Ethnicity and American Identity
The basic conception of American identity in the years between Cahan's Yekl, Yezierska's The Bread Givers, and Morrison's The Bluest Eye, is essentially unchanged. Each of the characters in these novels face a conception of American identity that is drawn along racial lines, and the arc of each novel's plot is centered on each character's attempt to transcend their racial otherness to be accepted by American society. In the following analysis, we will first look at the ways racial identity operates in these three novels. Secondly, we will look at Randolph Bourne's essay "Trans-national America" to see how Morrison's desire to avoid racial hierarchy fits into his basic scheme, and how the protagonists of the novels do not.
The crisis at the center of Abraham Cahan's story is presented as a conflict between Jake's ethnic past, his racial otherness in America and his ambition to be, in his words, "a Yankee." Early on in the story, Yekl, in his ambition to be an American, changes his name to Jake, because the name Yekl is associated with a Russian past he is not able to "reconcile with the actualities of his American present." Essentially, one cannot be a Russian Jew and an American, to be an American one needs to repudiate their ethnic past. This crisis gets even further developed when Jake's wife arrives from Russia.
To Jake, his wife is an embodiment of the ethnic identity he wishes to efface. When he first sees her...
It is for this reason that one could reasonably argue that Precious' entire life, and particularly the trials and tribulations she must endure, including her violent family life, her poverty, and her illiteracy, all ultimately stem from her racial and ethnic background, because the pervasive, institutional racial inequalities that still exist in America served to structure her entire life. Even before she began she was already disadvantaged by being born
The four illustrations from the earliest decades of the twentieth century illustrate the importance of fashion in the formation of identity just as much as Twiggy's outfit does, and in fact are possibly even more telling given their distance from current styles. Regardless of what people of the time though regarding the sexuality of certain of these gown, all of them give the female figure an incredibly sculpted look, whether
In grade four white males performing "At or Above Basic" math skills is stated at 90% while black males were performing at only 59% "At or Above Basic" skill levels. White males in the "At or Above Proficient" skills level is stated at 49% with black males in this category stated at a mere 13%. The following labeled Figure 2 shows the statistical report of NAEP (2005) in relation to
Figure 1. Demographic composition of the United States (2003 estimate). Source: Based on tabular data in World Factbook, 2007 (no separate listing is maintained for Hispanics). From a strictly percentage perspective, it would seem that Asian-Americans do not represent much of a threat at all to mainstream American society, but these mere numbers do not tell the whole story of course. For one thing, Asian-Americans are one of the most diverse and
Question 3: In some regards, the idea of 'culture' is highly mutable and subject to widespread variations in characterization. Quite in fact, the concept of culture is highly implicated in the weaponzation of words that may be used by one nation to subjugate another. Ideas about how cultures interact, about which cultures are superior and indeed about whether or not the practices of some peoples should even be called 'cultures' have
" (Fredrickson, p562) In his view, the disadvantages (still) faced by many African-Americans is the result of some degree of institutionalized and unacknowledged racial and ethnic hierarchies. Meanwhile, many minority groups that have achieved relative success have done so through one-way assimilation while accepting the price of cultural erosion. Fredrickson's vision of the best scenario is very much in-line with public policies and stated goals of American society: "Of the four models of
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