Lindsey Kerckhoff

The Struggle to Become One of the Dominant Culture

            Before taking this class I thought that the dominant culture as still being white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.  I thought that it was colorful.  After reading about the dominant culture from the immigrants and minorities point of view I realize that it is not as diverse.  Trying to fit into the dominant culture is not an easy thing to do because in order to do truly fit in a person has to give something up.  The idea that many immigrants have is that they will come to America and work hard and life will be easier and they will be accepted, but the dominant culture is always changing what is acceptable and it often seems out of reach.  One of the main struggles comes to the later generations, by assimilating to the dominant culture their immigrant parents make them feel that they are not being true to their culture. 

            Second or third generations often have an easier time assimilating because they are born in America.  Their parents or grandparents are often the greatest challenge in their assimilation.  They often feel that they are betraying their culture by blending into the dominant culture.  In Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers, Sara Smolinsky is torn between the two worlds.  She is not accepted by the dominant culture or by her parents.  She is different from the college that represent the dominant culture, “I see such plain beautifulness.  The simple skirts and sweaters, the stockings and the shoes to match.  The neat simple quietness of their tailored suits” (Yezierska 212).  The dominant culture is plain and does not stand out in any way.  Sara does not fit in with them and her desire to be a part of them separates her form her family.  She is not accepted in either place.

            The dominant culture that I am familiar with is the one that is always wanting more.  We live in a place where anything is available at anytime and your success is shown by the amount of material items you possess.  The speaker from Michael S. Glaser’s poem, “Preparations for Seder” presents the dominant culture as materialistic.  In preparations for the Seder the woman is stuck in both worlds but she in also accepted by the dominant culture and the traditions of the old world.  She is not fully assimilated because she is still carrying on the traditions for the Seder that her grandmother used to do.  The dominant culture for her is reflected by the easiness of preparing the meal, “Now the fat is plentiful, preserved by chemicals” (l 15).  Unlike her grandmother, she does not have to work as hard by scraping the fat from the chickens.  She just buys one that is full of chemicals that make the fat abundant. 

This same materialistic view of the dominant culture is apparent in Jonathan Raban’s Hunting Mister Heartbreak: a discovery of America.  The main character comes to America and goes into Macy’s, he realizes that you have to have money to be a part of the dominant culture because then you can afford all the things that help you blend in.  He purchases a seersucker suit jacket and washable trousers and calls it his “American camouflage” in this outfit it is easier to assimilate because he looks like other Americans (Raban 345).  This was when I realized how important appearances are too fitting in with the dominant culture.  Once you look like the dominant culture they know how to take you read they are more accepting.  He feels that he has purchased everything to help him be a regular guy but comments on how unfortunate it is that Macy’s does not sell teeth because that is something that stops him from looking completely like the dominant culture.  In Bethany Fenner’s 2006 Final she describes Americans use of capitalism perfectly, “Instead of making ourselves unmarked in order to be humble, we have warped the ideals to make markedness a sign of superiority.  We have turned capitalism into a tool of exclusion.”  We exclude people until they lose enough of themselves to look and act just like us.  The man in Hunting realizes that he will always have that his teeth are the one thing that cause him to stand out from the dominant culture.

            The Pilgrims and the Ancient Jews both left the old world in hopes of having religious freedom in a new world.  Although the journey for both groups is hard and they have to get used to a new country their struggle to become part of the dominant culture is not the same as the traditional immigrant narrative.  The Ancient Jews and the pilgrims both become the dominant culture in their new worlds.  They do not have to struggle to assimilate instead it is the Native Americana and the Canaanites that are pushed into the outsider position.  In both cases they are the lawmakers of their new land.  In Exodus 20 Moses writes the Ten Commandments which are the laws that the Jews live by and in Bradford’s Plymouth Plantation the pilgrims write the “Mayflower Compact” (Bradford 84).  Both of these groups are literate and their further separate them from the groups that were previously in the new worlds.  Both of the groups prohibit the intermarriage of the first inhabitants and themselves.  Instead they feel that they need to take over the land and drive the other group out.  “Dispossess the inhabitants of the land, and therein; for I have given you the land to possess it” (Numbers 33.53) shows the Jews know they are the chosen people that are supposed to take over and drive the Canaanites out.  In Plymouth Plantation they look down on Morton and his people for consorting with Indian women and they change the name of the lands (Bradford 227-8).  Although the pilgrims and Jews travel to the new world to seek a better life as in the traditional immigrant narrative, the struggle for them is not the same because they are not looked down upon by the existing groups.  Instead the tables are turned so that they can be the ones to look down on the Native Americans and Canaanites.

            The puritans appear to be the dominant culture in the other stories because they maintained the plain and neat look that the dominant culture is often associated with.  In all of the stories this is the one thing that remains constant about the dominant culture, our inability to stand out.  Yet as dull and boring as it seems, people want so badly to be a part of it because it means that they are truly American and they have achieved the American dream.  Being a part of the dominant culture makes me a little sad that it is such a struggle to become a part of for some.  This idea of exclusivity is what keeps it so alluring to people that are not part of the dominant culture.  This course has opened my eyes to the immigrant struggle and all that they give up once they enter America.