A Seat at Someone Else’s Table

Assimilation and Acculturation: How & Why

By Garry Wendell

Imagine a child named Marcus being invited to dinner at a friend’s home for the first time. Before arriving, his mother reminds him to be polite, say “thank you,” and respect the family’s rules.

When Marcus sits at the table, he quickly notices that things are different. In his home, family members serve themselves as soon as the food is placed on the table. At his friend’s home, everyone waits until the father finishes saying grace. In Marcus’s family, dinner is filled with overlapping conversations, laughter, teasing, and people reaching across the table. In this home, the children wait to be served, keep their voices low, and ask permission before leaving the table.

Marcus isn’t sure what to do. He watches his friend and follows his example. He bows his head during grace, waits until everyone has been served, speaks quietly, and asks, “May I be excused?” when dinner is over.

Marcus has not rejected his family’s customs. He has learned how to behave respectfully in another family’s home. This small encounter offers a starting point for understanding acculturation, although cultural change involves more than a single dinner.

Learning another way

Acculturation involves cultural change through contact between people from different cultural backgrounds. In Marcus’s story, learning another family’s customs does not require forgetting his own. When he returns home, he may tell his family about the experience. He may even decide that he likes one or two of the customs he observed. His understanding has expanded.

Acculturation does not always flow in only one direction. Marcus may also influence his friend. Perhaps his friend later visits Marcus’s home, enjoys the lively conversation, and discovers that respect can be expressed through warmth, participation, and laughter—not only through silence and formality. Both children can learn from each other.

When learning becomes pressure

Now imagine that Marcus begins to believe his friend’s family has the only proper way to eat dinner. He becomes embarrassed by the noise and informality in his own home. He asks his parents not to speak a certain way when his friend visits. He stops inviting people over because he fears they will judge his family. Eventually, he tries to replace his family’s customs with his friend’s.

Marcus is no longer simply learning another way of living. He begins to distance himself from his own way of life to resemble another group. That movement illustrates assimilation.

Assimilation is one possible outcome of acculturation. It occurs when a person or group becomes increasingly absorbed into another, often dominant, culture. Connections to the original culture may weaken as its language, customs, or identity become less visible. This process does not necessarily involve shame, but Marcus’s story illustrates how shame can accompany it.

The difference can appear small at first. Acculturation says, “I can learn how you do things.” Assimilation may communicate, “I must stop doing things my way if I want to be accepted by you.”

These processes are related, rather than perfect opposites. A person may freely adopt some cultural practices, feel pressured to adopt others, and strongly preserve still others. Learning a new language or changing a habit does not, by itself, mean abandoning an identity. Cultural adaptation is rarely all-or-nothing.

Who gets to set the rules?

Power also matters. Marcus follows another family’s customs because he is a guest in their home. But imagine being told you must abandon your family’s language, traditions, appearance, or beliefs before you can attend school, find employment, live in a particular neighborhood, or be treated with dignity. That is more than good manners. It is cultural pressure backed by social power.

Pressure to fit in can make people feel they must become less visibly themselves. People may treat a name, language, accent, hairstyle, or tradition as an obstacle to acceptance. When belonging or opportunity depends on hiding these parts of oneself, adaptation may become a survival strategy rather than a freely chosen exchange.

This is why cultural adaptation requires self-awareness. A person must learn to distinguish between respectful flexibility and the quiet surrender of identity.

The pause before adapting

A pause creates room for awareness.

The pause allows us to ask:

Am I learning something new, or am I being taught to feel ashamed of something old?

Am I adapting because I find value in this practice, or because I fear rejection?

Can I participate in this environment without pretending that my background is inferior?

Room for both traditions

Dichotomous thinking may tell Marcus that he has only two choices: behave like his own family everywhere or completely adopt his friend’s customs. Diunital thinking recognizes another possibility. Marcus can respect the differences between the two homes while remaining connected to his own identity. He can learn when to adapt, when to preserve, and when to combine what is valuable in both traditions.

This does not mean that every inherited custom must be protected. Some traditions deserve questioning, especially when they cause harm or deny people dignity. Cultural preservation should not excuse injustice. At the same time, difference should not automatically be treated as a deficiency. Practice can be unfamiliar without being inferior.

The healthiest cultural exchange does not require everyone to become the same. It allows people to encounter new customs, examine their own habits, and grow through mutual learning. Acculturation can add another language, perspective, or practice to a person’s identity. Assimilation becomes harmful when acceptance is offered only in exchange for self-erasure.

A child should be able to eat respectfully at a friend’s table without becoming ashamed of the table at home.

Perhaps that is the deeper lesson: maturity is not demonstrated by knowing only one set of rules. It is demonstrated by understanding that different tables may follow different traditions—and that learning how to sit at another person’s table does not require forgetting the one that first nourished you.

Author’s note

How do you learn to participate in another culture if you have been denied a fair understanding of your own? What happens when media, historical narratives, and institutions diminish the value and contributions of your lineage, or when civic systems treat your heritage as something to overcome?

And what happens when access to work and economic security seems to depend on concealing your people’s inherited appearance or cultural expression?

These questions bring me back to self-awareness. We need room to understand our own history and customs, examine them honestly, and recognize their value. From that foundation, we can learn from others without accepting the idea that our background makes us less worthy.

Acculturation should expand your branches while preserving your roots with dignity.