https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/tom-brokaw-defends-assimilation-immigration-debate/
Immigrants can become wholly American while making a distinctive contribution to our national culture.
The worst thought crime is the one you don’t realize you’re committing.
So it was with NBC News legend Tom Brokaw, who — for good reason — didn’t understand that assimilation is now a third rail of American politics.
He caused a furor with comments on the venerable Sunday news program Meet the Press over the weekend, including, most controversially, his statement that he believes “that the Hispanics should work harder at assimilation.”
The condemnations were swift and sweeping and a sign that being a beloved media figure who has never before said anything that could legitimately be considered bigoted is no defense when the furies descend.
It was Presidential Medal of Freedom to white hood in one sound bite. A group called Latino Victory hit Brokaw for allegedly giving “credence to white supremacist ideology.”
Typically, his apologies were deemed insufficient and part and parcel of the original offense.
Let’s stipulate that using a definite article to refer to any minority group will always strike people as tone-deaf, but what Brokaw was getting at — the importance of assimilation to cultural cohesion — should be uncontroversial.
It isn’t anymore. The head of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists rejected the very idea of assimilation, which he decried as “denying one culture for the other.” It is astonishing that in that formulation “the other” is American culture. We are perhaps the only nation in world history that has sought to “otherize” its own culture.
It’s also been a trope to accuse Brokaw, as Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro did, of xenophobia. But saying immigrants should assimilate is the opposite of xenophobia — it is an expression of a belief that they can be and should be fully part of the American mainstream.
The old American ideal of the melting pot is that immigrants become wholly American (learning the language, embracing the folkways and traditions, becoming deeply patriotic), but also make a distinctive contribution to our national culture, which is organic and open to a variety of influences. It is wrong to view this dominant culture as hateful or exclusionary.