Becoming American has always required immigrants to renounce Blackness and adopt Anglo-Protestant norms.

Evidence

When Anglo-American elites realized the tidal wave of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe was drastically changing the demography of the country, they focused their efforts on integrating these new immigrants into Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture. To survive, the “American race,” as defined by Anglo-Saxon ethnocentric notions of assimilation, would have to absorb and improve these allegedly inferior Europeans. Becoming an American, therefore, has always required immigrants to change their lifestyles, behaviors, clothing, diet, and language to comport with the norms and behaviors of Anglo-Protestant culture. Immigrants also have to abandon any claims to racial distinctiveness, most specifically, any association with Blackness. The African American poet and intellectual James Baldwin candidly described this process when he stated, “The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro.” — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 366

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the coercive assimilation model: what ‘becoming American’ has actually demanded of immigrants.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in cultural assimilation and identity construction, and to the Baldwin quote’s sharp framing.
• SHARE: The Baldwin one-liner ‘The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro’ is a sharp quotable for anyone working on race and American identity.