Mary Brooks

Intermarriage and Assimilation: The Road Not Taken

When considering the immigrant narrative it struck me, that the surest and fastest way to assimilate and gain success in an existing society was to marry into that society. By marrying an individual of the society, the immigrant can gain the knowledge of that which is unwritten and thus assimilate faster. The question is whether my assumption, based on nothing more than my own thoughts, could be proven by research. Is Robert Frost’s poem correct when it states, “I took the one [road] less traveled by, and it has made all the difference” or does the ethnicity of the immigrant still supersede assimilation even in intermarriage? (Frost, “The Road Not Taken”).

Intermarriage in the very earliest stages of American society was completely relegated to the intermarriage of what we would consider Northern Europeans (i.e. Scots, Irish, Swiss, German and English). This is described eloquently in Crevecoeur’s letters, that it is “From this promiscuous breed, that a race now called American’s has arisen.” (Crevecoeur, “Letters from an American Farmer”). The American of the 1700’s was decidedly white and clearly not interested in assimilation with the Native or African Americans.

However, they were not above romanticizing the Native Indian Tribes as having “…something very bewitching in their manners, something very indelible and marked by the very hands of nature.” (Crevecoeur, “Letters from an American Farmer”). Despite Crevecoeur’s romantic notions of the wonders of being Native American, there was no strong desire in American society to pursue romance or intermarriage with the Native Americans on any large scale. This early description of intermarriage seems to indicate instead, that intermarriage between Northern Europeans resulted in an entirely new society of people now called Americans. There was, at least at this point in history, no assimilation to a broader society through marriage; there was simply the creation of a society.

It is not until American society is fully formed that we begin to see intermarriage on a larger scale regardless of culture or ethnicity. However, even today “while some later generations show a decline in some indigenous cultural practices, many ethnic group members retain a strong identification with and commitment to their ethnic group” (Lerman, “A theory-based measure of acculturation: The shortened cultural life style inventory”). This desire to maintain the past deviates from the immigrant narrative’s idea of leaving the past behind and would make it difficult to assimilate into American society.

With the 20^th century, assimilation is based on the already established American society that was developed in the 1700’s. This is a society where “levels of intermarriage increased steadily…ethnic intermarriage was very low [first generation immigrants]…higher among native-born children (second generation)” (Stevens, “Intermarriage in the Second Generation: Choosing Between Newcomers and Natives”). This increase in intermarriage “requires individuals in different groups to form intimate attachments, which suggests that group boundaries are fading in importance” (Stevens, “Intermarriage in the Second Generation: Choosing Between Newcomers and Natives”). These intermarriage statistics are clear indicators that immigrants are beginning to be less tied or identified by their ethnic or racial backgrounds and thus find it easier to marry outside their groups.

However, it is clear when reading further into the literature on the topic that generation matters and ethnicity matters more than I had first imagined. So, we come back to a piece of my question relating to the faster assimilation of those immigrants who marry, in this case Americans. Intermarriage does seem to benefit the next generation, as it “blurs the boundaries between groups and leads to more intermarriage in the next generation” (Stevens, “Intermarriage in the Second Generation: Choosing Between Newcomers and Natives”). So, it seems that the assimilation and identity of the children of intermarriage becomes less strict and more open and there is not a direct link to a single culture or ethnic identity.

It is “these societal and cultural changes [that] have interacted with ethnic intermarriage to produce ethnic fluidity” (Waters, “Immigration, Intermarriage, and the Challenges of Measuring Racial/Ethnic Identities”). However, I could find no clear statistics indicating that assimilation was faster or success easier for those who intermarry. So, is intermarriage the most efficient way to assimilate into society? Well, it all appears to stem from whom you ask and when you ask it. The “rates [of intermarriage] vary dramatically across societies and across groups within each society” and I could find no correlation between success and intermarriage (Jacobson, "Comparative Patterns of Interracial Marriage: Structural Opportunities, Third-party Factors, and Temporal Change in Immigrant Societies").

If one considers the intermarriage of the 1700s, then intermarriage was a means to create a new society and not to meld more easily into an existing one. If however, one looks at today’s society one can clearly see that through the blurring of boundaries intermarriage creates an “ethnic fluidity” that flows easily across the boundaries of American society (Waters, “Immigration, Intermarriage, and the Challenges of Measuring Racial/Ethnic Identities”).  If assimilation is as Dr. White’s Objective 2 states, “To assimilate means to become similar ” then intermarriage is succeeding at just that, except of course for those who cling to the past.

Works Cited

Jacobson, Cardell K., and Tim B. Heaton. "Comparative Patterns of Interracial Marriage: Structural Opportunities, Third-party Factors, and Temporal Change in Immigrant Societies." Journal of Comparative Family Studies 39.2 (2008): 129-149. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 16 June 2010.

Lerman, Dawn, Maldonado, Rachel, and Luna, David. “A theory-based measure of acculturation: The shortened cultural life style inventory” Journal of Business Research 62 (2009): 399-406. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 16 June 2010.

Waters, Mary C. “Immigration, Intermarriage, and the Challenges of Measuring Racial/Ethnic Identities.” American Journal of Public Health 90.11(2000): 1735-1737. American Journal of Public Health. Web. 16 June 2010.

Stevens, Gillian, McKillip, Mary E.M., and Ishizawa, Hiromi. “Intermarriage in the Second Generation: Choosing Between Newcomers and Natives” Migration Information Source . Migration Policy Institute, 2006. Web. 16 June 2010.

Frost, Robert. “The Road Not Taken.” Mountain Interval. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920; Bartleby.com, 1999. www.bartleby.com/119/. Web.16 June 2010.

Crevecoeur, Hector St. Jean de. “Letters from an American Farmer.”  Online Texts for Craig White’s Literature Courses. University of Houston Clear Lake,  June 2010. Web. 16 June 2010.

Related Reference Links

1 - http://ajph.aphapublications.org/cgi/reprint/90/11/1735.pdf

2 - http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=444

3- http://www.bartleby.com/119/1.html

4 - http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/texts/AmClassics/Crevecoeurexcerpts.htm

5 - http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/LITR/5731im/default.html

x