Tuesday, 6 June 2006: African American Minority vs. the immigrant narrative.

Web highlight (midterms re minorities): Wayne Reed

It is difficult to understand the difference between minorities and immigrants without a class defining the two categories. Minorities and immigrants seem to be one in the same for many people until a person learns how different the two really are.  The one thing that causes them to be similar is the fact that both go through discrimination and marginalization.  These two groups are distinguished from the dominant culture, but one is more reluctant to assimilate into the dominant culture, while the other is willing.  Immigrants are willing to assimilate because they chose to come to America.  Since it is a choice an immigrant makes it is easier for an immigrant to follow their “social contract” with the dominant culture. They will be willing to abide by the dominant culture’s rules. Minorities, on the other hand, have no “social contract” because they were either brought unwillingly to America or forced to accept to be taken over by the dominant culture.  Minorities have no choice or options so their idea of the “American Dream” is really an “American Nightmare.”  Many ethnic groups can fall either into the immigrant category or the Minority category, but one that is in between both is the Mexican Americans.  It is difficult to place them in either category because some are immigrants and others minorities since the dominant culture resides on some parts of the country that once belonged to Mexico.  Although the United States is filled with people from different ethnicities,  some have chosen to reside in the United States to fulfill their “American Dream,” some have been forced to live the “American Nightmare” and some fall in between the two categories, the “ambivalent minority.”

To continue, minorities are those ethnic groups that have been forced to accept the dominant culture’s invasion or have been brought to live in the dominant cultures world without their consent.  Minorities refer to predominantly the Native Americans and the African Americans…and some Mexican Americans.  These groups tend to resist the act of assimilating to the dominant culture.  They hold on to their cultural traditions for a longer time span than the immigrants.  Minorities feel that although they are put in a position unwillingly that they can still attempt to hold on to their cultural traditions.  They do hold on to their traditions longer than immigrant groups.   Native Americans have been forced to accept the fact that the land they called their own was no longer theirs.  The dominant culture took over their world and forced them into a smaller space.  Yet, Native Americans attempt to hold on to their traditions.  In “The Man to Send Rain Clouds,” Leon and the others decide to bury Teofilo without a Christian burial.  The Native Americans want to have a traditional burial for Teofilo.  Yet, they want Teofilo to send them rain for the crop season.  They believe if water is poured onto Teofilo’s grave he will send them those rain clouds.  Leon has to go ask the priest to pour holy water on the grave.  Leon is not concerned about the holy part of the water, but just the water itself.  The priest agrees after refusing at first.  The priest may have thought that the people were accepting his religion, but after the priest walks away it states that Leon “felt good because it was finished, and he was happy about the sprinkling of the holy water; now the old man could send them big thunderclouds for sure”(IA 209).  Leon was not concerned about Teofilo having a Christian burial, he was concerned with his peoples’ beliefs.  African Americans have been brought to this country through force.  Unlike Native Americans who were here all ready, African Americans were pulled from their homes and family to provide a service to the new country.  It was not an “American Dream” they found in the new country, but an “American Nightmare.”  In Bambara’s “The Lesson,” the children realize that there is no equality between them and the dominant culture.  The story asks who “are these people that spend that much for performing clowns and $1,000 for toy sailboats? What kinda work do they do and how do they live and how come we ain’t in on it”(IA 151).  The children realize that just around the corner from their home there is a whole other world.  Their “Dream” is to just be equal and have the same rights as all the dominant culture.  The minority groups are not as lucky as the immigrant groups.  Chance and opportunities are not handed to them.

Immigrants come to America to take advantage of opportunity.  It’s a choice they’ve made, and, though they face frustrations and obstacles due to assimilation, they are aware, somewhat of the sacrifices that come with immigration.  Minorities, on the other hand, particularly African-Americans and Native Americans, have a different kind of resentment.  For the Native American, their homeland has been lost or shrunken at the hands of the dominant culture.  They never bought into the American Dream, much less the struggle it involves.  For African Americans, they have also been forced from their homeland and, because of their resistance to assimilate, they are forced to focus their American Dream on primarily equality, understanding, and acceptance as a way to prosperity.

The Immigrant Narrative is an easy way to evaluate the vast cultures in America without having to tiptoe around the idea of cultural difference and deference.  Studying the narrative also shows how many American ideals were created which also helps us observe and better understand the dominant and minority cultures.  The goal of early immigrants is very similar to the goal of immigrants crossing over today.  In fact, the immigrant narrative has become the “American Dream” – the thing every American wants to reach for (objective 1: story of immigration as a fundamental narrative of American lit. and culture).  Splashed across billboards and t.v. screens we are told to “be the best we can be”, “reach for the stars”, and be a little more “like Mike” – the idea being to better our station in life, make it rich, be known, on top of the world, and thus be free of worry.  By looking at the Immigrant Narrative it can be seen where many of these ideas were developed and how the idea of separation from the “old world” and assimilation of the “new” was seen as the way to reaching this better station.  Reading the immigrant narrative and the minority narrative makes it easier for us to step back from the rush of our culture and see how we became and understand the struggle of those we see as “others

                Those who choose to resist assimilation are seen as outsiders, the “others”, or radicals.  Resistance to the system of assimilation is often seen as a result of one’s original social contract with America.  Many Americans are not living the American Dream rather they are involved in the American Nightmare – or a new version called “The Dream” (MLKjr) focusing on equality and acceptance rather than making it big (objective 1a: American Dream vs. American Nightmare).  The two major groups living “The Dream” are African Americans and Native Americans.  African Americans original relation to the USA began with the slave ship and as property of Americans.  As seen in “The Classic Slave Narratives: The Life of Gustavus Vassa or Olaudah Equiano”, he notes how he saw the ship and realized that he was the “cargo” it was awaiting which quickly changed his “astonishment” into “terror”.  He speaks of his resistance and wanting to be returned to his “former slavery” instead of his present situation – he “wished for the last friend, death, to relieve” him.  The resistance to the system and a want to return to the old world are common traits of the minority narrative.

