Cultural Studies

Mark Chappell

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New immigrants coming into the US have faced persecution throughout our countries history.  The United States of America has been known as the land of opportunity since its conception.  Because of this reputation it has attracted many immigrants from many different countries.  Very often these immigrants become victims of racial prejudices.  Using the lens of Cultural Studies it is made obvious that as an influx of immigrants of a specific group come to the US they are often faced with hatred from other groups.  Cultural studies is defined as, “an innovative interdisciplinary field of research and teaching that investigates the ways in which “culture” creates and transforms individual experiences, everyday life, social relations and power.” (culturalstudies.web.unc.edu).  This hatred begins often times because these immigrants are seen as competition in the job market.  Many immigrants coming to the US are fleeing from hardships in their homeland.  This is usually due to reasons such as war and extreme poverty.  In these extreme cases we see many immigrants from a specific area entering the country at one time.  The people who already call the US their home often feel threatened by these new groups.

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We can see examples of this prejudice throughout our countries history.  One early example of racism towards immigrants was directed towards the Irish in the mid-19^th century.  Irish men and women came into this country fleeing extreme poverty and famine.  They came to the US seeking a better life.  Because most Irish immigrants were extremely poor, they were deemed as lower class.  They often took demanding, and sometimes dangerous jobs in order to make ends meet.  According to Takaki, “The Irish became disposable workers.  The pervasive presence of the Irish in railroad work produces the popular saying that there was ‘an Irishman buried under every tie.’” (p. 138).  This tells us that the Irish in this time were not treated as people, and had no agency.  Agency is when an individual is recognized as a person, and treated as such.  The Irish women would often take jobs in the service industry.  Due to the low entry level of the jobs there was great competition.  Irish were often in a race to get the jobs before immigrants of other countries would take them.  Immigrants from China would many times be seeking the same jobs as the Irish, this created racism towards Chinese peoples.  Takaki tells of one such instance, “Dennis Kearney led an anti-Chinese labor movement, charging that the Chinese threatened the employment of Irish women.” (p. 147).  This shows that hatred often perpetuates itself.  After the initial reasons for the hatred is forgotten, the hate itself will often remain.

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Our community partner was OneAmerica which fights for immigrant’s rights here in the US.  We interviewed a representative of their organization named Pavan Vingipuram that informed us they have bi-monthly meetings in which they discuss ways of increasing the Power of immigrant communities.  Power is a group’s access to resources which can influence and control others.  One America actively works to create bonds between immigrants in the US.  According to their website,

OneAmerica was formed directly after September 11, 2001 in response to the hate crimes and discrimination targeting Arabs, Muslims and South Asians. Called Hate Free Zone at the time, the organization expanded to organize and advocate with many diverse communities of color. OneAmerica has now grown into a leading force for immigrant, civil and human rights. (par. 4)

When we asked how OneAmerica uses cultural studies to change issues facing immigrants Pavan informed us that almost all the people in his organization are immigrants or children of immigrants, so they have dealt with these cultural issues first hand.  After the 9-11 attacks immigrants from the middle-east dealt with an increase in hate crimes directed towards them.  This was due to the attackers being members of a radical group from the middle-east.  This radical group was a very small percentage of people from that part of world, but because of their actions almost all middle-eastern people deal with prejudice.  A lot of this incorrect association is due the way these people are portrayed in American media.  Often racism and bigotry is normalized by the way it is regularly presented in the media.  People may choose to believe what the media tells them, rather than talk to and get to know the people they now share a country with.  As Postman states, “The telegraph may have made the country into ‘one neighborhood,’ but it was a peculiar one, populated by strangers who knew nothing but the most superficial facts about each other.”  (p. 67)   Maybe if the racists among us would go out and talk to these people they hate, they might learn they have a lot in common with them.

