InternationalPlayboy said:
Back in the day it was irish, then italians, then asians, etc. Everyone assimilates at some point, generations down. Again, this is for legal immigration not including slavery / illegal border hopping from mexico.
Black Americans (which the reparations article was about) don't and -- I think it's fair to predict -- won't assimilate. Not that I think they should....but, good or bad, it's not going to happen.
Regarding immigration in general, conditions today are fundamentally different than they were in the past. It used to be an expectation, prior to the mid-20th century, that assimilation would be actively and aggressively engaged in. For instance, many European immigrants during the Ellis Island era were forced to change their name to something that sounded more American (i.e. English.) Today, the government makes forms in countless different languages. It's a huge shift.
We now have an ideology of anti-assimilation promoted by academia and the left. New immigrants are taught to, at best, have mixed feelings about integrating into mainstream, English-speaking culture. This idea -- that assimilation is a bad thing to be avoided -- didn't even exist when all those Irish, Italians, Germans, Chinese and others came over 100+ years ago.
Adding to the problem: is there even an American culture to assimilate into anymore? I suspect there really was 100 years ago, but what is there now? There's TV and Hollywood, yeah. White people have white guilt and endless sorts of privilege to atone for. Every other group has its victim status identity politics.
Mainstream American culture, whatever is left of it, was predominantly derived from white culture. Whites were nearly 90% of the U.S. population through the 1960s.
These days, even white people (at least in big urban centers) aren't too enthusiastic about being white and don't really view it as being anything culturally. Who wants to assimilate into that?