Is cultural diversity a threat to a common national culture? Or does it enrich our culture?

Question

It's for my humanities class and i need to do and essay on it. I am also having trouble of starting an Introduction for my essay.

Answer 1

It would enrich our culture. Just like the notion says "There's a unity in diversity." Meaning diversity would be the best thing that would exist because it would make the society progress. For example, the rich and the poor. If everybody's rich, no one would be their followers or no one would be considered as workers or slaves. This kind of situation would not obviously fit to the society. Because we need each other to form a society. Antother example is that of the social groups. In here, leaders are needed and members are needed. Because if there's no leader, who will unify the members? And if there are no members, who would be the people under leaders?

Answer 2

Not in the form most people see it as. Having differnt cultures from different parts of the world isnt a problem, but different culture within Americans themselves is a major problem.

Different American cultures love to clash with each other, liberals and conservative, libertarians, and such are not really political parties as they are ways of life. They intentionally cause problems between cultures to try and create a strengthened base of support in their own, by demeaning the other cultures enough to make it undesirable to deal with them , which creates a self defeating culture.

When either side does something good, the other party has to get in the way which causes considerable harm to our entire society.

Answer 3

It seems that in the search for commonality and incorporation into a larger cultural construct, one(culture) would ultimately have to abandon isolationist tendencies when it comes to cultural practices in order to contribute to, in this case, the common national culture.  That is unless the national culture is of course entirely composed of these cultures which have no aspirations of incorporating  surrounding ideas into there own.  In this sense the common national culture would be one of separateness.  The nation would be sharing the common strand of cultural isolationism, and would thus, although not diffusing in the traditional sense, share national boundaries and ultimately a common culture.

        One would have to, in the end, judge whether or not richness came from multiplicity or singularity.

Answer 4

As the question puts it...it is a threat..

Our common national culture is just that..A COMMON NATIONAL CULTURE....meaning we all have in common, a culture that is uniquely and wholly ours...as in the good old US of A's.

Now some diversity, is good....Halle Berry, J.Lo...some years ago Whitney Houston...

No really...it would be a boring place if all we had to listen to was Van Halen, Linda Ronstadt and Styx...

But when a dis-common sub-culture, or in our case...many dis-common sub-cultures attempt to erode a common national culture...and succeeds to the point where we no longer have a common national culture...that is problematic to any culture..

Multi-culturalism hurt the Native Americans...the Mayans, the Aztecs, the middle east  (before Islam turned it back into a uni-cultural society again), South Africa, France....why would it be good to us?

By the way....why are our colleges called UNI-versities...not DI-versities?

If you use my answer...you'll fail....say it'll enrich our culture..praise anything from Sitting Bull to Snoop Dogg...you'll get an A+

Answer 5

I believe that it enriches us... if we just had one culture, and one way of doing things.... life would get boring and we wouldn't have much to learn about the places we go, and there wouldnt be history.

Answer 6

It has it's pros and cons. I think it enriches our culture...but for the old fashioned people who still think whites are superior...it's getting hard for them to be able to express that b/c of our culrure accepting other races and such.

Answer 7

Cultural diversity is fine as long as there is a degree of integration. Learning the language of the host nation is essential if the immigrant is not to be excluded from most social activities. There is a threat to common national culture when the balance of  ethnic origins is changed. So when the white men came to the USA that changed the common national culture. There have been large influxes of Hispanic people to the USA which have changed the common national culture. Bringing in slaves from Africa and the Carribean changed the common national culture. No country or it's people stay the same unless they live in complete isolation. Outside influences always result in some kind of change.

Answer 8

Both... this depends upon the numbers & the attitude of the cultures.  If the incoming culture embraces the old culture, language & laws of the adopting culture, then it will enrich the country, but if the new culture swamps the old national culture, then division will occur & is likely to split the country into waring factions.

One need only look at some Arab, East European & African countries that have had an influx of displaced persons to find an example of disruption due to diversity. Until Africa (consisting of 100s of ethnic groups/tribes) starts to assimulate cultures, they will be plagued with genocide & instability.

Answer 9

All cultures change in time and often out of the influence with other cultures they come into contact with.

Examples include the people of what is now Spain when they came into contact with the Carthaginians, the Romans, and, in more modern times, the Arabs.  American culture is now changing significantly--especially in the southwestern part of the United States--through contact with Latinos.

There have been many processes of this kind of cultural fusion throughout history.  If you like this kind of cultural change, you call it progress.  If you don't, you call it cultural decay.

In writing your essay, you will get a better grade if you conclude that cultural diversity is a very good source of cultural enrichment--especially if your teacher comes from a minority.

Please feel free to copy anything that I have written here and include it in your essay if you feel it is useful.  You don't have to give me credit for writing it.

Harleigh Kyson Jr.

Answer 10

Diversity enriches us all.  The call to glorify and try to encourage diversity hurts those that don't become full members of the society.

Answer 11

im hispanic but i always say im american while traveling

and i always refer to myself as american first

of hispanic orgin/ethnicity

Answer 12

ah, diversity, the old, old wooden ship

Answer 13

This can actually go either way. It really depends on how strong a national culture is.

In the case of the U.S., we have no strong single national culture. There are too many sub-cultures. Diversity actually enriches our culture (in my opinion).

However, if we lived in a society where everyone practiced the same religion, spoke the same language, and had a very strong natioanl culture with little or no divisions or sub-cultures,. then cultural diversity could be seen as a threat to the national culture.

Answer 14

To build a national culture, you need everyone in the nation to share a cultural core in which they see each other as an similar or equal. Cultural diversity may get in the way if makes people inside the same nation to not care at all of people outside their own sub culture. Culture is not a static thing, it evolves with time, you may say that a culture isolated from others age in flavor like a wine, it would be rich in that sense of purity. Diversity brings people choices and the possibility to take the best of each culture, in this sense richness would be in the sense of  choice variety .