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  3. Discussion of the assimilation of Puerto Ricans in the United States has focused

Discussion of the assimilation of Puerto Ricans in the United States has focused

游客2023-12-15  34
问题 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 whether the commentator is North American or Puerto Rican. Many North American social scientists, such as Oscar Handlin, Joseph Fitzpatrick, and Oscar Lewis, consider Puerto Ricans the most recent in a long line of ethnic entrants to occupy the lowest rung 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 illustrate the cultural subordination if Puerto Ricans as a colonial minority.
   In contrast, the "colonialist" approach of island-based writers such as Eduardo SedaBonilla, Manuel Maldonado-Denis, and Luis Nieves-Falcon tends to view assimilation as the forced loss of national culture in an unequal 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 rejecting 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 at work in both Puerto Rican and North American history. They pose the clash of national culture 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 AfroCaribbean 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.  [br] It can be inferred form the passage that a writer such as Eugenio Fernandez Mendez would most likely agree with which of the following statements concerning members of minority ethnic groups?
选项 A、It is necessary for the members of such groups to adapt to the culture of the majority.
B、The members of such groups generally encounter a culture that is static and undifferentiated.
C、Social mobility is the most important feature of the experience of members of such groups.
D、Social scientists should emphasize the cultural and political aspects of the experience of members of such groups.
答案 A
解析 此题为推理题。这题同样也是出在第二段，“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,”，句中的tradition少数民族成员必须适应多数人的文化。所以，可以选出A项，Eugenio Fernandez Mendez很可能是希望少数民族成员必须适应多数人的文化的传统。
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