The Minutemen: Protecting America

 Yadhira Ramirez

Blog Post #2

Jeffrey Alexander introduces civil spheres as having cultural codes and institutional structures that are separated from spheres of political, economic, family and religious life. Furthermore, assimilation is a form of integration of minorities into the dominant culture. Assimilation causes tension between these spheres as one group of individuals has to give up their identity to fulfill the requirements of the superior group.

For example, the minutemen are a group of U.S citizens who believe that they are protecting the border from “criminals”. While these individuals are not officially hired to protect the border, they participate in maintaining the American identity alive within the “Americans” rather than accepting any person. One of the reasons that minutemen have a problem with people like Mexicans is due to the fact that they have their own strong culture and beliefs that are hard to surrender to American culture. Jeffrey Alexander states “ In  social systems that have weaker and less autonomous civil spheres, this instability of assimilation can lead, not widening , but to a narrowing of the civil sphere, to its deeper primordialization” (431). Based on Alexander’s statement and the picture above, it is noted that assimilating to another culture can be hard. For people like the minutemen, it is hard for them to accept people like migrants because they fear change and being overthrown by another group of people. In addition, the strong beliefs of keeping the American Dream alive creates an inclusive group that prohibits other people from easily joining. Overall, the picture resonates with Jeffrey Alexander’s belief of civil spheres as humans tend to use assimilation for unifying groups together, but fail to fall under pressures from dominant groups.