The Article ' What Every American Should Know ' By Eric Liu

Richard Rodriguez article, “The Chinese in All of Us (1944)”, argues that many different cultures have contributed to making up the American culture. Rodriguez backs up this claim by sharing

“We don’t really care about diversity all that much in America” (132). In “People Like us” David Brooks takes a logical approach through examining the demographics of our neighborhoods, our educational institutions, and he touches on an emotional approach by having his audience examine their values; he does this with hopes of having his audience question their word choice for the American value diversity, and question if the way they are living their lives invites diversity.

Culture is the Backbone of a society, when something/someone tries to alter it or go against it everyone will notice. In this issue pointed out by Ruth Macklin, we look at the problems that can arise when an individual’s culture and autonomy clash. Every year there at least 30 million immigrants from all over the world that move to the United states of America, making America one of the most culturally diverse country in the world. Keeping this in mind, we will focus on Ruth Macklin’s issue of Multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is the co-existence of diverse cultures, where culture includes racial, religious, or cultural groups and is manifested in customary behaviors, cultural assumptions and values, patterns of thinking, and communicative styles. Critics argue that we associate culture with a society, community and or family, but rarely with a single individual, thus placing it above the individual person. In this paper we are going to look at four different scenarios on from Ruth Macklin’s article.

To understand Eric Liu’s opinion on having a common culture in the U.S and purpose it is important to know about his cultural background and career. Liu’s parents were born in China but Liu was born in Poughkeepsie, New York. He studied history in Yale University then got his degree and graduated from Harvard Law School. Liu has accomplished many things over the past couple years. He is the CEO for citizen university, which has a main focus in teaching the arts of being a powerful citizen who is a someone that make an impact in the world to help others. Everyone should strive in being a powerful citizen. Liu is well prepared and intelligent writer, he wrote the article called “What Every American Should Know”. This specific article is about Liu 's thought and new ideas in having a common culture in 2015 towards Hirsh’s controversial book Cultural Literacy. Cultural Literacy is based on arguments about teaching common cultures on having a common vocabulary for students. Hirsch 's article had a big impact in his career and Cultural Literary became a National best seller. This article came out in a very controversial moment in America going through Cultural Literacy. Liu disagrees with Hirsh list and throughout the article Liu main purpose is to come up with a new list based on diversity and shared cultures. This list is important to me because I am an American that would love to be able to communicate to other culture other than my own. Liu has many strategies to get his

As Americans, we are privileged with diverse experiences. With this comes a perceived understanding of many cultures and their influences but in fact full cultural literacy is impossible to achieve.

What every American should know by Eric Liu thoroughly examines the issue of cultural literacy and its place in modern America. It takes on a convincing argument against E.D. Hirsch’s book on the same which included some 5000 things that he thought define cultural literacy and every American should know. Liu argues that America has changed over time, becoming more multicultural, and to capture the cultural literacy of the country, no one person should sit down and come up with what they think everyone else should know. Instead he suggests that in order to capture the view of the nation, every American should be involved in the making of the list. The most engaging part of this article is Liu’s idea that this new list that is crowd-sourced should always change according to the times. It should not be cast in stone because things in this day and age change really fast; what is a hit this month will be old news in the next one. This is what cultural literacy really is; keeping up with what is going on around you and being open to learn new things as they emerge. This can also be said of education; in order to stay educated in any field, you have to be in the know of in terms of new developments.

America has always been labeled the “melting pot” and the “land of the free,” but when one is analyzing the history and social norms of the country, these statements are far from true. America has thrived through the oppression of minority groups and social pressure towards these groups to conform to the majority culture. In any historical sense, from the near extermination of Native Americans to the racial profiling of Muslim individuals after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, minority groups have always been the victims and have always been viewed as different if they do not assimilate into the “typical” American culture. Numerous works of literature have successfully displayed the struggles that minorities face when attempting to conform. Two works in particular, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Alexie Sherman and When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka, tell stories of two different minority groups: Native Americans living in the 21st century and Japanese-Americans during World War II. While these stories are separated by several decades, it is clear that American culture has not changed, as each story exemplifies how difficult it truly is to leave old cultural norms behind in order to be accepted by the majority.

In American society, there are multiple cultures and races exist. Since immigrants bring the various cultures to America, Americans face a highly controversial problem. Some of the Americans believe all of the ethnic groups assimilate into a common culture can help Americans distinctly identify themselves. Others argue that ethnic groups should not abandon their cultural heritages background. As a result, merging different cultures into one new culture will cause America lose its cultural diversity which is one significant charm of this country. On the contrary, if every ethnic group only focuses on building their own community and resists communicate with others, it will aggravate the separation of a nation. Although people often argue about these two ways which one is more appropriate to Americans, I think Richard Rodriguez's idea is more realistic in nowadays American society. Rodriguez resists the idea of the melting pot, and believes that assimilation is inevitable and reciprocal. In the essay Does America Still Exist?, Rodriguez explains his thought to us through his experiences.

