Social Assimilation Among American Catholic National-Origin Groups

The current resurgence of interest in white ethnicity largely has taken the form of asserting the continued vitality of ethnic communities. Current scholars, following Gordon's (1964) well-known distinction between acculturation and social or structural assimilation, acknowledge the great extent of acculturation but maintain that, nonetheless, social assimilation has not taken place. They claim, in other words, that primary relationships are generally between individuals of like ethnicity. This paper, using data about Catholic national-origin groups in the early 1960s, finds little support for these present assertions of ethnic vitality.