Paper instructions:
Review the top ten values listed in the textbook. What values do you think are missing from the list, and why are they not in the top 10?
What are five symbols important to American culture? Are they important to you? How and why?
What problems arise from excessive ethnocentrism?
What are five symbols important to American culture? Are they important to you? How and why?
What problems arise from excessive ethnocentrism?
The Reading
1. Equal opportunity. People in the United States believe in not equality of condition but equality of opportunity. This means that society should provide everyone with the chance to get ahead according to individual talents and efforts.
1. Equal opportunity. People in the United States believe in not equality of condition but equality of opportunity. This means that society should provide everyone with the chance to get ahead according to individual talents and efforts.
2. Individual achievement and personal success. Our way of life encourages competition so that each person’s rewards should reflect personal merit. A successful person is given the respect due a “winner.”
3. Material comfort. Success in the United States generally means making money and enjoying what it will buy. Although people sometimes remark that “money won’t buy happiness,” most of us pursue wealth all the same.
4. Activity and work. Our heroes, from the golf champion Tiger Woods to the winners of television’s American Idol, are “doers” who get the job done. Our culture values action over reflection and taking control of events over passively accepting fate.
5. Practicality and efficiency. We value the practical over the theoretical, “doing” over “dreaming.” “Major in something that will help you get a job!” parents tell their college-age children.
6. Progress. We are an optimistic people who, despite waves of nostalgia, believe that the present is better than the past. We celebrate progress, viewing the “very latest” as the “very best.”
7. Science. We expect scientists to solve problems and to improve our lives. We believe that we are rational people, which probably explains our cultural tendency (especially among men) to devalue emotion and intuition as sources of knowledge.
8. Democracy and free enterprise. Members of our society recognize numerous individual rights that governments should not take away. We believe that a just political system is based on free elections in which adults select government leaders and on an economy that responds to the choices of individual consumers.
9. Freedom. We favor individual initiative over collective conformity. While we know that everyone has responsibilities to others, we believe that people should be free to pursue their personal goals.
10. Racism and group superiority. Despite strong ideas about individualism and freedom, most people in the United States still judge others according to gender, race, ethnicity, and social class. In general, U.S. culture values males over females, whites over people of color, people with northwestern European backgrounds over those whose ancestors came from other parts of the world, and rich over poor. Although we describe ourselves as a nation of equals, there is little doubt that some of us are “more equal” than others.
Since then, historians have reported events from the point of view of the English and others of European ancestry, paying little attention to the perspectives and accomplishments of Native Americans and people of African and Asian descent. Multiculturalists criticize this as Eurocentrism, the dominance of European (especially English) cultural patterns. Molefi Kete Asante, a supporter of multiculturalism, argues that like “the fifteenth-century Europeans who could not cease believing that the Earth was the center of the universe, many [people] today find it difficult to cease viewing European culture as the center of the social universe” (1988:7).
3. Material comfort. Success in the United States generally means making money and enjoying what it will buy. Although people sometimes remark that “money won’t buy happiness,” most of us pursue wealth all the same.
4. Activity and work. Our heroes, from the golf champion Tiger Woods to the winners of television’s American Idol, are “doers” who get the job done. Our culture values action over reflection and taking control of events over passively accepting fate.
5. Practicality and efficiency. We value the practical over the theoretical, “doing” over “dreaming.” “Major in something that will help you get a job!” parents tell their college-age children.
6. Progress. We are an optimistic people who, despite waves of nostalgia, believe that the present is better than the past. We celebrate progress, viewing the “very latest” as the “very best.”
7. Science. We expect scientists to solve problems and to improve our lives. We believe that we are rational people, which probably explains our cultural tendency (especially among men) to devalue emotion and intuition as sources of knowledge.
8. Democracy and free enterprise. Members of our society recognize numerous individual rights that governments should not take away. We believe that a just political system is based on free elections in which adults select government leaders and on an economy that responds to the choices of individual consumers.
9. Freedom. We favor individual initiative over collective conformity. While we know that everyone has responsibilities to others, we believe that people should be free to pursue their personal goals.
10. Racism and group superiority. Despite strong ideas about individualism and freedom, most people in the United States still judge others according to gender, race, ethnicity, and social class. In general, U.S. culture values males over females, whites over people of color, people with northwestern European backgrounds over those whose ancestors came from other parts of the world, and rich over poor. Although we describe ourselves as a nation of equals, there is little doubt that some of us are “more equal” than others.
Since then, historians have reported events from the point of view of the English and others of European ancestry, paying little attention to the perspectives and accomplishments of Native Americans and people of African and Asian descent. Multiculturalists criticize this as Eurocentrism, the dominance of European (especially English) cultural patterns. Molefi Kete Asante, a supporter of multiculturalism, argues that like “the fifteenth-century Europeans who could not cease believing that the Earth was the center of the universe, many [people] today find it difficult to cease viewing European culture as the center of the social universe” (1988:7).