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Every one of us aside from Native Americans have ancestors from other countries, which makes us all related to immigrants.  Our ancestors left their home countries to seek a better life, one free from persecution.  I believe that peoples coming into our country these days seek the same things.  We should be open to letting these people of other cultures join forces with us.  I think people often take the stance that it is us against them, when we should be combining our efforts in an attempt to make things greater for everyone.  I think we all have abilities and talents to give to the world, and when we combine ours with our brothers and sisters from other lands we could make a country worth being proud of.  Who knows, in the next hundred years our relatives may be free of racism and bigotry, but it will not be without great effort from the ones who came before them.

References

What is Cultural Studies? (n.d.). Retrieved February 11, 2018, from http://culturalstudies.web.unc.edu/resources-2/what-is-cultural-studies/

Postman, Neil. Amusing ourselves to death: public discourse in the age of showbusiness. Methuen, 2007.

Sutherland Serena, and Pavan Vangipuram. “Interview transcript.” 11 Feb. 2018.

Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Little, Brown and Company, 1993.

“OneAmerica.” Home Page | OneAmerica, weareoneamerica.org/. Accessed 11, Feb. 2018

 

Frame of Reference

Madaleine Smith

Frame of reference is described as how our point of view affects our understanding, everyone has a unique point from which they understand information and process it. Prior knowledge, values, language, and assumptions all affect how we see events and build up our frame of reference. Certain conceptual and linguistic frameworks also shape our frame and these frameworks end up shaping how we interpret our perceptions, evaluate ideas and see the world. Although when shifting contexts and frameworks are present, it doesn’t always influence us because we approach the world and relations to others with a fixed temporal context.

“How our point of view affects our understanding”

5/1/13 May Day Walla Walla

It has been shown that many first-generation immigrants often possess something called a “dual frame of reference”. A dual frame of reference is an adjustment of their previous life before moving or being forced to move into their current position. This adjustment enables many immigrants to sometimes feel that their life in the United States is either better or worse than the life they left. Many children of immigrant parents don’t have this dual frame of reference and therefore don’t know what life outside of where they live is like. These children often see themselves as the minority compared more dominant culture surrounding them. They can often feel like they get stuck between the two worlds. The dual frame of reference in first-generation immigrates can create a dissonance between the parents and their children.

“Because immigrant and refugee children tend to adapt more easily than do their parents to the new language and culture of the host country, a generation gap is opening in newcomer families.” – Suárez-Orozco

 

1/28/2015 District Day

OneAmerica is an organization focused on advancing “the fundamental principles of democracy and justice through building power in immigrant communities, in collaboration with key allies” (OneAmerica). The organization was established right after September 11, 2001 to “address the backlash in a post 9/11 world against immigrant communities of color, primarily Muslims, Arab Americans, East Africans, and South Asians.”

 “OneAmerica works to change the limits of what is possible, and all of our staff are grounded in the belief that anything is possible if we organize and advocate together.” (OneAmerica)

Flash forward to 2018, OneAmerica has become one the largest immigrant advocacy organization within Washinton. We reached out to Pavan Vangipuram, the Communications Manager at OneAmerica. He has a large background in science, activism, and communications. Pavan is a former Americorps volunteer advocating for the disabilities community. He has gotten engaged with a variety of things such as environmental activism, foreclosure defense, and advocacy journalism. According to Vangipuram, he said they “schedule base groups that we use for organizing protests so basically our power comes from our base, and when we have people who are motivated and are willing to act in a civically engaged session, which, that’s where a lot of our community power comes from, so we have meetings every week where kinda we discuss different activities we can do, we do a lot of lobbying with the state legislature so we just a have big lobby day were we have our grassroots, hundreds of people throughout the state, they brought them over to Olympia and then we are able to speak to our legislatures in person about the issues on refugees … and that’s the stuff we do on the state level, on the national level we send delegations to Washington DC to talk to our Congresspeople about policies and programs that we want to advocate for our communities.” 

