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