 Douglass’s amalgamation is sometimes conflated with his support for assimilation. Amalgamation is conceptually distinct from assimilation; one does not have to accept amalgamation to support assimilation. Assimilation concerns various degrees of social and cultural adoption, adaptation, and absorption. It can theoretically go in either direction, say from black to white or white to black, or it can involve a subtle blending. In the United States, the assumption has been that non-whites or white Ethnics would and should enter the “melting pot”, and assimilate to dominant white Protestant mores (Sundstrom  2003).[12]