Cultural Diversity

1
Chapter 3

• Cultural Diversity

2
Movie

• My Big Fat Greek Wedding

3
Try to understand (1)

• Toulas father takes great pride in being Greek.
  How do you know?
• Toula and her younger brother want to break away
  from their Greek heritage. How do you know?
• Toula sends her daughter to Greek school even if
  she herself disliked it very much when she was a
  girl. Why?

4
Try to understand (2)

• What kind of family does Ian come from?
• Family in the Greek sense refers to the
  extended family, while to Caucasians it is
  limited to the immediate family.
• How do the parents of both side react to the
  romance between Toula and Ian?
• What does it take to bring the story to a happy
  ending?

5
Discussion Questions (1)

• Identify the key success factors in the
  cross-ethnicity marriage depicted in My Big Fat
  Greek Wedding, and explain why.
• Will you marry out of your culture? Why or why
  not?
• Why cant China and Japan reconcile their
  differences?
• When shooting took place in Virginia Tech on
  April 16, 2007, which killed 23, why was most
  peoples immediate response like the killer must
  be Chinese?

6
Discussion Questions (2)

• Compare the merits and demerits of the French and
  British approaches toward ethnic diversity.
• Why was the ban on headscarves proposed in France
  in the first place? What were peoples reactions?
  Surf online to find out more.
• What do you know about the recent Muslim riots in
  France, Australia, Denmark and other old
  European countries?

7
Time, April 1990

• Cover story
• -- Americas Changing Colors
• -- the browning of America

8

• someday soon, white Americans will become a
  minority group
• How soon?

9

• By 2056, most Americans will trace their origins
  to Africa, Asia, the Hispanic world, the Pacific
  Islands, Arabia almost everywhere but white
  Europe.

10
The US was not a plural society(case study of
Native Indians)

• President Jackson in 1830 broke the promise that
  NA would hold new territories in perpetuity and
  opened these land to white settlement.
• Migration from the East disrupted the Native
  American way of life.

11
Assimilation

• In 1887, congress passed the Dawes Act, an
  official policy to destroy tribal structure and
  communal life style of Native Indians by
  encouraging tribal Indians to become individual
  farmers.
• Indian boarding schools where Indian children
  were forced to become an imitation of the white
  man

12
Australias Apology to the Aborigines

• Prime Minister Kevin Rudd introduced a motion in
  the Australian National Parliament on Feb.12,
  2008, apologizing for past mistreatment of the
  country's Aboriginal population.
• Apology refers to Stolen Generation -- Aboriginal
  children removed from families
• It says sorry for the "indignity and degradation"
  inflicted on a "proud people"
• The statement promises a "new page in the history
  of our great continent"

13
The Stolen Generation

• The greatest assault on Indigenous cultures and
  family life was the forced separation or 'taking
  away' of Indigenous children from their families.
  This occurred in every Australian state form the
  late 1800s until the practice was officially
  ended in 1969. During this time as many as
  100, 000 children were separated from their
  families. These children became known as the
  Stolen Generation.
• The separation took three forms putting
  Indigenous children into government-run
  institutions adoption of children by white
  families and the fostering of children into
  white families. The last two strategies were
  particularly applied to 'fair-skinned' children.
• These forced separations were part of deliberate
  policies of assimilation. Their aim was to cut
  children off from their culture to have them
  raised to think and act as 'white'.

14
Whats the ban on headscarves in France?
15 March 2004 President Jacques Chirac
signed the ban into law
By 2 September 2004
Students will not be allowed to wear conspicuous
religious symbols in French public primary and
secondary schools.
15
Support for the Ban

• Prevent religion from interfering in
  government affairs.
• This ban will help prevent the division of
  society into ethnic communities, and promote
  integration into French society.

16
Arguments Against the Ban

• Shortly after the French government
  announced its intention to ban religious attire,
  about 3,000 demonstrators marched in the streets
  of Paris. A global protest followed in January
  2004.

17

• By October 2004 seven girl students were arrested
  for disregarding the ban.

18
Echoes of French Muslim headscarf debate in
Singapore

• Since its independence, Singapore's government
  does not allow Muslim girls to wear the
  headscarves at school, a rule designed to
  "promote religious harmony".

19
The reasons for supporting the headscarves ban
in Singapore

• We are especially concerned for the students
  because at a young age any marks of distinction
  on any group of students can make others look at
  them differently. This can cause them to be
  segregated from the rest.
• ---Deputy(then) Prime
  Minister
• 
  Lee Hsien Loong

20
The reasons for opposing the headscarves ban in
Singapore

• Banning the garment could have a negative effect
  on racial harmony and understanding.
• By banning the headscarves the government has
  violated the constitution of Singapore on freedom
  of religion.

21
"Her education is important and so is
religion,but we cannot have one at the expense of
the other."
22
A Singaporean Muslim girl embroiled in a
political controversy over a ban on wearing
Islamic headscarves in the island's public
schools applied for permanent residency in
Australia.
23
A Tale of Two Courses(1)

• soup (the melting pot)
• Melting away the differences (racial bias) and
  the birth of a new race of man
• Total assimilation into the mainstream French
  society

• salad
• Affirmation of multi-culturalism
• Its possible to be a good British citizen while
  retaining the values, customs, etc of his/her
  origin

24
A Tale of Two Courses(2)

• Social solidarity
• The French model
• Lack of ethnic visibility lily white
• Uniformity stifles excitement and innovative
  thinking

• Diversity
• The British model
• Existence of highly concentrated minorities
  actual segregation
• May breed radicalism and extremism

