Need help with a Cultural Diversity assignment (don't laugh)

[bryanthompson]

I'm in the end of the first week of my Cultural Diversity class... So far it's been somewhat interesting. I'm trying to be as open-minded as possible, but some of this seems pretty ridiculous.

First off, in the class, the instructor and book take the attitude that everyone is part of an ethnic group or minority group of some kind, and that they automatically have faced some oppression, discrimination, racism, or segregation because of it.

Well, Bryan to Earth: I'm a 20 year old straight white guy from the middle of Nebraska. I'm of Polish-Norwegian heritage, the most racism I've seen are Polish jokes, which I usually laugh with. They're damn funny sometimes.

So, my next assignment is to write a 750-1050 word essay. Here's the description from the syllabus:

Choose an ethnic group to which you personally belong. If you identify with more than one group, choose the group with which you identify most or about which you would like to learn more.

The essay must answer the following questions:
- Was the group colonized, or did it immigrate to the United States?
- Did the group face discrimination, segregation, or racism? If so, how and why?
- What gender roles are established in this group?
- What part does religion play for this group?
- Which group characteristics helped individuals assimilate to American society?
- Which characteristics were harmful to group success?
- Do you culturally identify more with the ethnic group you examined, with American mainstream culture, or with both equally?

I need a way of looking at this assignment in a positive way, otherwise I'm never going to make it through this class.

Any thoughts, please?!

[jm951]

You could always harken back to your Viking/Nordic roots and how they are truly part of the master race and all others are inferior and deserve to be eliminated. That would be sure to blow some fuses.

More seriously though, this class seems designed to instill some malcontent. Keep your head up, profs like these are just trying to justify their beliefs of a victim class. Get the A and leave.

[Paco Anton]

I'd suggest you use your Polish background. You can talk about:

- Foreign occupation. Poland has had an independent state only intermitently over the last few centuries. They were subjected to Russian occupation, forcing many of them to emigrate to the States in the early 20th century.

- Also during WWII Poland was partitioned between the USSR and Nazi Germany and its inhabitants were discriminated. Also many Polish Jews were segregated and/or exterminared

- The role of the Catholic religion (hey, the Pope is Polish, isn't he?) versus his Protestant (Germany) or Orthodox (Russian neighbours. Maybe this will lead you also to gender differences (can't hel much here but probably Polish families tend to stick together more and have some "mamma" characters like the iItalians)

Then end saying that you don't feel too much Polish and identifiy more with mainstream american culture.

Good luck!

[dafischer]

If it was me, and the course wasn't a core requirement, I'd be finding out if the option to drop and add a course was available.

[Moses]

When a professor requires a truly stupid approach like that, do not feel compelled to respond with honesty.

Tell him you are a white northern european and your "people" have committed thier lives to the subjugation of all minorities. Be an apologist. Tell him it's hard to live with the shame of your ancestry and that you have dedicated your life to attone for the sins of your fathers. He'll eat it up.

I used to hate profs like that.

[BlueSkyJaunte]

You seem to be part of a majority of "have-nots" that is being discriminated against by a small minority of "haves"...i.e., you're a student and he's a professor.

[Isabo]

Perhaps as a Pole you are not smart enough to understand you are being oppressed?
Sorry!
Perhaps the prof is just trying to bring out an understanding of oppression from that slant and demonstrate that we're all oppressed so shut up about it already.
Or he's using the assignment to collect information for a project of his own.
Advice: Toe the line a get the "A". Anything controversial may get you max points or minimum points, think twice before submitting anything like that.

[bryanthompson]

Thanks for everyone's input. I'm going to go with the polish oppression route. I just got off the phone with my Grandma who knows most of the family history. I should be able to pick out some interesting things and BS the rest. wish me luck

[stomachmonkey]

As you said, I think the core of it is to drive home the fact that at some time or another every race, culture, ethnic group has been subjected to some form of oppresion.

Some may need to reach back farther than others to find it but it's there.

I don't understand why you perceive it as a negative experience.

You may very well learn a lot of things about your heritage that you never knew.

I used to love speaking to my grandparents. The things that they experienced in their lives was fascinating.

My Swiss/German grandmother, Oma, used to tell me about when she was a young child during WWI and would go to visit her father who had been conscripted into the service. 11 years old and she would bribe the border gaurds with chocolate while she kept the cigars for her father hidden in her stockings.

