Twentieth International Conference on Diversity in Organizations, Communities & Nations

Abstract

The United States, particularly in its big cities, is known as an immigrant magnet. However, the way immigrants are expected to become societal members has always been contentious. Many Americans think of their country as welcoming to outsiders. The inviting metaphor of America as a “melting pot” has survived, from eighteenth-century French nobleman de Crevecoeur (1904) to twentieth-century historian Schlesinger (1992). New York is often depicted as a melting pot as well (e.g. Crouse 2013). However, what best describes how immigrants are expected to fit into society is “Anglo-conformity” (Gordon 1964), a one-way assimilation process in which immigrants adopt the dominant group’s traits. In New York, this applies to the expectation that immigrants should speak English. This paper focuses on two sources of evidence of the conflict between those who wish to speak their native/heritage languages in public and those who favor Anglo-conformity. One source is the New York City Commission on Human Rights. It has seen a recent increase in unlawful discrimination, including language. (While language is not legally protected against discrimination, the commission places it under the categories of “immigrant status” and “heritage”). A second source is an online survey of bilingual New Yorkers (Dicker 2019). One question asks respondents to describe incidents in which they received negative reactions from others when they chose to speak their native/heritage languages. The evidence shows that as immigrants find their ways of belonging in New York, the languages they use in public often determine their degree of acceptance.