Assimilation versus Multiculturalism: The Views of Urban AmericansAuthor(s): Wallace E. Lambert and Donald M. TaylorSource: Sociological Forum, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Winter, 1988), pp. 72-88Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/684622 .Accessed: 23/02/2011 18:04

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Assimilation versus Multiculturalism: The Views of Urban Americans

Wallace E. Lambert and Donald M. Taylor McGill University

Parents of children in public schools in a large American urban center, representing a number of different ethnic groups, were in- terviewed about their personal views and feelings toward cultural and racial diversity in America today. Three main issues were ad- dressed: respondents' attitudes toward the maintenance of heri- tage cultures versus assimilation; their attitudes toward bilingual- ism; and their attitudes toward other groups in the community. The analyses revealed important differences in attitudes between ethnic minority groups and established white and black groups. Nonetheless, strong support was shown for the retention of heri- tage cultures, even among middle-class white and working-class black Americans. The working-class white American sample was distinctive in its rejection of multiculturalism and in its negative attitudes toward other ethnic and racial groups. All groups sup- ported the idea of bilingualism for their children, and certain groups thought that public schools had an important role to play in its promotion. Overall, the results delineate a series of factors that affect intragroup and intergroup harimony and the processes of ad- justment that transpire within a social system when it has to cope with ethnic and racial diversity.

An observer recently summarized the American character in terms of three national preoccupations: war and peace, bread and butter, and black and white. Interesting as this overview is, it misses what may be the most distinctive feature of all, namely, a preoccupation with what

* This is a summary of the main results of a community-based study. The complete manu- script, available in mimeograph form, is titled "Cultural and Racial Diversity in the Lives of Urban Americans: The Hamtramck/Pontiac Study" (Lambert and Taylor, 1986). We are very grateful to the Spencer Foundation for their financial and personal support of the study and to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, grant number 410-87-0098. Dr. Naomi Holobow helped us with the data analysis and interpretation. We are also indebted to four students at McGill for their discussions and interpretations of the findings: Geoffrey Hall, Lambros Mermigis, Gertie Witte, and Barbara Gasiorek. We are especially grateful to Clarence Pilatowitz, Elba Berlin, Marcia Nowakowski, Nicholas Prychitko, John Radwanski and Maria Etienne, educators in the greater Detroit school system, for their cooperation and support throughout the investigation.

? 1988 by the Eastern Sociological Society. All rights reserved. 0884-8971/88/0301-0072 $1.50

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is or what is not "American." The present study deals indirectly with this concern. It is a community-based investigation of the attitudes of Americans-some long-term residents and others first or second gen- eration immigrants-toward ethnic diversity and intergroup relations.

The focus of the research is a fundamental and long-standing de- bate in America about how immigrants, as well as established ethnic minority groups, can and should accommodate to mainstream society and be accommodated by it. In this debate, two contrasting ideological positions are highlighted: assimilation, the belief that cultural minori- ties should give up their so-called "heritage" cultures and take on the "American" way of life, and multiculturalism, the view that these groups should maintain their heritage cultures as much as possible.

This debate has had a rich theoretical and empirical history in the sociology of ethnic relations (see Hirschman, 1983). The assimilation perspective (e.g., Park and Burgess, 1921; Gordon, 1964) was and ac- cording to some "continues to be the primary theoretical framework" (Hirschman, 1983:401). More recently, the assimilation view has been seriously challenged by those who suggest a revival of ethnicity (e.g., Glazer and Moynihan, 1970; Greely, 1974; Novak, 1972). The ethnic revival perspective, while gaining much momentum, has itself, however, been challenged by others (e.g., Alba, 1981; Gans, 1979) who question the depth of the alleged resurgence of ethnic awareness over the last two decades.

In order to gauge contemporary views on these issues and espe- cially the role that attitudes play, we chose to conduct this study in a large American metropolitan area which, like many others in the United States, is continually accommodating to the social pressures generated by daily contacts among members of a large array of ethnic groups, some visible "minorities" and others hardly visible at all. Urban centers and inner-city public schools in the United States are unmistakably diverse in cultural and racial composition. The underlying concern of our study is how communities and schools adjust to the social tensions among members of such a variety of ethnic and racial groups.

