Raisin In The Sun Assimilation

In the plays “Disgraced” and “A Raisin in the Sun” the subject of assimilating into American culture is brought into light. Amir was born as an American but to immigrant parents who raised him as Muslim. Beneatha is an African American woman raised off the American Dream with Christian values. The attitude towards assimilation between these two characters differs greatly between these two characters. Amir sees it as a fact a life something that is inevitable and as something that should be resisted if not embraced. He was all too eager to leave his Islamic heritage aside and embrace the American as a superior culture. While Amir accepts American culture Beneatha is all too ready to abandon her American culture and accept the culture of her ancestors. After a college …show more content…
Unlike Beneatha he accepts the reality of his position and even supports it to a point. Amir lives in a post 9-11 New York city where the suspicions and hostilities against the people of his race is based upon fear that he is an Islamic Terrorist. He seems to sympathize with this opinion and submits to it. He understands the concern and is more than willing to supply. He even surrenders himself over to a search when going through the airport, showing that he rather accepts their discrimination as a fact of life rather than resent them for it. Amir goes so far as say that he agrees with them, “The next terrorist attack is probably gonna come from some guy who more or less looks like me.” (Akhtar 50). Unlike Beneatha, Amir agrees with the discrimination he is subject to, he has abandoned his culture and is very antagonistic towards it. He has fully assimilated into American culture, and even into the worse parts of it while Beneatha is proud of her heritage and takes offense to assimilation. The play “Disgraced” presents a new view of assimilation that is not often explored while “A Raisin in the Sun” presents a more traditional view of