Or my opa, drafted at the end of WWII after his steel mill was bombed out. Got caught deserting and as the Germans are taking him to be executed they get ambushed by a Russian patrol. So opa is sitting in a ditch thinking, if the Germans win this skirmish they'll still kill me, if it looks like the Russians will win the Germans'l probably shoot me before surrendering, so he says f it and jumps up and runs across the field of fire towards the Russians, he makes it there in one piece and just keeps going.

Anyway, by your own admission you are having a hard time because you feel you've never been the target of oppresion. Good for you, I can tell you that being a member of a minority group in this country sucks. Especially when we run into people who do not have the faintest clue what it feels like to be an "outsider".

So look at it as a positive experience and it just may well be. If you go in with a negative point of view you won't benefit from it fully.

Good luck with the paper.

Scott

[bryanthompson]

I don't understand why you perceive it as a negative experience.

You may very well learn a lot of things about your heritage that you never knew.

I just finished it up, and it did turn out to be a much better assignment than I initially expected it to be. From the reading we've been assigned, class discussions, and wording of the syllabus, the lady is a total leftie and I just hope she was expecting me to learn about my ancestry, not to look at it as if I'm a victim of something. It really is worded in a way to suggest that we're all victims, but it could be that she's trying to get the point across that our ancestors all had to go through tough times, so "get over it." I REALLY hope that's what her message ends up being.

[Moses]

Originally posted by bryanthompson
I just finished it up, and it did turn out to be a much better assignment than I initially expected it to be. From the reading we've been assigned, class discussions, and wording of the syllabus, the lady is a total leftie and I just hope she was expecting me to learn about my ancestry, not to look at it as if I'm a victim of something. It really is worded in a way to suggest that we're all victims, but it could be that she's trying to get the point across that our ancestors all had to go through tough times, so "get over it." I REALLY hope that's what her message ends up being.

If she's a true lefty, you may have missed the point. You are part of the oppressor class.

[VINMAN]

You can talk about the new crayons my wifes school gives out to the students....

[id10t]

Try explaining how because you don't fit in a "minority", and how most minorities now have either special protections or special benefits, and how that has affected you since you don't qualify for anything "everyone else" gets.

[911pcars]

Bryant,
Congratulations on that learning experience. Scott (Stomachmonkey) was right wasn't he? College classes shouldn't be all about about learning career skills. Being more aware of the world and other people and discovering things about yourself and your heritage is as valuable. You're a better person for recognizing those things. Apparently, there's something to learn from everyone, even "lefty" profs.

Ignore the narrow viewpoints. Learn all you can,
Sherwood

[dawnbass]

I'm glad I am not the only one with a road block on this assignment. Who's class are you in? I found this post by accident while doing my paper, hope your's turns out.

[bryanthompson]

wow... didn't expect to see this thread again.

My class was ETH/123 Cultural Diversity (Section 3) with Mona Earnest. I ended up writing about my Polish ancestry and basically the story of how they came to the U.S. It worked out really well, and I ended up with an A- in the class.

The story was pretty interesting, actually... I didn't end up BS'ing as much as I expected to

[red-beard]

I was heavily discriminated against through my younger life. I was smart. People hated me for breaking the curve and consistently getting A's. They didn't like how I could answer most of the questions, before they were asked. I was subject to name calling, like, "Dictionary Face". I mean, they showed just how ignorant they were. It should have been: "Encyclopedia Face"!

Anyway, the oppression didn't end. Things only seemed to revert to normal when I was physically challenged to fisticuffs. I never lost a scrap, and would, for a short time, be shown respect by my classmates.

College was no different. I usually was smarter than the Professors and they would get quite upset when I would show how the answer they proposed to a test question, proved they didn't understand the subject as well as I did...

[ubiquity0]

Originally posted by VINMAN
You can talk about the new crayons my wifes school gives out to the students....

What.. only 8 races included in the box?!? What are the ommitted others going to say? Isn't that discrimination?

[Mulhollanddose]

I would make the case that our cultural differences are irrelevant and discrimination has occured regardless of race or ethnicity; in other words I would diminish ethnicity from the concept of being an American..I would use this opportunity to not find the points of division, but the points of similarity...In that we are Americans and have been blessed by a brilliant experiment in self-government, formulated from a Judeo-Christian philosophy and a Protestant work-ethic...It is this Christian underpinning that laid the framework for the success of this country, not diversity...In fact diversity thrives and is allowed precisely because of the Christian heritage...We are proof that Christianity and capitalism leads to the nearest thing to a utopia the world has ever seen.

Maybe try to weave this in somewhere...

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From Bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage."

Alexander Tytler