We focused on parents whose children were attending public schools in a large, midwestern urban setting. In probing their views on assimilation and multiculturalism, we took care to present both the fa- vorable and unfavorable arguments commonly associated with each al- ternative. For instance, respondents who favored assimilation were then asked if this option would promote national unity and provide a com- mon national language, and also if it would oblige newcomers to aban- don something precious to them and if the nation might lose the best that other cultural groups had to offer. Similarly, respondents who fa- vored multiculturalism were asked if this would dangerously diversify the nation and increase language barriers, and also if this would permit

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newcomers to keep their identity, generate intergroup tolerance, and conserve each group's distinctive contributions.

Three overriding issues were addressed: attitudes about the main- tenance of heritage culture (multiculturalism) versus assimilation; views about the maintenance and use of heritage languages (bilingualism); at- titudes toward the respondent's own group and toward other prominent ethnic groups in the community (the issue of intergroup harmony or conflict).

The participants in the study were all parents of children enrolled in public schools in either Hamtramck or Pontiac, two ethnically diverse communities adjacent to Detroit, Michigan. The participants were cho- sen because they belonged to one of the four major ethnic groups living in Hamtramck: Polish Americans, Arab Americans, Albanian Americans, black Americans; or one of the five major ethnic groups living in Pon- tiac: Mexican Americans, Puerto Rican Americans, black Americans, working-class white Americans, or middle-class white Americans. Ac- cording to plan, all groups but one comprised respondents from lower working-class backgrounds; the exception was the middle-class whites who were included as an important reference group. A distinctive de- mographic feature of the greater Detroit area is that working-class whites are, in large proportion, families from the South who have been in the motor industries for generations and who keep close ties with relatives in the southern states.

We selected from the literature certain standard measures of at- titudes and values that seemed appropriate for our purposes and de- veloped others that focused on particular combinations of feelings, at- titudes, and points of view. The measuring instruments had to be unmistakably straightforward and understandable for use with mainly working-class respondents. They also had to be psychometrically sound and so worded that parents would think seriously about particular issues and give us candid, spontaneous reactions. It should be mentioned that the terms "multiculturalism" and "assimilation," which might well have been confusing, were never used in the interviews. Rather, alternative wording, such as "maintain" or "keep" versus "give up" or "not use," was employed.

Once developed and pretested, the final interview schedule was professionally translated into Arabic, Polish, Albanian, and Spanish and tested again with small samples of each of our target groups. Because some parents might have had trouble reading questions, it was decided that the interviewers would read questions aloud and that parents would give their responses in terms of Likert-type numerical scales that ac- companied each item. Thus every question required a response on a seven-point scale defined at one end (1) by such qualifiers as "not at all" or "disagree" and at the other (7) with "extremely" or "agree to-

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tally"; four (4) represented the midpoint on each scale. Although the interviews were kept informal and interpersonal, the respondents were taken through a predetermined progression of questions designed so that systematic psychometric analyses could be carried out on their re- sponses.

Two to four interviewers were selected from within each ethnic group on the basis of recognized respectability. Thus the majority were teachers, social workers, nurses, or the like. All interviewers were fluent bilinguals in a heritage language and English, except for those inter- viewing English-speaking mainstream Americans. That they were in all cases coethnics with the respondents meant that although they held responsible positions, their family backgrounds were typical of the working-class family backgrounds of the respondents. The middle-class white group was interviewed by middle-class whites and the working- class white group, comprising mainly southern whites, was interviewed by a high school teacher and his wife who were unmistakably southern whites themselves.

The use of coethnics posed a potential problem in that we might expect that being interviewed by a member of one's own ethnic group could bias respondents toward multiculturalism. That the interviewers were recognized as effectively bicultural and bilingual, however, pre- sumably reduced such a bias. In any case, it would have been impossible to gain the confidence of these difficult-to-access communities with in- terviewers not of the same ethnic background.

