What is the American Culture?
The readings this week really emphasized the concept of culture and assimilation for me. It summed up some of the observations I have made so far in this course and really solidified them by reading first-person perspectives from Latin Americans themselves. While Spilling the Beans emphasized the way cultures are developed, Wild Tongue demonstrated how many view America as a melting pot for immigrants. Even though the story of Spilling the Beans may seem simple, the purpose of reading this passage is to show that people from different families/countries each have a unique culture. It embraces the fact that the Latinx community, for example, has a different food culture than Americans, but also that within Latinx community, there are smaller cultures as well.
What reading Wild Tongue did for me, however, was emphasize the way immigrants are treated in America. One thing I have noted throughout several blog entries so far is this common thread of immigrants being treated with a sense of hostility when they come to America. Doing further research outside of class, I stumbled upon this article which goes further into detail about immigrant experiences in immigration facilities. The question this has raised for me, not just this week, but in past weeks is- Why are immigrants treated poorly? Also, why in particular, are Latinx immigrants seen in a negative way?
It seems that when speaking of immigrants, those in the Latinx community are seen in a negative light, while some coming from areas of Europe, for example, are seen in a better way. I think of this quote Anzaldua writes in Wild Tongue describing her feelings on the American view of Spanish language:
“By the end of this century, Spanish speakers will comprise the biggest minority group in the U.S., a country where students in high schools and colleges are encouraged to take French classes because French is considered more "cultured." But for a language to remain alive it must be used· By the end of this century English, and not Spanish, will be the mother tongue of most Chicanos and Latinos” (Anzaldua, 39).
What this makes me think of is, why are Americans forcefully trying to assimilate immigrants to learn English and lose their native language? There could be several possibilities for this, but one that comes to mind is that Americans are afraid that their culture will become a minority, as more immigrants come into the United States. Some may argue that this is ironic, considering that our country was founded on immigrants and that Native Americans here were taken over by Europeans with a new language.
The bigger concern to note is that this is not just language. Language is one small part of a culture, because as Spilling the Beans demonstrates, the food we put on our plates is a part of culture as well. The biggest question to ask is- what do we define as American culture? Must we hold onto one traditional culture or understand that there does not have to be just one national culture. America is a large country and different groups of people in that country may have their own individual cultures.
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