American Culture: What Culture Should We Adopt?

Teaching English as a Second Language often makes me question issues of cultural identity. Americans live in an immigrant society, whereas many of my students come from more homogenous cultures like Iceland, Korea and Japan. Other students come from more diverse nations like Germany, Brazil and Kazakhstan. No matter what type of country they come from, it seems that they all still share some form of national pride, traditional customs and the desire for cultural preservation.

The topic of adoption came up in class recently, and I was confronted with all kinds of views on American culture. The main issue was asking which culture should the adopted child adopt. My college roommate was adopted from Korea as an infant and is American as pie. This angered many of my Korean students. The simple answer, in my mind, would be that the child should embrace both cultures. Seems like the typical American response, but my students saw it otherwise.

Most of my students said that a child adopted in America should be raised honoring the culture of his or her birth. To raise a child as an American was, in their opinion, a disservice to the child and ultimately denying their true heritage. So I asked my class if an American was adopted at birth in Korea should the Korean parents honor the child's American heritage? The whole class kind of laughed and said, "No, of course not." They said there is no American culture, and really American culture is just a mix of other cultures anyway.

I thought about it, and I had heard that argument before. I, myself, come from an Italian immigrant background, and practice more Italian culture than American in many cases. But, I found myself taking offense to the idea that Americans have no culture. So we spent the next day dissecting American cultural norms. To the surprise of my students, and myself we found many "isms" that were unique to American culture. For example, Americans are very blasé about making plans and keeping in touch. We very often say "oh I'll call you later," with little or no intent of actually calling later. Or the ever popular, "keep in touch!" when the reality is we may never see this person again. We are overly kind in the sense that we are a very "after you" "no please, after you" culture. Most of my Europeans students are far more blunt. When they say "I'll call you later" you'd best be sitting by your phone waiting for a call.

Within minutes, my entire class was going on and on about American norms in communication. However, communication is only one part of culture, not a whole. So we spent another day talking about American literature and art. Many playwrights write about American experiences. Some of those experiences are purely American, while others chronicle the immigrant experience in America, which is uniquely American. The late August Wilson, who I had the pleasure of meeting on several occasions, was famed for his plays chronicling the African-American experiences throughout the twentieth century. Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and Anna Deavere Smith are a few other notable American playwrights. Of course we can add artists, actors and novelists to the list.

Many of my students talk about being bombarded by American culture both in their home countries and here in the US. I asked them how they could make that claim, when also claiming that America has no culture. The result was an in depth conversation on what it means to be part of a culture. Are white Africans, African? If an American gives birth in Korea, is that child Korean whether or not they are of Korean decent? Are the children of Japanese parents American if they are born here? What if they move here, when do they become American?

As a class, we did end up coming to some sort of consensus. The goal was not to come to an agreement, but rather just to share ideas. However, we did come to an informal agreement. We all said that there are many factors to consider when choosing your cultural identity. One thing to consider is the culture in which you live. It is impossible to not be affected by the culture in which you live. Even people who choose to live in gated communities away from the locals are still affected by the culture in which they live. The fact that they are ignoring the culture around them affects their lifestyle. So that was the first thing to be considered. What culture or country am I living in?

The second thing to consider is the culture of your family. In some cases this will be the same as the culture in which you live, and in other cases it won't be. The culture in which you live should be infused with the culture you live with in the confines of your house. There has to be a juxtaposition of those two ideas. It is nearly impossible to deny one or the other. It affects who you are in some way shape or form.

Lastly, we all agree that the culture in which you feel part of is just as valid. Most of my students and I all agreed to some extent that culture is not in your blood. Physical appearances are genetic, but actions are not. Although I will never look Korean, if I have a child in Korea, and raise my child in that environment, and my child feels Korean, then they are, in my opinion, Korean. They may never look Korean, but I think there is a problem in attaching a physical appearance onto a culture. The belief that a culture is based on physical appearance has been the cause of slavery, genocide, war and other atrocities. To say that Iceland is a "white" culture, although statistically that may be true, it doesn't mean that a black person could never be truly Icelandic.

This then led us to discuss the issue of how long, or how many generations, must a person or family live in a country before he or she is a "native." We all use the term "Native American," but weren't we taught that these people came from Asia? Humans are historically nomadic, and although some cultures have been established for thousands of years, while other only for decades, at some point people have to become true "locals."

The result of our conversation in class was a reevaluation of all our cultural ideals. Does a homogenous culture have the right to want to keep their culture pure? Or is that racist ethnocentrism? Can a country like America ever really be American? Or will be always be an ever-changing smorgasbord of all the world has to offer? Lastly, I'd ask if it is necessary to have a culture? Is culture a celebration of diversity or just one more way humans have found to separate and create status?