What Does It Take to ‘Assimilate’ in America?
By Laila Lalami

Laila Lalami the author of “What Does It Take to ‘Assimilate’ in America?” starts the article with personal experience about the idea of assimilation. Her entire article is centered on the word assimilation. Lalami goes on in her article to explain how people of different races, religions, and backgrounds are supposed to assimilate to American culture. Lalami describes America as a “salad bowl, rather than melting pot: Each ingredient keeps its flavor, even as it mixes with others” (Lalami). When America uses the expression “melting pot” it references that we are all the same and that we are assimilating to the American way of life. Lalami then goes on to explain how immigrants are forced to blend in and remove parts of there own identity to be “normal” in society. After, Lalami explains another view of immigrants and assilation. She explains how some people will come to America and assimilate into the community in order to hide the fact that they are undocumented citizens. She shows that there are many ways a person can use the word assimilation in reference to America.

I read the article “The Open Secret of Anti-Mom Bias at Work” by Katherine Goldstein which focused on the idea of “covering”. This article highlighted the struggles of mothers in their working environment. Women with children are regularly seen as “less competent and committed to their jobs” (Goldstein) This discrimination causes the mothers to “cover” there true identity in order to have equality at work. Women may be more inclined to cover their family status because “they have families to support, have more to lose, and maybe less willing to jeopardize their current jobs or professional status by speaking out” (Goldstein). The other article called “My Daughter Passes for White” by Seema Jilani touches on the idea of “passing.” The author identifies as a Muslim Pakistani-American with a daughter that is primarily White. Jilani stuggles with the fact that his daughter doesn’t have to go throught the same issues as he did in school because of her white apperance. The author descibes his past experience in school where he tried to “pass” in order to feel normal. Jilani descibed, “My great-aunt, adorned in a colorful sari, waves goodbye to me while the entire school bus looks on…I scoff and loudly tell my classmates, ‘That crazy lady is just my maid.” This story is an example of “passing” because Jilani tried to relate to the other kids at his school by playing it off his great aunt as a maid.

What does it mean to “modulate your outsider identity”? Do you agree that everyone has “outsider” aspects to their identities, aspects they might choose to hide?

When someone “modulates there outsider identity” they are changing how they act in the presence of other people. They may alter big things like there personal values, ideals, goals, and aspirations. They can also change the little things like how they dress, the way they speak, how they act, and what they like and dislike. I believe that everyone has an “outsider” aspect of there identity. Everyone has a certain personality they bring out when they are outside closed doors. I personally do not intentionally hide any aspects of my personality but certain parts of my personality may not come out according to the type of group I am with at the time.

The Pressure to Cover
By Kenji Yoshino

“The Pressure to Cover” by Kenji Yoshino has similar ideas to the video he made. The main idea they are both highlighting is the idea that people “cover” their true identity to assimilate to society. Assimilate means to blend into or become similar to someone or something. Yoshino uses diction in the article such as “covering” and “passing” to describe how people try to blend into society. Yoshino describes the word “passing” as an accepted visible characteristic while “covering” is a visible characteristic that is unwelcome too society. He then gives the example of covering and passing when President Roosevelt “used a wheelchair. He was covering, playing down his disability so people would focus on his more conventionally presidential qualities.” The passing part was the fact that everyone knew he was disabled but the covering part being that he would try to hide this difference because society would possibly think of him differently because of it. This was very similar to the video because Yoshino described how straight white men “cover” up who they are because they are afraid they do not live up to the stereotype of what a “real” man should be in the eyes of society.