Quote:
Originally posted by Rudey
Most immigrants come and start families here or bring very young children here. And why doesn't culture apply to them? Why don't they all turn out to work at 7-11's and drive cabs simply because that's what culture says? Is it an internal culture then? Who is responsible for that if it's internal??
-Rudey
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I think that if you're raised in one culture, then introduced to another at, say, age 18, your chances of sticking with the values of the original culture are much higher than your chances of adopting the second. Of course, the longer you stay immersed in the second culture, the more of it you will probably come to adopt. That's why those who move here when they're two will, in general, be more susceptible to the pressures of American culture than those that move here when they're 30 and already have a culture to call their own, so to speak.
Of course all this is in general terms and there are exceptions.
But that's really getting into another whole issue entirely.
The reasons that some minorities fail to achieve are either innate or society-based (i.e., back to the old nature/nurture debate). I don't think anyone is arguing that minorities are innately set up to fail. So that means it must be society-based. But then what?
For example, it's been established that alcoholism is a much bigger problem among Native Americans than among other races. There's speculation that Europeans gave Native Americans alcohol (sometimes in exchange for goods) because they liked watching the Native Americans (who had no alcohol tolerance) get drunk -- perhaps so that, while they were drunk, the Europeans could take advantage of that fact and trade with them, getting the better end of the deal. There's also speculation that alcoholism became an issue because of the pressures of living on reservations and the problems that Native Americans faced. So what came first, the discrimination or the alcoholism? Similarly, did "black American culture" develop the way in part due to discrimination, or did discrimination result from the way whites viewed "black American culture"? It's another one of those things where it's impossible to tell and a hard cycle to break.
There is a tendency to simplify racial issues way too much. None of our actions exist in a vacuum, and they never have.