Sunday, September 18, 2011

Chapter 4 Blog

Chapter 4 Blog:

1.Summary of the chapter:
This chapter opens by showing the diverse types of families in America. When members of a different culture immigrate to a new country, either acculturation (changing one's cultural views to meet the new culture's) or cultural pluralism (the country's culture changes with all of the new incoming cultures) occur. Over one million immigrants enter the United States each year, and another 12 million illegal immigrants are currently living in the US. They make up a third of all foreign born immigrants. The general opinion on both legal and illegal immigration widely varies. Many people feel that its costs out way its benefits. The costs include: less jobs for others, overloaded school systems, and they pay less in taxes that the governmental benefits that they reap. The benefits are as follows: they pick up the jobs that we don't want to have to do, they keep many rural towns alive with their work, and there are many highly skilled immigrants from Asian countries that can greatly help our economy and other needs. The majority of scholars feel that immigrants provide more benefits than costs to the American people. The difference between an ethnic group and a racial group: a racial group is one that is differentiated by the way a certain group of people look. An ethnic group is a group of people that are differentiated based on how they identify with their origin. As for groups that distinguish themselves based on their beliefs and how they look are racial-ethnic-groups. Racism occurs when one believes that his/her race is superior to others; whereas prejudice is am attitude that prejudges people in negative ways. Contrarily, discrimination is a behavior that allows one to treat people unequally. Focusing specifically on African American families, males are more likely than men of other races to help out with household chores and are more likely to be involved in their children's lives. However, African American children are also more likely to grow up with only one parent (usually a mother). American Indians however, the majority of their children live with both parents. Also, over half of grandparents are the primary caretakers to their grandchildren. There is also no known research done on gender roles for this minority group. What we do know is that grandparents are extremely important to the raising of the grandchildren as mentioned earlier. They also have very strong relational bonding because their families are so tightly knit together. Similarly, 70% of Latino children grow up with both of their parents. The fathers though often "suffer" from "machismo"--where they feel the need to be over-the-top dominant and honorable while showing much courage and respect for authority. Children are expected to be very obedient to their elders. Similarly to the American Indians, families often contain more than one generation in the home. Asian families are also very likely to live with extended members of their family, and the children are expected to always obey their elders, and the parents are the most likely to exercise the most control over their children. Four out of ten middle eastern families have five or more children--family is also extremely important to them. However, many US-born Arab women fairly often only have two children--an effect of acculturation. Also, families are usually endogamous--marriage of first cousins, etc. Men are also considered to be the providers and the protectors of the women and children and they are sometimes considered to be second class citizens depending on what country they are from. Despite this, parents and children often have very strong bonds to each other.

2. Interesting topics addressed:
I thought the definitions of minority groups and dominant groups were interesting. A minority group is someone who is treated as lesser than the dominant group--it has nothing to do with the number of members of a group, but rather their social status in society. This makes perfect sense, I have just never heard it phrased this way.

3. Questions and concerns:
What are your views on interracial and interethnic relationships? Do you feel they are forming stronger bonds and bringing humanity closer together? Or do you feel they are reining traditions and meshing cultures to the point that we are losing sight of what the original cultures once stood for?

--Bonnie Noel

2 comments:

  1. I think that interracial and interethnic relationships are bringing humanity closer together and that our culture as a whole is becoming more accepting, hence the increasing number of these types of relationships over the years.

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  2. I totally agree with your above comment!

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