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those who enter already developed secondary labor markets. The
immigrant enclaves may hasten one aspect of the assimilation process
while retarding another. Over the past century, views and value
judgments regarding assimilation have changed. Gordon (1964) finds
that during the 1800s there was a strong political push for immigrants
to take on the perspectives of the dominant culture: white, Anglo-
Saxon, Protestant. That movement gave way to the Melting Pot theory
which was strong from the 1920s to the 1950s and still persists today
(see Arndorfer, 1982). According to that theory, the .S. is made up
of a number of immigrant groups who have all contributed cultural
characteristics which make the U.S. culture a blend of many different
groups. The net effect of the two theories is that the immigrants must
change to become like the host culture, the second one being a somewhat
modified version of the first in that the host culture is also in the
process of changing to become slightly more like that of the immigrants.
Many scholars and ethnic leaders have called for the acceptance of
cultural pluralism (Dinnerstein, Nichols, & Reimers, 1976; Gordon,
1964; Safa, 1982). Binder (1979) writes that the U.S. is no mythic,
multicultural melting pot and does itself no good in expecting or
forcing total assimilation. Kessler-Harris and Yans-McLaughlin (1978)
find that in the third generation, the immigrant group begins to seek
to regain ethnic identity lost by their parents and grandparents in
the process of assimilation.
Conflict Perspective
Portes (1969) was one of the first to point out the fallacy of
assuming that immigrants necessarily want to become acculturated to