Complete sample essay for Essay 2 assignment

Defining the Dominant Culture

The term “Dominant Culture” is a particularly slippery one.  Is it the rich, ruling that fills this position or does it include everyone who has been here for at least four generations and happens to have light colored skin?  The literature we have read this semester defines it in exceedingly distinct and different ways. 

            From several instances in the literature we have read so far, such as Gish Jen’s “In the American Society”, it appears to be true that the dominant culture prides itself on being superior to others.  If this serves as one of the defining elements, than an examination of the Exodus narrative classifies the Jews as a member of this elite class.  It can be argued that they were once a subjected people, but Exodus 3: 7 changes their status to “The Chosen People.”  The Lord gives them strict orders not to intermingle with nor follow the ways of the Egyptians or the Canaanites.  As well, he gives them the “promised land”, a land already inhabited, telling them, “then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places: and ye shall dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and dwell therin: for I have given you the land to possess it.”  This, of course, does not occur in America, but this notion of pre-eminence did not die when they immigrated.  

            This supremacy reoccurs in the Pilgrim narrative.  In William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, there is a reflection of the Exodus narrative.  These people, too, were escaping religious persecution and oppression, and they escaped to a new land to worship in their own way, as well. The Puritans thought of America as the perfect place to settle because it was only inhabited by a few Englishmen and “savage barbarians” with no religion. The Puritans quickly become a force of change for the Native Americans, for the Puritans expected them to assimilate to their ways.  It, unfortunately, did not take long for them to succeed.  One of the first instances that we see their change is when the Indians obtain guns from the white men.  They had no experience with them hitherto, and their ability to kill those within and without their tribes increased dramatically from simple bows and arrows.  The Native American tribes still fight for independence and have achieved this somewhat in their grants to have separate nations and governments from the United States, but their culture has forever been distorted by the white man’s presence.  Within my own tribe, Choctaw, an urgency surges to regain this identity through language lessons, tribal gatherings, and retracing the steps along the Trail of Tears, but what is lost is cannot be regained. 

            The Puritans clearly correspond with the dominant culture, but there is still the troublesome task of fitting the Jews in this culture as well.  Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers and “Soap and Water” deny us the opportunity to clearly define them as such.  They, too, were immigrants who were once thought of as inferior and unworthy.  In “Soap and Water”, the main character finds herself separated from those in “snowy shirtwaists...”  They treat her “as if [she] were crooked or crippled, as if [she] had come to a place where [she] didn’t belong, and would never be taken in.”  This theme is repeated in Bread Givers when Sara Smolinsky finally arrives at college and realizes just how different she is from everyone else.  She claims, “They didn’t even know I was there.”  Yet, she rises above her standards to find the “clean, empty airiness” that she always longed for.  Is this assimilation to the dominant culture, or is this representative of the Jewish-Americans entering into the elite class?

            The Puritans became the dominant culture, and the Jews similarity to them seems to denote the like.  As an undergraduate student put it in 2003, “Both the Israelites and the Pilgrims experienced stage one and two of the standard immigrant narrative, What was unique about both of these two groups was that they felt they were had to leave the Old World and journey to the New World because they were called by God.”  But there are complications to defining both groups as such.  The Puritan churches are dwindling, and there are few who can claim their ancestry as pure.  Opposing this, the Jews’ population remains strong, but even this is recently threatened with increasing intermarriage and outside influences.  So who now makes up the dominant culture? Perhaps the easiest definition is any group of people who expect others to conform and oppress those who do not.  Now the tricky part is getting anyone to identify themselves with this group.    The conundrum ensues. [KM]