Week 9

Week 9 Essay

Our country has a wide variety of many cultures, races and ethnicities backgrounds. I have learned that each group has differences and similarities. These differences give us insight into other cultures, beliefs, and ways of life that we would not normally know. By embracing the differences through our diverse society, I have learned new concepts of living, new ways to thinking, and new ways to understand things that are different than my everyday life. Many of the groups that are so different have a common interest which is to coexist and thrive as one. It would be beneficial to our society if we would focus on the main interest of all, rather than focusing on how different we are from one another. In the past we were taught to judge based on race, cultures, and ethnicities. And now-a-days, we are taught to get to know a person before we pass judgment.

In my opinion, when we reach year 2050, our ethic make-up will be mixed. People have surpassed the culture differences between races. In today’s society, there are many mixed couples who procreate mixed children. Thus leaving tomorrow’s society mixed. With this happening now, all of the major races will become minorities, leaving the mixed races the majority.

The United States face many challenges due to the diversity of its people because, racism is still relevant. There are still quite a few people who carry judgment toward the interracial couples, gays, lesbians, bi-sexual, transgender, and religious beliefs.

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Diversity in society helps us to grow as individuals and open our minds to different ways of life. When you become exposed to different ways to live, and see how other cultures carry on then you are no longer closed to the idea that we are all different in some way, and those differences can be meaningful in our lives. When it comes to diversity it also promotes more tolerance. In terms of being tolerant that means diversity can help us accept other cultures, and even adapt some of their ways into our society. We are all different. Yet the differences that we have between us can be used to strengthen society as we know it. Diversity allows us the opportunity to learn, grow, understand new ways of living, and experience life to the fullest. Without diversity, we are closed off in our own worlds. But with it, we expand our knowledge and we are no longer ignorant. When you are aware of the differences and embrace them, then you have taken the blind fold off to living differently and you are a better person for it. The key is exposure and using what you learned to increase more tolerance and decrease things such as racism.

We can foster a climate of acceptance and cultural pluralism by simply being civil and tolerant and respectful to one another and treating each other as we would want to be treated. This means if we want to be treated without any prejudice, we would treat others the same. This would eliminate a lot of hate. If we can be civil with one another, we would not only teach each other how we should be, but we would also teach our children.

The media contributes to the perpetuation of stereotypes and prejudice in America as they show viewers either from the television, newspaper, etc things in certain ways to make them think as a stereotyped or prejudice person. For example, in the media they represent Muslims all as threats and bad people due to the American government 'claiming' that Muslims caused the destruction of peoples lives in the bombing of the world trade centre in New York. Due to this, many people have now changed their views on Muslim people. Still today, 12 years later, many people mainly think of them as terrorists. Nearly everyday in the media they represent black males as criminals as well as drug dealers. In newspapers everyday the media represent people of color in negative ways. This causes tension between racial groups, which cause people who are weak to stereotype and be prejudice to other ethnic groups.

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The face of America is changing -- becoming more diverse and complex than at any time in our history. We’re no longer a white-and-black society struggling to integrate two major groups of people who have been in this country for nearly 400 years, but a multiracial, multiethnic society in which newcomers are arriving in record numbers every day. The 1980s will be remembered as a period of one the highest levels of immigration in our nation’s history. Some ten million persons immigrated to the United States in the last decade, a number as great as that of the peak decade, 1900 to 1910.
*Unlike the immigrants of the early part of this century who were primarily from Europe, the great bulk of the last decade’s immigrants--approximately eighty percent--were from Asia and Latin America. Much has been made of this phenomenon and many who favor restricting immigration suggest that these new Asian and Latin immigrants will be less successfully absorbed into the fabric of American society: "I know that earlier large waves of immigrants didn’t `overturn` America," says former Colorado governor Dick Lamm, "but there are . . . reasons to believe that today’s migration is different from earlier flows."
But, in fact, when we look at one of these groups, we find that most Hispanics are assimilating the social, educational, economic, and language norms of this society despite the image of Hispanics portrayed in the media and perpetuated by Hispanic leaders. Let me just acquaint you with a few facts about the Hispanic population with which you may not be familiar: • Mexican-origin men have the highest labor-force participation rates of any group, including non-Hispanic whites and Asians. • U.S.-born Hispanics have rapidly moved into the middle class. The earnings of Mexican-American men are now roughly eighty percent of those of non-Hispanic white men. • Mexican-Americans with thirteen to fifteen years of education earn, on an average, ninety-seven percent of the average earnings of non-Hispanic white males. • Most differences in earnings between Hispanics and non-Hispanics can be explained by educational differences between the two groups, but at the secondary-school level, young Mexican-Americans are closing the gap with their non-Hispanic peers. Seventy-eight percent of second-generation Mexican American men aged twenty-five to thirty-four have completed twelve years of school or more, compared with approximately ninety percent of comparable non-Hispanic whites. • English proficiency is also key to earnings among Hispanics, but here, too, conventional wisdom about Hispanics is mostly invalid. The overwhelming majority of U.S.-born Hispanics are English-dominant and one half of all third-generation Mexican-Americans--like most other American ethnics speak only one language: English. • What’s more, Hispanics, with the exception of Puerto Ricans, have marriage rates comparable to those of non-Hispanic whites. Three quarters of Mexican-origin, Cuban, and Central and South American Hispanics live in married-couple households. And nearly half own their own homes. * (By Linda Chavez | From Forum Journal | January/February 1993 | Vol. 7, No. 1) How might individuals and the United States work together to reduce prejudice and increase appreciation for diversity?