What It Asks You to Erase in Order to Be Tolerated.
Assimilation.
This is the word being thrown around these days, casually, as if it were harmless.
According to the dictionary, assimilation is the process through which a minority adopts the values and culture of a more dominant group. But what does that really mean in practice. What does it cost. What does it take from a human being.
Does it mean learning the language. Or does it mean stripping yourself of your own.
Does it mean understanding customs. Or erasing the ones that shaped you.
Does it mean coexistence. Or disappearance.
Because in real life, assimilation rarely looks gentle.
It looks like being asked to shrink.
To dilute.
To reduce yourself into something more palatable.
In nature, some animals change color to survive. They blend into their environment not because they want to, but because the alternative is death. It is survival mode, pure and simple.
Is that what is being asked of immigrants.
To always be surviving.
To never fully live.
To never fully thrive.
I am Haitian.
And right now, being Haitian feels like a curse.
This has happened before. In the early 1980s, many Haitians in the United States were afraid to say where they were from. Afraid of threats. Afraid of violence. Afraid of losing work. Afraid of being marked. Some paid with their lives. Silence became a shield.
We are watching that cycle repeat itself.
When politicians and media figures speak of “undesirable people,” of “shitholes,” of groups that should not be here, they are not speaking in abstraction. They are speaking about me. About my family. About my people.
And yet, I know Haiti.
I grew up there.
I know these people.
Haitians are among the most welcoming, resilient, hardworking, and intelligent people I have ever known. I have spent most of my adult life in the United States, and all it has taught me is this: human beings are human beings everywhere.
The myth of superiority collapses the moment you look closely.
So what is assimilation really asking.
It asks you to erase the things that make you whole.
Your grandparents’ stories.
The way you eat.
The way you speak.
Your worldview.
Your humor.
Your grief.
Your music.
You become a skeleton of yourself.
Always people-pleasing.
Always bending.
Always watering yourself down for crumbs of acceptance.
Not even full acceptance. Tolerance. Maybe. On a good day.
You contort yourself into something unrecognizable. And then, after all that effort, you are reminded that you will never truly belong. That no matter how much you erase, you will never be one of them.
You advocate for them.
You fight for them.
You defend them.
And still, you are thrown out the moment you forget your place.
That is the violence of assimilation.
You suffocate quietly.
You learn to silence your own screams.
You become a hollow version of the dominant culture. Disconnected. Disaligned.
So detached from yourself that you may even turn against your own people, believing that proximity to power will save you.
It never does.
You know it will never be given. And yet you strive. And strive. And strive. Until something inside you dies.
That is the price of assimilation.
Some people survive this by wearing a cloak. Outside, they perform what is required. But at home, the scent of the land remains. It lives in the food. In the language spoken behind closed doors. In the music. In the songs. In the books. In the traditions. In the plants they grow.
For some, the accent leaves.
For others, it refuses to go.
It becomes a war in the mouth. The mother tongue fighting to stay alive. Confusing sentences. Mixed grammar. A refusal to surrender.
The inner turmoil is immense.
That is what it takes.
You become a walking contradiction. Always negotiating yourself. Always editing yourself. Because the real you is considered too much. Too colorful. Too loud. Too spiritual. Too different. Too human.
Too undigestible.
One conversation with a coworker made this clear to me. He spoke about the superiority of Western culture. About how some cultures are incompatible. About how certain people need to be removed.
He was talking about me.
About my people.
About my culture.
What he called unacceptable is my essence. And I will carry it everywhere I go.
Where I am from, we welcome others without trying to dominate them. We are exposed to many cultures, and if something resonates with our spirit, it is appreciated as it is. There is no need to erase ourselves to accept another.
So if we are to talk about civilization, tell me this.
Which is more civilized.
The culture that seeks to erase others.
Or the one that makes room.
You tell me.
Assimilation is not neutral.
It is not harmless.
It is not just adaptation.
It is often a demand to disappear politely.
And I refuse.
Until Next time,
Xoxo, JPP
