The Brokaw Controversy and Assimilation

By Kevin D. Williamson

Tuesday, January 29, 2019

About Rich Lowry’s defense of assimilation: Maybe I missed a talking point somewhere along the way, but in response to the Brokaw controversy I have heard a couple dozen nearly identical invocations of “what about Irish pubs and Italian restaurants?” The source here seems to be Paul Waldman writing in the Washington Post: “Something tells me that Brokaw doesn’t stop in an Irish pub or an Italian restaurant and say to himself, ‘These people should really work harder at assimilation.’”

Of course he doesn’t. They don’t need to.

I think those establishments actually make the case for assimilation. Yes, the United States has been greatly enriched by the contributions of Italian Americans. No, the United States is not full of Italian Americans who cannot speak English. Some people have a Sicilian grandmother they remember who never learned English, but the Italians did in fact assimilate pretty quickly and pretty thoroughly. Italian Americans are not very much like the Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals who live and travel frequently between the countries, vote in elections in their home country, have limited command of English, etc.

In Chicago, for example, ballot assistance is available in Spanish, Chinese, and Hindi — but not Italian.

There isn’t very much that is Irish about most “Irish” pubs. In the same way, the people who run the taco shops in New York do not speak Spanish — they speak Chinese.

The big Irish-American populations in cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago assimilated pretty thoroughly, too. This was probably helped along by the limitations of the time: no Internet, international travel largely restricted to the wealthy, etc.

“Assimilation” does not mean — or require — the abandonment of every item of cultural distinctiveness. Jewish immigrants did not need to become Methodists to assimilate. That isn’t what assimilation really means.