Integrating America: an Insight into an Ethnocultural Society and The Origins of a New System of Ethnic Relations

Abstract

The nineteenth century stands as a hard turmoil period for Americans with regard to the issue of cultural assimilation. Requiring a national unity, the American process of cultural assimilation faces the challenge of theory and reality: the ones of hypocrisies, dualisms and double standards of ethnic and cultural forces in presence. The effort of entertaining sets of beliefs , applying them selectively to different situations , the capacity to minimize, ignore and defuse contradictions, hits the bloc of power localization which results in the birth of new systems of ethnic relations. The American kind of multi-ethnic melting pot worked but did not prevail to reach the target of the relatively restrictive national consciousness of Americans themselves.