POLISH, ARAB, AND ALBANIAN AMERICANS1

Despite a host of minor and sometimes major differences in atti- tude and outlook, there is a surprising degree of consensus and agree- ment within and among all the key ethnic groups in Hamtramck con- cerning certain fundamental issues. Polish, Arab, and Albanian Americans in our sample were all strongly committed to the idea of multicultur- alism, and they all rejected assimilation as a viable strategy for newcom- ers to America. The Polish parents, while not as extreme as the Arab and Albanian parents, nevertheless showed a clear endorsement of mul- ticulturalism, which is especially strong considering that many of this group are third generation in the United States. The extent of the po- sition taken by these and all other ethnic groups surveyed is depicted graphically in Figure 1.

1 Since this article is essentially a summary of a large-scale investigation, we present here only the major findings; detailed descriptions of methods and data are available in the complete writeup (Lambert and Taylor, 1986). Any summary, by definition, provides an oversimplified and therefore overinterpreted profile that does not do justice to the rich- ness of the perceptions and opinions expressed by the individual parents in our study.

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PRO MULTICULTURALISM

7 -

zn n ..... ...... LNU A ON

I- ~ HAMTRNEUTRALNPOIN

z .~~~~~~~~~~~~jLaJ~~~~.... ..

l RESPONDENTS RESPONDENTS PRO

ASSIM I LATION

FIGURE 1. Group Comparisons of Mean Responses on the Debate over Assimilation versus Multiculturalism

Parents from all three groups believed as well that being bilingual in both the heritage language and English would be a great advantage for their children. The advantages they saw were not limited to feelings of ethnic identity and family solidarity but extended to the world or work. The degree of their support for bilingualism is presented graph- ically in Figure 2. These two figures help to portray one of our major conclusions, namely that these samples of ethnic parents want oppor- tunities for themselves and their children to juggle two cultures, that is, to become bicultural and bilingual Americans rather than to give up heritage cultures and languages to become "American." In short, their responses suggest that they want members of their families to become "double breeds" rather than single breeds or, possibly, half-breeds.

Beyond these fundamental similarities, certain key differences in perspective emerge. In Hamtramck, the Polish parents are not quite as committed as the other ethnic groups to multiculturalism and are not as extreme in terms of the extent to which they think the school should play a role in the maintenance of the heritage language. They appear, however, to have a constellation of attitudes that one would expect of those with a long-standing and secure status within the community. They have a relatively positive self-image; they are optimistic but realistic in their aspirations for their children; and they tend to be relatively tot- erant in their attitudes toward other groups in the community.

Albanian parents are totally committed to multiculturalism and bi-

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O IF YOUR CHILDREN WERE BILINGUAL

O IF YOUR CHILDREN SPOKE ONLY ENGLISH

* IF YOUR CHILDREN SPOKE ONLY YOUR HERITAGE LANGUAGE

THEY WOULD BE SYMPATHETIC 7 -

TO PEOPLE FROM DIFFERENT CULTURAL AND RACIAL GROUPS e _

5-

4

3

2 THEY WOULD NOT BE SYMPATHETIC TO OTHERS

THEY WOULD FEEL A SENSE 7 OF PRIDE ABOUT WHO THEY ARE 6

4

3

2 THEY WOULD NOT FEEL PROUD

THEY WOULD HAVE A CHANCE 7 FOR JOBS OTHERS CANT GET

6

4

3

2 THEY WOULD NOT HAVE A

POLISH ARAB ALBANIAN BLACK

RESPONDENTS

FIGURE 2. Parents' Views on Value of Bilingualism: A Sample of Scales

for Hamtramck Respondents

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lingualism. They have an extremely favorable self-image but are quite negative toward other groups, particularly toward blacks. They also have extremely and perhaps unrealistically high aspirations for their children in the world of work.

The zeal for multiculturalism and bilingualism found among the Albanian parents is shared by the Arab sample. They too have an ex- tremely high self-image; they are especially favorable to the idea of Ar- abic being used in the public school systems; and they are quite neg- ative toward other groups, again particularly toward blacks. They have high aspirations for their children but very modest expectations. In this sense, there would seem to be far less parental pressure for achievement placed on the Arab children than on the Albanian children.

