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Sample Student final exam answers 2018 |
LITR 4340
 American Immigrant Literature Model Assignments |
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Ruth Brown
The Search for Dominant Culture
I approached this final web highlights essay hoping to
gain a clearer view of the dominant culture. Out of all the ideas and terms
we’ve discussed this semester, trying to identify and categorize the dominant
culture has been the most challenging. I find it difficult to understand how the
dominant culture is dominant, but also originated from immigrants. By reading
the essays posted to the model assignments, I was able to gain a better and more
fully developed understanding of the dominant culture.
I found that I was not the
only one struggling to understand or identify the dominant culture.
In his essay “America’s
Guide to Becoming Dominant,”
Austin Green
begins his essay by declaring,
“I never gave much thought to how the dominant
culture had become the dominant culture.
White
Europeans made their way to American, settled here, and expanded. That was that.”
He then proceeds to analyze the history of the Pilgrims and how they established
a dominant culture as immigrants. Through class discussions, I was able
to see how Pilgrims identify with the immigrant narrative because of their
journey to the United States. However, Green expanded on that idea by examining
the different waves of immigrants establishing the dominant culture, from the
1620s through the 1700s. He illustrates the relationship between the Pilgrims
and the Native Americans and how the Pilgrims resistance to assimilate to the
culture already found in America led to the reversing of roles where “the
minority becomes the dominant culture, and the dominant culture becomes the
minority.” This explanation helped clarify the journey from immigrant to
dominant culture.
Cesar Cano
also writes about the confusion of the dominant
culture in his essay “Universally
Bland Yet Appealing to All.”
He states that he originally characterized dominant culture as “white culture,
but if asked to define white culture I would be at a loss for words.” In his
introduction paragraph, he describes being unconscious of the dominant culture
and then relates it to a waterfall metaphor from
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. When
you live next to a waterfall, you will eventually become used to and unconscious
of the noise. This was a lightbulb moment for me. I realized that because I am a
part of the dominant culture, and have lived with it all my life, that is why I
never thought of it before and why I have trouble identifying it. While Green
improved my understanding of Pilgrims as immigrants, Cano connected the Pilgrims
with an identity I had never thought to consider with the dominant culture, New
World immigrants. He explains that before the Pilgrims traveled to America they
lived in Holland and were concerned about their children losing their culture
and religious identity, just as New World immigrants try to balance assimilation
and keeping their unique identity. Reading this example expanded my ideas of the
dominant culture and helped me build new connections and view the history of the
dominant culture from a new perspective.
In both Green’s and Cano’s
essays, the idea surfaces of whiteness being a major aspect of the dominant
culture. This has emerged in class discussions as well, but again I was having a
hard time grasping the full meaning. Amber Boone begins her essay “The
Dominant Culture and ‘Whiteness’”
with the question “what does it mean to be ‘white?’” She asks if it is a
cultural heritage, race, appearance, or social identity. I don’t feel as if a
clear answer is ever reached, which is understandable because I don’t believe a
clear answer exists. Boone explains that beyond the color white the dominant
culture is defined by “middle-class modesty, plainness, and cleanliness.” These
are ideas covered frequently in the literature of this semester, but I am just
now learning how they connect with the concepts of whiteness and the dominant
culture. Boone concludes her essay with a thought-provoking idea, “today, white
people in America are largely considered to comprise the ‘dominant culture,’ but
I wonder what that culture would truly be if the label ‘white’ was cast aside.
Perhaps we would simply be a nation of immigrants, each with our own unique,
rich cultural history.” She brings the dominant culture back again to their
origin as immigrants and places the focus on the history and culture each
American possesses.
Green, Cano, and Boone were all effective in clarifying
and expanding my ideas of what the dominant culture truly is. I came to the
conclusion that perhaps dominant culture is not so much a label, as an identity
with a vast history, an identity that characterizes itself as being unmarked and
plain, but has much depth. The dominant culture doesn’t necessarily need to
change their unmarked identity, but we should learn to be more conscious and
aware. Otherwise, we are being blinded not just to a defining force in our
society, but also to a complex identity that has its own narrative steeped in
history and culture.
