Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society.

Doctorow’s remark treats “gangsterism” not merely as criminality but as a social mechanism by which outsiders—often immigrants or the economically marginal—force entry into the structures of American power. By placing it alongside art and politics, he suggests three parallel routes to visibility and influence: cultural production, civic participation, and (in a darker key) organized violence and illicit enterprise. The line implies that assimilation is not always genteel or lawful; it can be accelerated by seizing resources, territory, and status when legitimate avenues are blocked. It also reflects Doctorow’s recurring interest in how American identity is made through conflict between aspiration, exclusion, and the pursuit of power.