Discussion of the assimilation of Puerto Ricans in the United States has focused on two
factors: social standing and the loss of national culture. In general, excessive stress is placed on
one factor or the other, depending on __(26)___ the commentator is North America or Puerto
Rican. Many North American social scientists, such as Oscar Handlin, Joseph Fitzpatrick, and
Oscar Lewis, consider Puerto Ricans as the most recent in a long line of ethnic entrants to
occupy the lowest ___(27)___ on the social ladder. Such a “sociodemographic” approach tends
to regard assimilation as a benign process, taking for granted increased economic advantage and
inevitable cultural integration, in a supposedly egalitarian context. However, this approach fails
to take into account the colonial nature of the Puerto Rican case, with this group, unlike their
European predecessors, coming from a nation politically subordinated to the United States.
Even the “radical” critiques of this mainstream research model, such as the critique developed
in Divided Society, attach the issue of ethnic assimilation too mechanically to factors of
economic and social mobility and are thus unable to illuminate the cultural subordination of
Puerto Ricans as a colonial minority.
In contrast, the “colonialist” approach of island-based writers such as Eduardo
Seda-Bonilla, Manuel Maldonado-Denis, and Luis Nieves-Falcon tends to view assimilation as
the forced loss of national culture in a(n) __(28)__ contest with imposed foreign values. There
is, of course, a strong tradition of cultural accommodation among other Puerto Rican thinkers.
The writings of Eugenio Fernandez Mendez clearly exemplify this tradition, and many
supporters of Puerto Rico’s commonwealth status share the same universalizing orientation. But
the Puerto Rican intellectuals who have written most about the assimilation process in the
United States all advance cultural nationalist views, advocating the preservation of minority
cultural distinctions and __(29)___ what they see as the subjugation of colonial nationalities.
This cultural and political emphasis is appropriate, but the colonialist thinkers misdirect it,
overlooking the class relations ___(30)___ in both Puerto Rican and North American history.
They pose the clash of national cultures as an absolute polarity, with each culture understood as
static and undifferentiated. Yet both the Puerto Rican and North American traditions have been
subject to constant challenge from cultural forces within their own societies, forces that may
move toward each other in ways that cannot be written off as mere “assimilation.” Consider, for
example, the indigenous and Afro-Caribbean traditions in Puerto Rican culture and how they
influence and are influenced by other Caribbean cultures and Black cultures in the United States.
The elements of coercion and inequality, so central to cultural contact according to the
colonialist framework, play no role in this kind of convergence of racially and ethnically
different elements of the same social class.
【題組】28. (A) harmonious (B) inconsequential (C) unequal (D) similar
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