I think both you and the game are being too all-or-nothing here, and that’s probably part of what’s throwing people off. Out groups do assimilate even when the in-group doesn’t want them, it’s just much harder. Maybe being discriminated should reduce cultural assimilation but not eliminate it. IMO it would be good for gameplay since you’d then have a reason to care about assimilation.
People can co-exist, but that's very different from being truly assimilated. The most extreme example I can think of would be German Jews pre WWII; they felt fully German and were allowed in pretty much all levels of society... until they weren't. If I understand assimilation mechanics correctly, which I admit I may not, assimilated pops fully change cultures within the game engine in a way that can't be undone. The only way that's happening is if they're truly accepted, not merely tolerated.
I’m an American Jew and while I have a separate religion I don’t really have a separate culture. I am assimilated. There are also Jews in the US who are not assimilated. They live in their own communities and have their own cultures that are separate and distinct from the American mainstream.
In a game where ethnostate is an option for citizenship laws, you do have to account Nazi rules, that's the entire point of playing with that ruleset and it's why the groups who are allowed to assimilate increase as you get more open laws. No matter what a Black or Asian person did, they wouldn't have been able to assimilate into the broader American or South African cultures. Even today, migrants from outside Europe are very much not assimilating because even if the laws aren't technically discriminatory, they face discrimination in their day to day lives.
Even in those extreme cases some pops do assimilate through inbreeding and living in atypical communities and “passing.” I’m not sure we really disagree, you’re just taking something that is a spectrum and saying it’s black and white.
Not sure how worthwhile it is going back and forth more. I agree that being discriminated against makes it harder to assimilate. But I again don’t agree that it’s so monolithic. Even in a highly discriminatory society there are pockets of acceptance, sometimes large ones. And intermarriage isn’t the only way to mix genes - over time any form of inbreeding leads to more people with mixed blood and therefore more people who can pass, or just be accepted as either ethnicity.
I may get flamed to hell for this, but the reason this is observable now, in the US at least, is because being seen as Indigenous is actually advantageous in specific circles and with respect to specific opportunities in life. You absolutely cannot say that this was the situation in 19th century USA.oh, i see
it’s not entirely out of consideration though. there are several people that prominently identify themselves as the indigenous populace without actual biological ties
see for example:
Woman with no Aboriginal ancestry claims to be Indigenous
Mia claims to be one of a growing number of Australians who falsely identify as Indigenous in the Census. 'I am a box-ticker,' she told Daily Mail Australia. 'I now identify as Aboriginal.'www.dailymail.co.uk
“The Rachel Divide” Review: A Disturbing Portrait of Dolezal’s Racial Fraudulence
The documentary posits that Dolezal is a pathological liar, but that she is also a victim, and leaves it up to the viewer to manage these contradictions.www.newyorker.com
and these are just two that made their way into the world press. from holidays i recall quite a few people larping as at least partly indigenous despite not showing any apparent relation or being able to prove their claim via dna analysis. nevertheless, gameplay-wise merging micro pops was a good decision that made the game run pretty smoothly for me
People with mixed heritage are still called Black in the US to this day, 100+ years after the "one drop" rules mostly went away and 70 years since the official end of discriminatory laws. All those background assimilations you're talking about do happen in game, it's the people who are accepted under the current citizenship laws; aka the Irish and Jews and Italians who passed racially (because of the racial segregation law) while visible racial minorities were, at best, tolerated. Meanwhile, decades later a Black person was elected president and you'd have to be blind to have missed the massive racial backlash that followed. You can point to pockets of acceptance all you want, somehow I doubt the people who were living then and there would appreciate being used as proof that integration happens in pockets when those same people still had to know what towns they weren't allowed to be in after dark. If you're only accepted by your neighbors but you're still seen as the Other by everyone else, then you aren't assimilated.
