Seymour Martin Lipset's Analysis

With the United States being Canada’s only neighbor, comparisons and similarities have been made regarding all forms of the two nations for many years. Seymour Martin Lipset tries to explain the difference between Canada and the United States in the 1980s through different aspects, such as religion, economy, culture and politics. However, it is a very difficult task to break down the two country’s similarities and differences through only a few pages. While I believe that Lipset’s arguments on the similarities and differences between Canada and the United States may have been effective in the 1980’s, I do not believe that the same arguments would hold the same weight today as they did back then. Factors have changed within both of the two nations
One nation being universalistic, the other particularistic. Lipset’s facts regarding total melting pot versus mosaic has gotten very mixed in todays’ societies. The concept of the American Dream is one that many, including non-Americans are familiar with, as it is seen in movies, magazines and other media outlets. The idea that success and prosperity will be achieved through hard work within a functioning society with few barriers is one that immigrants quickly and willingly have adapted to. They begin to identify as an American first and put their original nationality second. This ultimately leads to a concept called assimilation, the process of immigrants integrating themselves into a new community and also losing some, if not all aspects of their own heritage as well. Ruben Rumbaut explains assimilation on different levels: “At the group level, assimilation may involve the absorption of one or many minority groups into the mainstream, or the merging of minority groups —e.g., second-generation West Indians “becoming black Americans.” At the individual level, assimilation denotes the cumulative changes that make individuals of one ethnic group more acculturated, integrated and identified with the members of another” (Smelser and Baltes, 82). This is a process
Participating in a community populated by a different ethnic group which is filled with that groups’ political and religious beliefs, culture, and ideologies leads to the inevitable mix and clash of these factors in which the majority usually wins, unless the minority willingly put effort into upholding their heritage for generations to come (Smelser and Baltes, 84). This leads to cultural pluralism, not multiculturalism. The core difference between the two terms is that cultural pluralism still has a dominant culture with its own laws, values and identity, while multiculturalism lacks a dominant culture. Furthermore, a weakened culture may be the bridge from cultural pluralism to multiculturalism (Wikipedia). For Canada, in contrast, newcomers do not have to identify as Canadians. They keep their original identity and try to retain their culture in the new world. Canada became the first country to adapt multiculturalism as an official policy in 1971