Reasearch Paper

Land of the Free, Home of the…

                Can oppression exist in “The Land of the Free?” It can be found in different forms throughout this nation, yet it is sometimes done subconsciously due to one’s environment and lack of critical thinking. J. Andrzejewski asserts his definition of oppression: “Oppression exists when any entity (society, organization, group, or individual) intentionally or unintentionally distributes resources inequitably, refuses to share power, imposes ethnocentric culture, and/or maintains unresponsive and inflexible institutions toward another entity for its supposed benefit and rationalizes its actions by blaming or ignoring the victim” (56). Has America’s past formulated this air of oppression?  In pursuit of the American dream, immigrants encounter discomfort, rejection, even persecution because they arrived as foreigners with different customs, traditions, attitudes, and beliefs. This “free land” is surviving inside the lines of Andrzejewski’s definition as it expresses foreign anxiety and phobias, edicts linguistic disregard and right-depriving obstacles, and forces ideas of assimilation and hierarchies. These rejections of diversity have created a mindset of unimportance regarding various cultures within the American bubble.

Despite the beauty of cultural contributions, many Americans express negative attitudes toward foreign immigrants, especially those who are of Spanish-speaking origin. Does the American heartland reside in the concept of xenophobia? Americans seem to dislike or fear people from other countries or of that which is foreign or strange. Ever since colonization, this land has been the battle grounds of racial oppression from the Aboriginals to the Spaniards. José Cobas and Joe Feagin provide their abstract of the raise of the Latin American population within American society and why the oppression continues to flourish:

The growth of the Latino population has been a source of concern for many white Anglos, who assert that it will result in the death of the American way of life and the English language…This rhetoric is a subterfuge aimed at increasing the prestige of English vis-à-vis Spanish, a development that will facilitate the growth of capital, both material and symbolic, in the white establishment ("Language And Oppression”1).

What sparks American fear of foreign influence? Cobas and Feagin’s concept, “The browning of America,” is a development that many whites see with alarm ("Language and Oppression” 1). Why does the Anglo-Saxon society shake at the mention of a bilingual country? As a nation without an official language, the United States tremble in the wake of a potential loss of English; however, the benefits largely outweigh what society may deem “the costs.”

            Apathy is filling this nation with its lack of cultural realization and linguistic open-mindedness. In his poem, Martin Espada dictates his corresponding assertions as he expresses the life of a Honduras-native janitor: “The Spanish of my name is lost” (15-16). “George” is recognized before the actual “Jorge” which is increasingly common in the U.S.A. Many Americans do not care to exhaust the attempts in foreign pronunciation. As supported in "Language and Oppression: Latinos/As In The United States," the evidence of racial biases prevent the existence of American strife in foreign languages and “abnormal” pronunciation: “Latinos commonly encounter objections to their accent. From a linguistics point of view, all people who speak a language speak with an accent” (Cobas and Feagin 2). Flashes of anger also arise when the majority population cannot understand a minority group due to heavy accents. However, anyone who speaks a language has an accent. Are fellow citizen supposed to discriminate against distant Americans due to the use of long and short A’s when pronouncing “water”, “beans”, etc? It seems so due to the hypocritical exercise of English-expectations and foreign biases.  Not only is pronunciation an oppressed factor within society, but also its core: bilingualism.

The denial of language persists in availing the obstacles aimed against immigrants, which is supported by Cobas and Feagin: “Language is fundamental to social life and expresses the understandings of its associated culture in overt and subtle ways. This is true for all languages, including those in dominant groups and those in oppressed groups” (“Language and Oppression” 2). The spread of multi-lingual influence and acceptance is a vital part of a growing society: it is what our country was originally built on. Bilingual education, which can help children whose native language is Spanish, is strongly opposed by many whites, and a number of states have abandoned or restricted such programs (Cobas and Feagin 1). The importance of language and other multicultural aspects is elaborated on by Ashwani Peetush in his article “Living in the Global Village”: “Culture shapes a sense of self which allows one to navigate through worlds by learning and responding to his specific background...This is the cultural background for which we preform our civil and physical actions” (18). When a group of people is forced to abandon its “sense of self” then the turmoil of lost cultural identity reacts against its people. Present in past history within the actions of Gandhi’s people, the Jewish nation, Aboriginals, women and homosexuals, the effects of lost cultural identity can shake a nation to its core: “It becomes an issue of justice and fairness that people are not discriminated against, but also, that their identities are recognized as being important to their sense of self” (Peetush 18). 

            As expressed by Cobas and Feagin, the United States is proposing different strategies to cease the “browning” or the increase of the Latino population: to enforce the existing immigration law with tenacity and to make the immigrants’ life in the United States more difficult (1). Laws effective in some states create obstacles for immigrants to obtain rightful benefits: Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer now denies driver's licenses or any other benefits to immigrants granted "deferred status" under a new federal program. The new program allows accepted applicants to remain in the United States and work without fear of deportation for at least two years. Governors in Nebraska and Texas have followed Brewer's lead (Castillo and Shoichet). This depriving act is intended to weaken the desire of American immigration. It is also aimed at lowering foreign status. “This Land is your Land, this Land is my Land” seems to have changed within American society: “This Land is my Land. If you’re here, it’s still mine.”

            Forced assimilation, defined in “The Procrustean Bed of Assimilation,” is one of the most contributing points of cultural oppression. It clouds the immigrants of this country with a cold air: “The traditional social science concept of “assimilation” refers to immigrant and subordinate racial-ethnic group adaptation to the dominant culture and institutions of the host society” (Cobas and Feagin 39). Cultural assimilation is prominent in this country, not only in languages, but also other traditions. Oppression of these customs stands side-by-side with the concept of assimilation. This is noted in Espada’s poem:

            I host the fiesta

            Of the bathroom

            Stirring the toilet

            Like a Punchbowl (11-14).

White society’s expectation of foreign conversion into the typical “immigrant worker” strips a person of his or her cultural identity. Jorge the Janitor is Espada’s spokesman of the constant assimilation within the United States and the voice of one fed up with oppressive recognition.

The central point of assimilation, as explained by Cobas and Feagin in “The Procrustean Bed of Assimilation,” began with the formation of the theoretical hierarchy of color which is grounded in American physic: “The white-invented racial hierarchy, and its racial framing of society, began in the seventeenth century and persists, indeed fundamentally, to the present day” (54). Multicultural education can be traced historically to the Civil Rights Movement. Acceptance and defiance against this white-hierarchy concept became a necessity during this time period: “Often, the lighter-skinned a group is, the more Anglicized they seem, and therefore the more likely they are to be better treated by whites” (Cobas and Feagin 40). The “Dirty Mexican” idea has grown from this false, white-supremacy hierarchy and pushed assimilation. It needs to be abolished as the greater good of cultural diversity takes place. In his arguments pertaining to assimilation, Ashwani Peetush states:

…even though it may be possible to move from one culture to another, does not mean that a society can justly require such assimilation of all its members, especially given that most individuals resist this and given that it can have long ranging damaging effects on their lives (20).

His statement detects the flaws of assimilation, especially when forced upon a group of people.

The greater good of cultural diversity is held back by many aspects within the United States: obstacles aimed at foreigners, linguistic and cultural apathy, racial expectations and forced assimilation. If this truly is The Land of the Free, then who is actually regarded to as The Free? With oppressive factors downgrading foreign influence, America is continuing the false sense of a white or American hierarchy. Each and every one of the ancestors of an American citizen were welcomed (more or less) into this nation and finally accepted. It is now the time to return this acceptance to humanity and grow as a diversified nation.