Assimilation
On civic health, the Bill of Rights and the Borg
Assimilation, once imagined as beneficial, in an evolving but fractured American culture, with a quiet disappearance of difference as the desired end, is better understood as a contested process in which difference is reorganized within enduring dominant monocultural power structures, with the dominant culture loses sight of it’s foundational values. In such, the American culture has developed with a form of amnesia, tone-deafness and time blindness.
In keeping with my last post evoking season two of Star Trek: Picard, assimilation and the horrifying reactionary dis-assimilation must both be seen as cruel and dehumanizing processes, leaving behind traumatized individuals and disrupted cultural continuity. Holistically speaking, assimilation is a distorted and malignant antithesis of healthy integration. Regardless of any health assessment, assimilation and integration represent two distinct normative models of how cultural differences are handled in our society. The difference rests in deep philosophical assumptions about identity, power, and social cohesion. In Star Trek canon, The United Federation of Planets is built on voluntary cooperation among diverse cultures. The Borg are the dark mirror of that idea: unity through coercion and assimilation.
With assimilation, members of nonresident or non-dominant cultures are expected to adopt the dominant culture, often at the cost of values central to their original identity. Resistance is futile, as the Borg Queen might say. As the dreaded Borg in Star Trek canon rip out natural organs and replace them with reductionist cyber replacements, dominant cultures often violently remove culture, values and religion purposing an irresistible connection to the dominant collective. The Borg culture, in some metaphoric ways, is much like American assimilative culture - crude but effective. The undoing of such reductionism is a multigenerational project as can be witnessed in nations pursuing truth and reconciliation projects.
With integration, the goal is for all to participate fully in society while retaining and applying distinct cultural values into a larger evolving cultural identity, with the whole becoming greater than the sum of its parts. Across all uses, the word integration connotes connection, unification, and coherence—taking separate pieces and making them function as a new meaningful whole. In math, especially calculus, integration is the process of finding the whole from infinitely small quantities. In psychology, integration may refer to internal coherence—bringing different aspects of personality, identity, or experience into a balance - into a stable sense of self. On a societal scale, American culture could certainly sign up for such a therapeutic regime. In short, integration requires higher cognitive and emotional sophistication than assimilation. Integration requires continuous rebalancing, adaption and assessing values. Integration means connecting different systems rather than suppressing one system by another. Integration is a continuous improvement process rather than a reductionist protocol.
Philosophical basis for Assimilation
Like the Borg Continuum, it seems to me that the western liberal tradition is based on the concept of a dominant rational culture. The concept has been employed forcefully in colonial efforts from the 17th century to present day. In modern neoliberal thinking, the concepts of Robert E. Park are influential. Cultural values are considered to be best for the populous when they are singular, hierarchical, and normative. There is an implicit “correct” or “advanced” culture to converge toward. Nation-building projects often rely on this cultural tradition.
This approach assumes that identity is malleable and replaceable, with the ideal goal of shedding previously held language, customs, or traditions in favor of a “better” set. In the mid-20th century, Frantz Fanon shed light on the alienation and internalized conflicting social hierarchy that assimilation produces. The structural and behavior-based aspects of assimilation do not align value to the suffering of those assimilated. Slavery is touted for it’s cultural benefits. Assimilation systems produce superiority, forced compliance, alienation and inferiority - all unhealthy and imbalanced cultural values.
Herbert Gans introduced the interesting concept of assimilated cultures retaining a symbolic ethnicity. Let’s call this “culture cancel-lite”. The central idea is that generations that follow the initial outsider status retain identity in symbolic, optional ways, making ethnicity a matter of choice (usually with dominant culture-assigned token acknowledgement). Symbolic ethnicity allows for collective amnesia and reframing of non-dominant cultural features. This worked well for assimilating immigrants from Europe and parts of the Middle East, but not as well for those targeted for racism by skin color. It has worked less well with continental native peoples and the descendants of African slaves.