These basic ethnic contrasts are in accord with key value differ- ences, measured by Kluckhohn's (1950) scale of values. For example, compared to Polish parents, Arab and Albanian parents are distinctively more prone to remain close to the nuclear family and to be fatalistic toward life. Also, compared to the Polish parents, the Arabs stress the importance of finding a safe place within an organization rather than striving for individual recognition, while Albanian parents emphasize the futility of planning ahead. We suspect that this distinctive value profile may underlie their tendency to pressure their children to perform by exaggerating the chances of success and by expecting very high levels of accomplishment.

PUERTO RICAN AND MEXICAN AMERICANS

The parents representing the two Hispanic groups in Pontiac- Puerto Rican and Mexican Americans-strongly endorse multicultur- alism (see Figure 1). Puerto Rican parents are especially committed to maintaining their heritage culture and language. Both samples of His- panic parents are also as favorable toward bilingualism as were the eth- nic groups in Hamtramck. Both Puerto Rican and Mexican respondents feel that their children will benefit in terms of their social identity and in the practical world of work by being fluent in both Spanish and En- glish.

Puerto Rican American parents take a particularly strong stance on the role public schools should play in promoting bilingualism. While Mexican American parents want their children to be bilingual, they feel that community-based language classes might be an appropriate context for maintaining the heritage language. Puerto Rican American parents, however, believe that the public school has a responsibility to promote both Spanish and English for their children.

Both Mexican and Puerto Rican American parents have a positive image of their own group. The Puerto Rican respondents, in fact, ex-

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pressed an extremely favorable self-image, in terms of their ratings of Puerto Ricans, relative to other groups, as powerful, likable, smart with practical things, intelligent, and law-abiding. That is, their self-images were not tempered with the reality and humility shown by most other groups of parents. With regard to other ethnic groups in the community, the Hispanic parents are relatively favorable and accepting. Still they show a bias for their own group when asked about having members of other ethnic groups enter their families through marriage. The Puerto Rican American parents are especially cautious in that they are not even very favorably disposed to close social interaction with Mexican Amer- icans.

WHITE MIDDLE- AND WORKING-CLASS AMERICANS

How do our samples of white Americans feel about multicultur- alism and assimilation? Do their perspectives on these issues clash with those of ethnic newcomers? The research suggests two quite different answers to these questions, one for middle-class whites and a second for working-class whites. Middle-class white parents revealed a surpris- ingly favorable perspective on multiculturalism, one that suggests an ap- preciation for the adjustment pressures experienced by ethnic newcom- ers and black Americans alike. They have favorable attitudes toward each of the ethnic groups, including blacks, in the community; they assign each group positive personal attributes; and they express willingness to interact with other groups at all levels of social distance. They also sup- port the idea of keeping heritage cultures and languages alive in the home and community, but draw the line at having public schools use languages other than English in instruction. For their own children, however, they prize bilingualism developed through schooling for its social, intellectual, and career-related consequences. We interpreted this comparatively strong support of multiculturalism and this personal ap- preciation of ethnic newcomers as a derivative of the favorable self-view the middle-class white parents displayed, including feeling secure in their social position.

At the same time, white working-class parents displayed a quite different, essentially hostile attitude not only toward multiculturalism but also toward ethnic newcomers and minorities. Our white working- class sample was comprised mainly of people who had come to Detroit from various southern states, keeping family and residential contacts in both places and moving from one site to another depending on available work. Thus we can in no sense generalize these results to other work- ing-class white Americans. This particular group, with their own dis- tinctively southern American cultural heritage, takes a neutral stand on the debate about multiculturalism versus cultural assimilation. Other than

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this neutrality, their attitudes toward all other ethnic groups in the com- munity are negative and stereotyped to the point of being disdainful. They attribute no favorable characteristics to any group other than white Americans, and they are inclined to keep all other groups at extreme social distances, ethnic newcomers as well as blacks. This generally neg- ative attitude shows itself as well in their manner of questioning why ethnic newcomers should want to keep heritage cultures and languages alive and in the strong stand they take against culture and language training, other than "American," in the public schools. They do, though, see substantial advantages for their own children were they to become bilingual.

