Scott argues that the experiences of European ethnics and African Americans have differed fundamentally. Black people therefore constituted an estate, and the assimilation of African Americans would depend more on political strategies than economic ones, at least as long as they constituted an estate. The implication of Scott's analysis, given our concern with differential rates of assimilation, is that Blacks were not allowed to compete in the labor market until they had mobilized politically and had successfully changed the statutes, which means that, unlike all other immigrant groups who were allowed, though discriminated against, to compete immediately in the labor market, Blacks were not. The rate of assimilation, therefore, would be correspondingly slower. According to Blauner, there are two major processes by which new groups are incorporated into a society, immigration or colonization.
Immigration is voluntary and the prescriptions and proscriptions are minimal.
Colonization, on the other hand, is involuntary and prescriptions and proscriptions are maximized. Blauner then, using his postulated processes by which plural societies are formed, contrasts the experiences of Native Americans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, the Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, the Irish, Jews, Germans, Italians, British, Negroes, and Afro-Americans, in terms of their rate of assimilation. Gans takes a look at the changes in the ethnic enclaves of Euro-Americans and demonstrates that, for them, instrumental ethnicity has been transformed into symbolic ethnicity. This process he claims took approximately six generations. Gans' analysis has some very important implications for African Americans in the last decade of the twentieth century as we watch the transformation of the class structure of African American ethnic enclaves.