To Be An American: Cultural Pluralism and the Rhetoric of Assimilation (Critical America Series)

The United States' "melting pot" has boiled dry in recent years amid a climate of rising anti-immigrant sentiment. When politicians pick up on the dissatisfaction, the rhetoric often takes a sharper edge but offers no better understanding of the issues. Controversial measures such as California's Proposition 187 and the movement to make English the official language have prompted citizens to draw their own battle lines. In To Be an American: Cultural Pluralism and the Rhetoric of Assimilation, Bill Ong Hing examines both sides and attempts to bring needed rationality to this emotional debate, although he believes strongly in maintaining the present level of legal immigration. Hing points to other periods of U.S. history in which immigration was blamed for economic and social ills and then analyzes whether fears that immigrants take away needed jobs and refuse to assimilate into American society are justified. By combining economic facts with a keen understanding of cultural identity, To Be an American makes us look anew at this conflict as old as the country itself.