Research Paper on:
Assimilation Ideologies and Ethnic, Racial, and Cultural Diversity

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
account for the variety of behaviors and characteristics we see among our citizens. The most often utilized explanation seems to frequently revolve around race and ethnicity. Indeed, ethnic  and racial diversity has become the expectation, not the exception in our modern society and we tend to try to explain even the most basic of human behaviors in those  terms. There are three major ideologies of assimilation. These are "Anglo-Conformity", "the Melting Pot", and "Cultural Pluralism". While the first two  terms relate to a strong pressure toward assimilation, the release of culture, racial, and ethnic behaviors, in favor of taking on the ways of the majority (a majority which most  often is Anglo), the last term is an attempt to explain the inevitable cultural diversity which continues to prevail even in the face of considerable resistance. In reality, neither  of these terms is adequate to explain the complexity of cultures which we witness in the U.S. Gordon (1964), for example, finds that both the term "melting pot" and  the term "cultural pluralism" are simply inadequate to describe the social organization at play in America. Emphasizing that the complex social  organization which is in existence is shaped by race, religion, nationality alike; Gordon (1964) suggests a more accurate terminology for the description of this phenomenon would be "structural pluralism".  While immigrants to this country have been shaped by assimilative and acculturative forces, they have also been shaped by significant structural separation (Gordon, 1964). Ethnic background, social class, and  intellectual interests interact to form a mosaic of subgroups (Gordon, 1964). Steinberg (1989) agrees that there is a complexity of race,