Complete sample essay for Essay 2 assignment

 . . . Both dominant groups while not exactly assimilating, did adopt what manners of economy would best suit the environment and did establish relationships with the people of the New World for business and other reasons when it was to their advantage to do so.  For example, see Sara’s father adopting a new kind of “work” as a match maker or Moses accepting into his community the Levites who would join with him as long as they accepted/practiced his religion and kill off the rest of their families refusing to so the same.  The Pilgrims were also quick to learn from the Indians how to cultivate corn, trap furs, and raise cattle and  did business with them for seed and other things but were careful not to socialize or marry into the groups.  As a result of this adaptation or acculturation, both groups cultivated a unique hybrid of their original culture, successfully accomplishing stage five of the immigrant narrative structure. 

            Along side these similarities one sees specific differences appear within the context of these stages.  First, unlike immigrants, the people of dominant cultures, the Jews and the Pilgrims, participated in the history of migration as a whole body of people or a nation.  This migration was in response to a call from the divine to escape severe physical persecution and oppression.  Subsequently both cultures succeeded in displacing, if not wiping out, the cultures inhabiting their newly found Promised Lands (Canaan and America-taken from student exam).  Immigrants usually migrated in small family units or as individuals and generally for very secular economic reasons (though they are generally not the norm, there are cases of individuals immigrating for political persecution, such as in Children of the Sea ).

    Also, a pronounced departure from immigrant narratives is stage four, assimilation, was dealt with in terms of resistance especially in terms of intermarriage, language use, religion, and so on.  Most immigrants wanted to assimilate, to intermarry, to adopt dominant culture’s values of family, gender roles, education, economics and so on.  The Pilgrims however, resisted assimilating with the native Americans, keeping to their own faith and communities, and especially forbidding intermarriage and sexual involvement (as seen by Bradford’s disproval of  Lord Merrymont and his partying and sexual relations with the native Americans). (See also Hoffman’s defiance in the face of acceptance into the highest levels of ivy league American education.) Jewish immigrants in America didn’t intermarry and had their own language and own schools, within their American communities. Dominant culture nevertheless managed  both resistance and adaptation to prevail in becoming the dominant culture and succeeded in establishing its own unique set of values in America.

            Dominant culture is distinct from immigrant culture concerning differences in issues such as family structures, literacy and education, mobility, and physical characteristics of skin color, language, and overall general mien of countenance.  Since these differences too have been discussed at length during classroom discussions and within the syllabus, web notes, presentations, and student exams, again I will only briefly mention these comparisons (and Dr. White’s chart is more comprehensive than anything I can put together.)  There is a difference in education-emphasis of the written word vs. oral tradition.  Compare the literacy of Moses and Bradford and the emphasis on the word in religious texts and governance agreements (and Sara’s father’s emphasis on learning the sacred Torah) versus the illiteracy of Gary Soto’s parents in Like Mexicans, Rudi in The English Lesson who works and doesn’t care to get an education, and so on in immigrant narratives.  Compared to the nuclear family structures one sees in dominant cultures (Sara’s family in Bread Givers, the small family units of the Pilgrims) one sees the  extended family structures in non-Mexican Americans in Silent Dancing, Afro-Carribeans in Children of the Sea. . . . Similarly, gender issues become more important in traditional family cultures of immigrants (see Silent Dancing, El Patron, Silver Pavements, and Bread Givers) whereas more modern views of gender equality are seen dominant culture-see Hunting Mr. Heartbreak, Alice is a woman living,  alone, doing her own thing) When one sees that Sara is of a more “dominant” cultural background, Asian immigrants such as Mukherjee’s wife in A Wife’s Story living alone, and other characters such as Lola in Silent Dancing commanding the household, differences  between dominant and immigrant blur, but these exceptions will be discussed momentarily.

            Generally immigrant culture is most often identified by skin color, which determines their accessibility to economics and education and assimilation into society.  In general, the whiter they are, the closer one they are to living and assimilating into dominant culture.  But also by temperament.  Immigrant cultures are defined as more “colorful” warm and friendly than dominant cultures, a greater sense of community pervades-noisy, in each other’s business, and always present (Bread Givers).  Ironically dominant culture is best defined, as my classmate Thomas put it, by negation or what it is not and yet this definition leaves one with just as much ignorance or invisibility as when one began.  From the narratives, one sees dominant culture described as “white,” “colorless,”-and  “bland” or tasteless and is exactly what immigrants and minorities are not. Every other immigrant or minority is “of color.”  Of color however, also includes of emotional as well as physical color.  Immigrants are often identified by their warmth and friendliness, their community and caring for each other while dominant culture is also described as “cold” stark and unfeeling, uncaring, mechanistic.  Such descriptions might appear to record the feelings of immigrants and minorities toward dominant culture.  A definitive answer however, cannot be drawn.  Frequently, one also reads of the “pink” faces or “red” or “ruddy faces of white people, intimating health and color or positive emotion as well as emotion in general, such as anger. 

            With respect to mobility, having established the standard, it is easy or at least easier for dominant cultures to achieve economic success whereas for immigrants it is a slow and laborious process, successful only in direct correlation with their skin color.  . . .

