Miscommunications In American Culture

In recent years, there has been an attack on a basic American right, a right so fundamental and deeply rooted that it defines the basis of American culture. With the ever growing and sweeping power of the U.S. government, society is beginning to feel like this right has been crushed and forgotten. Wars were fought and people sacrificed their lives in the name of protecting the right worth dying for. What defined one’s livelihood, gave one a personhood, ensured democracy, promoted labor, and maximizes the happiness of the people will all come crumbling down. What was once an indicator of the elite leaders of a democratic society has become nothing more than a pawn in a political game.

All communication is cultural. It draws on ways we have learned to speak and give nonverbal messages. We do not always communicate the same way from day to day, since factors like individual personality, mood, and the context of the situation interact with the variety of cultural influences we have internalized that influence our choices. Communication is interactive, so an important influence on its effectiveness is our relationship with others. Do they hear and understand what we are trying to say? Are they listening well? Are we listening well in response? Do their responses show that they understand the words and the meanings behind the words we have chosen? Is the mood positive and receptive? Is there trust between them and us? Are there differences that relate to ineffective communication, divergent goals or interests, or fundamentally different ways of seeing the world? The answers to these questions will give us some clues about the effectiveness of our communication and the ease with which we may be able to move through conflict. The challenge is that even with all the good will in the world, miscommunication is likely to happen, especially when there are significant cultural differences between communicators. Miscommunication may lead to conflict, or aggravate conflict that already exists, or in the sad of case of girl developing epilepsy and both her parent’s Hmong culturally clashing with her Western medicine

Throughout history, there has been discrimination against race, religion, gender, orientation, age, among many other things. From the British preventing the colonists’ rights to the “separate but equal” doctrine people used to justify discrimination against African Americans, America has had its fair share of it. After years of the mockery of equality that African Americans had, change was needed. Out of the thousands of voices who brought the winds of change, that were heard the most were: Martin Luther King Jr., for convincing people to join their cause; Thurgood Marshall, who used the law to get people to listen to their voices; and the Silent Majority, for without them, freedom would never truly ring from every mountainside.

The election of Barack Obama as the 56th president of the United States raised many hopes that the “Black struggles” was finally over. For conservatives, Obama victory reassured their beliefs that there was no longer such thing as racism and that every American had equal rights and opportunity to pursue the American dream. While many people have come to believe that all races have equal rights in America, Tim Wise argues in his documentary “White Like Me” that not only does racism and unconscious racial bias still exist, but that also White Americans are unable to simply relate to the variety of forms racism and inequality Blacks experience. This is mainly because of the privileges they get as the “default.” While Wise explores the variety forms of racism and inequality today such as unconscious racism, Black poverty, unemployment, inadequate education system, and prison system, the articles by the New York Times Editorial Board, the Human Rights Watch (HRW), and Adam Liptak further explore some the disparities in the criminal justice system. Ana Swanson points out in her article, “The Stubborn Persistence of Black-White Inequality, 50 Years after Selma” that while the “U.S. has made big strides towards equal rights,” significant gaps still remains between the two races. With the Supreme Court striking down a “portion of the Voting Rights Act that stopped discriminatory voting laws from going into effect in areas of the country with histories of disenfranchisement,” civil

America’s history is overrun with oppression and injustice based on race, ethnicity, and other traits that innocent victims have no control over. As a result, the reputation of the United States is forever tainted by it’s dark past, and still practices these surviving habits of hatred. Civil liberty issues faced since the establishment of the country have yet to be resolved because of the ever-present mistreatment, corruption in positions of authority, and the dehumanization of minorities.

Over the course of American history, from the time of the American Revolution to today, there have been countless fights for rights waged by different groups of individuals. From racial rights, to gender rights, to rights of opinion, life styles, or religion, every century has been marked by a variety of prejudices, injustices, and inequalities. People who have been deprived of their basic rights as citizens and treated unfairly have to stand up to opposing voices, cruel actions, and humiliation time and again, in order to gain equal rights. Though some fights are lost, at least at first, the fact that some are won show that our country will listen to people’s voices and are willing to change.

America, “The Land of the Free,” or so I thought. As an American, I have always believed that everyone has a right to free speech, free thinking, and a life without racism. I thought that I was lucky to be growing up in this century, where slavery had been abolished almost completely and racism on a steady decline. I was beyond proud of all of the accomplishments that our country had made in the past thousands of years; that was until I read “Whither Now and Why,” by W.E.B DuBois. DuBois was a Negro man, who in this passage described that although Negroes would soon be lawfully equal, they would never be socially or independently equal and forced to assimilate to White American culture (DuBois, W.E.B., 135). DuBois predicted that black identity would be lost if his kind were forced to assimilate to White culture, and compared this assimilation to “racial suicide” (DuBois, W.E.B., 135) Through this passage, DuBois was not only able to describe “racial suicide” of his culture but helped to open my eyes and see that assimilation is still a huge problem in America today.

