So there’s 133 million European-Americans. The vast majority of them are not of British ancestry.

So I’ve always wondered why it was so easy for the non-British European-Americans, like the Germans, Scandinavians, Poles, Italians, Dutch, Czech, Russian, French, Hungarian, etc to assimilate into the dominant British American culture?

Like why was it so easy to completely lose their language, the traditions, and culture? And even change their names to sound more British. Did they have an inferiority complex to the British Americans? Did they feel British culture was the superior one? That English was the superior language? Because at the time Great Britain was the world superpower & English became the lingua franca.

3 comments
  1. For the most part, it wasn’t easy, and they didn’t. There are still distinct Italian-American, Irish-American, etc., subcultures, and it is only several generations after people immigrate here that they really lose these things, as their children’s children intermarry. And even still, we retain many traditions, and favorite foods, and so on.

  2. I think you’re mistaken about quite a few assumptions here.

    First, it was *not* easy for many European immigrant groups. Many of them suffered widespread discrimination well into the 20th century.

    Second, they did *not* completely lose their traditions and culture (and in some cases even language). Many immigrants *kept* some parts of their culture, and still do today. Some of them have been integrated into the wider American culture, some of them are still pretty unique to descendants of those immigrants, and in either case I don’t think it’s correct to say that immigrant groups “completely lost” their culture.

  3. After independence there was no desire to be protective if their Britishness. The focus was on westward expansion and an obvious expectation of immigration as the country grew. No reason to be precious about being specifically British like those in the UK.

    If is easy to lose contact with your home culture when moving across the ocean before modern telecommunications. Assimilation is a process that happens over time. New York City had a large population of Italian immigrants and would live near each other and probably wouldn’t be considered assimilated. Their kids and grandkids would be, because they were born and grew up here, and they wouldn’t say they mixed in with British culture.

    Frankly, your way of describing the situation is very strange. Inferiority complex? People just wanted opportunity and did what they did to achieve that. This isn’t a conflict of civilizations.

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