The profile of values of the working-class whites on the Kluckhohn scale differs noticeably from that of the middle-class whites, making them less like the middle-class whites than are the two Hispanic groups. Sim- ilarly, their stand against racially and ethnically mixed public schooling not only makes them the distinctively odd group in the community but also makes them the only group that appears racist in outlook.

In sum, then, what we found is a community where the more es- tablished, mainstream white parents fall into two strikingly different groups in terms of attitudes. The white middle-class group emerges as sup- portive of multiculturalism, whereas the white working-class group ap- pears suspicious, unfriendly, and potentially threatened by cultural and racial diversity. This clear contrast in the attitudes of two subgroups of white Americans may pose difficulties for both ethnic newcomers and long-term minorities as they try to adjust to the American scene; if they generalize about white mainstream Americans, from one social-class group to the other, they would likely be misled.

BLACK AMERICANS

What about black Americans' perspectives on multiculturalism, multilingualism, and public education? Are they consonant or dissonant with those of other ethnic minority groups and with those of main- stream white Americans? Since we surveyed separate samples of black parents in Hamtramck and Pontiac, we have a relatively broad base for drawing the following conclusions.

It became clear that black American parents are generally favor- able toward multiculturalism and generally against assimilation. Their attitudes toward other ethnic groups are most similar to those of the socially dominant group in the community. Thus in Hamtramck, their attitude profile approaches that of Polish Americans and in Pontiac, the profile of middle-class whites. In both places, black parents give con- sistent arguments to bolster their stand, as, for example, that pressures to assimilate would perturb the identities of ethnic minorities and that

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the nation would lose the best that each ethnic group has to offer. They recognize that multiculturalism would diversify the cultural norms in the nation, but they do not think this would necessarily promote dis- unity or social conflict. Blacks support strongly the idea that ethnic groups should keep their cultural histories and their traditions alive not only within the family and community but also in the public schools, sug- gesting, even, that equal time should be devoted to such cultural his- tories as to general American history. This strong position on culture in the schools brings them close to the Arab and Albanian American parents in Hamtramck and to the Mexican and Puerto Rican parents in Pontiac. On this one issue, they draw away from the middle-class whites, who support culture maintenance in the home and community but not in the public schools.

On the issue of heritage language maintenance, black parents would like their own children to develop full bidialectal skills involving black English and standard American English, but in their eyes having com- mand of black English only would be dysfunctional and inappropriate. The generality of their position is seen in the strong endorsement they give to other minority groups' attempts to keep their heritage languages alive. They feel that these other languages should be kept up at home and in the community but are hesitant about having ethnic languages used in the public schools. Thus they argue that heritage cultures should be sustained in public schools much more than heritage languages. This position brings the blacks in line with Polish American parents in Ham- tramck and away from the Arabs and Albanians, and in Pontiac, it makes them very similar to middle-class whites and different from the Hispan- ics.

The attitudes of black parents toward their own and other ethnic groups are particularly revealing. Their overall self-view is only mod- erately favorable. They see themselves foremost as very "American" and very "unfairly treated." In comparison with other groups, they are "lik- able," "determined to succeed," "smart," "intelligent," and "hardwork- ing." They also perceive themselves to be rather "aggressive and vio- lent," and not fully "trustworthy." Their views of other groups are simnilarly balanced with good and less good attributes. Violence is apparently very salient in their judgments of themselves and others, but they see blacks as no more aggressive or violent than Mexican, Puerto Rican, or Alban- ian Americans, and as even less aggressive and violent than white Amer- icans. They view white Americans as particularly "powerful" as well as very "American," making whites and blacks much alike except for dif- ferences in power and its consequences, which translates to unfair treat- ment of blacks.

In general, blacks hold basically favorable views of other ethnic groups, and they rate themselves similarly. They recognize that certain

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other ethnic groups are somewhat favorable towards blacks (e.g., the Polish Americans and the middle-class whites), and in these instances they contribute to a mutuality of respect and appreciation. They are also aware of which groups are racist or at least anti black (e.g., the working- class whites and the Arabs and Albanians), but they do not reciprocate particularly hostile sentiments. As a group, then, the black American parents are accepting and charitable toward various ethnic groups, mak- ing their social attitudes much like those of the middle-class whites and the Polish Americans, the two groups with most power and privilege in the two communities studied.

