Meaning Of Assimilation In Crapo

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• What is the definition of assimilation according to your textbook? According to Crapo, assimilation is "When members of one society become a politically or economically subordinated part of another, as when a conquered group is incorporated into the conquering society or when an ethnic population immigrates into a country with a different culture, the subordinate group may lose its original culture as its members adopt the customs of the larger society, a process called assimilation.” Furthermore, Crapo attributes this process as a “result of the choices of individual members of the assimilating group to enter the lifestyle of the dominant society, but it can also be a coercive process” I understand this very plainly to mean a smaller group …show more content…

It was very surprising to me to learn how brutal the process of assimilation was with Native Americans. The idea of having my child taken from me and forced to learn the customs and believes of a culture I deemed as barbaric and immoral would be devastating. I found the techniques torturous and not “coercive” as the definition Crapo provides; coercion would have probably been welcome compared to the cruelty that the Native Americans were subjected …show more content…

History has shown the effects of the assimilated subpopulation to be damaging. The Native Americans lost their cultural identity and were victims of an assortment of abuses (Givens, 2011) We can also view the actions of vast empires conquering and attempting to master other races, lands, and cultures in the Middle East as a form of forced assimilation. This was practiced by the Ottoman and Persian empires and the ramifications of this enslavement/ assimilation is still being dealt with today. The ethnic groups who never took on the larger populations believes eventually fought back against the oppression, forced assimilation, and differences of religion and culture (Gelvin,

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