Diane Palmer

A Blurry Face in Clear Water

      The Dominant Culture of America is the true definition of an enigma.  When you think you understand its dynamics and forms, it changes to become something else.  It is then no wonder why the immigrants who have journeyed to this country have an extremely hard time assimilating.  While the dominant culture itself is harder to track down then the Yeti, there are a few characteristics that ring universally true while others continually change. To define the dominant culture you must consider the values they uphold, how they began and became the dominant culture, and their connection to the past and the future.

     The dominant culture is generally considered blank, colorless, a void, so one of the main ways to identify the dominant culture is to consider the five senses.  In Anzia Yezierska’s “Soap and Water,” there is the idea that everything of the dominant culture is clean including “Going to college…the frigid whitewashed wall of cleanliness” (107).   Katherine Rearick pointed out this passage during a dominant culture moment, and it rings true because if someone is clean, they cannot be smelled, they are clean to the touch, and they are completely blank because they lack distinguishing dirt or color. In Cofer’s “Silent Dancing,” she remembers her first experience with America as “grey, as were the streets” because there is a lack of distinguishing color, and color is generally associated with the exotic and foreign that point to exotic, foreign immigrants and not the dominant culture (180).  They are so clean that they are undistinguishable.  They have no smell, no color, no taste and can therefore, not be tied down to a single idea, hence the frustration of immigrants trying to adapt to something not defined.

     Jonathan Raban continues to try to classify the dominant culture by labeling them “Air people,” and the immigrants and others not included in the dominant culture are labeled as “Street people.”  The “Air people” still lack any appeal to any of the senses.  He enters a mall and states they “smelled of serious money” (345).  Again, there is the lack of a real smell.  Money is not like fruits or exotic flowers with pungent odors but is completely lacking a smell.  Meanwhile, the street people are “a bad smell, a dirty smear that needed cleaning up” (351).  Even the air of the “Air people” is like “alpine silence” while the “Street people” live in the sounds of traffic and chaos. Raban gives us the sense of utter blankness when concerning the dominant culture.

      “National Migration” is an important idea to consider when defining the dominant culture and considering how it begins. There are groups such as the Jews of Exodus and the Pilgrims who came to America that retain certain values like religion, education, and family.  While many immigrants come with immediate family only, these groups traveled as whole communities.  In doing so, they retain their religious and cultural values.  In the story of the Jews exodus to Canaan, God tells them “Do not follow their practices” (Leviticus 18:3).  This order to not assimilate and to not practice their idolatrous practices is one sign of those who become part of the dominant culture.  They surround themselves with people of like practices and minds, and refuse to assimilate.  In doing so, they begin to drown out others who waver between many religions and they begin to form the dominant culture of the area.

      Besides the importance of keeping in one’s own religion, education is also an important value of the dominant culture.  In Yezierska’s Bread Givers, the main character Sara has decided the only way to better her station in life is through education.  She notices of those in the college town “There was in them that sure, settled look of those who belong to world in which they are born” (211).  It is through their education, family, and upbringing that the dominant culture can exude this idea of confidence and belonging.  Education is one of the ways to obtain it because it is like obtaining power through knowledge.

      Another reason they become the dominant culture is because they value family and do not allow intermarriage.  God decrees that the Jews will not intermarry with the Canaanites, while the Pilgrims are determined not to intermarry with the Native Americans.  If they do so, William Bradford explains “one wicked person may infect many” (356).  To keep the community one, they must keep out the others.  Many cultures who immigrate over begin to intermarry, cultures combine, and there becomes no distinct difference between them.  The Jews and Pilgrims on the other hand become distinct because they are pure amongst themselves.  Again, there is the idea of pure, cleanliness, and blankness that defines the dominant culture.