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Sample Student final exam answers 2019
(2019 final exam assignment) Part 1: Essays: dominant culture overview |
LITR 4340
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Ronni Abshier
The Difference Between
Minorities, Immigrants, and how the Dominant Culture compares
Without knowing the true working definitions of
“minority” “immigrant” and “New World immigrant” as it pertains to those not a
part of the USA’s dominant culture, it could be hard for people to understand
the intricate differences between the two subgroups of people. Not knowing those
differences could also make it even harder to appreciate the ways in which they
are similar. Before this course, I thought that immigrants and minorities were
essentially the same, with only some minor differentiating factors, and that
where they immigrated from, or when they immigrated, wasn’t of much consequence.
It wasn’t until I delved deeper into the literature and poetry written by
members of the dominant culture, immigrant groups, and minority groups here in
the United States, that I realized there are very key differences between not
only the old world immigrant, minority stories, and their new world
counterparts, but definitely between them and those of the dominant culture.
After reading several selections of poetry and literature from the dominant
culture, immigrants, minorities, and those who seem to fall somewhere in the
middle, it was easy to see how these varied subgroups of people differ in their
view of the world around them, how they view the dominant culture, and how they
view their own culture.
Anzia Yezierska does a great job of painting the
difficulties that she faced as an immigrant when moving to the United States and
struggling to fit in. As an immigrant from Russia, she found it hard to adhere
to the dominant culture’s strict ideals of cleanliness when she worked eight
hours every day on top of going to school. “Where was the time and the strength
for the “little niceties of the well-groomed lady”?” Anzia was too exhausted at
the end of the day to keep herself clean or to keep up with her fingernails to
the standards of her teacher Mrs. Whiteside, who refused to pass her through
school due to her lack of conformity. Because of this, she struggled to fit in
with the dominant culture and was treated more like the minorities were treated
by their peers.
Joseph Papaleo paints a similar image to Yezierska in his
poem “American Dream: First Report.” Papaleo details the same idea of being
looked down upon by the dominant culture due to his Italian family’s lack of
cleanliness and also their slightly darker skin. Fortunately for him, his family
was “married” to the TV programs which taught them much about the United States.
They immersed themselves in the new culture, keen on assimilating. They washed
and took care of themselves and their home, moving from the tenement rooms and
slums to become proud American Citizens. “Who would have guessed that the end of
those voyages...would end this way, as well-dressed citizens devoted to the
disinfection of our carpets?” These Italian immigrants embraced the new culture
they’d escaped to and were accepted by the dominant culture, thus were able to
be successful in assimilating.
Minorities who aren’t immigrants, on the other hand, face
some different struggles than that of their immigrant counterparts. In Toni Cade
Bambara’s “The Lesson,” it becomes apparent to the children of the short story
that there are even more differences between African-American
people and those of the dominant culture who happen to be
mostly Caucasian than they had originally thought. The kids come to learn that
the money the dominant culture seems to be spending on things that they deem as
toys could be used to feed all of them or their families for an entire year. In
the end, Sugar, one of the girls in Miss Moore’s class, determines that “this is
not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal chance to pursue happiness means an
equal crack at the dough, don’t it?” With this trip, Miss Moore was able to
teach her students that although the constitution promises life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness, that the pursuit is definitely a different trek for
those who are disadvantaged as minorities.
Further explaining the divide between the USA’s dominant
culture and that of minority culture is Patricia Smith in her poem “Blonde White
Women” and Olaudah Equiano in his novel The Interesting Narrative of the Life
of Olaudah Equiano. While Smith’s poem focuses mostly on appearance and not
socioeconomic factors, it is still a very large part of the reason
African-Americans aren’t able to assimilate into the dominant culture, and why
now most no longer want to ‘fit in’. Smith and Equiano both explain that as a
child they longed to be accepted into the dominant culture; and even at a young
age Smith knew that with “nappy hair” and without being “blonde and white” she
couldn’t adhere to the beauty standards that were set in America. Smith details
longing to be white, to have pink skin and long flowing hair, so much that she
tried to color herself white. Equiano, of course, rather than trying to color
himself lighter as a child of about the same age, tried to wash his skin to make
it match that of his Caucasian peers. Both African-American narratives culminate
in the realization that there was no way for the authors to turn themselves into
the light-skinned people they wished they could be. As an adult, however, Smith
was able to embrace her own beauty, thumbing through Ebony magazine and
expressing the idea that there are no crayons more beautiful than those that
match her own skin. After years of feeling outcast by the dominant culture, from
her white teachers to the women on the train with her, she finally surpassed her
longing to be accepted into the dominant culture and embraced her differences.
Bridging the gap between immigrant and minority is often
seen with Asian families who immigrated to the United States. The narratives
that come from Asian immigrants see them as both a minority group as well as an
immigrant group, but they are generally considered to be a ‘model minority’.