One controversial issue involves language. Some people believe that English should be the official language of the United States; by 2008, legislatures in thirty states had enacted laws making it the official language. But nearly 55 million men and women—one in five—speak a language other than English at home. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language in the United States, and several hundred other tongues are heard across the country, including Italian, German, French, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Russian, and a host of Native American languages. National Map 2–1 shows where in the United States large numbers of people speak a language other than English at home.
subculture (p. 53) cultural patterns that set apart some segment of a society’s population
counterculture cultural patterns that strongly oppose those widely accepted within a society Seeing Ourselves
Seeing Ourselves
NATIONAL MAP 2–1 Language Diversity across the United States
Elvira Martinez lives in Zapata County, Texas, where about three-quarters of the people in her community speak Spanish at home. Jeffrey Steen lives in Adams County, Ohio, where almost none of his neighbors speaks a language other than English. VERMONT MAINE NEW HAMPSHIRE FLORIDA WASHINGTON RHODE ISLAND NEW YORK IDAHO MONTANA NORTH DAKOTA MINNESOTA SOUTH DAKOTA NEBRASKA WISCONSIN MICHIGAN OREGON MASSACHUSETTS IOWA NEW JERSEY MARYLAND WYOMING COLORADO NEW MEXICO PENNSYLVANIA CONNECTICUT NEVADA ILLINOIS D.C. DELAWARE INDIANA OHIO KENTUCKY TENNESSEE VIRGINIA UTAH CALIFORNIA KANSAS MISSOURI WEST VIRGINIA NORTH CAROLINA SOUTH CAROLINA ARIZONA Percentage of Population That Speaks a Language Other than English at Home OKLAHOMA ARKANSAS 60.0% or more 35.0% to 59.9% 17.9% to 34.9% 4.6% to 17.8% 0.4 % to 4.5% TEXAS ALABAMA GEORGIA LOUISIANA ALASKA U.S. average = 19.7% HAWAII
Seeing Ourselves
NATIONAL MAP 2–1 Language Diversity across the United States
Elvira Martinez lives in Zapata County, Texas, where about three-quarters of the people in her community speak Spanish at home. Jeffrey Steen lives in Adams County, Ohio, where almost none of his neighbors speaks a language other than English. VERMONT MAINE NEW HAMPSHIRE FLORIDA WASHINGTON RHODE ISLAND NEW YORK IDAHO MONTANA NORTH DAKOTA MINNESOTA SOUTH DAKOTA NEBRASKA WISCONSIN MICHIGAN OREGON MASSACHUSETTS IOWA NEW JERSEY MARYLAND WYOMING COLORADO NEW MEXICO PENNSYLVANIA CONNECTICUT NEVADA ILLINOIS D.C. DELAWARE INDIANA OHIO KENTUCKY TENNESSEE VIRGINIA UTAH CALIFORNIA KANSAS MISSOURI WEST VIRGINIA NORTH CAROLINA SOUTH CAROLINA ARIZONA Percentage of Population That Speaks a Language Other than English at Home OKLAHOMA ARKANSAS 60.0% or more 35.0% to 59.9% 17.9% to 34.9% 4.6% to 17.8% 0.4 % to 4.5% TEXAS ALABAMA GEORGIA LOUISIANA ALASKA U.S. average = 19.7% HAWAII
Of more than 279 million people age five or older in the United States, the Census Bureau reports that nearly 55 million (20 percent) speak a language other than English at home. Of these, 62 percent speak Spanish and 15 percent use an Asian language (the Census Bureau lists 29 languages, each of which is favored by more than 100,000 people). The map shows that non–English speakers are concentrated in certain regions of the country. Which ones? What do you think accounts for this pattern?Supporters of multiculturalism say it is a way of coming to terms with our country’s increasing social diversity. With the Asian American and Hispanic American populations increasing rapidly, some analysts predict that today’s children will live to see people of African, Asian, and Hispanic ancestry become the majority of this country’s population.
Supporters also claim that multiculturalism is a good way to strengthen the academic achievement of African American children. To counter Eurocentrism, some multicultural educators are calling for Afrocentrism, emphasizing and promoting African cultural patterns, which they see as a strategy for correcting centuries of ignoring the cultural achievements of African societies and African Americans.
Although multiculturalism has found favor in recent years, it has drawn criticism as well. Opponents say it encourages divisiveness rather than unity because it urges people to identify with only their own category rather than with the nation as a whole. In addition, critics say, multiculturalism actually harms minorities themselves. Multicultural policies (from African American studies departments to all-black dorms) seem to support the same racial separation that our nation has struggled so long to overcome. Furthermore, in the early grades, an Afrocentric curriculum may deny children important knowledge and skills by forcing them to study only certain topics from a single point of view.
Finally, the global war on terror has drawn the issue of multiculturalism into the world spotlight. In 2005, British Prime Minister Tony Blair responded to a terrorist attack in London, stating, “It is important that the terrorists realize [that] our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to … impose their extremism on the world.” He went on to warn that the British government would expel Muslim clerics who encouraged hatred and terrorism (Barone, 2005). In a world of cultural difference and conflict, we have much to learn about tolerance and peacemaking.
Counterculture
Counterculture
Cultural diversity also includes outright rejection of conventional ideas or behavior. Counterculture refers to cultural patterns that strongly oppose those widely accepted within a society.
During the 1960s, for example, a youth-oriented counterculture rejected mainstream culture as too competitive, self-centered, and materialistic. Instead, hippies and other counterculturalists favored a collective and cooperative lifestyle in which “being” was more important than “doing” and the capacity for personal growth—or “expanded consciousness”—was prized over material possessions like fancy homes and cars. Such differences led some people to “drop out” of the larger society and join countercultural communities.
Countercultures are still flourishing. At the extreme, small militaristic communities (made up of people born and bred in this country) or bands of religious militants (from other countries) exist in the United States, some of them engaging in violence intended to threaten our way of life.
