Quotes About Assimilation

Everyone learns how to assimilate through watching television. Everyone thinks America is going to be like Hollywood, and when they get here they keep watching TV to find out how to be.

The teapot takes in water and gives out tea. So the human individual takes in anything you give him and promptly transforms it; he is ready to give you out again his own reactions - first, in thought and emotion, then in voice or action.

Well, I think when you come here and wave a Mexican flag in our face in a country that's giving a lot of these people an opportunity that they've never had before, I think a lot of Americans are insulted, whether they're first-, second-, third-, fourth- or fifth-generation Americans.

European countries simply do not have the ideological framework the United States has in the shape of the 'American dream' that has helped to absorb successfully wave after wave of immigration to the States, including Muslim Americans who are well integrated into American society. There is no analogous French dream or German dream.

There's an Irving Howe book called 'World of Our Fathers' which is about the wave of Jewish integration from Eastern Europe. It starts in 1880 and goes to 1920, and that was just really informative.

Because I was born in Casablanca and my parents were from the south of Spain, I do not have a big central root in France. I feel French but in a few ways, not at all French.

It takes a strong effort on the part of each American Indian not to become Europeanized. The strength for this effort can only come from the traditional ways, the traditional values that our elders retain.

We are very anxious to bring the Jews of Morocco over and we are doing all we can to achieve this. But we cannot count on the Jews of Morocco alone to build the country, because they have not been educated for this.

We cannot just ape the west. What may be good in an alien country may be unpalatable in India.

There are a host of ethnic minorities in China, but they often have a weak sense of identity and are relatively small in total number. History has taught the Han that other groups will and should ultimately be absorbed and assimilated as Han. There is a belief that the Han enjoy a superior and far more advanced culture.

When you play on foreign pitches, you get used to their conditions.

I didn't speak English until I came to Pittsburgh.

I was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States with my family when I was 4. I spent most of my childhood in Chicago. My elementary school had no program in English as a second language, so I was placed in a class for students with speech impediments.

Every African-American I know has two faces. There's the face that we have for ourselves and the face we put on for white America for the places we have to get to.

I mean, a Mexican boy couldn't be anything else but an Indian. And why did you take the name of Quinn, they used to say to me. Hey, you're an Indian, so I played Indians.

They're strange, the Aussies. Because if they like you, they say, 'Oh, he's an Aussie.' And I keep saying, 'I'm not, I'm from Preston.' There's nothing Australian about me. Don't start claiming me just because I've got a job over here.

It's always an adjustment period when you are with a new team. Things don't necessarily click how you want them to.

In America, they often don't know where I am from. The important point is the audience should not be able see through it. It should be so natural that your close friends may even think that you are not a great actor.

If I had not been coached well about how to deal with a culture and a set of values that were foreign to my own, I would not have been able to be successful.

Listen, I didn't know how to make coffee when I came to the United States. Because in Colombia the maids do it.

My accent is very confused.

My parents came from Calcutta. They arrived in Cambridge, much like the parents in my novel. And I found myself sort of caught between the world of my parents and the world they had left behind and still clung to, and also the world that surrounded me at school and everywhere else, as soon as I set foot out the door.

When Muslims live and grow up in a separate neighborhood in London, they are surrounded only by their culture. They don't need to integrate with other cultures, they don't need to mix with other people... When we don't live together, we start hating each other.

We must all learn to adjust with our surroundings.