Native Americans Culture vs Latin Americans Culture - Essay Example

Native Americans culture vs. Latin Americans culture The aggregate of political, economical, territorial, legal, ideological and cultural relationship between nations, national groups and peoples appear in different forms of social-economical formations. Every culture reflects only the part of experience that was gained by people. Meeting people from different cultures one should know about the cultural peculiarities. Nowadays at the time of unification of different spheres of life, the ethnical characteristics did not lose their positions. Speaking about the stereotypes of behavior of some ethnical groups and making some general conclusions, there is a danger of one-sided approach. It is natural that the representatives of one ethnical groups can have different types of character. Usually the peculiarities of ethnical groups are based on religious views. Though many forms of behavior have the cultural roots. The terms mainstream and ethnic minority point out and reinforce division in society, whereas the phrase multicultural society suggests that the different groups are a part of a whole. In every country society is still divided, with some groups receiving better treatment or having more opportunities than others, but many attempts have been made to reduce discrimination and increase harmony and understanding between people from all cultural backgrounds. According to Oxford Guide to British and American Culture (p123) it is an important empiric fact for racial-ethnical relationship in America (and all over the world): under the impact of immigration from different countries the variety of ethnical groups is increasing. We should not forget that the very racial-ethnical factor had given a special shade civilization to America. It is not surprising that now the problem of assimilation of many ethnical groups is current of importance. It is worth mentioning that a lot of problems for ethnical groups appear in the sphere of education. For example Latin Americans have great difficulties in schools because of weak knowledge in language and culture of Native American population. Immigrants from Latin America are the biggest and rapidly increasing part of ethnical minorities in US population. Usually they occupy rural territories. There is a remarkable peculiarity of Latin American’s culture: they actively resist assimilation with Native Americans. They try to preserve their national identity, mostly they speak Spanish and as a rule they live in their limited communities. L.S. Luedtke (1987, P.64) outlines that “the life of Native Americans was very difficult during the history of American continent. They were under the cultural-educational discrimination up to the XX century. They are still ethnic minorities. The repression of culture of Native Americans caused their negative attitude towards European civilization and education.” It is worth mentioning that till recently Native Americans were exposed to systematic assimilation. They were educated in special schools where they got the education of European type. Sometimes we can observe the culture of Native Americans which is being increasingly expanded: their traditions are represented in music, piercing, tattoos. The blood-thirsty religious traditions of Native Americans are obvious in American contemporary movies. The tendency of popularity for drugs taking has its roots in the culture of Native Americans. Here we should mention the sexual revolution which had expanded the world, and analyzing its roots we can see that it has anti-European character has more features of Native American and African cultures where the taboo was not so strict. Nowadays the traditions of Native American culture are interpreted though the background of post-European culture. The development of Latin American culture depended on the political and economical situation, namely on land monopoly and political autoritarism. Though the impact of Western European countries had changed their societies. The history of Latin Americans was very energetic and contradictory. During many centuries the countries of Latin America experienced wars and rebellions, demonstrations. Actually, in the end of the XX century there was a relative political stability in society of Latin American countries. It was based on capitalistic economy and political democracy. Then the activity of the countries of Latin America increased. Though there are still the countries which keep on developing. They are really dependent on such powerful country as the USA. The countries of Latin America are still suffering from obvious social inequality. History had a great impact on the formation of Latin American culture. We should mention that most of representatives of Latin America are Catholics and observe the strict religious rules what is opposite to Native American culture. Latin American culture is more forceful today. It is characterized by the synthesis of African and Spanish cultures and soon it will be the prepotent all over American continent. To my mind, the US today are the chimerical and transitional formation which is an obstacle to the free development of the country and, maybe, soon Texas and California, which actively developing, will separate from the US and join to Mexico to create a new powerful country what will give a birth to the new wonderful culture. L.S. Luedtke (1987, P.78) defines some categories of Latin Americans in American society: those who preserve their cultural identity and have activities within their ethnical group (total identity); those who live in their ethnical groups but interact with the representatives of other cultures (partially identity); those who are not included into the ethnical group, usually they work in the field of science, mass-media or art (non-joined); those who don’t feel to be the member of any ethnical group, they were born in international families (hybrids). The problem of educating people of different cultures and explaining the importance of respect to every ethnical minorities is very important. As the representative of Latin American culture I’m very concerned about the problems of ethnical groups. Here we should speak about the main points of preserving the culture: possession of information and understanding; realizing a personality in his / her group, race; understanding of depression in society; gaining the knowledge about other ethnical groups, their contribution to world’s culture, their history and beliefs; assistance to social equity; assistance to development of respect to other cultures; loyalty to cultural pluralism; self-esteem development; polycultural educating; projecting, realization and evaluating pf the polycultural experience; practical attitude to social reality; self-experience while analyzing the cultural discrimination; taking part in solving the problems of different cultures. References Luedtke L.S. ‘Making America’. – Washington, 1987. P.78 Oxford Guide to British and American Culture. Oxford University Press. 2000 Sources to look for in internet: Marisa Warrix ‘Cultural diversity’ Sites: http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/5000/5255.html http://www.freemaninstitute.com/cultures.htm Read More