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.