Majority groups support assimilation -- except when they're not majorities

Thursday, January 5, 2012 - 08:02 in Psychology & Sociology

We generally think that views about how to integrate a diverse society depend on people’s positions in that society—that is, whether they’re in the racial, religious, or cultural majority or a member of a minority. In the U.S., “people tend to believe that blacks prefer pluralism and whites prefer assimilation,” says University of Delaware psychologist Eric Hehman. Assimilation asks minorities—whether newly arrived or historically rooted—to drop their cultural identities and adopt the ways of the majority. Pluralism recognizes and even celebrates minority cultures, which live cooperatively within the majority culture.

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