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Sample Student final exam answers 2018 |
LITR 4340
 American Immigrant Literature Model Assignments |
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Clark
Omo
1 May
2017
From Dominance to Internal Conflict
The
narratives examined in this course began with the exploration of the standard
Immigrant Narrative. Within the stories that exemplified this narrative, the
struggles of the immigrant in regards to leaving the homes they knew and
experiencing a culture that, in many ways, was totally alien to them, dominate
the thematic and symbolic structures within each respective tale. Accompanying
this style are the stories of the Minorities, whose tales of isolation and
conflict with the Dominant Culture bear resemblance to the hardships expressed
by Immigrants to the United States. But within this string of stories concerning
the barriers and obstacles that stand before the Immigrant and Minority are the
stories of the Dominant Culture. The Dominant Culture was not always so; it too
had to depart from its homeland and sail across the Atlantic to face the
hardships that awaited in a vast and unexplored land. In time, their culture
overran and dominated the body of American culture. Where this culture
originated, and the many internal issues it faces within its cultural realms,
are a subject that both Madi Coates and Chandler Barton explore in their essays,
respectively. And from this examination of internal breakdown within the
Dominant culture arises a sort of mirror image in the form of Elizabeth Tinoco’s
“Language Limbo”, where the linguistic conflicts faced by third and second
generation Mexican immigrants with their Spanish-speaking elders reveals that,
in America, cultural disruption is a problem for the Dominant as well as the
minority cultures.
Chandler Barton examines the progression of the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon
Protestant) dominant culture and traces their origins to their cultural
homelands, and then shows the disparity that festers within the Dominant
culture’s own social constructions. Barton follows the impact that the White
Anglo Saxon culture has left upon the Western World, beginning by stating that
no “other group of people has had quite the impact on world affairs in the
modern age than the Anglo-Saxons” and that, with this massive and expansive
influence, came to obtain over 23% of the world’s population at the height of
the British Empire. From this far reaching hand came the birth of the American
nation, and, within this establishment of this new country, came a “variety of
peculiar agendas and feelings, ranging from fleeing religious persecution in the
case of the Puritans and Pilgrims, to the land-hungry middle English nobility
establish royal colonies and provinces in the name of George III” . Already at
its onset, Barton identifies that the motivations and reasons for why America
was colonized lacked uniformity.
The
agendas for America’s earliest European settlers differed by class as much as
they did by social standing. Despite this differentiation among the settlers,
the dominant culture was nonetheless established. As Barton admits: “While the
styles, manners, and look of the different ‘flavors’ of WASPs varied depending
on community or origin, the dominant culture that emerged from their
amalgamation resulted in distinct look and feel that set the precedent for what
immigrants would assimilate too and minorities resist against”. The Dominant
Culture continued to shape and take form as the decades and centuries
progressed, with each successive wave immigration further adding to the mold
that would eventually take the shape of the WASP culture here in the United
States. As Barton remarks upon the Dominant Culture’s progressive gestation: “By
the era of the Scotch-Irish/Ulster Scots immigration, the shaping of ‘America’
as an entity began to emerge; in fact its not unfair to say that this third wave
of immigrants would come to dominate the sub-groupings of the WASPs…” The
American dominant culture, despite internal differences, solidified into a
somewhat cohesive, thought not always readily recognizable, social entity.
However, conflict inevitably arose from within. Such is the case of the
Scotch-Irish subculture within the WASP domination, in which, as Barton states,
“geography and historical circumstance have confined them to a area that
promoted and facilitated a disconnection from the rest of the WASP dominant
culture.” Barton cites J.D. Vance’s
Hillbilly Elegy as exemplary of this disconnection, as well economic
abandonment. Vance, in Barton’s viewpoint reveals a subgroup within the WASP
culture “marred with economic instability, confliction codes of morality and
ethics, rampant deficiencies in public institutions (education, welfare) and all
around digression.” Thus, internal disparity undermines the Dominant Culture,
with the WASP established superstructure falling victim to social and economic
inequality.
