Inspiring Essay About Second Generation

The second generation that both of the reviewed articles are centered around refers to the children of immigrants that were born in the USA. These children experience a variety of different social, financial and behavioral challenges of the rapidly evolving life in the USA.
“The Second Generation” by Nancy Foner and Philipp Kasinitz studies different connotations of the word “generation” and explores the degrees to what the immigrants of the second generation are distanced from the country of their origin, its customs, traditions, culture and language. The idea that the second generation of immigrants experiences many hardships on their life path is not new and is supported by the authors of the article. Children of immigrants are usually less successful in school and lag behind their native white peers. Nevertheless, they show better assimilation into the American society than their parents. The mentioned article also considers the problem of relations between the generations, which can be overburdened with difficulties of foreign culture accommodation. For example, the second generation immigrants are usually better in English than their parents, and it makes them feel more independent and more powerful than them which brings imbalance to the family and has a negative influence on the parent-child relations. Children may be embarrassed by the fact that their parents are not able to fill in documents and make business on their own. They may not like the role of mediators and interpreters that they need to perform for their parents. Sometimes they can misguide their parents intentionally.
The problems of assimilation expressed by the authors of this article are difficult and have a considerable impact on the life and well-being of the children of immigrants. To my mind, in the immigrant families there is a strong need for mutual support, and the family has to be a safe shelter that immigrants should protect and appreciate.
“Not Everyone Is Chosen” by Alejandro Portes and Ruben Rumbaut is studying the difficulties of assimilation for the second generation American immigrants. It determines the differences in acculturation and groups them into three categories:
dissonant acculturation, when the children of the immigrants become better and faster assimilated in the new society, than their parents;
consonant acculturation, when the assimilation of children and parents is simultaneous; and
selective acculturation, when the process of assimilation is embedded in a co-ethnic community.
The article emphasizes the fact that the darker is the immigrant’s skin, the worse is the reception of him in the American society, and the less return he should expect from imputing his efforts into education and work. The disappointing factor here is the statistics that shows that people of different race are badly accepted by the American society irrespective of their skills, education, personal traits and other features comprising their individuality.
As for me personally, the fact that the American society still shows intolerance and discrimination to such a great extent is very discouraging. Promoting high life quality and being one of the world’s most successful economies, the USA has a great potential to progress in terms of exterminating racism and discrimination.