Daniel Robison

Three Characteristics of the Dominant Culture

            This semester we have looked at the interaction between different immigrant and minority groups and Americans, more specifically, WASP Americans.  We have looked at success or failure in attempts to assimilate to WASP America.  The judgment, however, on whether or not that assimilation has been successful depends on our definition of the dominant WASP-American culture.  America is such a large and varied country that what might be considered the dominant culture of New England isn’t really the same as it is in the West or in the South.  Black Americans have been here for hundreds of years, and to say that they have not helped mold the dominant culture is not really true.  In much the same way, the Hispanics that were in the Southwest before the Americans came have helped shaped the dominant culture in that area.  But through all of this variety, all of the different ideas of what we mean by the vast term “culture,” can we come up with a core set of values that we can say are truly American and that permeate the many areas of the country?  I believe that we can, and those values, as seen in the texts that we have studied, include rugged individualism, morality, and literacy.

            America is a Judeo-Christian society, so we can trace much of who we are back to the Jews as handed down in the Old Testament.  In the Exodus story, individualism does not seem that apparent at first, but several key figures stand out apart from the groups:  Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and Caleb.  Moses and Aaron stood up to Pharaoh, all of Egypt, and the Israelites themselves.  Called by God, Moses faced down the leader of the most powerful nation on earth.  He stood down the magicians who tried to copy his work.  He stood down the jeers and cries and whines of his own people, leading them to the Promised Land.  When the twelve went down to Canaan, it is not the ten bad ones we remember, the ones who stood in fear with the crowd, but the two good ones, Joshua and Caleb, whom we extol.  We praise them for standing up for what is right instead of kowtowing to the cries of the crowd.  Obviously, the story of the Exodus carries with it a focus on morality.

The monotheism of the Israelites is contrasted with the polytheism of the Egyptians.  The center of the story is the giving of the Ten Commandments to Moses.  We can see how God deals with infidelity when the Israelites worship the golden calf, when they fear the Canaanites, and when Moses strikes the rock rather than speak to it.  The entire book of Leviticus is written to give them their laws and moral codes.  God moves against the Canaanites for their detestable life in the worship of their gods.  In addition, the Jews, as pointed out in class, are the people of the Book.  The fact that we have in our hands a text that was first being written probably 1500 years before Christ says something about the importance of reading and writing.  If one believes that Moses did write the Book, then we accept that little of the Torah depends on the oral tradition as does much of other classical / religious writing.  Their laws and traditions are written down, read, and studied.  Groups of learned men are entrusted with the safe keeping and purity of its words.  So these are the lessons that the Jews give us, and we have learned well.

Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation is a more direct link to our dominant culture, but it too carries many of the same lessons.  Rugged individualism is at the heart of what the Pilgrims began.  They had a choice:  live in England and follow the rules laid out and be a faithful member of the Anglican Church or follow what they believed to be right and face persecution, exile, and even death.  The Pilgrim fathers chose to follow what they believed to be right and suffered for it, eventually having to leave friends, family, and country in order to follow God’s Word as they saw fit.  This concept followed them to the New World.  After a several years attempt at communal living, they discovered that it is the individual looking after his own needs that will best aid the community as a whole.  They discovered that communal living “was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort” (133).  The men hated that their work went to the benefit of others and not their own families.  They hated that men who did not do nearly as much work had as much themselves.  Even the women began to see “it a kind of slavery” (134).  This resulted in loss of “mutual respect” for each other.  The answer was for each family to have its own land and to work if for themselves.  This individualism led to “very good success, for it made all hands very industrious […]” (133), with even the women working hard out in the fields.

This hard work brings up the rest of the idea of rugged individualism.  Yes, it is for the individual and not the group, but rugged implies hard work and industry.  The more industrious among them cried for even more individualism later, wanting “to have some portion of the land given them for continuance, and not by yearly lot” (160), feeling that all of their had work was for nothing when a lazy person got theirs the next year, or if the industrious person got stuck with a lazy person’s lot the next.  This rugged individualism and drive for success did have a downside as the need and desire for more and more land for both crops and cattle caused the people to be “scattered all over the Bay quickly and the town in which they lived compactly till now was left very thin and in a short time almost desolate” (281-82).

