Karen Daniel

Defining the Dominant Culture; Race or Social Stratification

Walking out of my hotel in Atlanta, averting my eyes to avoid contact with the hoards of homeless people sprawled out on the streets, my intention was to enter the lobby of the Marriot hotel to join the group of parents from my daughter’s volleyball team that did not have to stay in the in their hotel rooms to read for a college class.  Before entering, I found my favorite group of them sitting on the steps outside smoking cigarettes, having decided (as usual) that joining the throngs of “street people” was okay if they were not allowed to smoke inside the lounge.  They were arguing rather heatedly about the fact that one of them had just crossed the street and given a homeless man a fifty dollar bill.  Somewhat stunned, I asked my friend what she was thinking, to which she replied, “I am redeeming myself,” not the answer I was expecting.  The issue was not money, as she has lots of money and good intentions, but rather one of sense as I tried to explain to her that now the homeless people would be following us around for days, and that she had set herself up as word of her generosity would surely spread; my sneaking suspicions became a reality for me at that moment as I realized without a doubt I was, now and forever, a member of the dominant culture, and worse, like Jonathan Raban’s friend, an air person who would spend the next few days avoiding eye contact with the destitute people on the street as I made my way to the hotel elevators. 

The term dominant culture, or rather my membership in such an institution, does not sit well with me, and honestly, I am not entirely sure why.  Apparently I am not the only guilt-ridden air person.  Although I could never get an answer from my friend about her reasons for seeking redemption through her charity, I have strong suspicions that her guilt is born of her recent financial up-swing.  White, protestant, educated, self-made, and now very upper-class, she is the epitome of American dominant culture.  She and her husband have “made it,” and as he is the child of poor German immigrants, who still speak very little English, he is the immigrant American dream story. 

I think a great deal of my guilt, or maybe a better term would be discomfort, comes from the fact that, as a member of the dominant culture, I was subtly raised to resist such classifications.  By definition, if I, or we, are dominating, then we must be oppressing or dominating someone; equality is perverted in that scenario and that makes us all uncomfortable.  Few Americans would easily admit to being anything but mainstream and normal.  In her essay Lost in Translation, Eva Hoffman writes that a friend told her, “Being American means that you feel like you’re the norm” (220).  Surely being the norm means you are like everyone else, so then, who is doing the dominating and who are they doing it to?  Are middle and upper class Americans all members of the same dominant culture, riding high up in elevators and averting our collective eyes to avoid contact with the undesirable few on the streets below?  Or, conversely, is my fiscally sound friend the dominant culture, passing out her charity at will while the rest of us look on with discomfort, knowing, probably better than her, the resentment and shame that festers and grows under the outward gratitude? 

Many Americans would argue that they are not members of the dominant culture.  In The Lesson, Toni Cade Bambara’s character, Miss Moore, attempts to teach some poor African American neighborhood kids a lesson that centers on socio-economic stratification in the US.  Taking them on a trip into the fantasy world of FAO Schwartz, she shows them what they can accomplish if they buy into the social institutions of the white dominant culture, while at the same time, showing them that what the dominant culture portrays as democracy, “is not much of a democracy” (151).  While Bambara discusses whites as the dominant culture, the things she is showing her young neighbors are really the institutions of the elite class that few Americans are able to join, white or not.  Many of us, uncomfortable with the dominant culture label, are stunned to find out that minorities consider us part of the elite ruling class that is responsible for most of the oppressive laws in our country. 

The problem of definition and differing perceptions may stem from the idea that, unlike typical minorities and immigrants, the dominant culture, like the people in Exodus, came in mass waves, primarily looking for religious freedom, but sometimes attaining economic freedom along the way.  Leaving one country and migrating to another as a group, the puritans in William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation became in essence what was the dominant culture of our country, and in many ways still is.  While immigrants have an inferred and sometimes implicit social contract with the dominant culture, the puritan’s social contract was with God, and they had no intention of assimilating into the culture that Bradford describes as being savage and brutish.  By contrast, many immigrants come to this country with the intention of assimilating, mainly for economic gain.  Rather than become the dominant culture they have to try and understand the culture in order to more easily join it.  In the case of minorities, like Bambara’s characters, they are often here by force, brought here by the dominant culture for its own economic gain.  It is little wonder that they do not deign to differentiate between members of what they perceive as the dominant class, seeing the dividing line as one of racial privilege, not one of wealth. 

So, in the end, just how do we define dominant culture?  By its very nature it is difficult to discuss and to define; members of minority classes perceive the dominant culture as primarily white, while most whites would argue that they are not members of the dominant class, but see themselves as controlled by them as well, no more satisfied with their places on the ladder of social stratification or with their places in the vertical assimilation picture, than members of minorities. 

In his dominant culture moment, Ken Fisher questions the actions of the dominant culture:

My hypothesis, created during this week’s readings, is that the dominant culture is an entity designed to sustain and protect itself by staying out of the attention of its populace while maintaining a position to distort their perception of things.  Do you believe this to be accurate?  Does the dominant culture position itself in a manner that it can operate unseen, and alter our perceptions of other ‘worlds’?

His hypothesis creates an interesting paradox—we are the dominant culture but are also controlled against our will by that same culture?  While the question may be interesting, it convolutes the issue further, making it even more difficult to find a coherent definition. 

Regardless of how one views or defines the dominant culture in this country, there is little doubt that it is shaped by the values of the puritans, or that it is defined more by what it is not than by what it is.  The dominant culture is not dirty as cleanliness is next to Godliness, they are hard working as idle hands are the devil’s playground, and they are literate as only literate people can read the bible every day as a good Christian should.  The list goes on and on.  None of these traits by themselves are harmful, evil, bad, or oppressive, but when added to the dominant culture’s penchant for separateness and exclusivity, they can become impenetrable walls.  Perhaps what my friend was really seeking redemption for was her detachment and her neutrality that allow her and the rest of us to ignore the stratification that privileges us daily, making assimilation into mainstream America so difficult for so many.