多文化提高美国社会.doc

8Multiculturalism Enhance A SocietyThe United States is a unique country because it has the sole culture. The United States is basically made of immigration; its cultural development follows the immigrants continued entered the U.S. The famous historicist Handlin said, “When I want to write an American immigrated history, I found the immigration is American history.” (Handlin) From the early colonial times to the Twenty-First Century today, although the immigrated upsurge develops either quickly or slowly, it never stops. As the creators of Americas culture are different national immigrants rather then a single group, the different cultures collide and fuse, then form multiculturalism. The diversity enhances a society.In human history, migration and movement are human inborn behaviors. Different periods of immigrants affected the U.S. inversely. The first immigrated ancestor were western Europeans specially the Anglo-Saxon, then northern Europeans, middle Europeans, and so on. Meanwhile, the Africans forced to come the American as salary. Last were Asians and Latina Americans. The motivations of immigrating were variety. People were coming for escaping financial crisis, finding an environment, and coming true their dreams. For better assess the multiculturalism, a sociologist should survey the origin of the American immigrated culture. By reading historic materials and books, and comparing American culture with other countries cultures. There are three aspects need to research. One of them is the influence of immigrating traditional culture from original countries. The immigrants who grow in old world will bring some specific culture into a new world. They will immigrate unconsciously their religious, folkways, and values to the new place. And they try to use former methods to build new life. For example, in the early stage of immigrating, the immigrants moved the European culture, and copied English lifestyle in America. Its the basic of American culture.Another aspect is the interaction of immigrants and new environment. In the development of American culture, the interaction of immigrants and new environment had a determined function. One side was the old immigrants started from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic coast, and another side was the new immigrants stared it in opposite direction. This resulted an interaction between east and west. For example, the Westward Movement “formed a bridge not only advanced old world to the west coast of North America, but also connected Asia Pacific area.” (David Palumbo-Liu, p2) The Westward Movement raised the first time and the second industrial revolution of the United States, created the United States industrial civilization, realized the transition of the society, and made the United States became a strong country in the world.Besides, it is the fusion among different cultural backgrounds groups. Different cultural background of traditional racial, national, and ethnic groups interact with the new environment, due to the their cultural differences cause different social experience and experience, they accumulate different experience and knowledge. They absorb other cultures and abandon some old thoughts depend on their own respective. Therefore, the American multiculturalism shows a complex relationship.The last three aspects are completed processes. In the base of inheriting their traditional culture and experience, immigrants created new results and culture. Also, they accepted other benefit knowledge to improve them. They experienced three centuries development to form the unique American characters.There are three different types of conceptual models: Anglo-conformity, melting pot, and the cultural pluralism. They help us to understand the background of multiculturalism. In 1607, as the first England workers came to Virginia and successfully lived there, more and more Europeans came to America. Until 1760, there were about 17 million immigrants settled in America, and most of them were English. This led to English becoming the main language in commuting, but the Anglo-Saxon language owned a dominant position in America. So, it required many other immigrants learn English and a different culture. People called it an Anglo-conformity.Correspondingly, the melting pot phenomenon has appeared since the Eighteenth Century. There were some French, German, and other immigrants, that from Europe cannot be assimilated by Anglo-Saxon. They assaulted and changed the English standards. But as their descendants married different cultured people, a new structure and system formed. Their descendants identified a new sense to the society, for example, in a family, a mans grandfather could be an English man, his grandmother was a German, and his four sons got married to four different nationalities of women. But he was an American, and he abandoned his ancestors prejudice and method. This new generation combined the variety traditions and different cultures, created new lifestyles, and accepted new government and status. The more free and open model is cultural pluralism. After moving to America, almost all immigrants except English would quickly build a place to live together, and hoped to keep their traditional cultures. During the middle of nineteenth century, the Germany used language as weapon to refuse the Americanization. Even the family, church, and school used publications to remain German. When their children left their village to enter public universities and colleges, the culture in geographic limitation decreased. However, they kept their own