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Changing Ethnic Texture Of The United States

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James Banks once said, "Our nation 's motto is e pluribus unum--out of many, one. The changing ethnic texture of the United States intensifies the challenge of educating citizens and creating an authentic unum that has moral authority. An authentic unum reflects the experiences, hopes, and dreams of all the nation 's citizens. An imposed unum, the kind that has existed throughout most of the nation 's history, reflects one dominant cultural group. Our challenge, as a new century begins, is to establish an authentic unum that has moral authority and yet create moral, civic, and just communities in which citizens from diverse racial, ethnic, and cultural communities will participate and to which they will have allegiance" (University of…show more content…
This is primarily the result of culture being difficult to define. As explained in chapter one of Multicultural Aspects of Human Behavior: A Guide to Understanding Human Cultural Development, many have attempted to define culture however, they have failed to appropriately define what culture is (Bryan, 2014). One example of the definition of culture is provided by the University of Kansas. It states that culture refers to a group or community of people that share common experiences and ideas which shape how the members interpret the world (University of Kansas, 2014). Another working definition of culture is, the characteristics and knowledge of a certain group of people, composed of such things as language, religion, music, and arts (Zimmermann, 2015). Though both are fairly reasonable definitions, they are still incomplete due to the complexity of concept, culture. There are several things that make culture difficult to define. For starters, culture has no definite boundaries or limitations therefore, it can be influenced by many things. O 'Neil (2006) suggested that regardless of what culture a community or group are a part of, one thing is for certain, culture will change. Culture has become a key part of the interconnected world, which is made up of so many ethnically diverse societies. Culture can no longer be assumed to be fixed, if it ever was. Instead, it is essentially fluid and constantly in motion. This is one reason
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