Tanya Stanley

July 12, 2008 1:00 - 3:04 a.m.

Division to Diversity

Some people believe America is a nation of immigrants, but America is a blending of immigrants, minorities, and the dominant culture.  The dominant culture is the entity immigrants assimilate to and minorities resist.  Without the dominant culture, America would be a nation of division—a division among all the immigrants—instead of a nation of diversity.  The dominant culture’s allure of the American Dream entices immigrants to cross the borders.  The dominant culture remains the defining society of America because without the dominant culture immigrants would not have a society to be reborn to, and the dominant culture’s attractions allow immigrants to see a people and a place worth traveling across the vast ocean to join.

Immigrants see America as a place of rebirth, an escape from tyranny, and a source of improvement.  The dominant culture creates an ideal for the persecuted or the economically oppressed to advance.  Without the dominant culture, immigrants may be on their own living more like separate minority communities.  Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer shows the blurred lines between the rich and the poor in America.  Crevecoeur sees America as a place without “aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power giving to a few very visible ones…The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other…” (Crevecoeur excerpt).  America offers freedom from religious persecution, economic hardships, and the monarchy.  Without the dominant culture to maintain the ideals Crevecoeur describes, America may become a country of oppression between multiple cultures.  The dominant culture creates a nation of rebirth, and without the dominant culture, rebirth may turn into decay because diversity of the cultures would become a division of the groups. 

The Jews of the Bible’s Exodus story and the Pilgrims of William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation represent the dominant culture of America.  Both groups refused to assimilate to the cultures of the Promised Land and both groups rejected intermarriage with the previous inhabitants.  Objective four of the seminar states the English Pilgrims “imitated the Jews in Canaan by refusing to intermarry or assimilate with the American Indians.  This English culture became the basis for the USA’s dominant culture.”  According to the Bible, God tells the Jews that they are to dispossess “the inhabitants of the land”—the Canaanites (Numbers 33.53).  Like the Jews, the Pilgrims do not desire to assimilate to the Native American cultures.  The Pilgrims dispossess the Native Americans as the Jews dispossess the Canaanites (97).  Bradford states Mr. Edward Winslow and Mr. Hopkins found Massasoit’s home in which “the soil was good and the people not many, being dead and abundantly wasted in the late great mortality…wherein thousands of them died” (97).  According to the Bible, the Jews “shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them:  neither shalt thou make marriages with them” (Deuteronomy 7.2-3).  National migration suggests a relocation of a people to a new place in order to form a dominant culture instead of assimilating to the existing culture.  The Jews and the Pilgrims experienced a restoration without persecution from others when they journeyed to the Promised Land; however, instead of restoring their traditional lifestyles, immigrants experience a rebirth through assimilation into the dominant culture. 

The dominant culture’s attractions include an emphasis on education, economic advancement, and social acceptance.  The dominant culture stresses the importance of earning an education.  Having an education predicates upward mobility, economic security, and an elite status among fellow members of the dominant culture.  Upward mobility allows for members of the dominant culture to supersede older members of the dominant culture in the corporate world and the political arenas suggesting constant success generation after generation.  Having an education also suggests the learner knows the nation’s language, history, and expectations.  The importance of having an education is individual success as well as collective success.  After earning a degree, the graduate has an improved economic situation and financial security.  With the wealth obtained by earning a degree and a higher-paid position, the dominant culture’s economic situation improves.  The new employee will spend his income on a home, a vehicle, and other luxuries he can now afford.  Economic advancement becomes a collective progression while improving the livelihood of the individual.  With a nice home, a vehicle, a well-paying job, and the degree, the individual becomes part of the dominant culture and forgets the woes he experienced before the society accepted his membership in their social realm.  Socially, the individual networks and other non-members follow his lead—envious and excited about their own advancement.  Dean Whiteside, the representation of the dominant culture in Anzia Yezierska’s narrative “Soap and Water,” decides who graduates and who does not based on physical appearances and social acceptance (105).  The narrator describes Dean Whiteside as “merely one of the agents of clean society, delegated to judge who is fit and who is unfit to teach” (106).  Although many readers may not agree with Dean Whiteside’s abuse of power, we must respect her determination to uphold the dominant culture’s social contracts.  Dean Whiteside represents the college and her graduates represent her and the dominant culture.  Dean Whiteside must not stray from societal norms in order to remain unobserved from her peers as the dean of the college.  The dominant culture’s charming enticements focus on education, economic progress, and social approval.

By looking at the seminar’s texts, the model of the dominant culture dates back to biblical times.  The Jews in the Exodus story, the pilgrims in Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation, the farmers in Crevecoeur’s excerpt, and the unmarked judge of the sterile world, Dean Whiteside, resemble one another and represent the successes of the dominant culture.  Without the dominant culture, immigrants would not be able to assimilate to a group because the group would not exist. Without the presence of the dominant culture, America would become a nation of division—a division among all the immigrants—instead of a nation of diversity.  By having a dominant culture, immigrants see a successful group that they want to shadow.  A divided nation would create mass confusion among its inhabitants and possibly never-ending feuds.  The dominant culture creates a model of success for immigrants to fuse to when trying to assimilate and become successful.