Kimberly Ord

June 27 2008

Midterm Part 1 – Web Review.

            In Daniel Robinson’s Mid-Term Long Essay:  We Are Just Alike, Only Different, he discusses in view the dominant culture has of the terms immigrant and minority.  He writes:

The use of these two terms is good in that it lets us differentiate between the two major groups of people outside of the dominant culture, but an inherent problem ensues.  The implication for immigrant is one who comes here, works hard, and succeeds whereas the implication for minority is one who is forced to serve the dominant culture and is characterized by failure, not success.  Obviously this isn’t true—we have immigrants who fail and minorities who succeed, but that image is there.  In looking at our texts, we can see the varied stories that present this spectrum of experience and, as such, they force us to question the use of the terminology and its ramifications.  They help us see how often in the name of diversity and political correctness that the universality of human experience is lost in the myopic view of one’s own experience, not realizing how common that experience truly is.

I found the concept that the dominant culture’s expectation of immigrants is assimilation and success and of minorities is not assimilating and failure very interesting.  I hadn’t thought of that before.  I agree with his point that people get so wrapped up in their own stories and in their differences that what they have in common with others is lost.  His critiques of the stories were quite good.  He goes through several of the stories from the course list pointing out immigrants who were not being successful in assimilating into the dominate culture and achieving the American Dream and minorities who were, if not assimilating, at least being successful at making a better life.  He points out in “Soap and Water” the narrator attempts to live the American Dream by working hard and getting an education but is kept out by the “resistance and discrimination” by the dominate culture.  He equates the narrator’s story in “Soap and Water” to that of a minority narrative since she has apparently failed to achieve her goals.  While I understand the parallel he draws between the discrimination the narrator experiences and the discrimination a minority would feel, it ignores the fact that at the end of the story the narrator finds acceptance in Miss Van Ness and is joyful and singing “America! I found America” (Handout pg 110).  In this way, we are left to believe that the narrator will succeed.  This doesn’t invalidate his theory that the dominate culture equates immigrants with eventual success and minorities with failure, but I think it keeps the story firmly an immigrant narrative instead of a minority narrative as he suggests.  When discussing “The Lesson,” Robin asks:  “So what is the lesson?” I thought that echoing the title of the story in the discussion was a very good way to get us to think about what the story is trying to get across.  His answer “that being a minority does not equal failure” is a good reading of the story and supports his theory very well.  I liked the way he used “Like Mexicans” to illustrate looking beyond the labels and see the similarities instead of the differences.  I thought that using this story to make his point was very good choice since Mexican Americans are seen as both immigrants and minorities.

The next web review I’d like to do is of Cherie Correa’s first research posting, Why Do Immigrants from Nicaragua Seem to Resist Assimilation More than Some Other Hispanic Nationalities?  For this research posting Cherie interviewed her in-laws who are from Nicaragua.  I found this research posting very interesting.  I remember the Iran-Contra scandal but never knew the history behind it or anything about Nicaragua.  I found it interesting that Cherie had a different view of how strongly her in-laws were holding on to their ethnic identities compared to other Hispanics groups than they did.  She writes:

Rosa believes that it is easier for the Mexican Americans to preserve their cultural practices because their population is so much greater in the United States. Rosa claims that because there are not near as many Nicaraguan Americans in this country, it is much more difficult for them to preserve their culture.

 It makes me wonder if they are not only afraid of losing their culture in the dominant white American culture but also losing the difference of  between being Nicaraguan and Mexican and becoming one group - Hispanics.  Like the way it used to matter if you were Scottish or Irish and now both are part of the dominate culture and just white.  I liked her conclusion that some immigrants may hold on to their ethnicity more if they hadn’t intended to stay in the United States.  This is the same attitude that Diego has in “The English Lesson.”  It would be interesting to see if that is a trend in other groups fleeing political unrest or persecution such as Cubans, Haitians or Tibetans.  I also found the fear that if they assimilate that their culture would die out significant.  I hadn’t thought that people who emigrated from a country that still exists would be afraid that they culture would die out.  But after learning the history of the war in the country and how the government tried to make some of the people give up their traditions, it’s understandable.  It makes me wonder how many cultures have been lost in the past because people fled persecution and became completely assimilated.       

The last web review I want to do is on Pauline Chapman’s second research posting, Immigrant Insights from China, India and the Netherlands.  In her posting Pauline, interviews four recent immigrants – Li from China, Jyoti and Tushar from India and Julia from the Netherlands.  I found Pauline’s interviews very interesting.  Reading them was a good way to hear stories from more recent immigrants than in most of the stories for the class.  First, she relates Li’s story.  Li did not intend to stay in America.  He came over as a graduate student and then stayed because his wife was in school and “little by little they became more established.”  Like the couple from Nicaragua in Cherie Correa’s posting, Li seems to hang on to his culture.  “They attend a Chinese church, he plays on a Chinese soccer team, and most of their friends are Chinese…”  I thought her quote that “The bureaucracy of immigration and naturalization he called a nightmare” was a sad echo of “In the Land of the Free.”  Next she discusses her interview with Jyoti and Tushar.  I found the stories he related of not being able to use a soda machine and not understanding that here it is not impolite to refuse drinks very down to earth.  It seems like sometimes we get lost in big issues such as assimilation, identity and discrimination and we forget all the little challenges like these.  The last person Pauline interviewed was Julia who is Dutch.  Like Li, Julia did not plan to stay in America.  The Dutch culture was one of the original components of the dominant American culture, but Julia still experiences some cultural differences.  Pauline describes her as being “surprised the first time a stranger spoke to her in a store.”