Complete sample essay for Essay 2 assignment

The Exodus Narrative vs. the Immigrant Narrative: Characterizing the Dominant Culture

            What is the dominant culture?  How does it look, behave, and think, and most importantly, how will multicultural education benefit from the inclusion of discussing the dominant culture?  These questions have proven to be the hardest questions that students in Literature 5733 (summer 2004) grappled with, as we attempted to speak of the invincible power of the dominant culture despite its invisibility.  This mind-boggling dilemma is not a new dilemma for me, for I had taken Literature 5730 (Race in American Writing) during the previous semester, and we engaged in lively discourse surrounding this exact theme: What is the dominant culture; what is whiteness?  Thus, after taking the two courses, I am convinced that the dominant culture is a racialized (white) culture that benefits from structuralized privileges.  Yet, this is not to say that there are no complications to this observation, as quite simply some whites will vehemently oppose such classification because they are not middle class (or upper class), male, or “Northern.”  Hence, despite the goals of multicultural education to celebrate difference, the dominant culture’s “difference” from other cultures has often remained (as Dr. White once described it) a mystery.  And, if the power paradigms within educational institutions are going to be negotiated in order to become more inclusive, the dominant culture has to be critically examined as a means of extracting this cultural “mystery.”

Contextually speaking, the immigrant narratives that we’ve addressed this semester have not easily categorized the dominant culture; instead their categorizations of the dominant culture manifested via their perceptions of the dominant culture or their social distance from the dominant culture: dominant culture is what the immigrant hopes to be and/or what the minority is not.  Without creating unfair essentialisms and depicting the dominant culture as a monolithic group, I contend that by exploring and synthesizing the subtexts of the minority narrative of resistance, the ambivalent minority narrative of resistance and assimilation, the American Dream and the Exodus narratives, perhaps a fair but transient characterization of the dominant culture is possible. 

In Toni Cade Bambara’s The Lesson, the dominant culture is everything that the poor African American children (and at times Miss Moore) are not.  Thus this establishes a tone of defiance in this narrative.  The dominant culture, in The Lesson, is typified as “white folks” with elevated economic statuses (because they wear “fur coats” in the summer), access to the finer things in life, and options that these children do not have.  The markers of the dominant culture in Bamabara’s narrative are race, power, and wealth.

While Bambara’s composition depicts the political nature of the dominant culture, Richard Rodriguez’s Hunger of Memory portrays the social aspects of the dominant culture.  According to Rodriguez, the dominant culture speaks unaccented (opposite of an immigrant’s speech) standard American English (not Ebonics or “ghetto black” English).  Also, unlike the black teenagers on the bus, the dominant culture is not “loud,” and those individuals who comprise the dominant culture are insiders.  Most importantly, Rodriguez emphasizes that the dominant culture has no need to identify with or stand in unison with different groups because the dominant culture is the standard; the dominant culture sets the standard.

Gish Jen’s In the American Society provides the reader with the socio-political and familial markers of the dominant culture, for the dominant culture is everything that Callie and Mona’s mother desires to be.  The dominant culture in Jen’s short story, which reinforces the American Dream narrative, is powerful in a variety of ways.  The dominant culture is—as the mother aspires to be—politically astute.  The dominant culture has an active political voice and actively enforces the laws of the land.  Unlike the father in Jen’s writing, the dominant culture is individualistic, and has the ability to allow or block access into its privileged world.  This culture boasts of the all-American nuclear family. 

Essentially, the dominant culture is not a culture of immigrants who remain loyal to her/his native land.  This culture knows the unspoken rules of economic success and the attainment of power. 

Unlike Jen’s In the American Society, however, Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers combines the fiercely complicates both the immigrant narrative with its perception of the Jewish culture as a chosen culture.  Still, as a former student maintains, “The influence of the dominant culture is what tends to make more modern Jewish immigrant literature follow the pattern of standard immigrant narratives.”  (There is no denying that Yezierska’s usage of plot and literary techniques are influenced by the dominant culture.) By building on the “Exodus” motif, Yezierska paints a picture of an almost “mechanical” dominant culture that is unfeeling, cold, callous, and reserved.  Still, Yezierska praises this culture as a rational and insightful culture with a “plain beautifulness.”  She infers that the dominant culture is a vast group of Americans with “hands and necks” that are “white like milk.”  They have “soft” and “shiny” hair, and they are “clean.”  Although Yezierska’s novel paints the dominant culture in an ambiguous light (it is callous yet insightful), she seems to imply that while the whites create and maintain a dominant culture in America, they are but mere “Christians.” Furthermore, as Father explains, Jews (who are a “people of the book” and a “chosen people,”) can not “live in the same house” with Christians.  So, the chosen ones cannot really coexist with white Christians. 

            William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation is an excellent text for the conceptualization and contextualization of the dominant culture.   It differs greatly from the immigrant narrative because it complies with stages 1, 2, of the immigrant narrative; however, stages 3 (shock, discrimination, and resistance), 4 (assimilation to dominant culture and loss of ethnic identity), and stage 5 (rediscovery of ethnic identity) are completely revamped by the Puritans in Bradford’s history.  Because the Puritans sought immigration to America as a religious duty and calling, they did not see the Native American culture as a dominant culture that could viably constrain them.  (According to Bradford, the “unpeopled countries of America” were only “inhabited” by “savage and brutish men”.)  Additionally, the pre-migration resources (strong middle class communities and literate families) and the fierce motivations of the Puritans (to be “holy and set apart”) aided the Puritans in creating a dominant culture with high morals and strong family values.  Consequently, as they came to America and began to promote a new civilization of America, the Puritans evolved into the dominant culture and had no reason to assert an ethnic identity.  They had literally become the American standard.  Yet, the longer that the Puritans remained in the “promised land,” they became more economically oriented.  Bradford ominously refers to this as the Puritans loss of innocence. 

            The dominant culture is not very different from Bradford’s portrayal of the Puritans.  The dominant culture, in my opinion, is still an elusive culture with bland markers.  Though the dominant culture seems to still be comprised of WASPs, there does seem to be a religious flexibility or fluidity.  The dominant culture differs from the immigrant culture because the markers of the dominant culture are not vivid, but their belief in the American dream or an ability to prosper in America id the strongest commonality between the dominant culture and the immigrant culture. 

As the final two weeks of class proved, discussing and characterizing the dominant culture should be an objective of multicultural literature.  If educators continue to ignore the dominant culture, multicultural education becomes a farce producing the same dominant/subordinate outcomes.  And, we will never reach a level of understanding and acceptance. [nj]