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“Twenty-three peaceful demonstrators were arrested in the culmination of a daylong street fair in front of the Federal Building at 2nd and Madison in downtown Seattle. Protesters blocked the intersection for several hours before being arrested by police.” (OneAmerica)

Frame of reference comes into play here in a major way. Vangipuram said, “Most of our staff and community come from an immigrant background – either their parents were immigrants or we ourselves were immigrants and using that lense we can kind of advocate the policies that our communities need to thrive.” Most of these people have first-hand experience about the issues addressed and they have shaped the way they see the world. There aren’t many events or reports connecting to these communities frame of reference regarding immigration issues, therefore they don’t get the proper exposure. In A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki, Takaki tells a story about a cab driver who asked: “How long have you been in the country?”. Takai, a man of Asian descent, answered “All my life”. The cab driver, using his frame of reference, did not even begin to think about the history of Asian Americans within America. How they struggled to achieve a place in American society and achieve a status of a citizen. The cab driver has never exposed because this probably was never apart of his cultural or he did not possess this historical; knowledge. 

Vangipuram expresses the need to challenge our assumptions about immigrants, break our pre-existing frame of reference and rebuild it with new knowledge, new insight. When looking at immigration in the media, the public should question what they see because we know that one of the problems as said in Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, is that “the problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining” (87). Immigration issues in the United States tend to be presented in a biased manner or difficult subject to fix. The media shapes the public frame of reference by choosing what we hear and when we get to hear it. Media coverage operates in a way that can tend to limit the full ability to understand the full issues of these social and historical issues regarding immigrants. 

“We have tons of people from all different communities who believe in the cause of immigrant empowerment who will come to be our allies.” – Pavan Vangipuram

“My family is not less human than yours. Stop deportation”

As a public, if we hold a narrow frame of reference, we won’t be able to see the social issues that need fixing. People can treat people horribly, make bad decisions and let people in power take away human rights. In order to make an actual change around the world and within society, our frame of reference needs to be challenged, we need to learn, grow and educate others on issues that can not stay silent any longer for when our frame of reference becomes clearer will we be able to create a change.

“Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.” -Oscar Handlin

References

“A case of a dual frame of reference.” US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health Search database, NCBI, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1437457. Accessed 11, Feb. 2018

Garner, Bryan A., and Henry Campbell Black. Blacks law dictionary. 2nd ed., Thomson Reuters, 2016.

“OneAmerica.” Home Page | OneAmerica, weareoneamerica.org/. Accessed 11, Feb. 2018

“One America Photos.” Flickr, Yahoo!, 2009, http://www.flickr.com/photos/oneamerica/albums/with/72157626282186321. Accessed 11, Feb. 2018

Ortiz, David. “Lecture One: Frame of Reference.” Canvas, cascadia.instructure.com/courses/1541589/pages/lecture-one-frame-of-reference?module_item_id=26478554. Accessed 11, Feb. 2018

Postman, Neil. Amusing ourselves to death: public discourse in the age of showbusiness. Methuen, 2007.

Sutherland Serena, and Pavan Vangipuram. “Interview transcript.” 11 Feb. 2018.

Suárez-Orozco, Carola , and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco. “Transformations and California’s Immigrant Children.” Harvard Educational Review, Harvard Graduate School of Education, hepg.org/her-home/issues/harvard-educational-review-volume-66-issue-3/herarticle/_268. Accessed 11, Feb. 2018

Takaki, Ronald. A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. Little, Brown and Company, 1993.

 

 

Beliefs

Lauren Ballard

Our research efforts are helping us apply beliefs into most specifically the incident that happened on September 11, 2001, when the bombing of the World Trade Centers. That is because hate crimes started to emerge all over America against immigrant communities of color and the organization that we researched on which is called OneAmerica believed that they needed to take action on this immigrational issue. While we were interviewing OneAmerica and researching their website they talk about what they have a belief in building power within the immigrant communities and that it is also important to have a relationship with vital supporters. They believe that it is our crucial duty to work together, take action, and support any way we can.

 

 

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Our community partner OneAmerica, use of shifting beliefs by making it known to everyone that there needs to be an effective policy change that will give our community the change that it so needs by creating a movement for immigration reform and civil rights for immigrants as well that works on helping everyone in the immigrant communities that will positively re-image our social issue and to learn from our historical issue of the 9/11 bombing.

