ABSTRACT
Two important aspects of assimilation are its directionality and the influence differential between the assimilator and the to-be-assimilated (Teske and Nelson 1974: 363–1). Much of the classical American literature on the subject either implicitly or explicitly treats assimilation as a one-way process, suggesting ‘an essentially unilateral approximation of one culture in the direction of the other’ (Siegel et al. 1953: 988), typically in a context of unequal status and power. Accordingly, it is alleged that assimilation operates in the direction of the dominant group exerting influence on the less dominant group – a unilineal process of social change. Such a view, elegantly articulated in Parkl’s (1950) influential theory of race relations’ cycle, contains a sense of inevitability and irreversibility. The eventual absorption of minorities into the dominant culture and the gradual disappearance of ethnicity are to be understood and accepted not only in terms of what they are and what they will be, but also in terms of what they should be. A theory of ethnic relations and social change becomes an ideology in disguise which, in spirit and in practice, prescribes rather than describes. What is prescribed here is the vision of one country, one culture, one ideology, one way of feeling, thinking and doing – a loopback into a tribal existence of oneness and homogeneity.
