I am a born US-citizen but my roots belong to Italy; my ancestors came to the United States during the era that was known as the “New Immigration” during the period of 1900-1915. My ancestors belonged to the Southern Italy and were low-level farmers. During that era, migrations to the United States were made for the economic purpose but upon entering the country, they had to face ethnic prejudices in the labor force. The major factors that contributed to this migration were poverty, natural disasters, and low levels of earning and minimal opportunities in the homeland (Telles, 2012). Another factor was the high demand of labor in the United States and the higher wages which the laborers were earning that turned out to be the pull factors.
There is a difference between accepting a culture and absorbing a culture; the former is known as acculturation while the latter is known as assimilation (Rumbaut, 2011). My ancestors as I perceive accepted the dominant culture and tried to practice it so that they could make them acceptable and so they acculturated. While in my case, I belong to the generation that has been born here and my immediate family is completely absorbed into the social structure; I believe it is the way me and my ancestors became part of the society that influenced how we assimilated. I find myself with duality in image: being acculturated to the identity of an American yet, holding on to the loyalty of belonging to the Italian group. My ancestors hold on to the group identity more than me and I believe it is because of the prejudice that they had to face due to their ethnicity. But I personally, hold on to my group identity as being an Italian because it is a sense of attachment to that culture and to that society where my ancestors belonged (Morier and Bryan et al., 2013). In addition, I still happen to see prejudiced commercial which stereotype the Italians as being boisterous which happens to affect me positively as I feel it is my duty to remove their label and prove that this generalization is wrong.
References
Morier, D., Bryan, A. and Kasdin, L. (2013). The effects of group identity, group choice, and strength of group identification on intergroup sensitivity.. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 17 (1), p. 14.
Rumbaut, R. (2011). The melting and the pot: Assimilation and variety in American life. Incorporating diversity: Rethinking assimilation in a multicultural era, pp. 154--173.
Telles, E. (2012). Race and Social Problems. Race and Social Problems, 4 (1), pp. 1--4.