McGray states, “The United States can no longer afford an isolationist education, any more than the world can afford an isolationist American Public” (McGray 359). By demonstrating that, McGray provokes American legislators reasoning forcing them to recognize that changes in the American educational curriculum must be done immediately. Contrarily, young Americans’ lack of knowledge about the world surrounding them will set the country down and consequently compromise the future of the United States of America. In addition, this rhetorical choice supports McGray’s arguments challenging his audience intellectual to reflect about other possibilities to solve this issue. Following these lines, McGray appeals to American legislators’ action to incorporate multicultural studies in the American educational system such as the history, perspectives and values of people from distinctive cultures.

In “The Chinese in All of Us,” Richard Rodriguez describes multiculturalism in America in the 1950’s and how people of different cultures reacted to it. Rodriguez was born of Mexican descent from immigrants who moved to California in an attempt to find a better life. Being raised in America, Rodriguez was exposed and influenced by the various amounts of cultures surrounding him; he explored and developed as a person with a culture that went beyond his Mexican roots. Due to his embrace of multiculturalism, critics and people in general mocked and defamed him by saying to him “you have lost your culture” (Rodriguez 729). In “The Chinese in All of Us,” Rodriguez makes claims about the definition of culture and about how people reject multiculturalism in order to preserve their own culture.

Lawrence W. Levine approaches the issue of ethnic relations in a slightly different light in his book, “The Opening of the American Mind”. He focuses on the two central components of the entire matter: One-way Assimilation (the melting pot ideology) and Cultural Pluralism, given that the two other models (Ethnic

According to Maya Angelou, Amy tan, Chia-Fang (Sandy) Hsu, Janell Hobson, Yong Chen, Felicia F. Thomas, and Fuchs Lawrence, culture is what brings a community together as one. In “Champions of the World,” “Fish Cheeks,” “Acculturation and communication Traits: A Study of Cross-cultural Adaptation among Chinese in America,” “Between History and Fantasy: Harriet Tubman in the Artistic and Popular Imaginary,” “Recreating the Chinese American Home through Cookbook Writing,” “African American and Socialization,” and “Immigration, Multiculturalism, and American history”. All the authors mention and talk about how important is to know once culture. For generation culture has been what makes America so unique among

Even though there are set values that are universally known to the public, people do not always follow those values within their groups. However, these people have to act in conformity and abide by the values in public. Although everyone assumes that “imagined communities” contain a common culture, in reality, they really do not due to the fact that there are many body of ideas and practices that are not shared. Many languages are spoken and countless number of religions are practiced in various countries, so these make the “common culture” idea a misconception among citizens of different countries. For example, people tend to think that America consists of culture that is common, but they do not know if the beliefs, values, and practices are universally shared by all Americans. Nonetheless, there was a time when a dominant culture in the United States actually existed. It was during when the religion of Christianity was prominent and when many countries in Europe spoke the English language. It should be known that black Americans, Chinese-Americans, and white Americans have a common culture because of everything they do and do not share. From the common culture would arise the social identity, which can cause problems in diversity. Diversity can be an issue because of the ignorance of all the contrasting values. These issues arise because racial and ethnic identities are compared to one another and both can also relate to genders and sexualities. Nevermore, distinct genders and sexualities often live together now with the same knowledge and values and can still grow into opposite racial identities. Ethnic identities are so different since they are created in family and community life and people want the solidarity from being unique to one

Cultural diversity, or multiculturalism, is based on the idea that cultural identities should not be discarded or ignored, but rather maintained and valued. The foundation of this belief is that every culture and race has made a substantial contribution to American history. However, many people remain opposed to the idea of multiculturalism, or cultural diversity awareness, while others often support it and yet have no clear idea of how it should be taught. The diversity of the United States is truly astounding, as many different ethnic and racial groups have contributed to the social,

The United States of America was founded on July 4, 1776. Seeking a life free of the British Government, a host of immigrants founded a new nation. Because the United States was created by the migration of people from various parts of the world, it is sometimes described as a “melting pot.” Along with their personal possessions, these immigrants brought their respective cultures and traditions as they meshed together into a new society. Despite being categorized together as citizens of the same country, the independent traditions and lifestyles of humankind have created challenges throughout history. It is important for Americans to share a sense of pride, patriotism and loyalty. Equally important, however, is the need for respect regarding differences and individualism. Ethnocentrism is a barrier between understanding culture and diversity.