Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff Lauren vogle bam here. For over a century,
Speaker 1: America has been described as a melting pot in which
Speaker 1: immigrants from a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds slowly
Speaker 1: similar together, melding into an all American stew But is
Speaker 1: that really the way it works, or even how it
Speaker 1: should work. Is total assimilation the only way to be
Speaker 1: an American? And is it healthy for individuals to abandon
Speaker 1: their cultural heritage in whole or in part in order
Speaker 1: to adopt the customs of their new home. But we
Speaker 1: spoke with says Schwartz, a professor of public health sciences
Speaker 1: at the University of Miami, who believes that it's time
Speaker 1: to shelve the melting pot metaphor a Schwartz studies ac culturation,
Speaker 1: which is the process by which a person's cultural sense
Speaker 1: of self changes, as when you moved to a new
Speaker 1: country or are raised in an immigrant home, and the
Speaker 1: effects of a culturation on physical and mental health. It
Speaker 1: turns out that assimilation is only one type of acculturation,
Speaker 1: and that fully assimilated Americans have some of the worst
Speaker 1: health outcomes. Immigrant families are actually most likely to thrive
Speaker 1: in America if they embrace aspects of both their native
Speaker 1: culture and their adoptive land. Public health researchers like Schwartz
Speaker 1: call it the immigrant paradox. He said, there's a whole
Speaker 1: literature that suggests that foreign born Americans are doing better
Speaker 1: than US born individuals on many different health indicators, heart health,
Speaker 1: weight and obesity, diet, depression, anxiety, substance use, you name it.
Speaker 1: So what are the alternatives to assimilation? And there's an
Speaker 1: old joke that's well known in Europe. What do you
Speaker 1: call a person who speaks two languages bilingual? What do
Speaker 1: you call a person who only speaks one language American?
Speaker 1: Schwartz said. In the United States, unlike a lot of
Speaker 1: countries in the world, we actively discourage people from having
Speaker 1: multiple cultural identities. We just want people to be American.
Speaker 1: Even the fact that we equate a culturation and assimilation
Speaker 1: says a lot about our culture and how we think
Speaker 1: people should behave. However, it is important to note that
Speaker 1: the culturation is a two way street. Discriminatory behavior based
Speaker 1: on an immigrants race ethnicity by the receiving country can
Speaker 1: make it much harder for immigrants to achieve healthy by
Speaker 1: cultural integration. Traditionally, there's been an assumption that the ac
Speaker 1: culturation process in the United States ran in a straight line.
Speaker 1: At one end of the spectrum stood the recently arrived immigrant,
Speaker 1: still carrying around the language, traditions, and customs of the
Speaker 1: so called old country. But as the immigrant moved along
Speaker 1: the line over time, they'd slowly discard their foreignness as
Speaker 1: they gradually acquired language and customs of America. But starting
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, researchers began to question this straight
Speaker 1: line assimilation assumption. Psychologist John Barry came up with a
Speaker 1: pioneering model that showed four different responses or strategies, including assimilation,
Speaker 1: that immigrants used to navigate life in their new home.
Speaker 1: So first you've got assimilation, but that being that you're
Speaker 1: willing to discard your culture of origin and fully identify
Speaker 1: with the new culture. The sort of opposite is separation,
Speaker 1: wherein you hold onto your original culture at all costs
Speaker 1: and don't want to adopt the new culture. Then there's marginalization,
Speaker 1: in which you don't identify with either your heritage culture
Speaker 1: or the new one. It's a rare situation. And finally
Speaker 1: there's integration, sometimes called biculturalism. You want to maintain a
Speaker 1: strong connection with your heritage culture while interacting with and
Speaker 1: acquiring traits from the new culture. According to Schwartz, there's
Speaker 1: strong evidence that the assimilation strategy is bad for your health.
Speaker 1: The worst psychological effects of assimilation are felt by second
Speaker 1: generation Americans, children of immigrants who were either born in
Speaker 1: America or raised here from a young age. Second generation
Speaker 1: kids are sometimes so eager to fit in that they
Speaker 1: turn their backs on their parents customs and traditions entirely.
Speaker 1: The Shwarts explained, they basically reject their family's culture, and
Speaker 1: that tends to produce pretty negative results, higher rates of
Speaker 1: anxiety and depression, substance abuse, and worse family relationships. The
Speaker 1: best psychological and health outcomes, on the other hand, are
Speaker 1: achieved by individuals who embrace by culturalism, a balanced integration
Speaker 1: of their heritage and received cultures. Schwartz says that people
Speaker 1: who are able to comfortably blend their native and acquired
Speaker 1: cultures have quote much better outcomes in terms of higher
Speaker 1: self esteem, lower depression, lower anxiety, and better family relationships.
Speaker 1: Immigrants who learned to successfully inhabit two cultural worlds are
Speaker 1: the same people who draw of the immigrant paradox, in
Speaker 1: which Americans born outside the US achieve significantly better physical
Speaker 1: and mental health upcomes compared to their native born or
Speaker 1: assimilated neighbors. But why is this? Diet is one simple explanation,
Speaker 1: says Schwartz, because immigrant families are more likely to prepare
Speaker 1: home cooked meals than the typical American family, which tends
Speaker 1: to eat out a lot and consume more processed foods.
Speaker 1: But there are also significant psychological factors at play. The
Speaker 1: most important has to do with the values of American
Speaker 1: culture versus just about everybody else. A short said, the
Speaker 1: US consistently ranks as the most individualistic country in the world.
Speaker 1: We're more self reliant and less reliant on other people
Speaker 1: than basically any other country on the planet. So most
Speaker 1: people who come here from other places are more collectivist
Speaker 1: than we are. Let's break that down. What does collectivism
Speaker 1: look like as a cultural value. It stresses the importance
Speaker 1: of family above all else. It places an emphasis on
Speaker 1: the greater good and doing what's best for the community,
Speaker 1: not just yourself, and it's a less competitive way to
Speaker 1: look at the world. Schwartz says that cultural values that
Speaker 1: promote close knit families and selfless service can protect against
Speaker 1: a lot of the mental health issues that plague many Americans.
Speaker 1: He said, there's a reason why we have so much
Speaker 1: anxiety because we're so highly individualistic and competitive. We have
Speaker 1: to compete against other people for everything, and if you
Speaker 1: can't keep up, there's less of a support system ready
Speaker 1: and waiting to help you. In this country. When we
Speaker 1: talk about helping other people, some people want to shout socialism.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the issues that we have.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Kleine. For more on this and lots of other
Speaker 1: curious topics, visit house toffworks dot com. Brain Stuff is
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