ETHNIC AND MINORITY ETHNIC AND MINORITY CULTURESCULTURES

SEMINAR ONE

DESCRIPTIONS OF AMERICADESCRIPTIONS OF AMERICA

A nation of nations Society of Immigrants

A nation of people with a fresh memory of old traditions, who dare to explore new frontiers

METAPHORS APPLICABLE TO METAPHORS APPLICABLE TO AMERICAN CULTUREAMERICAN CULTURE

Melting pot: loss of original culture

Salad bowl: ethnic enclaves live side by side

 Symphony: : polivocality Rainbow: : Many colorsKaleidoscope: constant change

PUSH FACTORSPUSH FACTORS

Identify push factors and potential pull factors in the text below: In a bloody feud between the Chang family and the Oo

Shak village we lost our two steady workmen. Eighteen villagers were hired by Oo Shak to fight against the huge Chang family, and in the battle two men lost their lives protecting our pine forests. Our village, Wong Jook Long, had a few resident Changs. After the bloodshed, we were called for our men’s lives, and the greedy, impoverished villagers grabbed fields, forest, food and everything, including newborn pigs, for payment. We were left with nothing, and in disillusion we went to Hong Kong to sell ourselves as contract laborers. Source   “Leaves from the Life History of a Chinese Immigrant,” Social Process in Hawaii, 2 (1936), 39-42.

EXAMPLES OF DISCRIMINATIONEXAMPLES OF DISCRIMINATION

Mary Tape   San Francisco did not establish a segregated school for Chinese pupils until 1885. Mary Tape protests the refusal of San Francisco to admit her daughter Mamie to a school nearer her home. Year   1885 Text   To the Board of Education—Dear Sirs: I see that you are going to make all sorts of excuses to keep my child out off the Public schools. Dear sirs, Will you please to tell me! Is it a disgrace to be Born a Chinese? Didn’t God make us all!!! What right have you to bar my children out of the schools because she is a Chinese Descend…. Do you call that a Christian act to compel my little children to go so far to a school that is made in purpose for them. My children don’t dress like the other Chinese…. Her playmates is all Caucasians ever since she could toddle around. If she is good enough to play with them! Then is she not good enough to be in the same room and studie with them?… It seems no matter how a Chinese may live and dress so long as you know they Chinese. Then they are hated as one. There is not any right or justice for them. Source   Alta, April 16, 1885

RESPONSE TO PREJUDICERESPONSE TO PREJUDICE

I used to go to Marysville [California] every Saturday…. One day a drunk ghora (white man) came out of a bar and motioned to me saying, “Come here, slave!” I said was no slave man. He told me that his race ruled India and America, too. All we were slaves. He came close to me and I hit him and got away fast. Source   Bruce La Brack, “The Sikhs of Northern California (Ph.D. diss., Syracuse University, 1980), 130.

WHICH ACCULTURATION WHICH ACCULTURATION CATEGORY DOES THE FOLLOWING CATEGORY DOES THE FOLLOWING REPRESENT?REPRESENT?

Julian Ilar, a Filipino student at the University of Chicago, describes the prejudice that he and others faced.   Try as we will we cannot become Americans. We may go to the farthest extreme in our effort to identify ourselves with the ways of the Americans, straightening our noses, dressing like the American in the latest fashion, pasting our faces with bleaching cream, and our hair with stacomb---but nevertheless we are not able to shake off that tenacious psychology. Always we remain sensitive, always we retain at least a subconscious fear that we are being slighted because we are Filipinos. Always there lurks over us a suspicion that perhaps after all, we do not “belong.” Source   Julian Ilar “Who Is the Filipino?,” Filipino Nation, November 1930, 13.

PRIMARY CORE OF AMERICAN PRIMARY CORE OF AMERICAN CULTURECULTURE

American culture consists of a primary and secondary core (Virágos)

Primary core: tangible, and intangible elements

Tangible elements: manifestations of an unmistakably American culture—sacred documents, artistic output, iconography

Intangible elements: four layersIcon: culture specific image

PRIMARY COREPRIMARY CORE

Philosophical Americanism: acceptance of the American ideology, reverence of the sacred documents

Affective Americanism: Emotional identification with the American past

Volitional Americanism: a national commitment to pluralistic multiculturalism

Mythological Americanism: Ideological explanations for America’s domestic and global role—American exceptionalism, chosen nation

EVOLUTION OF THE PRIMARY EVOLUTION OF THE PRIMARY CORECORE

Separation: 1776, Declaration of Independence

Self-doubt: Thomas Paine, The Crisis, 1776 „These are the times that try men’s souls”

Rising Glory school at the end of the 18th century

George Templeton Strong: We are so young a people, that we feel the want of nationality 1854

OTHER COMPONENTS OF THE OTHER COMPONENTS OF THE PRIMARY CORE-AFRICAN-PRIMARY CORE-AFRICAN-AMERICANSAMERICANS

1845: Narrative of Frederick Douglass, an American slave

Slave narrative: cultural and physical independence

Slave writes himself into being, a quest for being

Authentic description of the slave’s lifeSlavery is immoral both for the owner and

the slave

OTHER COMPONENTS OF THE OTHER COMPONENTS OF THE PRIMARY CORE-AFRICAN-PRIMARY CORE-AFRICAN-AMERICANSAMERICANS

W. E. B. DuBois: The Souls of Black Folk (1903) //an American Negro, two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body//

Langston Hughes: The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926) //We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual-dark skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased, we are glad. If not, it does not matter//

AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURAL AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURAL ICONOGRAPHYICONOGRAPHY

Alexander Crummel, The Destined Superiority of the Negro—a chosen race

Nat Turner, leader of a slave rebellion in 1831 compared to George Washington

Black Manifest Destiny: //Africa for the African race and black men to rule them//

EVOLUTIONARY PHASESEVOLUTIONARY PHASES

African-AmericansSeparation: slave narrativeSelf-doubt: DuBois on the souls of blacksReaffirmation: Harlem Renaissance 1925LatinoSeparation: partialSelf-doubt: 1920Reaffirmation: 1965,United Farmworkers

Strike led by Césár Chavez

TECHNIQUES OF IDENTITY TECHNIQUES OF IDENTITY BUILDINGBUILDING

Therapeutic self-justification-destruction of stereotypes, search for identity, assigning art a political function—culture is a gun

Essentialism—glorification of Otherness, Black is Beautiful

Conation, conativity: belief in the power of the written word to will social changes into being--Declaration of Independence

TECHNIQUES OF IDENTITY TECHNIQUES OF IDENTITY BUILDINGBUILDING

Versus patterns: black artist v. white artist, White Manifest Destiny—Black Manifest Destiny

Myth-making: self justifying intellectual constructs fusing falsehood and validity

Functions of myths: explanatory, projecting, legitimizing

TECHNIQUES OF IDENTITY TECHNIQUES OF IDENTITY BUILDINGBUILDING

Versus patterns: black artist v. white artist, White Manifest Destiny—Black Manifest Destiny

Myth-making: self justifying intellectual constructs fusing falsehood and validity

Functions of myths: explanatory, projecting, legitimizing

WASHINGTON AND THE CHERRY WASHINGTON AND THE CHERRY TREETREE

I cannot tell a lieExplanatory: Washington close to

everyday peopleLegitimizing: honesty is a model to followProjective: promoting national unity