He sadly tells his audience that he has “moved away from the periphery and toward the center of American life, [he] has become white inside” (Liu 1). As a young Chinese boy growing up in America, he was taught that the way to assimilate was to abandon the language, culture, and traditions of his ancestors, and his essay is a remorseful reflection on the consequences of his sacrifice. Despite having given so much, despite having done everything to "become white", he will always be an outsider: race and skin color can never be the unifying factor of a community. Eric Liu goes on to talk about how “the assimilalist is a traitor to his species, to his class, to his own family” (Liu 2). Why does it have to be this way? The “a-word” (assimilist) need not be negative, if only assimilation meant adapting to an ideology rather than the culture of a race. If this were the true meaning of assimilation, the idea that to assimilate is to betray would be eradicated. The current method of naturalizing American culture is unacceptable: the only thing that will unite Americans will be a common goal to promote good values ​​and hard work within