Found the other thing knocking around in my mind, that the author of the book Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam, advises we should construct a new "us" instead of trying to standardize:

In an oblique criticism of Jack Straw, leader of the House of Commons who revealed last week he prefers Muslim women not to wear a full veil, Prof Putnam said: “What we shouldn’t do is to say that they [immigrants] should be more like us. We should construct a new us.”