The Values Americans Live By by Robert Kohls Essay

meaning and provide them with rules for behavior in their organization, however culture does not necessarily imply uniformity of values. Often different values can be displayed by people of the same culture.

David Brook’s essay, “People Like Us, describes about the tolerance and diversity in the United States. Since the great immigration of the late 19th century, America has been cited as one of the most diverse countries in the world. The United States is home to individuals from many different races, ethnic backgrounds, religions, political views, interests, personalities, and income levels. However, according to Brook’s, instead of the population of the country uniting in its diversity and using it as a strength, individuals are trying to distance themselves from others who are not like themselves, rather, band themselves together with those who are like them. Brook’s notes that, even though most of Americans are doing the right thing by finding locations where they are most comfortable and where they believe they can succeed. Their decisions make them achieve their goals often lead towards their own ethnic or racial extractions. For instance, Brook’s himself confesses that he has in the past gravitated towards places where he believed he could be most comfortable in and where he also felt he could pursue his identity. He further states, that the majority of his friends are middle-income level Caucasians and conservative Christians. Brooks’ main argument in the essay is that many individuals in the United States often do not even bother to show that they would like to

David Brooks, who is a successful journalist, columnist, and self - described “comic sociologist” at The New York Times, communicates the dilemma of diversification in his expository essay “People Like Us”. Brooks thinks that people should encourage the diverse community to perceive and esteem each other 's different reflection in America. David Brooks demonstrates why all different kinds of humans are attracted to identical and similar races, ethnicities, religions, beliefs, political values, and classes in his essay based on typical examples surrounding us. In other words, Brooks argues all kinds of humans are most comfortable and pleasant living and working with people who share the same values and ideas. Brooks’ convincible thoughts

Values are defined as the importance or preciousness of something. A long time ago, around the early 16 century the puritans came to the America they live with the Native Americans and had a set of values they both believed in and lived by. One may not expect to find many similarities between both of these groups, but there are many. The Native Americans were not very different than the Puritans. Native Americans valued many things like religion, family, and the concept of things being balanced. Specifically, they strongly appreciated their family. Puritans similar to the Native Americans, the Puritans were more civilized and valued family, life, religion.

When it comes to culture it depends on the state or country that you live in. As we age we teach our children these values and

Individualism and equality are two of America’s core values. These core values are the standards by which every American uses to distinguish what behavior are acceptable and what is not in the society in which we live in. It is these two values that our responsible for molding our personalities as well as our behaviors. I believe out of all the values the United States possess, individualism and equality are the two most important values to follow.

There are some common ways in which different cultures express their values. Cultures value different things. Some ignorant people think that this also means all cultures do not have similarities to teach or express values. In “Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning” it conveys how a professor recorded how American families talked about intelligence being something people are born with. In contrast, in Eastern families they talked about how hard work brought intelligence (Spiegel). This passage shows extremely different values, but when examined, researchers can see they both were expressed through speech. This discovery is not surprising

American culture encompasses customs or traditions in the United States. Customs or traditions include, but would not be limited to, values, language, religion, or how we communicate. The population in the United States is over 325 million, (United States Census Bureau, (n.d.) and is built on immigration. In comparison to other countries, the United States is considered cultural, as most nations unite, and later mix, their culture into American culture.

A question most fascinating to me is where in history does the first hint of American ideals and identities originate from? If we were to look at where the fiery passions of an American identity first arise we have to look to where the colonists first fought for their right to be a recognized citizen of America. American colonists formed their identity through the ideas of liberty, resistance to unfair British jurisdiction, and cultural diversity. Their identities formed between the Seven Years War and the American Revolutionary War as these two events deeply brought out what the colonist’s ideals were and what they fought for so passionately. Between these years 1763 and 1775 we see the first American ideals being born in the colonies. An example of such ideals is the want and need for Liberty. A reason for wanting liberty was that British control suppressed the lives of the people living in America and over time grew harder for colonists to live with. Americans are revered to have a passionate patriotic view of their country and this is true as it is seen throughout history but in my research I will try to explain where these ideals first arose.

Page 210/chapter 6: Everyone has different values in the United States; however, most people has same values which is liberty, equality and democracy. American is called melting pot, so it happens. However, the political values that American support have not always put into practices.

In David Brooks’ “People Like Us” passage on the issue of diversity, Brooks takes a personally emotional perspective of the way in which Americans don’t appreciate how diverse our nation is while “relatively homogeneous” (Brooks 136). His argument is weakened, however, through a bias and hypocrisy that his diction conveys. He claims that grouping ourselves with those who we are most alike is in our nature to, and in doing so, we separate ourselves from those who are different. Using certain statistics as evidence, Brooks points out that the social segmentation created by society will always exist.

The core values all citizens of the United States share are liberty, equality, and democracy. One right that falls under these guidelines is that of equal representation in the political atmosphere, namely voting. Undoubtedly, many Americans would consider the ability to vote fairly and freely a fundamental right granted by the Constitution. However, one would be amazed to realize that the right is not specifically stated anywhere within the original Constitution, any of its provisions, or the Bill of Rights. There are centuries of history and legislation that allows Americans the right to represent themselves as a “government by the people, for the people,” (Lincoln) like they do today. A long history of struggles to define what a citizen is, and by extension who has the right to vote, through various acts and amendments culminated to form a very structured and organized method in the election of a president.

America has always been associated with the idea of being filled with diversity and for the most part that is true. We are diverse in culture, ethnicity, religion, politics, income, character, and in many other ways. But when you bring us together we aren’t unified and as truly diverse as others might believe. “…what I have seen all around the country is people making strenuous efforts to group themselves with people who are basically like themselves” (Brooks 261). I agree with this statement because, it’s accurate in the sense that we tend to place ourselves in groups that we have more in common with just because

R.E.M. ....Religious, educational and moral values. These are the three values that affect society today the most, I think. Society may look down on people if they do not live by what society thinks is correct. For example if a persons values are corrupt then society will look down on that person, but if a person has real high morals then society will think that they are fake of just a “goodie”. In society today you will be looked down anyway your moral beliefs are.

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