As with the Jews, morality is another no-brainer when discussing the Pilgrims.  Two section of Plymouth demonstrate this.  The first is on page 225 where Bradford discusses the dangers of wampum and guns.  He sees these as luring the Indians into an immoral way of life, further exacerbated by Thomas Morton who led his people and Indians into drunken, orgiastic parties, dancing around maypoles.  This more than anything recalls the dangers that God continuously warned the Israelites about, the pagans in their midst who would draw them out to the high places and the Asherah poles.  Eventually, the men around the area had to go in and forcibly take Morton to ensure that this kind of immoral behavior did not take place.  Later, on page 351, Bradford writes that fornication, adultery, and homosexuality had broken out.  He argues that this bad behavior stands out so because “they are here more discovered and seen and made public by due search” (352).  They obviously have a high level or moral expectations and have ways to uphold it.

Finally, literacy can be addressed here.  First is this book.  The writing of it and its style demonstrate to us the level of learning among the Pilgrims.  Secondly, and probably more importantly, is the Mayflower Compact.  This group of men came together and first understood the importance of government.  They understood the necessity of men knowing that there are laws to follow and that they must agree to abide by those laws.  And most of all, they understood that it needed to be written down, that it wasn’t enough to say it, but that it must be there for all to see and read, which further implies that the Pilgrims there were learned enough to read and understand what they read.

Looking at Michel Crevecoeur, it does not take long to discover these traits here among the New Man.  In Letter III “What Is an American,” he points out that an Englishman coming to America “sees the industry of his native country displayed in a new manner, and traces in their works the embrios of all the arts, sciences, and ingenuity which flourish in Europe.”  In this one sentence, we get an understanding of the both the rugged individualism and literacy that help define who we are.  He further praises America as a nation of “cultivators” and that “[w]e are all animated with the spirit of an industry which is unfettered and unrestrained, because each person works for himself.”  This hearkens back clearly to what the Pilgrim Fathers learned about communal living.  He then adds even more praise, specifically for the English as the early settlers of America: 

for the accuracy and wisdom with which they have settled their territory; for the decency of their manners; for their early love of letters; their ancient college, the first in this hemisphere; for their industry; which to me who am but a farmer, is the criterion of everything.

I could go on and on.  I think these letters more than anything would still resonate with contemporary Americans.  It is these concepts of individuality, free enterprise, learning, equality, freedom, and opportunity that we truly think of when think of our country and ourselves.

These ideas can be seen in dominant culture moments in the other texts studied this semester.  In “Like Mexicans,” the speaker points out to his fiancée’s parents, whom he sees as “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps ranchers” (303) that he is getting an education, what he sees to be the key to making it.  Nothing can be more American than pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps.  It is the rugged individualism that created and drove this country.  And education goes back all the way to that first university in this hemisphere, created to produce learned men of God.  Even in anti-American seeming pieces such as “Soap and Water” and “The Lesson,” both Yezierska and Cade Bambara see that it is literacy, education, that will get people out of the ghettos.  “The English Lesson” shows us Rudi who works hard to provide and Lali who sees learning to speak English as freedom.  In “Silver Pavements, Golden Roofs,” Bikram-uncle decries the America that oppresses him, yet he remains here and works hard knowing that he at least has an opportunity here that he, a low-class man, might not have in caste-heavy India.  The father in “In the American Society” works hard to achieve for himself and his family.  Pedro in “Visitors, 1965” escapes the oppression in Cuba to make it here, sending Virginia to get an education realizing that that will take them even further.  The American sense of morality that appears as an equality between the sexes shows up again and again as immigrant groups that place a high priority on the status of men over women come into conflict with a culture that states that all men are created equal.

It is quite clear that the examples I have given to discuss the dominant culture look to praise it rather than critique it.  I understand that it is “an elusive subject that is unattractive if not repellent to some students of multiculturalism.”  I have occasionally had a difficult time this semester with constant critiquing of the dominant culture.  The stories we read have important lessons to teach us, and as we hopefully take them and share them with our own students, we will be able to make them aware of the situations that too many immigrants and minorities faced and to find ways to make America even better.

But there has to be balance.  Yes, there are problems with the dominant culture, but this is the place where millions of people try each year to get into, not out of.  This is the place where the grandson of Mexican immigrants with little education can rise up to be the head law enforcement officer of the nation.  It is the place where a child of the segregated South can rise up and become the most powerful woman in the world.  It is the place where a Chinese immigrant can rise up and lead the workers of the most economically powerful country in the world.  In my classroom, Indians sit next to Pakistanis, Christians next to Muslims next to Jews next to Hindus next to Atheists, poor next to rich, Blacks next to Whites, and Chinese next to Japanese.  Where else in the world can we encounter not only so much diversity but so much friendly and cooperative diversity?  Yes, it is easy to criticize the dominant culture of the WASPs, but it is the adhering to this single culture that allows so many to stand shoulder to shoulder and to succeed in creating the richest, most powerful, most equal, and most free country in history.