2f. Revisit the minority-immigrant distinction focusing on assimilation and intermarriage, starting with article on intermarriage. [Intermarriage b/w dominant culture and American Indians has faded or reversed as an issue, but Black and White intermarriage, though more frequent than previous generations, remains rare. (The article contains many variations on this premise.) For immigrants, intermarriage is an essential feature of assimilation. Pressure against black-white marriage comes from both sides. Can African Americans be separate but equal?]

Mary Brooks

Love, Honor and Assimilate

Intermarriage is the gateway to success in America. Both the immigrant narrative and the fairy tale of marriage share an infinite hope and infinite struggle. Research upholds the idea that immigrants who intermarry assimilate much faster into the new society. There is no greater teacher than a loving spouse. However, this path is not easy and is wrought with many issues whether it is culture, ethnicity, religion or language. These barriers exist and can be overcome but many find that this path is blocked. However, generation after generation of children is better assimilated because their parents took the risk and married each other.

When reading Sam Roberts’ article “Black Women See Fewer Black Men at the Altar” we are led to believe that “that more and more black men are marrying women of other races”. This idea would have seemed completely impossible in Crevecoeur’s time when the idea of the great melting pot began. There was nothing in the initial immigration on becoming American that spoke of marriage between minority groups. However, as we look at it today intermarriage remains the best path to assimilation for any group and it appears from Sam Roberts’ article that the African Americans are beginning to pickup on the idea. The only issue that appears to remain is that unlike the immigrants of Crevecoeur’s time they will not simply become American. As Roberts puts it, color overcomes the assimilation effect of intermarriage and “They’ll be black because that’s the way they’re seen”. So, is intermarriage the panacea for the assimilation of minorities that it was for the assimilation of other immigrants?

This is a tough question to answer in only a few sparse paragraphs and a couple of hours. But, if we are too look at Equiano’s writing we find that in so much as he mirrors the immigrant narrative in his desire to “speak English tolerably well” (Chapter V). The desire to fit in and to be successful despite being a slave, while not comparable to the immigrant who comes willingly, is indicative of a desire to find something more from life shared by all. So, in this at least we find that the differences between the immigrant narrative and the minority narrative not so vastly opposite. Assimilation via intermarriage was not an option in Equiano’s time; however his industriousness is a harbinger of the potential to be found in intermarriage as a way into a society in which one is otherwise barred.

In our readings such as “The Lesson” we are faced with the differences again between the immigrant and the minority narratives. We are confronted with a tale of things unobtainable to minority children even today. However, one needs to look at these stories as something representing more than just what is on the page. For example, what exactly is holding them back in society? Is it the color of their skin? Is it the poverty they face? These questions are about substantive facts but these narratives are about image and metaphor more than they are about the written facts. The children are those uneducated masses who do not try for more. Who do not open themselves up to the possibilities of intermarriage, of education, of success because they fear leaving what they know. This is a very different viewpoint than the immigrant of old who abandoned everything to be more in America. This is the viewpoint of a minority certain that they cannot succeed simply because of a past they and society cannot abandon.

Assimilation and resistance in minority intermarriage is felt not only by the immigrant but also by society as a whole. The resistance to change that minority immigrants face comes not only from their desire to maintain their culture, but also from the desire of society itself to keep them separate. If as Roberts’ states minorities will always be considered black then why change? Why struggle to be assimilated and accepted by society when the struggle will be met with such negative resistance from the world. Intermarriage does not change the underlying “social contracts” between immigrants and minorities (Obj 3A). Nor does it change society’s perception of the immigrant or the minority. The one bright hope is that as mentioned in Objective 3f “the inevitable mixing of people and races in a mobile culture continually creates New Americans”. It is in this hope for “New Americans” that the idea of intermarriage as assimilation for immigrant and minority alike shines the brightest. If there is a “New American” there is hope that color will no longer be the deciding factor in assimilation through intermarriage.

Intermarriage is the quickest way to assimilate into American society for immigrants from other countries. However, it is not necessarily a useful adventure for those African Americans already in American society. Their place in society as black does not change when they marry outside their minority group. As Roberts clearly puts it they are still black to the world and their children no matter how white will be black as well. The difficulty of minority intermarriage is that the goal is not the same as it is for immigrant intermarriage. Since African Americans are already part of American society they are not trying to learn heretofore-unknown societal norms or processes. The immigrant gains much more from intermarriage than the minority is capable of gaining from the process. The immigrant gains access to society, to culture, to unspoken laws that the minority even in intermarriage will not be free to learn and absorb. That is until we become the “New American” society we know we can be. The society that does not look at a child of intermarriage and say because they see them as black then they are black. The “New American” society will accept intermarriage in all its forms as the bonds of hope and acceptance that they are meant to be seen as by all.