The International Arena

The International Arena

Multiculturalism constitutes on several cultures or ethnic groups within a society, which makes it a melting pot. California has all the ingredients to be a good melting pot; it has all the countries, languages, cultures and ethnicities all together, therefore California has become and international arena where all the cultures crash into one making the state a very dangerous playground. To understand the meaning of living in a multicultural California I will use the following genres of art What is Multiculturalism? By Gregory Jay, American Son by Brian Roly Ascalon, the movie Crash by Paul Haggis and the article White Privilege by Peggy McIntosh.

 When we talk about multiculturalism we think of all the possible cultures America has, including the white privilege. On the essay What is Multiculturalism? Is asking if America has a melting pot, for most of the people would say yes, but to some white Americans the concept of melting pot is to assimilate to a white American “America’s traditional conception of itself as a ‘melting pot’ of diverse peoples joined in a common New World culture has been challenged by those multiculturalists who consider the ‘melting pot’ metaphor a cover for oppressive assimilation. To them, the only way you were able to melt into pot is by assimilating to the dominant white culture” I think America has not being melt to the fullest. People would say that this country is a melting pot because it has so many cultures and so many people of different countries. In some parts of America such as the south, still discriminating people for who they are. For example, Arizona has the most outrageous laws against the Latino culture and people, to the point that Latinos move to another place because this state does not want them just because they are not similar to the white culture. Arizona is not the only state but some of the east states are against these people. America needs more heat on thinking to melt the pot.

In the article White Privilege talks about the example of the privilege and how is it work. This lead to you of not being able to change your color or feel bad/good that you are white and born with such “luck”. This is an asset of how educated you were and what you want to do in life. But also it misleads that people are jealous of it and the white people suffer from robbery or discrimination in other countries. “I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was meant to remain obvious. White privilege is like invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, tools and blank checks” The white privilege is going to be in our lives forever, until a great miracle of changing people minds to get rid of this privilege is going to disappear. This privilege is just a pain to the rest of the people that are not white because is the belief of this type of things that people come up as a white culture. For example this case was a real life situation and most of the cases it happens. The police people go immediately to assist the white victim in a robbery, but when it comes to another ethnicity or immigrant person they take quite time to get there. I would call this a white privilege. Same in other places if you are white you get the best stuff, the first in line, the warmer lunch, is like the “devil” in an angel body. There is white privilege in the country and some white people take advantage of it but some of them they just do not care. By doing colliding different ethnicities in California would crash onto one another until they would depend on each other.

The melting pot in California has increasing in the past few years; more cultures have been crashing into each other making the melt to boil. In the movie Crash the director made in a way to force the white Americans to see the reality of race and discriminations. The theme of the movie is that everyone is prejudice, the white, black, Latino, Asian, Iranian, etc. This movie reflects a bag full of anger, grievances and fears. Even when the characters feel that they are making progress from their actions, they find themselves in a very complex frustration and they tangles themselves in their own decisions. I think the white people they know their privileges and have being maintaining them. The movie shows how white Americans are to other racial ethnicities and when the film goes on you can see how the film make the white people to feel better by helping the other races in somewhat actions. This movie wanted to show how the different ethnicities developed together in a new society created by them. In my opinion Anthony, the carjacker that Ludacris played was the one who understood the white supremacy because he was always making revolutionary arguments about how white people react towards other ethnicities and stereotyping them. We have to crash to respect one another; we need to do it before that.

 In California, we have a lot of cultures and the people identify with other cultures, in the American Son novel we discover how powerful a culture can be to a teenage person and how find himself living in a multicultural society.

 The American Son focuses on Gabe, a half white, half Filipino adolescent, who is caught in an identity crisis as he faces pressures from both Filipino and American cultural values. The novel that is defined as “the story of a single individual's growth and development within the context of a defined social order.” The individual in this case is Gabe the character that has the Filipino and American societies; at the beginning Gabe is illustrated as shy and timid, and is afraid to speak out, enduring the relentless beatings and insults from his brother. Gabe is shameful of his Filipino heritage and rejects his identity. Gabe explains how he is embarrassed of his mother, who he describes to be “self-conscious about her English.” He states, “Still, I do not like having her pick me up from school. She is short and dark and wears funny-looking giant purple glasses that are trendy on other people’s mothers but which do no match her brown skin tone” (30). After being beat up by his brother, Gabe decides to take his brother’s car and run away, however, he explores his identity of being white and Asian. At this point of the novel, Roley essentially integrates the protagonist’s “major conflict between self and society.” Then a truck driver state, after demeaning various ethnic groups, “But it isn’t near as bad as San Pedro. Cambodians, Vietnamese, Laotians,” he continues, “All those mute Asians won’t even learn to speak English” (84). Afterwards, a discomfort comes over Gabe. Roley describes Gabe to be avoiding the rearview mirror in order to visually demonstrate Gabe’s shame of his own identity as an Asian. Gabe is also surprised at this point that the truck driver does not recognize his own Filipino heritage and verifies the fact that he may possibly “get by” or “pass” as a non-Asian. Throughout this experience with the truck driver, whom Gabe regards as a father figure, he finally feels accepted and finds a place for himself. After returning home in the last part and experiencing “clashes between the protagonist's needs and desires and the views and judgments enforced by an undoing social order,” Gabe attempts to develop a new identity conforming to a misconstrued image of being American. He joins a gang and follows the path of his brother, a life of violence. Gabe describes, “Ben laughed even though I was older. But now he is respectful, his head bowed”, “I feel a rush not of anxiety but of confidence” (214). Gabe finally overcomes his shame and is no longer the introverted adolescent he was. This shows how America society change people home “culture”, but still we find ourselves in other culture. My mom once called me that I am becoming American because I do not act like a person, like her when she was my age. My Mom told me I need to be with her until I get marry, and to never leave her alone. The time changed people, so society; my mom let me moved out before marriage and sometimes my mom calls me her American daughter.

In California and the rest of America is a big International arena where everyone is in danger to crash on the playground. If we don’t crash, we would never learn to accept each other. Before crashing we need to learn to accept ourselves and the people around us because we are human beings, and our culture makes us richer.