ETHNIC AND MINORITY
CULTURES
SEMINAR ONE
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A nation of nations
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Society of Immigrants
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A nation of people with a fresh memory of
old traditions, who dare to explore new
frontiers
DESCRIPTIONS OF AMERICA
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Melting pot: loss of original culture
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Salad bowl: ethnic enclaves live side by
side
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Symphony: : polivocality
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Rainbow: : Many colors
Kaleidoscope: constant change
METAPHORS APPLICABLE TO
AMERICAN CULTURE
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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.
PUSH FACTORS
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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
EXAMPLES OF DISCRIMINATION
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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.
RESPONSE TO PREJUDICE
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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.
WHICH ACCULTURATION
CATEGORY DOES THE FOLLOWING
REPRESENT?
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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 layers
Icon: culture specific image
PRIMARY CORE OF AMERICAN
CULTURE
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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
PRIMARY CORE
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
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EVOLUTION OF THE PRIMARY
CORE
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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 life
Slavery is immoral both for the owner and
the slave
OTHER COMPONENTS OF THE
PRIMARY CORE-AFRICANAMERICANS
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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//
OTHER COMPONENTS OF THE
PRIMARY CORE-AFRICANAMERICANS
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//
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AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURAL
ICONOGRAPHY
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African-Americans
Separation: slave narrative
Self-doubt: DuBois on the souls of blacks
Reaffirmation: Harlem Renaissance 1925
Latino
Separation: partial
Self-doubt: 1920
Reaffirmation: 1965,United Farmworkers
Strike led by Césár Chavez
EVOLUTIONARY PHASES
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
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TECHNIQUES OF IDENTITY
BUILDING
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
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TECHNIQUES OF IDENTITY
BUILDING
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
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TECHNIQUES OF IDENTITY
BUILDING
I cannot tell a lie
 Explanatory: Washington close to
everyday people
 Legitimizing: honesty is a model to follow
 Projective: promoting national unity
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WASHINGTON AND THE CHERRY
TREE