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Discussion of the assimilation of Puerto Ricans in the United States has focused on two fa
In contrast, the "colonialist" approach of island-based writers such as Eduardo SedaBonilla, Manuel Maldonado-Denis, and Luis Nieves-Falcon tends to view assimilation as the forced loss of national culture in an unequal contest with imposed foreign values. There is, of course, a strong tradition of cultural accommodation among other Puerto Rican thinkers. The writings of Eugenio Fernandez Mendez clearly exemplify this tradition, and many supporters of Puerto Rico's commonwealth status share the same universalizing orientation. But the Puerto Rican intellectuals who have written most about the assimilation process in the United States all advance cultural nationalist views, advocating the preservation of minority cultural distinctions and rejecting what they see as the subjugation of colonial nationalities.
This cultural and political emphasis is appropriate, but the colonialist thinkers misdirect it, overlooking the class relations at work in both Puerto Rican and North American history. They pose the clash of national culture as an absolute polarity, with each culture understood as static and undifferentiated. Yet both the Puerto Rican and North American traditions have been subject to constant challenge from cultural forces within their own societies, forces that may move toward each other in ways that cannot be written off as mere "assimilation". Consider, for example, the indigenous and AfroCaribbean traditions in Puerto Rican culture and how they influence and are influenced by other Caribbean cultures and Black cultures in the United States. The elements of coercion and inequality, so central to cultural contact according to the colonialist framework, play no role in this kind of convergence of racially and ethnically different elements of the same social class.
The author's main purpose is to ______.
A.criticize the emphasis on social standing in discussions of the assimilation of Puerto Ricans in the United States
B.support the thesis that assimilation has not been a benign process for Puerto Ricans
C.defend a view of the assimilation of Puerto Ricans that emphasizes the preservation of national culture
D.indicate deficiencies in two schools if thoughts in the assimilation of Puerto Ricans in the United States