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Sample Student final exam answers 2018 |
LITR 4340
 American Immigrant Literature Model Assignments |
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Breanna Runnels
The Dominant Culture: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Often, we see the dominant culture described as many
different things. Members of the dominant culture are descendent from most
places in Europe including Scandinavia and Denmark. It is hard to pinpoint where
exactly the dominant culture comes from, since it changes so often. Though it
changes often, there are quite a few things that the dominant culture is always
associated with: whiteness, takeover, and.
In Amber Boone’s 2016 final exam,
The Dominant Culture and ‘Whiteness’,
we can see that she is basing her paper on trying to find what it actually means
to be “white”. When she begins her story with a personal anecdote of her own
heritage. She explains how her being white has affected her need to know what
“whiteness” actually is. My favorite part of her essay was her vast use of
history as a supporting factor of her research. She writes, “Some citizens in
America that are today classified as “white” were actually excluded from this
label for quite some time, despite being of European descent.” This reminded me
of the voting dilemma where Mexicans were once told to check the “white” box,
but when populations grew they were taken out of the white category.
The next essay that I read was Jennifer Robles’
Iceberg Domination. I used this as
one of my model assignments for the final exams, because I absolutely loved the
writing style. Her use of waves as a historical term as well as a metaphor was
well thought out and useful for the population influx as the dominant culture
arrived in America. I related to her iceberg metaphor that she used throughout
her paper because I also used a metaphor to describe the dominant, minority, and
immigrant narratives. Her use of chronological order and dating reminded me of
Boone’s paper and how important it is to use history as a basis for literature.
“America’s dominant culture, at surface-level, is the cookie-cutter image of
Anglo-Saxon, white Protestants who run our country… This image of the dominant
culture is definitely the tiny tip of the iceberg we can all clearly see but
does not touch on the magnitude of the dominant culture’s elusive presence
hidden beneath the surface.” is how she opens her paper. The iceberg is one of
the best metaphors for the inhabitants of America that I have seen.
The last paper that I read was
Defining America by Marissa Turner.
Her paper opens up with her idea that people do not always remember the
background behind the dominant culture like they do for immigrants and
minorities. So, like the other two papers, the author focuses on dates to
support the dominant culture’s narrative. I also really liked the fact that she
emphasized that the dominant culture could also be described as immigrants. She
says, “What society fails to remember or consider is that the dominant culture
is also descendants of immigrants. Even before their arrival in America,
pilgrims were resistant to assimilating to the catholic religion; therefore,
they decided to change location and migrate to Holland in hopes of finding a
promise land where they could be free regarding their beliefs.” The fact that
the dominant culture wasn’t always dominant is often forgotten. I also like that
this paper focused on the things that people assimilated towards from the
dominant culture, rather than what the dominant culture came from. She also
makes a point that I have not heard before but is a great thing to start a
conversation. She states that, “I believe that there should not be a “dominant”
culture and if there absolutely has to be one, it should have been the Native
American as they were here first.”
I have found many things that within these papers that
have made me think along different routes, but I have also found things that I
may not disagree with. Though many factors of the dominant culture are based
primarily on history and fact, some things are based on the ways that immigrant
and minority narratives have inversely affected the dominant culture. I find
that that dominant culture is one of the hardest thing to pinpoint since it is
ever-changing, but I also find it very interesting to research.
