Cultural Diversity in 15 Weeks

This past fifteen weeks, I have been taking a course called Cultural Diversity in the Modern World; and, throughout it, there have been four main themes: socioeconomics, race, culture, and ethnicity.

For clarification, ethnicity is shared and learned aspect of culture; therefore is a subset of it. This is the small “e” of ethnicity, the learned ethnocentrism of one’s parent. The behavior (learned) shapes the familial unit. The core and identity of the capital “E” of ethnicity originates from the cultural mores of the larger group beyond the family; such as school, church, and other larger community events.

Working backwards then, the overlapping template of ethnicity plays a role in the cultural diversity of an individual, in that, the perception of outside agencies, who bring their “own” baggage of perception”, sets one’s ideals, values, and beliefs juxtapose to the “other.” This otherness, if you will, soon becomes the “us” once the meeting of ideals are blended—thus integrated. One might say, is "the incorporation" of one’s ethnic group; no matter what one’s dominate group/s may be in charge of, or represented.

Example—If one is residing within the United States, for instance, one could be considered an “ethnic” group from the “others” perspective outside of the US—since ethnicity is more of a nationality than a race. Another example of ethnicity can be seen in the book, “In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in the Barrio” by Philippe Bourgois discourses on the state of Spanish Harlem—based on race ethnicity.

He points out the challenge of assimilation after the exodus of Puerto Rico, where the great immigration of Puerto Ricans nationals to New York aspires to the American Dream after War World II. He reveals a patriarchal dominated society of machismo identity from both female and male perspectives of their deconstruction of subsistence patterns inherited from their native land—essentially the transition of being farmers, mostly, to assembly factories workers, to only have them, their jobs for the immigrates, virtually disappear—“outsourced” within thirty years of immigration. During this transition the “work ethnic” that is usually attributed to immigrate becomes transformed. Education is revered and downplayed. A culture of dependency resulted; drugs, abuse—physical, mental, sexual—and alcoholism subverts and delays the full incorporation into the American ethos.

The core base of the work ethnic is instilled into the children of immigrates yet considered by their Puerto Rican youth as a foolish game of the overriding homogenic culture. They see themselves as a “ethnic group” subservient and oppressed by the dominating culture—thus their ethnicity, defined as arbitrary, of a group identity, real or imagined, social, cultural, and/or racial past has been relegated as insignificant. The youths see their culture under attack, which brings out their arbitrary and overstated sense of ethnicity in their culture.

Culture is defined as learned behavior that allows and explain a people’s way of life, it also includes the blueprint for survival, is adaptive is intangible, is shared, and is integrated, and that, the hegemonic “state,” in this case, culture sets and establishes cultural norms. The dreams, goals, and desires by both immigrant and hegemony become blended, and integrated. Again overlapping, sorting the details of behavior and the rule of law, both explicit and implicit. An example of this, again taking from the Bourgois book, is term he uses called “cultural capital.” In the book, one of the youthful protagonists has an office job, where he felt uncomfortable taking orders from a woman. His bitterness and disdain for her was only precluded by his lack of understanding of office politics and how corporations assess their economic value. Thus, his inability to achieve and understand “cultural capital” (Bourdieu 1973, and Bourgois 1995), defined as the general cultural background, knowledge, disposition, and skills that are passed form one generation to the next, within the dominating society, while underachieving prevented him from moving beyond recrimination of what he believed as hegemonic “state society”-defined as “the man.”

“The man” represents a particular faction of humanity, in this case, in the form of a race—Caucasians. Needless to say, this brings us to another component of cultural diversity, which is race. Race is defined as statistically significant phenotype (what is seen mainly—and unseen), and that, the official position of anthropology is that, racial categories are culturally determined, in so being that, they are arbitrary, in which, race is whoever, whatever, we (as a society) want it to be. And they sum up their with position as “we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called "racial" groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances” (American Anthropology Association 1998).

An example of this arbitrariness, is within the United States itself, the category of Hispanic as a race is a culmination of an ethnic Spanish speaking peoples covered a swath of various ethnic differentially different group, whereas as outside of the US, race is, for the most part, separated from a native indigenous peoples and former Colonizers of European decent. Skin color is also factor. Collin Powell, considered a Black American, but outside of the US, he could be considered “white” (because of his features) or of European descent in countries such as Brazil, or in Latin America states. This reinforces the observation that race is arbitrary element as determined by the hegemonic culture or society. Furthermore, race is a biological concept that may have varying differentiation within a race, but in the entirety of the species does not.

And finally, socioeconomic defined as differential access to a society’s sources of wealth and/or prestige. As exemplified earlier, in the book by Philippe Bourgois, speaks of limited resources of Spanish-Harlem, in the sense that, minorities access to, or understanding thereof, to the dominate overlaying culture precepts of bureaucracy of city codes and regulations for opening a store—for instance—was hindered by their inability to read and comprehend culture capital moments.

In fact, invariably “culture capital,” and “socioeconomic factors” are integrated, shared, in that, the behavior of surrender coincides with accessibility to the hegemonic culture tools from the depressed group. Although, the group is often misrepresented and categorized as skin color, as minority access to the dominate culture resources are not the same. For instance, someone whose income in that of the middle class (no matter what race) does have the same access that of Ted Kennedy, or a George Bush family members. The ability to have the resources from a global perspective is far easier for these families than a middle-class citizen. The automatic entrance to Harvard or Yale, because of family name recognition alone gives an advantage over those who don’t. Pro Athletes, politicians, famous actors have the access that most don’t.

The culmination of the above points is to illustrate that cultural diversity and the study of it are complex. In that, cultural diversity is the causes and implications of the contact and interaction of different social and ethnic groups. Moreover, these various themes are part of the web of significance that overlay the modern culture of America. The globalization is created by the engine of competition, as a leveling mechanism, dysfunction, and therefore creating variety of vehicles as a complex structure that empowers and fuels modern diversification in the sense of culture, religion, technology, innovation, and creativity yet with this saturation and overpowering of states comes the resulted backlash of ethnicity and state societies trying to find normalcy and stability seeking to reaffirm their brand of cybernetics.

This backlash can be seen in the “culture wars,” immigration debate, and on the “war on terror.” In addition to these, the blending, sharing, integrating the world of modernity and cultural diversity with globalization as the overriding engine of creation for competition of resources will continue to subvert state societies (in all forms), cultures (in all forms), and religion (in all forms) for years to come.