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StrangerThan -> RE: Race, Ethnicity, Language and Guilt - Take II (10/5/2011 7:23:25 AM)
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I had to think about this one for a while because I have and have had a lot of friends and acquaintances from many cultures and countries. My first reaction to question one is no. Multiculturalism is not a bad thing. What I've observed over the years is something Butch noted, in that, the initial wave of immigrants tend to hold on to their heritage and isolate themselves as a society within a society much more so than succeeding generations. It's almost like watching a ripple on a pond. The farther out it travels, the weaker it becomes, and yet manages to retain its overall shape. Travel far enough down that line and what remains isn't much more than a ghostly image of where it started.
I think it has some undesirable sides to it though, and not just among the individual cultures. The retention of culture among a culture tends to occur most, at least from my perspective, where there are high concentrations of the same groups. I don't see that as undesirable, if anything, it is the social pressure to do so that has me wondering where the good line is vs the bad one. I took part in a class years ago where the instructor asked everyone to identify themselves in terms of who they were and culture. As she went round the room, I heard everything from Mexian-American, to Indian-American, to African-American... and on down the line. When she came to me, I simply said American. That wasn't good enough for her. I finally ended up being African-American. When she blinked and asked if my descendents came from South Africa, I said I didn't know, but that if we follow what science teaches us, we all came from Africa, and that anything else was simply choosing a place on the path over the starting point. I told her if I was going to do that, the point I chose was to simply be American, since my family came over in 1580 on one side, and 1740 on the other.
The two issues that raises in my mind. One is related to a post DYB wrote out here a couple of months ago. It doesn't matter where you come from, doesn't matter where you grew up, doesn't matter what language you speak at home. What matters in terms of making a life here and enjoying success across a broad spectrum is learning to play the game or assimilate, in other words. The tendency to hunker down in like groups and in like communities inhibits that to a degree, and seems as if it would breed eventual discontent, eventual dislike of others where that lack of broad spectrum appeal in business would almost certainly seem to be a prejudice, when in fact as much prejudicial action occurs on side A as it does side B. That is a point you cannot address in today's world without being painted as racist or anti-something.
The second issue comes into the endless categorization we've adopted in trying to give everyone a sense of uniqueness and heritage. It is more difficult to bind a country when everyone within it ends up feeling as there's an US and a THEM, and there's a lot of that in the US. About the only time we seem to come together as one is when we're under attack from the outside. To me, aspects of all cultures are uniquely inherent aspects of culture within the US as virtually every culture is represented here. I think the policy is divisive in itself. Shrug.
As for the second, I don't agree with reparations. I believe it heightens the US and THEM idea. I believe every single person on the face of the planet has a historical stance where injustice was done to them or their people. I think the best you can do is to establish an equal playing field, where everyone has the same chances available to them, where the ultimate decision on their success or lack thereof is more related to personal choices and responsibility than to who they are.
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