The Native American narrative is similar in its resistance and a wanting to return or hold on to the past is evident.  Native Americans were forced from their lands, killed, forced to assimilate (children taken from them and sent to “white” schools), and then shoved into a remote pocket of land and romanticized by the dominant culture.  It was seen as better for them if their children were taken and brought up proper as seen in Erdrich’s “American Horse” Buddy is taken from his mother and uncle because the poverty and problems surrounding the house were seen as not fit to dominant culture standards.  (Why were they in poverty in the first place?)  Also shown is the minority culture resistance to the law and other dominant institutions.  Buddy whispering to his mom says, “cops suck the worst because they’re after us” – even as a child he understands the relationship between dominant and minority culture and knows that he is seen as lower in status.  The authority figures are not seen as protectors, but as disrupters because they are symbols of the dominant culture, who have tried to take away their culture and give them a new one.  To assimilate would be to agree with the dominant cultures view of superiority and so they must resist.  “The Dream” is to be treated as equals in the dominant world while holding onto one’s own culture.

The resistance is a way of minorities staying strong and showing that they are equal and have no need to assimilate because to assimilate does not mean to be better.  The dominant culture tends to call minorities who speak about the past as radicals who merely want to dwell in the past.  The dominant culture wants to move on, but to remember and remain in the past for the minority is to keep the progress rolling for better equality.  African Americans have only been “free” for a relatively short period of time – they were slaves for 246 years in America (1619-1865) and non-slave for 138 years (1865-2003) and if we take into account the slavery under Jim Crow laws – African Americans have only been free for 49 years.  And Native Americans are still in a constant struggle to be seen as real and not fictional characters, which whooped and hollered around the cowboy and his scared family.  To resist is to remember, and the minority narrative is very important in understanding class, status, and power in America.  They resist because the dominant culture resist them.

This essay reiterates the African American “Dream” as one of equality over prosperity and also shows of the lack of option in returning to his homeland.  Equiano would rather return to his “former slavery” than face the imminent nightmare of his life in America.  In contrast to the Immigrant Narrative, there is no decision to come and there is no option of returning.  It also illustrates the disdain the Native Americans have for the law since it is a symbol of oppression to them, while being a symbol of protection of the property and peace of the dominant culture.  Finally, progress for these two minority groups is first and foremost dependent on equality.

Other unwilling participants in the American Immigrant and Minority Narrative are those whose ancestors made the journey to America in the “middle passage” aboard slave ships. Although many of the early African immigrant narratives exist only as oral accounts of the passage to America, contemporary narratives such as Toni Cade Bambara’s The Lesson also describe a group of peoples whom are “just along for the ride,” it seems, with regards to the dominant culture in American society. Sylvia, the young black girl who narrates the story, learns “the lesson” from Miss Moore, an educated woman who has taken it upon herself to enlighten a group of inner-city children with regards to the harsh reality of the “haves” of society versus the “have-nots” by having the children observe how the “other half” lives, oblivious to the fact that there are those among them who have no concept of what it is like to eat every day, much less what it is like to spend over one thousand dollars for a toy sailboat. The Lesson, it seems, should be taken to heart by those whom it examines, as well, since it is an indicator of often-misplaced dominant American cultural values.

Moving from unwilling to willing participants in the American Immigrant Narrative, one discovers a recurring theme—a belief in the American Dream, despite the fact that this dream sometimes borders on becoming the American Nightmare, the luster of that pot of gold the adventuresome immigrant seeks having become somewhat tarnished. The “social contract” between these willing participants and America differs, however, from that of the unwilling participants, in that the willing participants come of their own volition to gain freedom, be it freedom from political oppression or freedom from economic disadvantage. One common means for escaping those fetters is through education, as both Anzia Yezierska’s Soap and Water and Nicholasa Mohr’s The English Lesson illustrate, although both short stories explore other issues as well. Soap and Water tells of one immigrant’s having sacrificed years of her life to obtain an education, only to be judged unfit to be a teacher by Dean Whiteside (the name alone should signal the reader that the dominant culture “makes the rules”) based on the immigrant woman’s unkempt appearance. The narrator cannot reconcile her feelings of disappointment at the injustice that has been thrust upon her, and believes the American Dream has become the American Nightmare. The English Lesson addresses another issue that is common among other cultures—that of gender roles in certain societies. Lali (whose husband, Rudi, owns a diner) is an immigrant who tries to better herself by taking English lessons with another coworker. Both of these characters exhibit traits of immigrants in Stage 4 of the Immigrant Narrative, assimilation and loss of ethnic identity. Lali, however, must also contend with gender issues, inasmuch as she is departing from her previous culture’s traditional role as a submissive wife, content to serve her husband while remaining at home—or, in this case, at work at her husband’s deli.

This essay brings up the idea of the “willing” versus the “unwilling,” and how the values of the dominant culture seem excessive and misplaced when viewed by the minority.  It also brings up the idea of how the social contract differs among the willing and unwilling.  The unwilling do not necessarily feel the obligation to follow the social contract that the willing may feel.