Lecture 3 Live with different ethnical groups

Unit 3 Interpersonal Relationships and Culture

The US has long been known as the “melting pot”, because many of its people are descended from settlers who came from all over the world to make their homes in the new land.

America - Melting Pot?

Immigration wave

During 1820-1924, millions of immigrants have arrived at the US. For most immigrants, the Statue of Liberty was their first sight of the promised land. Most of the immigrants could not speak a word of English, but only two out of 100 immigrants were refused admission. Most immigrants are from Europe.

With more and more immigrants coming, US government saw the need of a stricter immigration law.

1886 from France

tablet

Distribution of major ethnic groups

12.8% black 11.5% Hispanic 4% Asian and Arabic 0.9% American Indian rest White

or Salads Bowl?

Yet in recent year the melting pot model was challenged by supporters of multiculturalism, who assert that cultural differences within society are valuable and should be preserved, proposing the alternative metaphor of salad bowl or mosaic – different cultures mix, but remain distinct.

Ethnical diversity and identity

There is a general consensus among mainstream anthropologists that humans first emerged in Africa about two million years ago. Since then they have spread throughout the world, successfully adapting to widely differing conditions and to periodic changes in local and global climate. The many separate ethnical groups that emerged around the globe differed distinctively from each other, and these differences marked the identity of different ethical groups .

Ethnical diversity reveals not merely in the more obvious appearance differences that exist between people, such as skin color, hair and stature, there are also significant variations in the way societies organize themselves, in their shared conception of morality, and in the ways they interact with their environment.

Ethnocentrism

The tendency to believe that one's ethnic or cultural group is centrally important, to assume that one’s own culture’s way of thinking and acting is more natural normal and correct.

People are almost always ethnocentric to some degree. As we grow up and learn what is right and wrong, true and false, normal and abnormal. We naturally learn to view the world as our culture views it.

racism Racism refers to the superiority of a particular race. Racis

m is a very serious problem in the United States due to its ethnical diversity. Racism in US is defined as racial discrimination against non-Caucasian Americans. And because African Americans are the largest minority groups in US, racial discrimination against the blacks is most widely debated.

Although no longer slaves after the civil War, American Blacks took no significant part in the life of white America except as servants or laborers in the first half of 20th Century. The improvement of race relations is slow but gradual, especially after entering 1970s, in more and more areas blacks are winning control of their communities, and their standard of living is going up faster than that of the poor whites. There is still prejudice and even some hatred, but in most walks of American life there are now more blacks than ever before.

A video clip – black doll, white doll

A case study On July 16, 2009 Cambridge Sergeant. James M. Crowley

received an order from the police radio center to investigate a possible breaking in a neighborhood. According to the description of 911 caller, there are two suspects and one of them is a black. When patrolling around the neighborhood, Sergeant Crowley ran into Prof. Henry Louis Gates at his front door

Prof. Gates became very angry and the encounter between thetwo men escalated. Later when Professor Gates producedidentification in the kitchen of his home, Sergeant Crowley still hadno idea who he was and arrested him on the charge of disorderly conduct. Days later, the sergeant was surprised when friends explainedthat Prof. Gates was one of Harvard’s most famous professors. Prof. Gates thought the sergeant owed him an apology but the sergeant refused to make one, so the confrontation betweenthem soon turned into a heated national dialogue about race.

and ordered him to show his ID.

What a White House Beer Says About Race

President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. met withHenry Louis Gates Jr. and the police officer who arrested him, Sgt. James Crowley, at the White House on July 30, 2009.

How biased are you?

Do you assume that Chinese are smarter than Indians?

Who do you think is more attractive?Do you assume that Black males are more

likely to be criminals?Do you privately assume White males are

physically superior to Asian males? Whose hair do you like better?

Asians White worship

-Why are White models and actors frequently used for ads in Asia?

Why do so many Asian women get eye enlarging surgery, dye their hair blonde, and wear blue contacts?

-How come some Asian youth are ‘not attracted to Asians’?

How come if you are a Caucasian in Asia, you are treated better everywhere you go?

Ethnocentrism to white worship of Asians

Yellow FeverAn Asian Obsession

黄热病？

Extra credit

Write an 300 words essay on

Cultural shock – my personal experience

due by Nov. 29, 2010

Thank you