The United States of America is known as a country of independence, liberty, and rights; within the lines of our national anthem the Stars Spangled Banner, it is clear to see how the phrases "the land of the free and home of the brave", symbolize the ideals that have been centralized into the American Society for hundreds of years. Despite being recognized as a world power; for its military structure and the "believed" system of possibilities in terms of self advancement, the United States of America houses a very dark and inhumane secret; a sociological failure that perhaps is called that way, given the as a nation, we neglect, fail to address, and persecute those that because of their inherited skin color, look different than the accepted sociological norm of whiteness. It is shameful, to me at least, that the term "American" is a representation of the world 's largest incarceration rate; it’s even more shameful, how we prosecute, isolate, and declare what President Nixon once believed was the proper measure to take on poor communities; the war on drugs. For hundreds of years, we as a country have idealized with what Mustafa Emirbayer & Matthew Desmond have identified in their book Racial Domination, Racial Progress the Sociology of Race in America, as a mistake; mistake that has cost thousands of minorities their reputations and has impacted not only their tranquility, but their overall success rate in the promised land of opportunities.

The United States has a longstanding history of racism and discriminatory policy, stemming from the colonial era. Generally, those who weren’t considered true White Americans faced blatant ethnicity-based discrimination and adversity in matters of education, human rights, immigration, land ownership, and politics. Specific racial institutions, characteristic of the 17th to 20th centuries, included slavery, wars against the Native Americans, exclusion from civil life, and segregation. It wasn’t until the mid-20th century that formal racial discrimination was banned, and majority attitudes began to see racism as socially unacceptable. However, our relatively recent racialized history has left an unfortunate impact on present society. The legacy of historical racism still continues to be echoed through socioeconomic inequality, and racial politics still remain a major phenomenon. Many argue that our government systems have shifted from means of overt racism to more symbolic, covert racism, and that this is reflected in our societal institutions, such as employment, housing, education, economics, and government.

The United States, even though considered the land of freedom, has been struggling with lingering racism and discrimination throughout the 19th and 20th century. Democratic reform throughout the century were implanted to eliminate the “tyranny of the white majority” Yet many scholars like Tocqueville, Fredrick Harris and WEB DuBois have challenged these results. The reality is that the tyranny of white majority has continued throughout the 18th to the 21st century resulting in a society that has suppressed and constantly failed to integrate African American into the white society by neglecting the race, using natural prejudice, race neutral policies, and laws that benefited whites more than African Americans.

Despite our founding principle that “all men are created equal” (Jefferson), American life isn’t characterized by equality or fairness. Although we acknowledge that each member of humanity bears equal value, we fail to provide them with such equality in life. Racism and anti-immigrant sentiment are two factors that prevent America from being equal. Frederick Douglass identified this gap between value and reality for Americans when he found himself “not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary” (¶3) of the Fourth of July, “a day that reveals to [the American

Before I learned to count, I was taught to put my right hand over my heart and pledge my allegiance; to promise to stand by a nation that has “liberty and justice for all”. Learning the pledge of allegiance in kindergarten was my first real exposure to hypocrisy. The US claims to provide a level field for everyone, but dispels any real movement towards it. If there truly was liberty and justice for all there wouldn’t be discrimination, racism, or intolerance. Instead though, everywhere you turn society is filled with hatred and unacceptance. As a first hand observer to the discrimination of members of the gay and African American communities, I have developed a sense of how unjust and unaccepting the American society truly is.

The United States of America have long been known as the Land of the Free and the home of the American Dream. From a small colony seeking freedom to the world’s melting pot, America has been a welcoming home to many reformers and innovators and visionaries and common people looking for a place to turn their dream into reality. This romantic notion has historically defined America, but it is not the truth. America’s truth is slavery and bloodshed and death and poverty caused by confusion and hatred and bigotry and pride. Since it’s birth, the only winners, the few to live the Dream, have been straight males with ancestry from western Europe. Everyone else has faced hatred and crime and sorrow, for nothing. And after centuries of this pattern of disrespect, self-fulfilling prophecies have arisen, and hate has bred hate. In his poem, “America,” Allen Ginsberg discusses the effects of long-term discrimination and prejudice against minority groups in America through the contrast of nonsensical circumlocutions and more concise glimpses of reality.

The demands of the American people being met demonstrates the great democracy and progressiveness that many people want to be a part of. However, each group thus far that has chosen to fight for their rights in America, has initially gone through a struggle, in which hope was kept alive only by the strongest of believers. The recognition of these group’s importance and worthiness has especially been important to the people who faced discrimination all of their lives, or fought to death for change. Recognition of their values, beliefs, and traditions by the law, meant greater acceptance from the majority they were, -and still are-, a part of. Once African Americans paved the way beginning in 1865, women and the LGBT community followed suit to

The United States of America is suppose to be the place to pursue the “American Dream”, yet no one never said the path to that dream was going to be easy, especially if you are not white. Minorities in this country are riddled with struggle and barriers that hinder the growth of the people starting from below the bottom. As Berkman and Blunk said in their Thoughts on Class, Race and Prison, “we live in a country where large numbers of people, particularly young Afro-American, Latino and Native American women and men, have been written off by society.” The minority of the United States experience bare minimal surrounded “in a consumer society, [that] if you’ve got nothing, you’re considered to be nothing, and the frustration of this reality leads [minority] people into crimes and drugs” (Berkman & Blunk). Minorities throughout times have faced challenges and persevered for rights in this country, though their rights have been achieved “racial inequality...may linger on for indefinite periods of time after the racial barriers are eliminated” (Wilson).