Quotes About Assimilation

My dad used to say, 'You have to become part of the machine to beat the machine,' and there's some validity in it. But honestly, even when I'm inside the machine, you still see me. I stick out a little bit.

I am an American, steeped in American values. But I know on an emotional level what it means to be of the Chinese culture.

We must insist on assimilation - immigration without assimilation is an invasion. We need to tell folks who want to come here, they need to come here legally. They need to learn English, adopt our values, roll up their sleeves and get to work.

We have a bubbling successful melting pot in this country so long as the ingredients are essentially European.

En cuanto a la otra mitad del país, no se enteraba, o no se quería enterar. La mayoría eran inmigrantes del resto de España y, mientras les estaban vaciando la cartera, creían que el asunto no iba con ellos, que esto de la Generalitat era cosa de los catalanes de pura cepa, que ellos sólo estaban de paso aquí. Menuda cagada...

Japanese culture is thus a cannibalistic form - assimilating, absorbing, aping, devouring. Afro-Brazilian culture is also a rather good example of cannibalism in this sense: it too devours white modern culture, and it too is seductive in character. Cannibalism must indeed always be merely an extreme form of the relationship to the other, and this includes cannibalism in the relationship of love. Cannibalism is a radical form of hospitality.

But are you telling me the real secret, how to be exactly like everybody else? Tell me, for I am sure you know. If it means being deaf, then I'll be deaf. And if it means being blind, then I'll be blind.

The woman tried to teach Winnet her language, and Winnet learned the words but not the language.

I instinctively decided that I would prove that I wasn't different, that it should not be odd to hear me speaking English. From that day forward I lived with this double impulse:the urge to disappear and the desperate desire to be accepted

From that day on, pay of me yearned to be invisible. In a way, nothing would have been nicer than for no one to see me. Although I could not have defined it at the Tom me, I felt if attention were drawn to me, people would see what this girl had first responded to. They wouldn't see me, the would see the slanted - eye face, the Oriental.

We also have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate. Sometimes it's just not going to work out.

If you work hard enough at something, it begins to make itself part of you, even though you do not really like it and know that part isn't real.

The people who have recently come to this country to work and better their lives should be given the same opportunities that our parents, grandparents, and ancestors were given.

We have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate. Sometimes it's just not going to work out.

Immigrants in Norway must learn Norwegian. The same should Spaniards in Spain do, if they want to work with Norwegians.

To be the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe is in itself a special kind of experience; and an important one to an author. He has heard two languages through childhood, the one spoken with ease at home, and the other spoken with ease in the streets and at school, but spoken poorly at home.

If I go anywhere where there are people who vaguely look like me, there is always that feeling of, 'Actually I do look quite similar to everyone else.' At moments like that, I become very, very British. My accent gets more clipped, and I stride around as if I've got an empire.

Sadly, black people disassociate ourselves from the things which make us who we are, identifying them as lesser, or inferior. It's a form of self hate. So, with reckless abandon, we strive to be like the majority.

I do think of myself very strongly as a New Zealander, but when I moved out to the States, I was aware that I didn't want to just live in a satellite community of only other New Zealanders.

Whenever I ask myself what blackness means to me, I am struck by the parallels that exist between my predicament and that of many Western Jews, who struggle with questions of assimilation at a time when marrying outside the faith is common.

I struggled with being a Latino growing up in Los Angeles. I felt very American. I still do. I went to 35 bar mitzvahs before I went to a single quinceanera. I could talk all day about my culture and what it means to me.

If you don't speak English, then there is no way you can take full advantage of the opportunities that modern Britain has to offer you.

I think the best way to become a character is by osmosis as opposed to thinking directly about stuff.

We should be the natural home for the millions of Britons of immigrant origin. But we're not. Because too often we've sounded like people who wish they hadn't come here at all.