African Culture Essay Research Paper When WEB — страница 2

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the dominant culture, not in the sense that they were merely disliked by the White majority (exhibiting prejudice or racial discrimination), but that they were forced into certain roles by it. Where the principle (stated or unstated) of the use of power was based on race, it was racism. Feagin and Sikes define racism as follows: “Racism is racial discrimination backed by the power and resources to effect unequal outcomes based on race.” (Feagin and Sikes, Living with Racism, Beacon, 1994). The use of the power of the White majority upon Blacks is a measure of the openness of society and a comment upon the nature of democracy. This power has been exercised in personal acts such as brutal forms of lynching in which Blacks were burned alive or hanged, and modern forms of

lynching, such as when Blacks have been beaten to death while in jail. (Southern Poverty Law Center, 1994 Report) Also, institutions have used their power to deny Blacks access to capital, often through their own deposits in banks, for the purpose of buying houses, renting, or insuring their property. Other discriminatory incidents include Blacks being suspected of stealing merchandise and publicly humiliated by being forced to disrobe or perform other humiliating acts. Then, more sophisticated acts of intellectual racism have consistently questioned the mental abilities of Blacks and, in particular, their intelligence, in books such as The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, by Richard Herrenstein and Charles Murray. (New York: The Free

Press/Macmillan, 1994). The Black/White Paradigm Becomes Multicultural The paradigm of Black and White changed with modern events that altered its use and meaning. For example, Asian immigration to the United States came quickly in the 1970s and 1980s with refugees from the Korean War, and especially after the Vietnam War. Even the continued reign of the Communists in China stimulated the flow of immigrants to these shores. For example, in 1970 the U.S. Census counted 1,438,544 Asians, but by 1990, they had grown to five times as many, 7,273,662. Likewise, Hispanics, lured by the economic attraction of the United States, war in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and the proximity of Mexico, came with equal abandon, such that since 1970, Hispanics increased from 9,072,602 to 22,354,059!

The result is that in states like California 45 percent of the residents are already Black, Asian or Hispanic, and non-White children are already a majority in the school system. The rapid pace of cultural diversity is reflected in Census data for non- White population growth, which show that between 1980-1990, Blacks grew by .2 percent and Native Americans by .09 percent, but Asians grew by 1.1 percent and Hispanics by the highest rate of 1.6 percent. Many incoming groups such as Hispanics and Asians have benefitted from the existence of a legal regime of rights contained in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination against diverse cultural groups, as one protected class, in employment, education, and other areas of society. However, with the expansion of

groups and the rights they enjoy, a conflict has developed as some interpret this expansion of democracy as a threat to the interests of the dominant White majority, especially as economic competition increases. Multiculturalism Liberal sociologists such as Gunnar Myrdal, who wrote what is considered a classic on race relations, An American Dilemma, in the 1940s, proposed that pluralism could defeat racial discrimination and subordination. In effect, pluralism assumed that a theoretical equality between Blacks and Whites could be achieved without serious alteration in the status of Whites, by the elimination of racial discrimination and the practice of pluralistic equality. Not only was this a false vision of racial dynamics, but also it protected Americans from the fact that

they practiced a virulent kind of Apartheid, and from the implications if the practice stopped. The fact that each group has a cultural history that shapes its place in the social order, often marked by inequalities of power, negates the doctrine of pluralism. Historian Dr. Arthur Schlesinger, in The Disuniting of America, writes of Hector St. John de Crevecour, an 18th Century Frenchman who had settled in the American colonies in 1759 in Orange County, New York, who asked the question, “What then, is this American?” He answered his own question by saying: “He is an American who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. The American is a new