The idea of a dominant culture is elusive and uncomfortable, so most people don't think or talk about it except in brief references or symbols.

Simplest approach: What is the culture to which immigrants assimilate? What styles or values prevail in mainstream American culture?

styles: plainspoken, not flashy, quiet, informal to businesslike, "unmarked"

values: mobility, individualism / nuclear family, cleanliness / sterility, security

Other simple approaches are to say the dominant culture is "the rich" or "white people"--that is, identifying by class or race.

But the dominant culture is selectively absorbent of other races-- intermarriage with other nationalities and races occurs as long as the new members conform to dominant styles and values.

Class differences can prevail, but poorer whites often identify strongly with the values of wealth and power.

> cultural markers

Elusiveness to invisibility

Another reason for the subject's elusiveness is that America's dominant culture is surprisingly invisible or hidden behind the walls of gated communities, high rises, and secure compounds.

This invisibility is increased by the "plain style" of fashion and behavior that typifies the wealthy and powerful of the USA, in contrast to the extravagant displays of wealth that sometimes marked the rich in older civilizations.

• symbols: white bread, vanilla, soap, blonde hair & blue eyes

Back to race or nationality . . .

USA's dominant culture derives from its early settlers from Northern and Western Europe, especially England and the British Isles

Two main traditions or strains of America's dominant culture from two early waves of immigrants:

Puritan immigrants (1600s) in New England and Upper Midwest:

• more educated, more community organization and stability, more faith in government institutions
   

• vast literary heritage for study and cultural influence

Scots-Irish immigrants (1700s) in Appalachian mountains and westward into lower Midwest, the South, Oklahoma and Texas, even parts of California and the Mountain West

• less emphasis on education, more individualistic and fractious, faith in family or clan, anti-government

Proper spelling of a single word won't make or break your semester, but it really helps your instructor-grader's mood if you don't spell "dominant culture" as "dominate culture."

"dominant culture" is right.

"dominate culture" is wrong.

Objective 4. To identify the United States' “dominant culture” to which immigrants assimilate.

Examples of national migration and dominant culture for objective 4

• Our deep historical model for “national migration” is the ancient Jews who migrated from Egypt to Canaan in the Bible’s Exodus story.
   
• The standard immigrant story concerns families and individuals who strive to adapt to the prevailing culture. In contrast, the Jews moved to the Promised Land as a group and resisted assimilation and intermarriage with the Canaanites. American Jews have followed this pattern until recent generations, when intermarriage has increased.
   
• Our American historical model for “national migration” is the “Great Migration” of English Pilgrims and Puritans to early North America, where they imitated the Jews in Canaan by refusing to intermarry or assimilate with the American Indians. This English culture became one basis for the USA’s dominant culture to which American immigrants assimilate.
   
• A relatively recent internal example of “national migration” might be that of the Mormons in the 1800s from the Midwest to Utah, where they became the dominant culture.
   
• Some elements of national migration and correspondence to Exodus may also appear in the “great migration” of African Americans from the Old South to the urban North during slavery times, in the early twentieth century, and in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.