Madison Coates reaches a similar conclusion in her essay, “The WASPs are the
Boss: Dominant Culture in America”, with her reaching the diagnosis that the
image of the Dominant Culture has shifted dynamically since the days of its
precursors. As Coates states regarding the tails of Bradford: “The roots of the
dominant culture might lie within Bradford’s account, but the rhetoric of the
culture today is very different. Instead of a commonwealth like the pilgrims
first had, most established WASPs later supported a capitalistic society.” Even
in the initial stages of its development, the Dominant Culture already displayed
symptoms of internal digression and separation from the ideals that motivated
some of its earliest settlements. Coates then shifts to J.D. Vance’s
Hillbilly Elegy and reaches a similar
verdict. She states that “Vance’s rhetoric of hard work made me see how there
was a gap between the two types of people who are defined in the dominant
cultures.” This gap, like with Barton, appears on both to both a social and
economic extent. Coates then quotes Vance to illustrate this fact: “’There was,
and still is, a sense that those who make it are of two varieties: The first are
lucky: They come from wealthy families with connections, and their lives were
set from the moment they were born. The second are the meritocratic: They were
born with brains and couldn’t fail if they tried.” The gap within the Dominant
Culture widens due to the overwhelming force of economic opportunity. This gap
in opportunity contributes to this economically disadvantaged subgroup within
the Dominant Culture, thus cultivating internal conflict. Coates then identifies
this subgroup as such: “What fall between these two are those of the dominant
culture who are part of the middle or lower class who don’t have either.”
According to Coates, this subgroup possesses neither the “brains” nor the luck,
but rather have to “work hard for their living just like the immigrant or
minority narrative…” Coates elaborates and extends this argument to the
Declaration of Independence, where she quotes: “We hold these truths to be
self-evident that all men are created equal” and surmises that this doctrine
“does not always ring true to [the] history of American. Part of that comes from
the fact that no nation is perfect” and that we still have shortcomings
regarding our treatment of other immigrant groups. But even our culture, as
Coates and Barton have identified, is struggling with its own self-imposed
detriments, and these failures and conflicts continue to plague the Dominant
Culture.
What
stands as a mirror image to this internal destabilization of culture is the
picture of generational conflict within the Hispanic community presented by
Elizabeth Tinoco’s “Language Limbo.” Tinoco examines the issue of second
generation Hispanic immigrants and later whose grasp of the Spanish language has
deteriorated. As Tinoco explains regarding the results of this linguistic
dwindling: “An outcome of Latinos losing the language of their culture can
create animosity between other Latinos.” Tinoco then cites an article were the
resentment within the Hispanic community is discussed, and then reflects that
she herself has experienced this resentment “constantly in the community I live
in; it happens mostly with the young generations of Latinos who do not speak
Spanish, offending or inconveniencing an older person who only speaks Spanish”
Tinoco relates the regret that springs from this loss of one’s ancestral tongue,
saying that these “situations ultimately lead to guilt young people feel guilty
for never bothering to learn their cultural language and parents feel guilty for
not passing on such an important part of their culture.” This situation is
further complicated by the fact that Spanish-speaking immigrants do not pass on
this knowledge deliberately. Tinoco states that these parents do not perpetuate
these language skills “in fear that their children will be made fun of if they
do not speak English perfectly.” And so, the Hispanic community, in coming into
contact with the Dominant Culture and its strictures, experiences internal
degradation as much as the Dominant Culture does with its ever-widening economic
ravines. The Hispanic culture, as the Dominant Culture, faces the dilution of
its own ethnic identity due to traditional and societal expectations. The
Dominant Culture, in the case of the Scots-Irish, experience increasing
disadvantages as the class divide expands. Furthermore, as the Hispanic
generations continue to come to the US, they encounter the loss of regard for
their cultural heritage, just as the Scotch-Irish begin to lose contact with the
American Dream.
From
dominance to internal conflict, the Dominant Culture’s image, as expressed by
Barton and Coates, is one of degradation as much as it is success. As the
Dominant Culture continued to be fruitful and multiply, the economic cracks
within its cultural superstructure began to expand. As a result, disadvantage
and inequality circumvent the American Dream by creating a pitfall within the
system of opportunity. And, even as the Hispanic Culture tries to assimilate,
the virus of disparity reproduces within their social structures as well, with
each succeeding generation borne here in the US, as Tinoco identifies, losing
hold of its cultural ancestry. It would appear then that, with a country like
the US, with an economic and social magnitude such as it possesses, is in danger
of creating an economic and social void within itself that erects barriers that
prevent and obstruct opportunity for, not only the members of its own culture,
but those of any other that attempt to thrive within its borders.
