Culture and diversity has a profound impact on society development and interaction among individuals and the melding of culture can be difficult. Assimilation is a complicated and controversial process that alters cultural dynamics within a given populace. An infamous and contentious example of assimilation within the American society concerns the Native Americans. The past incidence of violence and genocide inflicted upon Native Americans is a tragedy and shameful reality of American history. The Native Americans have struggled to maintain their identity and culture. Proponents of Native American culture argue that continuing use of native language is the key to preserving culture. (Reyhner, 2001)
Traditionally, Native language has been able to transcend generations due to the physical isolation of tribal reservations; however, in recent time external modern American culture has begun to infiltrate Native culture. (Reyhner, 2001) The younger Native American generations are becoming less inclined to speak their tribal language due to assimilation into mainstream American culture. This phenomenon is perpetuated by the influence of the prominent English language in schools they attend, the music listen to, and television they watch. (Reyhner, 2001)
The Native American tribes have also experienced pressure from interest groups such as English First that promote English as the primary language throughout the United States. (Reyhner, 2001) A second obstacle for maintaining Native American languages is the dwindling opportunities for bilingual education. (Reyhner, 2001) The prevalence and influence of American ethnocentrism has dramatically impacted the ability of Native Americans to conserve their culture and values.
The documented mistreat of Native Americans throughout American history is an embarrassing hypocritical blemish that cannot be rectified. However the tragedy can be slightly mitigated by preserving and celebrating the Native American culture. It is important for modern American culture to coexist with Native American culture. In order for the Native American culture to not become extinct and forgotten a mutual effort must be made by the general public and Native Americans to emphasize the importance of the indigenous cultures.
Reyhner, J. (2001) Cultural Survial vs. Forced Assimilation: the renewed war on diversity. Retrieved from http://www.culturalsurvival.org
It’s so important that you touched on cultural assimilation! It’s a very prominent issue in racial relations and it is a very significant cause of intra-racial friction and discord. The Americanization of the Native Americans in the Early US days did a great amount of cultural removal, so it’s no wonder as to why they would want to preserve their culture. Based on our lesson, improving the cultural should include having the younger generation meet and become familiar with the cultural artifacts and ways via teachings from the older generation. This uses contact theory and mere exposure theory to get them acclimated. Hopefully, through repeated interaction and exposure, the cultural ties will be strengthened.
Forgive me, but I forgot to post my works cited:
Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems (2nd ed.). California: Sage Publications.
I really appreciated your post because it was not something I expected to read about. Your topic was not something that is brought up very much (kind of like Americans putting the Japanese people into concentration camps during WWII). As I was reading your post I was wondering what it would have been like if there was a philosopher or other brilliant mind that had brought forward the idea that Hofstede did. We are all born the same, but our surroundings and culture lead us to believe we are different (Schneider et al., 2012)
I think it would have been much different if people realized that humans are humans and yet we might be different culturally and idealistically, but we genetically are almost the same. I believe there would be much more Native American culture influence in our daily lives.