One night at a friend's apartment, we talked about why African American here in town are very sensitive to certain common things. Both of my friends are very talkative and are minorities in the United States. One of them commented on the phenomenon that African Americans in the United States would all prefer to travel back to Africa for their ancestries is because that they are trying to deny their cultural background in the United States roots in the fact of slavery. I did not find any chance to let the friend talk more about this judgment. However, this comment relates to some phenomena I have noticed on campus.
Almost all of the African Americans I have met so far prefer to save their time and money to go back to Africa for their first overseas trip in their life time. This fact has something to do with the American culture of being self-conscious and individualistic.
American people are well known as being ignorant. This is based on the facts that American people concern more about their own interests other than peoples in other countries. The United States have blessed natural sources like fertile lands, clear climate, and beautiful scenaries. The United States also have the most various races and cultures, which make the people in this country have an easy access to a taste of diversed foods, family names, styles of life, and thoughts of life. Under the classical liberal adminstration of American government, aboundant natural souces together with piths of diversified cultures in this country made it affluent and attractive.
Physical and natural wealth bring both fortune and idolence to American people. With only a few of sterotypes in mainstream American literature, American people think they have gotten the best in the world and are able to obtain exotic cultures through hollywood-made American media.
American media provide a variety of information through a filtered value system. Most of American media are privately owned. Mainstream media creat stereotypes for dramatic effects so that they can bring profits. A stereotype is only one facet of different cultures in the world. It always is the shallow and stupid side of a culture. It never is the wisdom a people have had in its civilization. All these stereotypes made in American media achieved dramatic effects. They fool American audiences in a mild form of being amusing.
The second phenomenon I have noticed on campus is that all those tutors who teach on campus are white. Meanwhile, their students are 99 percent white. Some European athletes or white students from Latin or South America enjoyed turoring services in terms of languages, maths, or other disciplines. For 30 months, I only saw one black student studying Spanish with a foreign but white lecturers in the library. I have never seen any Asian students or African students had their services. If it is not an issue about money or intelligence, it is an issue about cultural identity.
Cultural proclivity brings attractiveness and recognizance. When American mainstream media mix cultural proclivity with stereotypes, faked cultural identities are presented. The media-created mainstream culture plants a recognition of American core-value into other cultures along with American economic investements and American military services around the world.
A life without real experiences narrows people's view. Go nature. Get first-hand experiences. Grow to embrace differences. Gain knowledge.
