Research PaperCultural Intersections Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Research PaperCultural Intersections - Essay suitSince the process if bettering oneself is just that - a choice, when the black sub group chooses to pursue another pagan lead at heart the the Statesn culture, livid America often shows little tolerance or understanding.For black America, the break up pot and land of opportunity images have never been allowed to become the cultural icons with which white Americans co nearly identify. The black experience of American culture did not begin with voluntary immigration in the seeking of a better life. Black Americans were forcibly taken from their homes and brought to America as slaves. Black Americans, while no longer living as slaves, and living in a free country, still struggle to open up a distinctly American and successful identity. Their path was forced, not voluntary. Their emigration was from freedom to bondage, while white Americans, to a great extent, left religious and social bondage to establish freedom. From these two different paradigms, two different American cultures have emerged. At the seam where these cultures meet, friction and misunderstanding argon the norm. As a result, a homogeneous America currently does not exist for either group, and both sub-cultures tend to track down a chip on their shoulder, blaming the other as the source of the discord.For both of these cultures, the idea of choice should be taken into consideration so that the psyches can begin to move past their individual ideas of how America should look. black-and-blue Americans and black Americans each have made choices on how to perceive their country and culture. Each has come to an individual understanding based on their choices and personal experiences. Unfortunately, at the intersection of these two paradigms, the individuals often try to guarantee their perceptions as something bigger than choice. White America lifts up their own experience as how and what America is. America is the melting pot, the land of opp ortunity, and any individual or people group that does not perceive it withal is understood as attacking America. Black America similarly can understand the country as an oppressive culture, bent on taking from them their individuality and uniqueness as it tries to squeeze them into the white cultural mold. Working under this perception, black Americans can easily turn aggressively hostile to the white paradigm, which leads to conflict, and disunity.Reike and Sillars, in their work on critical decision making (1993) address this phenomenon by accurately identifying it as the mathematical product of choice. They say that our individual belief systems are made up of two components, beliefs and values. Individuals settle on hollow out values as both an individual and as a larger group. Often these values within a culture are similar, even though they are worked out in different ways. Americans as a group tend to hold the value of independence as a universal value. laissez faire is similarly a shared cultural value. According to Reike and Sillars, built around these core values are individual belief systems which shape and affect our understandings of our values. precept systems are most often learned behaviors. Belief systems are based on what is important to us, our values, but they also reflect our personal experiences, and our belief systems also shape our actions. We will rarely make decisions or choose a course of action which is in violation to our belief system, even if the belief system inaccurately reflects