Quotes About Assimilation

I grew up watching 'Ghostbusters' and 'Knight Rider' and Hot Wheels commercials. When I got to college, having never set foot in America, I knew more American pop-culture references than my friends did.

Whenever I'm around Spanish people, I'm kind of like a fly on the wall.

Whenever I've tried to ingratiate myself to an existing community, I tend to give too much, to become whatever it is they want me to be. It's something I do automatically - I've learnt to immediately adapt.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

I think moving from Ireland to Australia, you couldn't get a more different accent on the palate. The Irish accent is very muscular and involves a lot of tongue and cheek-muscle work, whereas the Australian accent is really flat; the palate is quite broad. They're at almost opposite ends of the scale, so I feel it was good training.

My parents and my brother and I left the Soviet Union in 1981. I was six, and Dima was sixteen, and that made all the difference. I became an American, whereas Dima remained essentially Russian.

I become a chameleon for wherever I am.

If I'm out shopping, in Topshop or wherever, I'm never spotted. In fact, I'm usually asked if I have a student card. No-one seems to notice me, they're oblivious to who I am even in Scotland, and I'm very happy to be able to blend in with the crowd.

My father is Italian, and I never met my paternal grandparents. The family name was 'Caroselli' and it was changed in the mid '50s. I think they wanted to assimilate, which was pretty common, although I love the name 'Caroselli.'

As soon as I arrived in the Indies, in the first island which I found, I took some of the natives by force, in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. And so it was that they soon understood us, and we them, either by speech or by signs, and they have been very serviceable.

America gave the world the notion of the melting pot - an alchemical cooking device wherein diverse ethnic and religious groups voluntarily mix together, producing a new, American identity. And while critics may argue that the melting pot is a national myth, it has tenaciously informed the America's collective imagination.

Growing up in the U.S., I'd siloed off my identities. While I was an Indian at home, I was an American at school. I have now embraced both the identities.

A lot of black people believe that Jews in this country have become white. They behave like white people rather than Jewish people.

I know Spanish pretty well. I'm half-Puerto Rican - my mom is from Puerto Rico - so I have a lot of family there, and my mom's first language is Spanish. But growing up in the States, and with my dad being from the States, I'm kind of just like this white kid.

We have a lot of black Anglo-Saxons. Their skin is black, but their brain is white. When I get real mad at them, I call them 'graham crackers.'

I was born in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1948 but grew up in a black neighborhood. During elementary and middle school, I commuted to a bilingual school in Chinatown. So I did not confront white American culture until high school.

The mistake British comedians often make is trying to beat the Americans at their own game - getting visiting American singers on their shows, talking about 'sidewalk' instead of 'pavement,' sitting on high stools in a white dinner jacket doing ballads. That way, you simply end up with a mid-Atlantic mishmash.

The best way to prevent the homegrown-inspired attacks is literally positive engagement with Muslim communities. Making sure that any immigrant population that comes into America assimilates, becomes part of our culture. That has been our history; it has made us strong.

Sometimes, growing up, I tried to be very Latina; I would change my voice... experiment with my hair a lot, trying to figure out who I was in a primarily white school.

Mickey is one of the prime examples: Mickey has never been suspected of being an American export. It was deja vu. They gave him a local name and he's been accepted everywhere he goes.

Our forefathers increased and decreased the influx of peoples because America was building a melting pot and because certain ethnicities often brought with them certain securities and degrees of productivity.

I grew up in a lot of different places, so I pick up accents pretty quickly.

There are different things to wear in different places, and if you want to fit in and show respect, you can dress to do that, or you can dress to show that you are foreign and not from there. That can work, too.

It's hard enough being American and trying to make it in an American world, but being Australian, you're from a whole different country and have a whole different way of doing things.