The power differentials of assimilation are asymmetrical. Outsiders are expected to conform to the majority culture, whether the change serve them or not, while the dominant culture pretends to remain largely unchanged. This is often enforced informally through cultural propaganda, social pressure, and formally through laws and administrative policy. Therefore, the method of social cohesion of assimilation is through coercive uniformity and enforced homogeneity.
Philosophical basis for Integration
Integration bases its value proposition on the concept of pluralism. Culture is plural, coexisting, and dynamic with no single culture inherently superior to another. Influenced by the thought of Canadian moral philosopher Charles Taylor and others, this philosophy focuses on respect for difference. Diversification strengthens social identity in the same manner as it does genetically, but not in a logical positivist way, but through understanding, applying and affiliating diversity of meanings. Integrated identity is layered and persistent because it involves adaptation rather than adoption. Individuals and subcultures may maintain multiple affiliations simultaneously, which enables hybrid identities built upon informal and promulgated mutuality.
The movement of social and economic power in integration, in theory, is more reciprocal. Not only do individuals adapt, but institutions adapt as well. Integration promotes institutional pluralism such as multilingualism, religious accommodation, and acknowledges the structural inequities that inhibit reciprocity. Indeed, cohesion is sustained through a sophisticated promotion of diversity, inclusion and social equity. Stability is achieved through civic participation and mutual recognition, and enforcement of civil rights. When you think of the ideals presented by the founders of our American form of democratic government, you would agree that they were thinking about integration, but when we think about how it was implemented, we find a problem.
Houston, we’ve had a problem …
Assimilation is grounded in the belief that social progress requires cultural sameness, whereas integration rests on the premise that unity can be sustained through the accommodation and recognition of difference. Now that we have reached the prescient age of artificial intelligence, we may see that there are more ways to assimilate than before. We literally are being transformed into adjuncts to cyborg systems. I am right now as I type words into a keyboard and watch them appear on a screen, with automatic corrections (some appropriate and others, wildly, not) that then gets sent to your eyes or ears.
How does a nation that is emerging from the classical liberal and neoliberal systems of powerful imperialism cope with a growing demand for respect for diversity, inclusion and social equity? What is the proper response to the demands to respect mono-cultural dominating traditions In our modern interconnected world? No society can be simply assimilating or simply integrating. Policies labeled “integration” often contain assimilationist expectations and vice versa. How do we manage the confusion between the two philosophical approaches? And when such bias is automated
After penning the original Constitution, the founders attempted to address this problem with the Bill of Rights. The first amendment they added had to do with valuing diversity of speech, religion, assembly and protest with:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The Fourth and Tenth Amendment scan also be seen as an anti-assimilation laws. They prohibits search and seizure without due process, and the sovereign nature of local communities. The autocratic strain remaining in our culture always finds itself at odds with these who sections of our Bill of Rights.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
The Chicago School (exemplified by Parks) promoted that, over time, immigrant groups naturally converge toward the dominant culture. This may be true, but not without systemic alienation, as argued by Fanon and others. Both assimilation and alienation progress in stages and have many facets that create persistent problems in the way cultural institutions affect members - both insiders and outsiders. We continue to experience intended and unintended consequences in believing that assimilation is a healthy choice.
We may all, by now, agree that the concept of a social “melting pot” is mythic; and that pluralism is a durable cultural portfolio remains untested in our nation. The problem we face how to deconstruct the mono-cultural pillars that sustain assimilationist mythology and to build a healthy national culture of sustainable concepts that embrace the best of pluralism, and integration of the most affiliative and harmonious of all coexisting cultural elements. To some institutional groups, such as those practiced in assimilation - like the Heritage Foundation, the first steps of integration may feel like the Borg Reclamation Project, depicted in Picard. But it is not. Aiming to de-assimilate, using the same crude methods as assimilation-in-reverse most certainly will devolve into a treacherous witch-hunt without a true commitment to integration. Such an approach is merely disruption. And as we all know, the proponents of disruption are more often than not, just more of the same assimilation protocols with a pinch of chaos.
