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Sample Student final answers 2013 (2013 final exam assignment) #1: Essays: dominant culture overview |
LITR 4333
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Carrie Block
Lead, Follow or Get Out of The Way
America has long been viewed as the land of
milk and honey, the land of opportunity. It is where one goes in search of
freedom, wealth, and second chances at life, which is often referred to as the
search for the American Dream. But long before the term American Dream was
coined or familiar the Pilgrims took that leap of faith in search of their
dream, a home free from religious persecution, a home they could make for
themselves that was reflective of their own religious beliefs and culture.
Little did they know the wheels they put in motion as they carved into history
what is now known today as the Dominant Culture in America and have forever
influenced the immigrant and minority narrative.
To begin, we must answer what is meant by
Dominant Culture? The Dominant Culture is the leading culture or the culture
that future immigrants aspire to assimilate or acculturate to when they arrive
but with the pilgrim’s this was truly not the case in point. They came to
America with just the opposite in mind. They did not want to assimilate or
acculturate but rather they wanted to assert their own beliefs and practices.
The Pilgrim’s story is one of the typical immigrant
narratives as they made a great journey leaving the old world for the new world
with the exception of two distinct differences. First, the Pilgrims traveled as
a large group or what might be referred to as national migration and second,
they came with no intentions of assimilating to the current culture. Their
intentions were going to establish their own practices.
Fleeing religious persecution in
England the Pilgrim’s first went to Holland but after twelve years noticed that
their children were starting to assimilate to the Dominant culture or that of
the Dutch. This was very unsettling for the Pilgrims and hence they decided that
America might be where their people could prosper. As Ashley Strange says in her
final exam she states “When national migration occurs, the immigrants do not
need to change their culture”. They
can thrive and become successful in a new land while keeping their existing way
of life. This is what they hoped to achieve in America. In the following quote
from Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford you can see that when talking of
America they thought it as a native almost uninhabited land “The
place they had thoughts on was some of those vast and unpeopled countries of
America,
which are fruitful and fit for habitation,
being
devoid of all civil inhabitants,
where there are only savage and brutish men which range up and down, little
otherwise than the wild beasts
of the same.”
The Pilgrims
felt that their endeavor was truly that of God’s work in John Winthrop’s A Model
of Christian Charity he states “[13]
. . . Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant
with Him for this work. . . . Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring
us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and
sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles
contained in it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which
are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall
fall to embrace this present world and
prosecute our carnal intentions, seeking great things for ourselves and our
posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, and be revenged
of such a people, and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.”
With such
religious overtones the Pilgrim’s story is very similar to that of the Jews in
the Exodus story. They Jews put their faith in God as they moved their nation
from Egypt to Canaan. The Pilgrim’s drew upon this event with great
encouragement that God would bless their decision and protect them. Ryan Smith
states in his final exam essay “Now
therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have
also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them. Come now
therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my
people the children of Israel out of Egypt” (Exodus 3: 9-10). And as the Jews –
the entire race of people, a homeless nation - escaped Egypt, moving from place
to place until final reaching the Promised Land, so did the Pilgrim’s journey,
as a politically and religiously unified, to their eventual home in what would
eventually be called America.” William Bradford also makes reference to the
Jews’ escape of Egypt in the following quote from Plymouth Plantation “But
seeing it is
not my
purpose to treat of the several passages that befell this people whilst they
thus lived in the Low Countries [Holland or
The Netherlands],
(which might worthily require a large treatise of it self,)
but to make way to show the beginning
of this plantation [Plymouth
Plantation in Massachusetts],
which is that I aim at; yet because some of their adversaries did, upon the
rumor of their removal, cast out slanders against them, as if that state had
been weary of them, and had rather driven them out (as the heathen historians
did feign [fabricate]
of Moses
and the Israelites when they went out of Egypt).”
Contributions to the Dominant
Culture are also evident in the writing of our Founding Fathers. For example, in
the Declaration of the Independence it states “When
in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to
dissolve the
political bands which have connected them with
another, and to assume among the powers of
the earth, the
separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God
entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of
mankind requires that they should
declare the causes
which impel them to the separation.” It again shows that we did not want to
assimilate or be bound to the English. We wanted to establish our own policies,
our own government, as we are all equal in the eyes of the Lord thus
perpetuating the Dominant Culture.
The Scotch-Irish have long been
thought to be the major ethnic component comprising the Dominant Culture. In the
web text Scots-Irish it states “Because
of their northern European background, their Protestantism, and their cultural
and political conservatism, they are often identified with the USA's dominant
culture, especially insofar as that culture is represented by "angry white men"
depicted with firearms or Confederate flags. However, the relation between
Scotch-Irish and dominant-culture elites like big-government liberals or
corporate conservatives is distanced or conflicted, to the extent that their
behavior sometimes (and increasingly) resembles that of an emergent minority
group that defines itself by opposition and a history of grievances and
exploitation.”
In establishing a Dominant Culture you are creating an expectation for other
immigrants to adhere to or assimilate. It becomes expected of the new immigrants
coming into the country and for the most part, most immigrants are willing to
assimilate and become an American. “In the American
Society” by Gish Jen it illustrates the desire of a family all trying assimilate
on some level. The mother is forming her own opinions, pumps her own gas, and
checks her own oil. She even wants to join the town country club. These are all
things that she would have never attempted and evidence of her desire to
assimilate to the Dominant Culture.
In minority narratives the exact opposite can happen. They
resist or push away from the Dominant Culture. This can be due in part by their
involuntary or forced migration to America. These stories often show the same
themes as the Immigrant Narratives as they have both left the old world in some
fashion and have faced some hardships but in contrast are very distrusting of
the government and dominant culture. African Americans are one of the most
exploited and discriminated against of minority groups. Many were brought here
hundreds of years ago as slaves against their will. They were oppressed for many
years even after the outlawing of slavery.
In “Elethia” by Alice Walker resistance to assimilation in the dominant
culture is evident in Uncle Albert’s character. Uncle Albert was beaten
mercilessly even after slavery was outlawed. His master wanted him to be
subservient as evident in this passage “They used to beat him severe trying to
make him forget his past and grin and act like a nigger” proof of this
resistance to assimilation of the dominant culture.
New World Immigrant Narratives tend to share commonalties
with both minority narrative and that of immigrant narrative. They long for that
of the American Dream but have a tendency to resist assimilation thus slowing
the progression of assimilation. In “El Patron” by Nash Candelaria the father in
this story is not happy that his son that has gone off to college. “I should
have never let him go to college,” Senor Martinez said. “That’s where the he
gets these crazy radical ideas. From the rich college boys whose parents can buy
them out of all kinds of trouble.” Because of this resistance to assimilate
Mexican Americans tend to like to stay in their own communities, assimilation
proceeds but a reduced rate.
As you can see the American immigrant and minority narratives have substantially
been impacted by the establishment of the Dominant Culture. The same dominant
culture that is so eagerly sought after by many and so vehemently resisted by
others as shown throughout history. Who knew with the giant leap of faith the
Pilgrims made so many years ago, in search of their dream, the American Dream,
would forever change the face of American literature.
