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  3. Discussion of the assimilation of Puerto Ricans in the United States has focused on two factors: social standing and the loss of

Discussion of the assimilation of Puerto Ricans in the United States has focused on two factors: social standing and the loss of

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问题     Discussion of the assimilation of Puerto Ricans in the United States has focused on two factors: social standing and the loss of national culture. In general, excessive stress is placed on one factor or the other, depending on whether the commentator is North American or Puerto Rican. Many American social scientists , such as Oscar Handling, Joseph Fitzpatrick, and Oscar Lewis, consider Puerto Ricans as the most recent in the long line of ethnic entrants to occupy the lowest rung on the social ladder. Such a " socio-demographic" approach tends to regard assimilation as a benign process, taking for granted increased economic advantage and inevitable cultural integration, in a supposedly egalitarian context. However, this approach fails to take into account the colonial nature of the Puerto Rican case, with this group, unlike their European predecessors, coming from a nation politically subordinated to the United States. E-ven the "radical" critiques of this mainstream research model, such as the critique developed in Divided Society, attach the issue of ethnic assimilation too mechanically to factors of economic and social mobility, and are thus unable to illuminate the cultural subordination of Puerto Ricans as a colonial minority.
    In contrasts, the "colonialist" approach of island-based writers such as Eduardo Seda-Bpnilla, Manuel Maldonado-Denis, and Luis Neives-Falcon tends to view assimilation as the forced loss of national culture accommodation among other Puerto Ricans 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 colonialists thinkers misdirect it, overlooking the class relations at work in both Puerto Rican and North American history. They pose the clash of national cultures as an absolute polarity, with each culture understood a static and undifferentiated. Yet both 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 Afro-Caribbean traditions in Puerto Rican culture and how they influence and 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 class.
The author’s main purpose is to______.
选项 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 of thought on the assimilation of Puerto Ricans in the United States
答案D
解析 此题属推理题，考查作者的写作目的，无法定位到具体某一段，因此需要通览全文，通过阅读可以发现第一段作者集中阐述了北美社会学家的观点，而第二段则陈述了波多黎各社会学家的观点，文章最后一段第三句笔锋一转，用Yet起句对两种观点都进行了点评，故选项[D]更符合文义，为正确答案。
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