On September 16, 2001, right after the 9/11 bombing of the World Trade Centers, the organization was founded and was first named Hate Free Zone. They felt that it was important to respond to the hate crimes and the discrimination that was going on against the immigrant communities of color that started to happen after the 9/11 incident. So that they are able to do everything in their power to address the backlash that Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians. They were going on against the immigrant communities of color, mostly the Muslims. With their strong beliefs to change our country, they have then grown into the largest immigrant advocacy organization in the state of Washington.

 

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There is a quote in “Amusing ourselves to death” by Neal Postman where he talks about our society and how we value things “When we were first drawn together as a society, it had pleased God to enlighten our minds so far as to see that some doctrines, which we once esteemed truths, were errors, and that others, which we had esteemed errors, were real truths.” Pg. 30 this quote seems to be a great example of how certain things we seem to value in our lives as truth end up being false. That our principles need to be improving and decreasing the number of errors we make. So, if we are not willing to improve then how could we succeed? OneAmerica is a great example of our society changing and improving our principles so that we do succeed and together.

I found a great example of why it is important to get to know other cultures with A Different Mirror by Ronald Takaki “Certainly one crucial way is for our society’s various ethnic groups to develop a greater understanding of each other. For example, how can African Americans and Korean Americans work it out unless they learn about each other’s cultures, histories, and also economic situations? This need to share knowledge about our ethnic diversity has acquired new importance and has given new urgency to the pursuit for a more accurate history.” Pg. 6 OneAmerica is doing exactly what Takaki is trying to say in this chapter and it is up to us to take action together so that we can become more knowledgeable when it comes to other countries.

 

 

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With their strong beliefs, they have a mission to complete five primary goals. To grow and improve the number of people who participate that are immigrants in the community. To achieve a constructive policy change for the immigrant communities that are nationally and locally. To progress the communal climate for immigrant communities that are nationally and locally. Enhance the number of immigrant organizations all across our state so that we can lead and support change. Then, progress our organizational amount to accomplish our mission successfully and withstand.

OneAmerica functions within the most essential principles that the power of speech that is together can become even stronger. That is the reason that their organization works together to create alliances among immigrant communities and the conventional communities. Though the problem of the policies that wear down lawful and civil rights is landing mainly on immigrant communities, we understand and are aware that everyone is affected by this.

This organization works together to change the limits of what everyone is able to do to show that anything is possible. They get their staff working hard and always stick to believe that they can make positive changes in the world if they organize and advocate together. They believe that everyone needs to take action on the issues that we are all having to deal with in our communities. They work together to in taking action and training each other to do so.

 

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OneAmerica does what they can to categorize and grows their leaders within the immigrant communities so that they are able to lead the people who struggle for equality through the base groups, which gives them space to come together and share their experiences with one another, inspire new skills within each other, and to help everyone see and use their creative talents to appraise, educate, and activate their own communities.

With this organization’s strong beliefs to change our country for the better, they greatly encourage others who also have the belief of achieving their mission to advance the fundamental principles of democracy and justice through building a powerful voice because anyone can make a change if you in immigrant communities, in collaboration with key allies.

 

References:

Black, H. (1910). Law Dictionary Containing Definitions of the Terms and Phrases of American and English Jurisprudence, Ancient and Modern and including the Principal Terms of International, Constitutional, Ecclesiastical and Commercial Law, and Medical Jurisprudence, with Collection of Legal Maxims, Numerous Select Titles from the Roman, Modern Civil, Scotch, French, Spanish, and Mexican Law, and Other Foreign Systems, and Table of Abbreviations. St. Paul, Minn., West Publishing Co.

Takaki, R. (2008). A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. New York, NY: Back Bay Books

Postman, N. (2007). Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness. London: Methuen.

OneAmerica. (n.d.). Retrieved February 08, 2018, from http://weareoneamerica.org/