Assimilating Afrikaners

Exploring assimilation in light of current events

Big news out of my home country, the United States of America, today. We have welcomed a group of white Afrikaner refugees from South Africa, which has raised some eyebrows, to say the least, considering the number of individuals of other nationalities currently being detained and deported – the legality of which continues to be challenged in our highest courts. 

This naturally inspires a lot of thoughts and emotions in many people, but we attempt now to put those aside and look at a more sterile aspect of this, which touches on a sentiment we interculturalists are certainly familiar with. 

Here is an excerpt of an exchange between a BBC reporter and Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau (emphasis mine, read the remarks in full here).

“QUESTION: Sorry. From the BBC. There are many people who are – who fit the criteria of seeking help, who are fleeing persecution – Afghans, for example, and they live in a country run by the Taliban. But they’re being denied refugee status. So I’m wondering why has such an exception been made for the Afrikaners, especially when the South African Government says they’re not in danger? And are you going to open up the Refugee Resettlement Program for others?

DEPUTY SECRETARY LANDAU: Thank you for that question. I think you may recall that on the President’s first day in office, on January 20th of this year, we issued an executive order that paused U.S. refugee programs that had been going at record levels under the prior administration and had brought in people that we were not sure had been carefully vetted for national security issues and put a pause on the Refugee Admission Program in general. That pause, of course, was subject from the very beginning to exceptions where it was determined that this would be in the interest of the United States. One of – some of the criteria are making sure that refugees did not pose any challenge to our national security and that they could be assimilated easily into our country.”

What does it mean to assimilate? According to America’s most trusted dictionary, Merriam-Webster, to assimilate means “to absorb into the cultural tradition of a population or group; to make similar”. 

Assimilation is one of several strategies a person entering a group can choose to employ to manage their new situation, the other common options being separation, integration and marginalization. The point of this post is not to decide if assimilation is good, but to look at it in the context of current events in the United States. Simplified, we could say that the Deputy Secretary is expressing a desire for the newcomers to become indistinguishable from the old timers. One shouldn’t be able to pick them out. They should fit in. 

Is that in itself a bad thing? It’s just logical that groups work best when they have enough in common to keep them moving forward, progressing, instead of arguing about what should be done and how. I personally am quite content to NOT be a head of state, trying to take into account and balance the needs of so many different constituencies. How difficult it must be. No, it can’t be said that assimilation as such is only bad. As with most things in life, there are advantages and disadvantages.

Assuming for this post that we view assimilation positively, we need to consider what the prerequisites are. First and foremost, the group to be absorbed into must have a clearly defined idea of itself. Newcomers must be able to discover and understand the expectations before they can make a decision about whether to conform to them. The burden here rests squarely on the majority group. An outsider cannot define for the culture what the culture is. 

Secondly, both the newcomers and the group members have to be willing to allow assimilation. 

It may not suit everyone. Not all individuals will want to let go of their own culture and those people will likely reach for one of the other strategies listed above. Additionally, if the group has defined itself very narrowly, it may not allow all newcomers to assimilate.

This may be where we get to the core of what has caused such a reaction to the bolded element of the Deputy Secretary’s comments.

Presumably not all of the general American public agrees with the idea of American culture the way the Deputy Secretary has alluded to it. By expressing that these Afrikaners will assimilate easily, he subtly defines American culture through the insinuation that it might not be so different from Afrikaner culture. 

I suspect people are experiencing an instinctual reaction to having the definition of “American” be so suddenly and dictatorially degraded, truncated. The United States tends to retroactively celebrate that you can come from anywhere geographically or socioeconomically and as long as you have enough hustle, you’ll be fine. You’ll belong. Now we’re being told that hustle isn’t enough. Something else matters too, but the Deputy Secretary declined to elaborate on exactly what Afrikaners have that could make assimilation easier for them than for any other immigrant group. This leaves the public to guess, infer and imagine all manner of reasons and, unfortunately, get the subtle impression that, were we not already members of the group, we might not make the cut. And what kind of feeling is that for a country to give its own citizens?

What about you? What does assimilation mean to you? How does this analysis resonate with you?