25
Both the British and French models are seeing
trouble right now.
26
Paris is torched
On October 27th, 2005, the riot began. Out of
rage, young people made arson attacks around
France, which had burned over 6000 cars in 300
cities in France. More than 1500 people were
arrested. Most of them were north-African French
people.
27
The new French immigration law (drafted in Feb.
2006)

• Aim control immigration to France, prevent the
  October, 2005 Paris riots from recurring
• Assign grades (stars) to immigration applicants.
  More stars are assigned to highly skilled labors,
  scientists, computer engineers, artists or other
  talents.To accept immigrants pro-actively instead
  of passively.
• Immigrants must integrate into the French
  society learning to speak French( If the wife
  doesnt study French, the whole family will be
  expelled) finding a job (now only 5 are
  employed)

28
The New President of France

• M. Sarkozy is the son of a Hungarian immigrant
• He is also the grandson of a Jew, yet he
  converted to Catholicism in his early age

29
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of
the World S. Huntington (1996)

• Culture and cultural identities, which at the
  broadest level are civilization identities, are
  shaping the patterns of cohesion, disintegration,
  and conflict in the post-Cold War world.
• There are seven or eight major civilizations
• Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu,
  Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly
  African civilization.
• West's universalist pretensions increasingly
  bring it into conflict with other civilizations

30

31
Cultural Suspicion

• Has become extremely serious since the 9/11
  attack

32
Cultural Suspicion

• even worse after the abuse in Iraq prison

33
Anti-Japanese Sentiments

• April 16th, 2005
• Organized by phone
• Internet messages
• University Students
• Violence
• Wide coverage
• Boycott Japanese goods

34
Voices from both sides

• China
• Japan has failed to repent sincerely for its
  wartime wrongs

• Japan
• Japan has paid its dues for the past

35
Yasukuni Shrine visits

• Yasukuni Shrine commemorates the souls of more
  than 2.5 million of Japan's war dead, including
  the war criminals.

36
Huntington 3 Guidelines in Avoiding Conflicts
and Wars

• Core countries in a civilization avoid
  interfering with conflicts between other
  civilizations.
• Core countries negotiate with each other to
  contain or prevent fault line wars between
  countries or blocs.
• Deepen the understanding of commonalities (e.g.
  absolute moral principle) among all civilizations

37
Ethno-nationalism The Clash of Peoples (by
Jerry Muller, 2/29/2008, International Herald
Tribune)

• The creation of a peaceful regional order of
  nation-states has usually been the product of a
  violent process of ethnic separation.
• In Europe nationalism twice led to war, in 1914
  and then again in 1939.
• Whereas in 1900 there were many states in Europe
  without a single overwhelmingly dominant
  nationality, by 2007, despite European Union, a
  transnational organization, there were only two,
  and one of those, Belgium, was close to breaking
  up. The other, Switzerland, protects domestic
  ethnic balance of power by strict citizenship
  laws .

38

• Ethnic cleansing goes back in time in Czech,
  France, German, and Poland. Much of the history
  of 20th century Europe has been a painful,
  drawn-out process of ethnic disaggregation. The
  breakup of Yugoslavia was simply the last act of
  a long play.
• When the European overseas empires dissolved,
  they left behind a patchwork of states whose
  boundaries often cut across ethnic patterns of
  settlement and whose internal populations were
  ethnically mixed, resulting in enduring wars
  there.

39
Ethno-nationalism Poses Challenges in China

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  ?????????????????????,???????,?????????08???? ?
• 2008?3?14?????????????????????,13?????????,???????
  ??????????????????????
• Dalai Lamas followers disrupted the Olympics
  torch relay in several locations around the world

40
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• 7?21?,???????????????????????????????????????
  ???????????700?????????????
• ????????????????????????????,????????????????????
  
• ???????????????,??????,????????????
• ?????????????????,???,?????????????????????????,
  ????????????????????????????????????

41
Shamit Saggar of Yale Univ.

• We should develop a glue that is sticky enough
  to build strong outlooks in times of need, but is
  not so sticky and cumbersome that it cements us
  into uniformity.

42

• Let my house not to be walled on four sides, let
  all the windows be open, let all the cultures
  blow in, but let no culture blow me off my feet.
• ----- Gandhi

43
Cultural diversity can contribute to an economic
boom (e.g. silicon valley)
Population, 2000 894,943
White persons, percent, 2000 47.5
Black or African American persons, percent, 2000 3.5
American Indian and Alaska Native persons, percent, 2000 0.8
Asian persons, percent, 2000 26.9
Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, percent, 2000 0.4
Foreign born persons, percent, 2000 36.9
Persons reporting some other race, percent, 2000 15.9
44
Sneed Shooter Was Chinese National On Student
Visa

• CHICAGO (WBBM) - Chicago Sun-Times columnist
  Michael Sneed reports the gunman was a
  25-year-old Chinese national who came to the
  United States last year on a student
  visa.Citing an unidentified source,
  investigators have not linked the man to any
  terror groups.Sneed reports the man arrived in
  the U.S. in San Francisco on a visa issued in
  Shanghai.Three bomb threats on the Virginia
  Tech campus last week may have been attempts by
  the gunman to test the campus security response,
  according to the Sneed report

45
Chinese students abroad

• Feel different -gtlonely and isolated
• Bad command of English-gtlittle interaction with
  non-Chinese
• Shy introverted -gtlittle social life-gtmystery
  man
• Studying habits educational background-gt too
  tight and upright
• Chinese economy grows, trade surplus expands,
  -gtChina Threat
• They have little interest in mainstream local
  society while the latter pay a lot of attention
  to them for fear of physical/job security

46
One final thought on Toula

• First-generation immigrants try to keep
  everything home intact.
• Second-generation immigrants try to deny anything
  back home and immerse themselves into the host
  culture
• Third or Fourth generation start to get
  interested in their roots