This similarity to the middle-class whites shows up in their value profiles on the Kluckhohn scale, suggesting that whatever the "Ameri- can" way of life might be, blacks contribute as much to these national values as do mainstream whites. That is, blacks are similar to the more privileged whites and dissimilar to other ethnic groups whose values or social attitudes deviate from certain "American" standards, as when, for instance, the Arab Americans place much stress on staying close to one's family or seeking a safe place of work in a large organization, or when Arab and Albanian parents question the value of coeducational school- ing, or when working-class whites question the merits of racially or ethnically mixed schooling.

This similarity of perspectives of black and middle-class whites in our study parallels closely the findings of Lorand Szalay who discovered that the "psychocultural distance between black and white Americans was relatively narrow, compared with the distance between Latin Amer- ican immigrants and both groups" (Cunningham, 1984). Our work, however, reveals striking differences between socioeconomic subgroups of white Americans.

The black parents' outlooks for their children's occupational future are similar to those of other groups: they would certainly like to have their children end up in the top professions, but their real hope is that they can at least become skilled workers. Unlike the white middle-class parents, however, they realize that the chances of success for their chil- dren are very limited, making them willing to be tolerant of (if not de- lighted with) any work at all.

Black parents thus present themselves as supporters of multicul- turalism, as a group that is sympathetic to other ethnic minorities, as a people who have their own valued culture and language style to pre- serve, and as coshapers and cocontributors to an "American way of life."

PUTTING MULTICULTURALISM INTO PRACTICE

During the interviews, parents rated themselves in terms of their fluency in their heritage language and in English. Four of the five ethnic

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newcomer groups to America-the Arab, Albanian, Puerto Rican, and Mexican Americans-reported that they have very strong skills in their heritage languages. What is striking is that these four groups of adults have kept these languages alive over varying years of residence in the United States. Although more than 50 percent of the Arabic Americans have been in the United States for ten to twenty-five years, for instance, 98 percent rate their skills in Arabic at the native fluency point on our scales. There is no systematic relation, for these groups, between time in the United States and loss of heritage language. There are no signs of heritage language attrition over, in some cases, very long periods of United States residence.

There are several ways of interpreting these outcomes. First, one can view them as an indication of the foreign language resources to be found in the United States. Here we have large proportions of four of the five groups surveyed who have kept up native- or near-nativelike control of Arabic, Albanian, and two cultural forms of Spanish. Main- taining the languages in these cases also means introducing younger family members to the languages and cultures, at least to the extent of devel- oping minimum skills of understanding the spoken word. Second, these findings suggest that there may be more resistance to the assimilation process than the assimilationists might expect, even for those who might want to wait for comparable data over longer time spans. Third, these outcomes raise the question of the price language minority group par- ents pay when they resist linguistic and cultural assimilation in this fash- ion. From a societal perspective, it appears to be difficult to develop maximum skills in English when the heritage language is maintained. The Arab, Puerto Rican, and Albanian American parents rate themselves as decidedly poorer in English than in the heritage language by a factor of two full scale positions on our seven-point rating scales. Mainstream Americans might well ask questions about this discrepancy, arguing that minority language families jeopardize their chances of advancement in the United States if deficits in English language skills are not sur- mounted. They might even argue that perhaps this resistance to assim- ilation through language has kept the respondents we are dealing with in the working-class ranks. The Mexican American parents appear to have met this challenge, however, since they rate themselves as equally skilled in Spanish and English. As the Mexican American parents have been in the United States for the longest period of time of any group included in the study, their bilinguality suggests that with time, or in spite of time, the two-language balancing act can be carried off suc- cessfully. But it could be argued that its success has taken continuous input, through immigration, of new waves of Mexican Americans.

