I think a related issue is that on a fundamental level, Americans have a problem not with having no culture, but with having too MANY cultures. The cultures which exist in the United States have some different features than cultures which exist outside it; some of this is because of centuries of appropriation (because, as you say, appropriation is part of our culture) and some is because Americans have organically grown aspects of their culture. As you say, "American culture" does exist; while the ideas, actions, and consequences of the Founding Fathers were influenced by other cultures, they are part of a uniquely American culture--and that's just one piece.
The problem we run into is, we can talk about the founders, American history, and American culture, but because there are so many groups involved due to our melting pot nature and sheer size, someone is going to raise their hand and say, "That may be your American culture, but it's not my American culture." A Native American who's lived on the reservation her whole life and a middle-class White American like me are probably going to have different answers to the question "What are the features of 'American history' and 'American culture'?", including the degree to which appropriation is a feature and the WAY in which appropriation is a feature.
I think perhaps the messages we send when we try to teach people about American culture wind up suffering one of two unfortunate fates: we either wind up saying that the culture of the dominant class is the only culture (i.e. the culture of white men with money is the "real American culture") and everything else is a "sub-culture," or we bend over so far backwards trying to avoid saying so that we wind up saying that the non-moneyed cultures are the "real" cultures and the white people with money are outside predators who mindlessly consume them because they have nothing of their own.
The truth is probably something more like, "American culture" is what has happened and continues to happen when all of these disparate elements collide under our unique governmental framework. All of the elements are part of it, and the fact of the ongoing negotiations between them are part of it, and resulting tensions over cultural ownership are part of it too. Some responses and customs seem much more "American" than others, and I don't think most people would argue if I said that Chinese Americans or Irish Americans etc. have different cultural features than Chinese people or Irish people etc. after generations have passed.
I think the whole world is struggling with this problem of cultural ownership now because of globalization. Perhaps one of the most truly American things about Americans is that we've got a long head-start on all of the dialog about it. Every nation has other "sub-cultures" living within it both separate and integrated, but they're generally so much smaller and fewer that the dominant culture of that country can easily suppress them. For example, take Japan: the Korean population in Japan for many years would look at the dominant paradigm of "Japanese culture" and say "That's not our Japanese culture." It's also true that mainstream Japanese culture appropriated things from its Korean population without consciously acknowledging so as more second- and third-generation Koreans mixed with the population. But it's so easy for mainstream Japanese culture to seem fairly "pure and simple" compared to American culture because the dominant cultural powers can suppress cultural-identity problems like these or dismiss them as an insignificant "sub-culture" that's only relevant to a small portion of the population. Yes, Japan is dealing with these problems now. But just like the dominant White culture of America past, it took them a while to really start wrestling with it, and they're not very far along yet. Whereas Americans are so ahead of everyone else that many of us are already wondering whether there even is such a thing as our culture. Nobody else asks that on this level. It's so quintessentially American.
Anyway, this isn't very well thought-out because I don't really have the time to devote my brain to it right now, but that's my knee-jerk thoughts about it in the midst of my crazy life....
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2007-05-14 06:41 pm (UTC)The problem we run into is, we can talk about the founders, American history, and American culture, but because there are so many groups involved due to our melting pot nature and sheer size, someone is going to raise their hand and say, "That may be your American culture, but it's not my American culture." A Native American who's lived on the reservation her whole life and a middle-class White American like me are probably going to have different answers to the question "What are the features of 'American history' and 'American culture'?", including the degree to which appropriation is a feature and the WAY in which appropriation is a feature.
I think perhaps the messages we send when we try to teach people about American culture wind up suffering one of two unfortunate fates: we either wind up saying that the culture of the dominant class is the only culture (i.e. the culture of white men with money is the "real American culture") and everything else is a "sub-culture," or we bend over so far backwards trying to avoid saying so that we wind up saying that the non-moneyed cultures are the "real" cultures and the white people with money are outside predators who mindlessly consume them because they have nothing of their own.
The truth is probably something more like, "American culture" is what has happened and continues to happen when all of these disparate elements collide under our unique governmental framework. All of the elements are part of it, and the fact of the ongoing negotiations between them are part of it, and resulting tensions over cultural ownership are part of it too. Some responses and customs seem much more "American" than others, and I don't think most people would argue if I said that Chinese Americans or Irish Americans etc. have different cultural features than Chinese people or Irish people etc. after generations have passed.
I think the whole world is struggling with this problem of cultural ownership now because of globalization. Perhaps one of the most truly American things about Americans is that we've got a long head-start on all of the dialog about it. Every nation has other "sub-cultures" living within it both separate and integrated, but they're generally so much smaller and fewer that the dominant culture of that country can easily suppress them. For example, take Japan: the Korean population in Japan for many years would look at the dominant paradigm of "Japanese culture" and say "That's not our Japanese culture." It's also true that mainstream Japanese culture appropriated things from its Korean population without consciously acknowledging so as more second- and third-generation Koreans mixed with the population. But it's so easy for mainstream Japanese culture to seem fairly "pure and simple" compared to American culture because the dominant cultural powers can suppress cultural-identity problems like these or dismiss them as an insignificant "sub-culture" that's only relevant to a small portion of the population. Yes, Japan is dealing with these problems now. But just like the dominant White culture of America past, it took them a while to really start wrestling with it, and they're not very far along yet. Whereas Americans are so ahead of everyone else that many of us are already wondering whether there even is such a thing as our culture. Nobody else asks that on this level. It's so quintessentially American.
Anyway, this isn't very well thought-out because I don't really have the time to devote my brain to it right now, but that's my knee-jerk thoughts about it in the midst of my crazy life....