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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 North American social scientists, such as Oscar Handlin, Joseph Fitzpatrick, and Oscar Lewis, consider Puerto Ricans as the most recent in a long line of ethnic entrants to occupy the lowest rung on the social ladder.  Such a "sociodemographic" 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.  Even 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 contrast, the "colonialist" approach of island-based writers, such as Eduardo Seda Bonilla, 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 cultures as an absolute polarity, with each culture uuderstood 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 Mro-Caribbean 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 "colonialist" approach is so called because its practitioners ______.
选项 A、have a strong tradition of cultural accommodation
B、emphasize the class relations at work in both Puerto Rican and North American history
C、pose the clash of national cultures as an absolute polarity
D、regard the political relation of Puerto Rico to the United States as a significant factor in the experience of Puerto Rico
答案D
解析 从第一段可知，波多黎各是一个在政治上从属于美国的国家。第二段中所谓“殖民主义”的分析方法，和第一段中提到的“社会人口学”的分析形成鲜明的对比。前者为岛内学者主要采用的方法，后者为美国(或北美)的社会科学家采用。二者是截然不同的。
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