Being labeled as such is because many Asian families prescribe heavily to the
traditional values that already exist within American culture such as hard work
and tight familial bonds, while pushing their children towards STEM fields, or
professions in the sciences. While outward appearance seems to play a major
factor in whether or not a person is able to assimilate, speaking the language
and adapting to the culture plays a larger part as evidenced in J. Christine
Moon’s “What Color Would You Like, Ma’am?”. Teenage Thien has no trouble fitting
in with his peers due to his parent’s sacrifice to make sure he is able to study
and partake in extra-curricular activities, though he does have trouble
balancing his home life and his school life. Such difficulties include not
wanting to let his peers know that sometimes he works at his family’s nail salon
when he’d rather be having fun with his friends who know nothing of the
pressures he is under to perform well in school and go to
college, many times without the incentives that his non-minority and
non-immigrant friends expect.
Unlike the Asian people who are often regarded as
‘model’, other cultures find it more difficult to assimilate into the dominant
culture of the United States. This form of immigrant, who also finds their place
somewhere between immigrant and minority, are labeled as new world immigrants.
New world immigrants are people who have migrated to the United States from
other countries in proximity to the US such as those from the Caribbean, Mexico,
and other Hispanic cultures such as those from Puerto Rico. Pat Mora writes in
her poem, “Immigrants” about the worries these new world parents face when
confronted with the idea that their children may not be accepted as true
Americans due to their lineage. Aside from outward appearance, where the more
‘other’ the immigrant appears in comparison to the dominant culture, the harder
their battle to assimilate will be, differing cultural values and morals can
also play a factor into successful or unsuccessful assimilation. In this poem,
Mora seems to illustrate the longing of immigrant parents for their children to
be accepted by the American people as a whole. She expresses that these parents
are attempting to integrate their children into this dominant-culture-run
society by feeding them “hot dogs and apple pie,” naming them traditional
dominant culture names such as “Bill and Daisy,” or speaking to them in English
to be certain they know the language, all while worrying that their “fine
American boy” or their “fine American girl” will not be liked or accepted, as
history has shown that this may likely still be the case, no matter how
Americanized their child may be.
In “Silent Dancing” by Judith Ortiz Cofer, readers are
able to take a glimpse into the world of a family from Puerto Rico, who
immigrated to the mainland United States in the 1950s. In this essay, Judith
details her struggle to assimilate to the dominant culture that exists in
America. What was particularly interesting to me when reading this essay was the
fact that the tenement that this Puerto Rican family moved into had previously
housed Jewish families. This struck a chord with me, because it signaled almost
a sort of end of an era. The Jewish families, as we know, were able to
successfully assimilate into American culture. This means they had likely moved
away from tenement housing and into more roomy, more expensive homes as they
worked their way up the social ladder into positions as community leaders, only
to be replaced by Puerto Rican immigrants who are also, of course, regarded as
minorities as well as immigrants. Similarly to the Jewish before them, the
father who was trying to assimilate, longed to move his family away from their
neighborhood, whereas the mother, who did not understand the importance of doing
so, felt comfortable in the tenement, surrounded by Spanish speakers and common
music and smells that felt like home – Puerto Rico. Cofer explains different
scenarios in which she struggled to balance the will of her father and the will
of her mother, unable to juggle the two opposing ideals of her parents.
Similarly to Cofer, Sandra Cisneros details some of the
same trials of being a young, Mexican immigrant to America in her work titled,
“Barbie-Q”. In this light-hearted but insightful story, Cisneros details a
little Mexican girl’s struggle to compete with the dominant culture’s pop
culture trends that she and her friend or sibling are immersed in. While she
isn’t necessarily
being steered in any one direction by her parents, she
still faces a struggle with assimilating. The story focuses around Barbie dolls,
a popular phenomenon for many years in America amongst little girls of all
races, the only problem being that Barbie dolls were expensive, and therefore
almost exclusive to the dominant, and subsequently wealthier, culture. Similarly
to Toni Cade Bambara’s “The Lesson,” the little girls in “Barbie-Q” are well
aware that the toys afforded to those children lucky enough to be a part of the
dominant culture were much nicer and more expensive than the ones they had. In
the end, it didn’t matter to the girls that their new Barbies were water-logged
or soot-stained, or even burned, because the fact that they were able to get new
dolls was exciting enough for them, no matter the circumstances that allowed
them to able affordable. This story, while not explicitly stating the
difficulties of assimilating, takes a good look into the life of a
Mexican-American and how their experience differs from their dominant culture
counterparts.
Another type of new world immigrants are those who came
from the Caribbean islands, such as the West Indies, where the families that
Paule Marshall described in his essay, “The Making of a Writer: From the Poets
in the Kitchen.” While people from the West Indies and Barbados closely resemble
Black American minorities in the US, their cultural identity is very different.
One of the main ideas that I gathered from this essay was that, in comparing the
two cultures, those from the West Indies tended to be more accepting of
assimilation – interested in politics and the economy like those in the dominant
culture, naming their children after FDR just as the dominant culture would, in
the hopes they would grow up to be like him, a hero. The West Indies women were
also hard working, placing value on being able to rise above their situations.
