Learning Objectives

  • Explain types of assimilation and pluralism, including Anglo-conformity, the “melting pot,” the “traditional” model of assimilation, cultural pluralism, and structural pluralism.
  • Discuss and explain other types of group relationships such as separatism.
  • Describe the timing, causes, and volume of European immigration to the United States, and explain how those immigrants became “white ethnics.”
  • Understand the European patterns of assimilation and major variations in those patterns by social class, gender, and religion.
  • Describe the status of the descendants of European immigrants today, including the “twilight of white ethnicity.”
  • Analyze contemporary immigration using sociological concepts in this chapter. Explain how the traditional model of assimilation does or does not apply to contemporary immigrants.