|
2019 Midterm2
(assignment) Sample Midterm2 Answers Part 1: Essays on Immigrants, Minorities, and New World Immigrants |
LITR 4340
|
 |
Ronni Abshier
The Difference Between Minorities, Immigrants, and their New World
Counterparts
Without knowing the true working definitions of “minority” “immigrant” and “New
World immigrant” as they pertain to those not a part of the USA’s dominant
culture, it could be hard for people to understand the intricate differences
between these 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 both the immigrant
and minority groups here in the United States, that I realized there are very
key differences between not only the old world immigrant and minority stories,
but also their new world counterparts. After reading several selections of
poetry and literature from 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 autobiography 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-curriculars, 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 balance 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.
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. 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.
