1. What people gain, at least in theory, from leaving their cultural heritage is twofold: membership in a new community that they choose to enter and opportunity to access the social and economic goods of that community's mainstream. What they lose by leaving behind their cultural heritage and joining or attempting to join the mainstream is, potentially, at least, their identity of origin. That is because the mainstream has a culture of its own at once independent from and a composite of people from disparate cultures. Thus in the context of the new environment, the forces of that environment exact a cost, in the form of some manner of exclusion, for failing to absorb and/or adopt the values, language, customs, and practices of the mainstream--that is, for not acculturating (Phillips 251).
Phillips says that "recognizing, even celebrating, ethnic differences brings back the enduring issue of community: insiders versus outsiders" (249). The tension between access to or exclusion from mainstream culture's goods on one side, and the overwhelming pressures of mainstream culture vis-a-vis members of marginalized groups who want to retain original identity while also accessing the mainstream on the other can foster a richer community or dynamics that are "ugly, glowering with misunderstanding and hate" (249). There is opportunity to gain from and contribute to mainstream culture, but there is a chance that opportunity will not be available, thus leaving the new community entrant outside the mainstream, with only original identity to support worth and dignity. Phillips makes the point that this tension is most visible in cities, "which bring together heterogeneous individuals where both faces of cultural pluralism are so prominently displayed" (249).
2. Marx's view that class status is a function of who controls the means of value production seems valid in explaining why the great mass of people who have only their labor to sell and who...