1. ETHNIC AND MINORITY CULTURES SEMINAR ONE

2. DESCRIPTIONS 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

3. METAPHORS APPLICABLE TO AMERICAN CULTURE Melting pot: loss of original culture Salad bowl: ethnic enclaves live side by side Symphony: : polivocality Rainbow: : Many colors Kaleidoscope: constant change

4. PUSH 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.

5. EXAMPLES 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

6. RESPONSE 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.

7. WHICH ACCULTURATION CATEGORY DOES THE FOLLOWING 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.

8. PRIMARY CORE OF AMERICAN CULTURE 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

9. PRIMARY 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

10. EVOLUTION OF THE 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

11. OTHER COMPONENTS OF THE PRIMARY CORE-AFRICAN- AMERICANS 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

12. OTHER COMPONENTS OF THE PRIMARY CORE-AFRICAN- AMERICANS 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//

13. AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURAL ICONOGRAPHY 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//

14. EVOLUTIONARY PHASES 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

15. TECHNIQUES OF IDENTITY BUILDING 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

16. 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

17. 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

18. WASHINGTON AND THE CHERRY TREE I cannot tell a lie Explanatory: Washington close to everyday people Legitimizing: honesty is a model to follow Projective: promoting national unity