"Rather than be asked to abandon one's own heritage and to adapt to the mores of the new country, one was expected to possess a treasure of foreign skills and customs that would enrich the resources of American living"
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Arnheim frames immigration as an aesthetic and civic upgrade, not a remedial course in becoming “American.” The key maneuver is in the verb expected: assimilation isn’t just rejected; it’s replaced by a different social demand, one that treats the newcomer as a carrier of “treasure.” That word choice matters. Treasure implies value that pre-exists arrival, something to be offered, exchanged, even coveted. It also quietly flips the power dynamic: the host nation is no longer the unquestioned standard-setter but a place whose “resources” are expandable, incomplete, in need of replenishment.
The subtext is a rebuke to the familiar script of immigrant gratitude that ends in self-erasure. “Abandon one’s own heritage” is cast as a loss not only for the immigrant but for the country, a cultural impoverishment disguised as cohesion. By contrast, “foreign skills and customs” aren’t framed as quaint add-ons; they are instruments that “enrich” everyday life, suggesting that pluralism is practical, not merely tolerant.
Context sharpens the stakes. Arnheim was a German-born Jewish intellectual-artist who fled Nazi Europe and made a career in the United States, writing influentially about perception and art. Coming from a world where nationalism turned cultural purity into violence, he champions a model of belonging that treats difference as an asset rather than a threat. There’s idealism here, but also a strategic realism: in a modern, mass society, the nation’s vitality depends on what it can absorb without flattening. Arnheim argues for a cultural ecology, not a melting pot.
The subtext is a rebuke to the familiar script of immigrant gratitude that ends in self-erasure. “Abandon one’s own heritage” is cast as a loss not only for the immigrant but for the country, a cultural impoverishment disguised as cohesion. By contrast, “foreign skills and customs” aren’t framed as quaint add-ons; they are instruments that “enrich” everyday life, suggesting that pluralism is practical, not merely tolerant.
Context sharpens the stakes. Arnheim was a German-born Jewish intellectual-artist who fled Nazi Europe and made a career in the United States, writing influentially about perception and art. Coming from a world where nationalism turned cultural purity into violence, he champions a model of belonging that treats difference as an asset rather than a threat. There’s idealism here, but also a strategic realism: in a modern, mass society, the nation’s vitality depends on what it can absorb without flattening. Arnheim argues for a cultural ecology, not a melting pot.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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