The Polish American parent group is the one exception among our five language minority groups. They have not kept up Polish to a level

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comparable to that of the heritage languages of the other four groups and although their English is relatively stronger than their Polish, it is not, on the average, considered perfectly nativelike. On the surface, this might be interpreted as an example of a group being caught between two cultures or two cultural sources of influence, leaving them with nonnativelike control of either language. Actually, on analysis we find two separate subgroups who contribute to the average: those in our Polish sample who have only been in the United States for a short period of time and who have not developed full skills in English but are strong in Polish, and those who have been here for ten years or more and who have nativelike skills in English, but who have not kept up Polish. And yet both these subgroups turn up in our working-class Polish sample, indicating that, while resistance to assimilation through language may contribute to class status, it is not the determining factor. Clearly, more research is called for on this complex issue. Our study reveals that lan- guage minority groups receive differing degrees of social pressure to maintain heritage languages or to master the national language. Time of residence in the United States seems to promote full Spanish-English bilingualism for the Mexican Americans, while in the case of Polish Americans, it promotes English at the expense of Polish.

Thus the majority of our parental groups keep their heritage lan- guages alive. But how about their children? Certainly they will have lived with parents who speak heritage languages, but there is no guar- antee that the languages will be picked up and used. Other data throw interesting light on these questions. Apparently, three of our groups the Arab, Puerto Rican, and Albanian Americans-are able to relay the heritage language to their children so that the latter are as nativelike in the heritage language as their parents. In addition, the children appear to have surpassed their parents by developing higher-level skills in En- glish. Since we already know that the aim of all five ethnolinguistic groups is to provide for full bilingual and bicultural competence for their chil- dren, it seems that in these three cases, the wishes of the parents are being satisfied. We presume that skill in the heritage language has been acquired in the home while English has simultaneously been brought up to nativelike levels through the school and the outside-home envi- ronment. These outside-the-home influences are the likely catalysts that permit the children to surpass the parents in English.

These three cases indicate that integration into a new society need not entail the loss of heritage languages and cultures. Instead, the new language and culture can be added, without necessarily replacing the old. If the "replacement effects" of assimilation can be avoided, then the second or third generation can more easily and more comfortably be- come bilingual and bicultural than can the first.

Of all five groups surveyed, the Mexican and Polish American fam-

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ilies have been in the United States for the longest periods of time. We find that children in long-standing Polish American families have very limited skills in the heritage language and very strong skills in English. Thus some ethnolinguistic groups do show the replacement or eradi- cation effects of linguistic assimilation just as clearly as other groups resist those effects by developing full bilingual abilities. Still to be dis- covered are the within-family and outside-family influences that under- lie these very pronounced differences.

Will new generations of Arab, Puerto-Rican, and Albanian Ameri- can children go the way of the Mexican and Polish American children when their families have been in residence in the United States longer? After some ten years of residence, the parents of these three groups have themselves kept the heritage language strong, as have their chil- dren. But will new generations of Arab, Puerto Rican, or Albanian Amer- ican parents keep these skills when they have been here for twenty or thirty years, comparable to the residence time of the Mexican and Polish American families in our study?

The Mexican and Polish American cases are puzzling from another point of view. Why do these parents, who show such a strong desire to maintain their heritage cultures and languages and to foster bilinguality for their children, not keep the language alive over generations or, in the case of the Polish parents, even within their own generation? Is it that these particular parental groups discourage the amplification of the heritage language, or is it that their children are under especially strong pressure to become American and to erase traces of foreignness? These questions can only be addressed through further research focused on various within-family and outside-family factors that may or may not support the promotion of biculturality and bilinguality through gener- ations.

APPLYING MULTICULTURALISM IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL SETTING

It is one thing for parents to have hopes for the maintenance of heritage culture but a different and more demanding thing to make it work. In the present study, we have found some cases where it is work- ing effectively and where it could continue through generations, thereby satisfying parental hopes. We have found other cases where it seems not to be working and consequently leaves parental desires unsatisfied.

