The Validation of Acculturation: A Condition to Ethnic Assimilation

Abstract

The effective utilization of the acculturational approach to study ethnic minorities has been impeded by lack of a clear formulation of the relation between acculturation and signif social forces making for and retarding assimilation. Students of the problem should study the ways that acculturated patterns of behaviour are used by groups undergoing change and the contexts in which they are used. Validation is the empirical test of the individual's achieved acculturation. The large part of the acculturational experience of the members of an ethnic group may be circumscribed by the ethnic community. Such experience does not validate acculturation. The organizations and institutions of the ethnic community change and some of them take on the essential characteristics of the institutional forms of the large society. These may be designated parallel ethnic institutions, and may be signif for the acculturational process in at least 3 ways: (1) they ameliorate the stresses of interethnic situations and provide contexts of acculturation under relatively permissive conditions; (2) they provide criteria of acculturation for the less acculturated and more isolated members of the ethnic group; (3) they legitimize the status system of the ethnic community in which we expect to find transplanted important aspects of the stratification criteria of the dominant society. Japanese Americans are used as an illustration. It may be hypothesized that the emphasis on formal educ in both American and Japanese cultures aids the acculturation process. But the validation of acculturation in many areas is for this group impaired and retarded by the societal regulations of racial exclusion. Retarding factors were discriminatory legislation which limited participation in political activities and considerable restriction in economic activities. Access to participation in the dominant institutions is a precondition for the validation of acculturation and consequently for assimilation. But access to the dominant society is limited by diverse factors which create stress in interethnic situations, provide for the prolonged survival of parallel ethnic institutions, and result in deferring the validation of acculturation. H. Takacs.