Assimilation Vs Pluralism

While reading the article A White Women of Color by Julia Alvarez I found myself continuously comparing her experiences with my own. During this class this is the first time it has happened to this degree, I thought it was interesting. Within Alvarez’s article you can find evidence of the struggle between cultural assimilation and pluralism. Our lecture notes describes assimilation as “what happens when a smaller cultural or ethnic group is absorbed into a larger or more dominant group”. The most common assimilation Americans have been taught about is what happened to Native Americans, the forced assimilation they endured. However, this was not the only people who were faced with assimilation, Alvarez also found herself dealing with it. The other term, which I’m not as familiar with is pluralism. We also get an idea of what pluralism is from our lecture notes as being “when a group holds on to some of its traditions while …show more content…
Reading Alvarez article gave me an insight to someone else’s struggle I personally have never had to deal with. My family is different from Alvarez’s family in many ways but similar in a few when I think about it. The biggest difference is my family doesn’t really claim any religion or cultural background, we think of ourselves as simply Americas, if we even really think about it at all. Maybe, this shows the amount of assimilation my family has done, in this sense I can see how we have lost everything. We no longer know where we come from or the beliefs that were once so dear to our ancestors. On the other hand, something similar between our families is that there was something considered prettier or better, oddly enough this also came from my mother’s side. It was weight, the skinnier the better. This was mainly directed toward girls in the family. I was the only girl my parents had so this focus came to me very early