Deculturalization

Deculturalization and the Claim of Racial and Cultural Superiority by Anglo-Americans.

The word “deculturalization” is so horrific its almost humorous.  Many refer to America as this “melting pot” of society.  However, we forget to remember that racism still exists today and the multiple tragedies our people have committed against one another.    “Cultural genocide – the attempt to destroy other cultures – as an important part of the history of violence in the U.S. Often, U.S educational policies have involved cultural genocide.  ‘Deculturalization’ is the term I use for the process of cultural genocide. Deculturalization is the educational process of destroying people’s culture and replacing it with a new culture.”.   Our government made it very apparent how they wanted every non-Anglo-American culture to assimilate to their own culture, which they considered to be superior.  Even the United States schools focused on a curriculum surrounded Anglo-American culture.  They wanted students to speak their language.  Language is a big part of culture, I feel that stripping them of this was demoralizing to them as human beings.

In the section where the author talks about the Culture and Race as Central Issues in US history and Education, it lists some of the more unfortunate parts of American History.  Including almost 1 million deaths from the civil war, the Trail of Death, the lynching and killing of Chinese and African people, race riots, and segregation in general.  This is so horrible and awful to think that all of this was caused because one race felt that they were more superior that the other.

“..The Naturalization Act of 1790 highlight the racial and cultural attitudes of early government leaders.  The Naturalization Act excluded from citizenship all nonwhites, including Indians.  Indians were considered domestic foreigners and, therefore, ineligible for citizenship.”  This relates to the other article talking about how uncultured English settlers considered Native American’s to be.  It is funny to think of America as this “melting pot” of society, when in reality, our government tried to assimilate all non-typical Anglo-American culture’s EVEN THE ONE’S WHO WERE HERE BEFORE THEM.  Boy .. how society is crazy.  What gives groups of people the right to think their culture is better than anyone else? What makes the so much more superior?

Citizenship? "Whiteness"

Lastly, I thought that it was ironic how our government at the time thought that Native American’s were savages and yet they relied on them for their land and the increase of goods and services.  “Jefferson wanted to change Native American values regarding the economy, government, family relations, and property, and manipulate desires regarding consumption of goods.  Civilizing Native Americans, in this case, meant completely wedding them to an economy of increasing production and demanding new goods.”  These intentions are so backwards and selfish.  The government was looking to better themselves with disregard to culture in general.  They hoped to gain their land, strip them of their culture and make them dependent on American government and economy. 

It is good to see how far we have come but a shame that there is still so much racism and bigotry in our country today.  We see how affected the lives of these people were yet, our current government feels the need to instill their believes among not only the United States but believes that our culture is better than the rest of the world as a whole.