Of course you can more easily recognise the outsiders because they have a different skin color. But let us take for instance the relationship between the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority in America and the negroes. What is important here is that the negroes were the descendants from slaves and were excluded from power, while the white majority kept them at bay, kept them down, kept them where they are. If the negroes in the future became assimilated and acquired equal power access, if there were a black president, then many of these things would change.

Very often people who live in a ghetto accept some of the stigmatisation against them. I mention the case of a Japanese minority the Burakumin, which was pure Japanese in descent, but which was concerned with dirty work: leather work, cadavers, and some other things.There was a famous story of an old man who asked: 'Do you yourself believe you are the same as the Japanese?' And the outsider said: 'I do not know, we are dirty.' This kind of conscience was never there in the surroundings in which I lived. One always felt as someone whom could be proud of, being both German and Jewish.

The heart of assimilation process of absorbing minorities lies in the self-image of a nation. There are, as you will know, big differences for instance between the self-image of the French and the English. And the Germans, in accordance with their rather chequered history, had at least in the past very little capacity for absorbing minorities.

Scientific modes of thought cannot be developed and become generally accepted unless people renounce their primary, unreflecting, and spontaneous attempt to understand all their experience in terms of its purpose and meaning for themselves. The development that led to more adequate knowledge and increasing control of nature was therefore, considered from one aspect, also a development toward greater self-control by men.

I would like to remind you that both assimilation and integration apply to the working classes in the nineteenth century, at least in Britain and also Germany. Like most outsider groups compared with the establishment, the working classes were treated more or less with the same kind of stigmatization as immigrant groups are treated today.

Of course you can more easily recognise the outsiders because they have a different skin color. But let us take for instance the relationship between the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority in America and the negroes. What is important here is that the negroes were the descendants from slaves and were excluded from power, while the white majority kept them at bay, kept them down, kept them where they are. If the negroes in the future became assimilated and acquired equal power access, if there were a black president, then many of these things would change.

The way one behaves and feels as a Dutchman and Dutchwoman is the result of a long development. It is by no means 'the natural way' or 'the human way' of behaving, it is a particular code of behavior which has developed over the years. And these people, the immigrant people, come from a group where different standards of conduct and behavior have developed. What clashes are these two standards of conduct and behavior.