Events outside the family system sometimes change substantively the normal course of heritage language usage. We brought about one such event as part of this study. We had found that most ethnic groups surveyed supported the idea of introducing heritage languages on a part- time basis in the public schools, although some suggested that com-

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munity or church-run classes could be equally good alternatives. The underlying arguments were, first, that use of the heritage language in instruction could help language minority children grasp new concepts through a familiar language and thus keep them from falling behind and, second, that using a heritage language in school even on a part-time basis would legitimize the cultural background of the children involved and thereby enhance a sense of ethnic pride and identity. We already knew that certain ethnic groups of parents would be particularly pleased if such an intervention were possible. The Puerto Rican American par- ents, for instance, had given us the impression that Spanish should be offered as a school language for their children as a right of citizenship. Arab American parents had given the impression that the part-time use of Arabic in school would buttress their own attempts to keep a valued heritage alive.

The findings of our study-that all the ethnic groups in both Ham- tramck and Pontiac wanted to retain their heritage cultures and lan- guages; that all supported other ethnic groups in their desires for mul- ticulturalism; and that all felt that public schools had at least some role to play in this process-were presented in the form of feedback to members of the ethnic communities and to the teaching staff and ad- ministrators of the local public schools. Several parents suggested con- ducting a pilot "educational experiment" in Arabic partial immersion for a class of grade one pupils in Hamtramck. The basic idea was to give these pupils an opportunity to be educated through their home lan- guage for half of each school day. The program was voluntary, and par- ents became involved from the start in planning the curriculum. The school administrators in Hamtramck fully supported the idea.

Arabic was the major home language for the majority of pupils in the pilot group, although, interestingly enough, four fully Anglophone families registered their children for what they saw as an "enriching experience." "Partial immersion" means that for half of each school day this subgroup of pupils moved to a separate room with a separate teacher, leaving the other half of the class in the homeroom with an English- speaking teacher who followed a standard all-English curriculum. Those who moved to the Arabic immersion teacher thus had half of their in- struction presented exclusively through the Arabic language. This also meant that they had half less time in English language instruction than did the pupils who stayed with the English-speaking teacher, a point to remember in the evaluations that follow.

The Arabic-speaking teacher taught all aspects of the subjects re- quired by the conventional curriculum but did so in the Arabic lan- guage. The teacher also reserved a certain amount of instructional time for Arabic language arts. This was needed to maintain age-appropriate reading and writing skills in the language. In addition, since four pupils

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in the program did not have an Arabic language background, the lan- guage arts element in their case was crucial for the development of literacy skills.

Of special interest are the end-of-year achievement results for chil- dren who have had such an educational experience. The results of this pilot study indicate that the Arabic partial immersion experience in no apparent way placed these minority language pupils in jeopardy in their development of English language skills, nor in other subject matters measured by the subtests of the Metropolitan Achievement Test, an En- glish language test. Thus, even though half of their instruction in math- ematics, science, and social science was given in Arabic, they performed as well on English tests of these matters as did the all-English, non- Arabic control children. Developing Arabic skills had, if anything, helped these pupils to keep up with and in one instance surpass English-speak- ing pupils on end-of-year tests of achievement in grade one subjects. This finding is consonant with previous research with language minority students who have the opportunity to learn partly through their own language (see Lambert, 1984). Whether the same trends hold at higher grades can only be determined by following these children, and the follow-up groups that are coming into the first grade and the immersion program, as they advance in years.

CONCLUSION

In summary, this study was planned as an up-to-date pulse-taking of urban Americans' attitudes toward multiculturalism versus cultural assimilation. It was found that (1) there is strong cross-subgroup sup- port for culture and language maintenance not only from working-class subgroups of ethnolinguistic minority groups but also from working- class blacks and middle-class whites; (2) there is support for multicul- turalism even from certain subgroups who have resided in the United States for over twenty-five years (e.g., Polish and Mexican Americans); (3) all subgroups support bilingualism for their children, not only for cultural and identity reasons, but also because bilingualism is seen as a means of enhancing economic and career advancement; (4) all ethno- linguistic immigrant groups endorse the idea of public school involve- ment in teaching about heritage cultures, with support also from two long-term resident groups, the blacks and middle-class whites; (5) some groups, (e.g., the Arabs, the Albanians, and the Hispanics) believe that public schools should use heritage languages for instruction, while oth- ers (the Polish, blacks, and the middle-class whites) have reservations; and (6) the working-class white group is distinctly out of line with all others because of attitudes and values that are negative toward multi- culturalism as well as racist.

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