RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Making Americans: Schooling, Diversity, and Assimilation in the Twenty-First Century
JF RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
FD Russell Sage Foundation
SP 99
OP 117
DO 10.7758/RSF.2018.4.5.05
VO 4
IS 5
A1 Cristina L. Lash
YR 2018
UL http://www.rsfjournal.org/content/4/5/99.abstract
AB How do schools teach American identity in light of immigration-driven diversity? This ethnographic study focuses on everyday nation-making at Castro Middle School, located in a city transformed by immigration. Building on theories of bidirectional assimilation, I show how assimilation can produce new definitions of Americanness more recognizable to immigrant communities, facilitating their national identification. At Castro, bidirectional assimilation supported African American students’ descriptions of Americans in multicultural terms and their own identification as American. Assimilation between the school and the larger Latino and Asian student populations, however, was limited because of a binary racial paradigm that excluded them from the national community. This study thus nuances the role of race as a barrier in the assimilation process, particularly as it unfolds in schools.