            As mentioned earlier, there are exceptions to these differences.  Though on the one hand minorities are shown to be oppressed (The Lesson, American Horse), they are also, on the other hand, shown to gain position and to have done so by choice, not because of discrimination ( see the main characters in Man on No Name Street and June Jordan’s Report to the Bahamas in which within the same story, two individuals of the same ethnicity are compared to each other in terms of their achievement of varying economic and social status).  Also notice that various other immigrant groups achieve the “luxury of time” or marks of economic success: dwelling in coffee houses (Hoffman), sleeping late because husband works (Thank God for the Jews) and having the money to buy things in a luxurious manner (Bread Givers).  Furthermore, dominant narratives are  also filled with themes of extraordinary hard work, e.g. the Pilgrims and all of their toil on the land and even at Christmas Bradford exhorts people to work and not play. Note too, the sky dwellers in Hunting Mr. Heartbreak who work all the time even though they live in these grand places on fifth avenue. 

            One is seeing however, mobility at work: with the passage of time in America, generations tend to become less and less distinguishable as being of immigrant or dominant cultural groups because of increasing economic and social status through various factors.  Though hard work (Bread Givers), service (military, No Name Street,) and most importantly, education (Bread Givers), one sees this change in status.  Both immigrant and dominant cultures agree that education is a major key to success (The English Lesson, Lost in the Translation, Bread Givers), although they may have different motivations for believing so.  For immigrants it is a way to better oneself economically and socially (The English Lesson, the professor); for dominant culture it is perhaps a more cultural/spiritual necessity (father in Bread Givers with the Torah, and Bradford in Plymouth with his Bible).  Nevertheless, it is a factor held common to both groups that begins to blur distinctions between dominant and immigrant, especially those based on ethnicity/skin color (e.g. June in Report to the Bahamas-very educated, independent, financially stable vs. the African American girl who is abused).

            As a result of this growth in status, further distinctions between immigrant and dominant cultures become blurred as new generations of both cultural groups are born in America.  As children of America (the New World), these new generations have different experiences with life than their ancestors, who have come from the Old World.  Their needs and desires, challenges and views are shaped by this new experience as their ancestors’ experience had been previously shaped by their struggles and migrations . . . .

            Distinctions also begin to blur because of intermarriage in the next generations. Skin color changes, but also attitudes and traditions.   For example, a white American is Emilio is married to a Mexican woman in El Patron.  Both individuals are educated and live a middle class life and will be able to give their children the opportunities any middle class family, immigrant or dominant can give.  Furthermore, the children will look different from either of them, with skin color changing from more olive to less olive colored (or even dark colored skin) so these defining characteristics will be taken away.  Also, the wife is doing away with some traditions (or trying to at least) of patriarchal dominance and will most likely instill in her children a respect and equality of both genders not traditionally held in her own culture. 

            The blurring of these distinctions, the elusiveness of definition however, is what is going to define American culture, a unique synthesis based not on blind tradition, but a new response to the diversity of America-tolerance, harmony and beautiful, infinite variety.  As Lori in her midterm essay sagely comments, dominant culture is also taking on the characteristics of immigrant culture  Presently we have international cuisine in many restaurants and a mixing of styles at that, international food stuffs pervade our grocery stores, international music is fusing with modern disco, rock and roll, jazz, funk and everything else, business has become international and transnational, stores such as Pier 1 and Cost Plus now carry ethnic styles of everything from clothing to bathroom shower curtains to furniture, foreign exchange programs between universities and other organizations are flourishing, international studies have even become part of our educational course majors, and even our laws are being used to uphold various cultural traditions such as the veil on a driver’s liscense, the exemption from school for religious holidays that are not Christian, and so on.  Furthermore, street signs are seen to have both English and foreign names on them (like the Vietnamese ones in downtown Houston) or no English on them at all (Chinese signs on Bellaire way out West), bilingual education is offered in schools, movies are shown with English subtitles (not dubbing), cell phones, television, telephone, and computer systems all have programmable language capacities, intermarriage is common, and internet brings everybody together.  People are encouraged to establish and maintain their own cultural schools and centers and religious institutions.  People in America are encouraged to keep their differences but at the same time, this widespread exposure makes for a more homogenous, cosmopolitan, and tolerant culture.  Where else in the world does one see (ok, Montreal) such a mixing.  Here African American children, African, asian all go to school together-I think one time I counted as many as twenty different ethnic backgrounds in one classroom.  What better place to learn and grow.  Growth is inevitable.  Learning to integrate these differences however, into economic systems while still maintaining a basic structure is the challenge of dominant society--but these are all changing.

            The benefits of such cultural syncretistic are numerous.  As one can see from Report from the Bahamas, people will begin to relate on the human level, on the basis of ability, and not on the basis of any other division.  Notice it is the Irish white woman who connects with the abused, not the African American who is of the same background.  This is the benefit of such a society.  That and the ability to explore different cultures and come up with new and wonderful solutions (the Kosher for Halal, Thank God for the Jews or the prayer on the side of the road in the poem by Hamad?) Work will be accomplished by those who are most qualified and/or those who most enjoy it, rather than by anyone.  This seems contrary to the industrialized, mechanized society, but it is not-technology will soon replace most menial labor jobs so that individuals will be forced either to starve or came up with new and creative ways of living. . . .

            Who is to say what would have happened had a different people traveled here first.  Would Spanish be the dominant language?  Or Chinese?  Would Christianity have reigned and brought with it its errant step-child, capitalism?  Would the country be as open to other cultures as it is now?  We will never know, but it might make for an interesting story. [KK]