Assimilationists

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Individuals or groups who advocate for the integration of minority cultures into the dominant culture
2. supporters of processes where diverse cultural identities are absorbed into a mainstream culture
3. those who favor adapting differences to achieve social unity and cultural homogeneity

Etymology: The word is built from "assimilation" and the suffix "-ist", which marks someone who holds or practises a doctrine. "Assimilation" comes from Latin "assimilare", "to make like", from "ad" plus "similis", "like". Its core idea is making one thing resemble another, and by the time it reached English it had come to describe a person or group being absorbed into a larger culture. The suffix has a longer and more tangled path. It passed through Ancient Greek "-istēs", used for practitioners of a craft or belief, into Latin "-ista", then through Old French "-iste" into Middle English as "-ist". English speakers attached it freely to nouns and adjectives, so a word like this one follows an established pattern: a person who advocates a particular doctrine. Its plural, "assimilationists", refers to several such advocates at once. Each "assimilationist" is a person who favours bringing differing groups into a shared, uniform culture, and the plural simply names a group of them.

Synonyms: integrationists