Why do you guys always assume someone is trying to "remain separate". No one complained when there was a little Italy in every major city. No one complains when Russians or Poles had a separate district in cities. If anything, they were less quick to assimilate than immigrants are today! Come on now.
Part of the problem is the concentration of ethnic groups into their own communities. The Germans, Irish, Scandinavians, etc. assimilated because they dispersed across the country and intermarried with Americans. Italians stayed on the East Coast and lived in the same communities. You have this situation all over the American Southwest today, and also in places like Edison, NJ.
If you went through the countryside of the Midwest, Great Plains or Central Texas in the year 1900, you could find towns where the local newspaper was printed in German, there was a local Bund, and people spoke German at home as often as English.
That didn't noticeably stop until World War I and wasn't fully extinguished until World War II, when people stopped feeling "proud" to be German for obvious reasons.
As for the Irish, ever been to South Boston? You also had Irish-Americans supporting the IRA in its terror campaign against longtime US ally Britain in the 1980s.
Or does "assimilating" just mean "not being dark skinned" to you?