Certainly assimilationists who argue so vehemently against wokeness (an essential cognitive process required to support social integration) call it culture canceling - something that assimilationists actively practice, is like the skillet calling the dinner plate a kettle, and then calling it black. The anti-woke misinformation campaign has delved into hate speech, shown up in policy outlines in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and have been cruelly implemented in Donald Trump’s slew of executive orders deconstructing civil rights, established integration-friendly government policies and education programs that promote civics clarity. What they claim integration is doing to the culture of the nation is actually what they are doing.
Getting ahead by getting back to basics
Forgive me if I jump to another space flight metaphor. Fifty-six years ago today, the world held its collective breath waiting to see if real astronauts speeding through space would have enough oxygen to return to Earth safely. Without oxygen, needed for breathing and for generating electrical power, the Apollo 13 propulsion and life support systems could not operate. An investigative review board found fault with preflight testing of the oxygen tank as being the cause of the near fatal accident. Every time we don’t pre-test our political leadership for the tendency to revert to an assimilation protocol for national unity, we fall into a near-death spiral that is only reversed by creative engineering based on competent knowledge of this fragile vessel we travel on - translated into an expansion of civil and human rights that spreads through our entire culture. Our life support system has always been our openness to diversity, pluralism and the practice of integration over assimilation.
Our America political culture has oscillated between assimilationist nationalism and fragmented identity politics. Why not skip the need for yet another national recovery from near death, and insist that we use the current civic institutions that promote continuous improvement - and continue to build more consistent with their mission? Why give up and leave ourselves stranded in the lifeless void? Let’s get back to the basics of humanity.
We must build a coalition that sees pluralism as strength rather than threat. We cannot falsely see diversity as fragmentation or diminishing of power. We must see it as a shared civic identity. Clarifying integration requires that we might:
Emphasize constitutional principles and how they strengthen cultural norms.
Expand civic education to include multiple historical narratives. This means using materials like the 1619 Project as heuristic models.
Encourage cross-cultural national service programs that build relational ties between persons from various backgrounds.
Create and celebrate expanding inclusion of participatory governance structures (citizens’ assemblies, local budgeting processes, and advisory councils) in local institutions.
Create diversity in administrative and criminal justice procedures in ways that strengthen community values (such as restorative justice programming)
Investment in shared public spaces (schools, transit, parks) that create interaction, not just proximity.
Practice institutional pluralism (such as multilingual public services and ballots, culturally responsive school curriculum and pedagogy shaped by multiple traditions, and legal flexibility where appropriate (e.g., accommodating religious practices in workplaces and schools).
A model of communicative democracy advances by Marion Young asserts that legitimate decision-making requires welcoming diverse forms of expression—argument, narrative, rhetoric, even protest—so that marginalized perspectives shape public reasoning. To me, this is an affirmation of parts of the Bill of Rights that we should not have to recreate. We just have to confirm those laws.
Tuesday night I sat at a meeting with the head of a non-profit that helps coordinate services for refugees and immigrants. She calls these individuals New Americans. Once, our founders were new Americans. At the beginning of our lives, many of us have all been new Americans. Some join later. Ethically and spiritually, there is no limited and divided American Pie to fight over pieces. There is no master heritage to defend. These are social constructs designed to support assimilation into a partitioned system dominated by an oppressive monoculture.
We become Americans from a journey of first being new and then growing our ways into our culture. We are nurtured and nurture. This is a natural and healthy way. Part of our national culture is enshrined in the Bill of Rights that protects us from forced assimilation into some reconstituted version of pre-American colonial cruelty. We must look back to that time to learn lessons and pivot forward to test new hypotheses to support better living. We don’t destroy traditions, but take lessons learned from them. Isn’t that the culture we should be about?
Young’s social connection model of responsibility is relevant here - that individuals share forward-looking obligations to change unjust structures because they participate in the social processes that produce them. Once we are on board with the founder’s dreams, we can awake to see our mission and purpose in our individual and civic lives - is not to support assimilation, but to find ways to support healthy integration of everyone into a mutually beneficial American culture.
