth accept the standards and mores of the American consensus.

Nativism is a movement that promotes favored status for established citizens or residents of a nation over newcomers or immigrants. Nativists typically oppose immigration and support restricting the legal status of specific ethnic groups because they view them as harming the culture of the host nation.

I]nclusion, not assimilation, should be the key concept in seeking, ever seeking, a more perfect national union. Our own history has shown that we are stronger as a mosaic than a melting pot. Our nation is bound together more by ideals than by blood or land, and inclusion is in our cultural DNA. We should feel proud that we are not all the same, and that we can share our differences under the common umbrella of humanity.

Capitalize on Threshold Moments: When we enter a new group, our brains decide quickly whether to connect. So successful cultures treat these threshold moments as more important than any other.