Barry Levinson’s Avalon, is an honest account of the early 20th century process of immigration into the United States and assimilation into its developing culture. This essay purports that as immigrated families lived longer in America, each new generation became more assimilated with American culture, thus making them strive more for the American Dream.
The Industrial Era of the 1800s and early 1900s caused a domino effect of events, such as: “waves of immigration…massive rural to urban migration…guaranteed violent racial and ethnic conflict,” (Cantor). Individuals like Sam Krichinksy optimistically came to America to see the new life that this quickly developing country could offer. As more people needed to be accommodated for, the politics of governance and fragmentation continued to develop.
With the new wave of immigrants coming in from Canada, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, Baltimore rose to having 14% of its population being Foreign-Born. That statistic rose to 38%, when those who were Native-Born with at least one foreign parent were…show more content… This incident became racially significant when the robber happened to be portrayed as a dark-skinned individual. On surface level, it was a wake-up call to the immigrant family that America wasn’t perfect. But ultimately, it was a realization that racial conflicts couldn’t be ignored and that the lighter pigmented culture was often going to be seen as the victim, while the darker pigmented one was going to be pitted as its villain. The second generation of the Krichinksy family was born into American culture and were affected by the result of the new deal: the creation of the American dream. From leaving labor positions to become entrepreneurs, the necessity was now to gain success. Society’s need for more along with the slowing territorial expansion of cities, led to the start of
