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Midterm2 (2013 midterm2 assignment) Sample Student Midterm Answers 2013 #1: Research Report Starts |
LITR 4333
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Dorothy Noyes
What is “White” and Why?
America is a country of immigrants. Unless
you are a direct descendant of the Native Americans, your ancestral history
begins somewhere not located in this country you so proudly claim. Sitting in
this class on immigrant literature, I was profoundly aware that I did not feel a
connection to a homeland other than the United States. That though I knew
objectively I came from Irish-Scottish stock, it is in my identity as simply a
white female, as part of the dominant culture that has been illustrated as being
quite oppressive, that the people around me saw about me in relation to cultural
heritage. Unlike all the descriptive choices given on the census forms, the box
I check on all of those forms simply reads “White.”
I
find myself curious as to how a group that started off as immigrants themselves
overwhelmed the native culture and established dominance. What happened that
allowed one group as varied as the European immigrants were and are, to be
transformed into a large, homogeneous group defined as “white”? How has the
history of immigration in the United States contributed to the establishment of
European immigrants as the ultimate, dominant culture? I want to connect with
texts and with society in a way that reflects my cultural history in more than
just a color, to be able to illustrate to future students that “white” is much
more varied and diverse than we have ever been given reason to understand.
In delving into the research, I noticed that
at the beginning of European immigrant literature, that these groups considered
themselves to be distinctly separate in origin upon their immigration to the
United States. As some of the earliest immigrants, i.e. the Pilgrims and
Puritans, they were still by all means English in all ways except physical
location. There was no “American Dream” at this point, just the promise of
freedom of oppression in a land where they could shape the cultural landscape
for themselves (Bradford).
Works Cited
Bradford, William.
Of Plymouth Plantation. Accessed
through Craig White’s online Course Site
Mucha, Janusz.
Dominant Culture As a Foreign Culture: Dominant Groups in the Eyes of Minorities.
Boulder, Colorado: East European Monographs, 1999. Print.