They prescribed to the American Dream, even though they “didn’t count in
American society except as a source of cheap labor” but still they hoped to work
their way into buying a home one day in which to see their children grow from.
Claude McKay is another voice of these Caribbean
immigrants. Claude, born in Jamaica, immigrated to America in the early 1900s.
Once here, he encountered racism in the south before moving north to New York
City. Well-traveled, Claude published many poems, and one of these poems,
“America” tells a story of his experience. While his heritage would lead most to
believe his experience should have aligned more with immigrants to American, it
is seen that his status as an immigrant is largely disregarded, and instead, he
is regarded much more similarly to black minorities than immigrants of a
different skin tone. In speaking of this country, McKay writes: “Her vigor flows
like tides into my blood / Giving me strength erect against her hate.” Here, he
expresses that although ‘America’ hates him, that hate makes him stronger in who
he is. Claude is one of the many examples of black immigrants to America whose
cultural identity was refused by the dominant culture due to his resemblance to
those descended from slaves. Because of this, his experience in America closely
resembled the minority group of Black Americans, who suffered and continue to
suffer, from racism at the hands of the dominant culture daily.
It wouldn’t be right to compare all of the groups listed
before: old world immigrants, minorities, model minorities, new world
immigrants, and those in between, without discussing the dominant culture
standard against which these groups are judged.
The USA’s dominant culture has largely grown to nowadays
encompass descendants from many different cultures, however that wasn’t always
the case. The dominant culture that founded this country was largely emigrated
from Great Britain. As stated in Of Plymouth Plantation, both pilgrims
and puritans settled in the New England area, bringing new disease to the native
populations that already inhabited the area and wiping most of them out over
time. Whoever didn’t die from disease either became allies to the stronger
“dominant” presence or fell in battle against them. This culture, which settled
in and took over lands that did not already belong to them, starting their own
government and laying claim to property which they deemed open for the taking,
is what developed into America’s dominant culture.
Now, the dominant culture has expanded to include
descendants of immigrants from Scotland, Ireland, Germany, France, and other
countries of Europe. An example of this would be the Scots-Irish descendants as
explained in Hillbilly Elegy. There are many ways the family described in
J.D. Vance’s recounting of his life fit the mold of the dominant culture. His
mamaw, for example, did not approve of laziness or failing at school, making him
do chores and get a job, and not allowing him to drop out of school. As we’ve
learned through this course, the dominant culture prides itself on promoting
hard work and education as a means of bettering yourself, your family, and by
extension the country as a whole. Although his extended family thought Mamaw was
too hard on him, it seemed to have worked favorably for him, as he did end up
being one of the only successful people in his family.
The dominant culture, as we’ve learned can also generally
be described as members of the working class, who may or may not face struggle,
but are very much against taking handouts of any kind, whether that be
subsidized housing or food stamps. The dominant culture will never condone the
using of these services as a means to get by and especially not as a permanent
crutch. As J.D. Vance points out in Hillbilly Elegy, his family did not
look kindly upon those who were poor just like them, but accepted welfare: “I
can’t understand why people who’ve worked all their lives scrape by while these
deadbeats buy liquor and cell phone coverage with our tax money.” It is
important that this distinction is made, because there are three major parts at
play when it comes to determining whether or not a person can be accepted into
the dominant culture or whether someone who wasn’t born into the dominant
culture will be accepted. As discussed earlier, appearing the part matters, but
so does a person’s views on the world around them as well as their social class.
In this case, J.D. Vance’s family fit the bill for two of those three factors,
but not the third.
Fitting into the correct social class is one way in which
J.D. Vance’s family in Hillbilly Elegy did not fit into the dominant
culture or their ideas of how families should function and thrive. For example,
J.D.’s mother and grandmother both had problems with drugs – his Mamaw took
prescription pills while his mom took those along with other sorts of drugs.
J.D. also learned that his Mamaw had become pregnant as a teenager, something
the dominant culture often frowns upon as they usually prefer to keep their
children and raise them up until they are fully functioning adults and
contributors to society before allowing them to go off and have families of
their own. J.D. also commented a few times about his Mamaw’s filthy mouth and
cigarette use, two identifying factors that determined their place on the fringe
of society. Even if they did fit into the dominant culture by their heritage,
there were aspects of their way of life and behavior that were far from ideal in
the dominant culture’s eyes.
Before taking this course, I was blind to the difference
between immigrants and minorities, and also blind to some of the struggles that
immigrants and minorities face when trying to, or in some cases feeling forced
to, assimilate. Some groups are unable to assimilate because of their
circumstances, their appearance, or their focus on their offspring’s success. I
have now, through reading short stories, excerpts, and poems written by these
groups of immigrant, minority, and new world immigrant cultures, gained a better
understanding of what it is like to not be a member of the American
Dominant Culture, or to be within the dominant culture ambiguously. I am able to
see how those circumstances, which are beyond control in many cases, affect the
everyday lives’ of not only first generation immigrants and minorities, but
those subsequent generations as well. It seems that no matter where the
immigrants or minorities are from, or when they came to America, their struggles
are both unique and similar in many ways.