folkways. This kind of things also happened in other immigrated groups.The diversity of Americans languages and religions show the multiculturalism. Americans speak approximately 200 languages. According the statistics in 1990, there were about only 20 percent of American speak English, 38 percent of American use Spanish, 5 percent of people use Chinese, and so on. The modern English also absorb other language, and it can be divided into four big sorts. Also, there are a variety of different religions in America such as Catholicism, Christianity, Islamism, Buddhism, and etc. the expansion of diversity participates some influence of former main religions decreased, and minority religions including Asian religion booms in the America.The society now contains a rich variety of cultures represented in art, literature, music, dress, sport and food. It is one of the great achievements of recent American history, and many people with such diversity of culture and history have been absorbed peacefully into the United States society. The fact shows that the United States succeeds in creating a rather harmonious society in the following five aspects:Firstly, contrary to the predictions of its early critics, in diversifying their social framework, multiculturalism has strengthened that structure and its social unity. People felt secure in their new adopted environment, and this enhanced their desire to be full members of the Untied States society and enhanced their ability to participate as full members of the United States society quickly. It inspired them to lead and to inspire others. They have maintained their social cohesion under stress. Secondly, under multiculturalism, the U.S. generally has low levels of racial violence, discrimination, and experiences of genocidal acts against the native people. And despite the fact that they still has racism institutionalized in our Constitution. Thirdly, its language, cultural and social connections are supporting the development of trade links internationally. Fourthly, multiculturalism has contributed to the rich and vibrant cultural life in the U.S. It has made possible the innovative combination approaches to theatre, dance, cuisine, and music, which are so often commented on. And the final point: the immigrants have the sense to increasingly be encouraged to become citizens, as a means of demonstrating their commitment to the American way of life and values.New York is a topical immigrated city. It became a Dutch New Amsterdam from an Indians resident place, and then developed a big city in the world. The constructors were the immigrants who owned American dreams from different countries and places, and they built modern skyscrapers in here. They showed the wonder achievement to the world by imitating European classical building to create the U.S. characterizations. In 21th century, New York City not only is the business center, but also is the symbol of the United States. The boom of New Yorks multiculturalism makes people cannot distinguish the dividing line between the mainstream culture and affluent culture. Im an immigrant from China, and I understand whats different in these cultures. Although I have been here for more than a year, I still cannot completely adjust to the new environment. First is because of the language. We use opposite words order and have different customs. For example, we will say “I and you”, but American says “you and I.” When someone prizes us, we must keep modesty, and say no. But, American will feel proud, and say thanks. In America, the popular greeting is “how are you?” and the Chinese greeting is “ have you eaten?” Second is food. I can easily find different food everywhere in the U.S., but I need to go some special please that have a lot of foreigners to find other countries food in China. Once, my friend and I took an hour subway to an American restaurant to have diner in Beijing. Now, I just spent five minutes to walk to a Chinese restaurant. Third is our festival. Most Chinese only care about the Spring Festival because we will have two weeks holiday, and every child can ask elder money on that day. I still can remember I get one thousand Yuan on Spring Festival when I was twelve. Before coming the U.S., I never celebrated the Halloween and the Christmas. Even I never know Thanksgiving. Last year, I made up and dressed up with my cousin on Halloween. That was very interested. I learnt lot things after living here, not only American culture. For example, I learnt to say a little Korean, and made some Japanese food. I made many friends, and some of them from Cuba, India, and Bulgaria. Although we have different backgrounds, we still can communicate with each other and enjoy our lives very well in the U.S. I think its the fascination of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism refers to the acceptance of many different groups in society, or the many different schools of thought in an intellectual or cultural discipline. Although Americas culture is becoming more uniformed, its society remains a diverse mix of ethnic, racial, and religious groups. The United States is a diverse society, meaning that it is composed of many nationalities, races, religions, and creeds. Some of the people who immigrated to America embraced the opportunity to leave old cultures behind and to remark themselves unencumbered by past traditions and loyalties. So, people find that multiculturalism adds to the richness and strengths of the nations culture. It enhances a society.In fact, human civilizations development are always various, and they have each own track and f