Cultural Studies & Ethnology of America

2007-02-25T01:56:00.000-08:00

First Report: New Cold War

Russian President Vladimir Putin speech in Munich, at a meeting on international security, renewed the cold war. The Cold War has not returned, but Russia is now officially asserting itself as a great power. At Munich, Putin launched a systematic attack on the role the United States is playing in the world. He said: "One state, the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way ... This is nourishing an arms race with the desire of countries to get nuclear weapons." In other words, the United States has gone beyond its legitimate sphere and is therefore responsible for attempts by other countries to acquire nuclear weapons.

Russia for some time has been in confrontation with the United States over U.S. actions in the former Soviet Union. What the Russians perceive as an American attempt to create a pro-U.S. regime in Ukraine triggered the confrontation. But now, the issue goes beyond U.S. actions in the Soviet Union. The Russians are arguing that the unipolar world is itself unacceptable. In other words, the United States sees itself as the solution when it is, actually, the problem. Putin now clearly wants to escalate the confrontations with the United States and likely wants to build a coalition to limit American power. The Russians need allies but are not likely to find them among other great-power states.

The Middle East is the pressure point to which the United States is most sensitive. Its military commitment in Iraq, the confrontation with Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and oil in the Arabian Peninsula create a situation such that pain in the region affects the United States intensely. Therefore, it makes sense for the Russians to use all available means of pressure in the Middle East in efforts to control U.S. behavior elsewhere, particularly in the former Soviet Union.

Like the Americans, the Russians also have direct interests in the Middle East. Energy is a primary one: Russia is not only a major exporter of energy supplies; it is currently the world's top oil producer. The Russians have a need to maintain robust energy prices, and working with the Iranians and Saudis in some way to achieve this is directly in line with Moscow's interest. To be more specific, the Russians do not want the Saudis increasing oil production. But the Saudis and Iranians have dramatically different interests. Saudi Arabia is rich but militarily weak. Iran is not nearly as rich as Saudi Arabia but militarily much more powerful.

This creates a problem for Russia. While Moscow has substantial room for maneuver, the fact is that lowered oil prices impact energy prices overall, and therefore hurt the Russians. The Saudis, moreover, need the Iranians blocked. In other words, they want to see the United States remain in Iraq, since the Americans serve as the perfect shield against the Iran so long as they remain there.
The interests of Russia and Iran align more closely, but there are points of divergence there as well. Both benefits from having the United States would be defeated, militarily and politically, in wars, but Tehran would be delighted to see a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq that leaves a power vacuum for Iran to fill. Meanwhile, there are energy matters: The Russians, as we have said, are interested in working with Iran to manage world oil prices. But at the same time, they would not be averse to a U.S. attack that takes Iran's oil off the market.

In sum, the Russian position in the Middle East is at least as complex as the American one. Or perhaps even more so, since the Americans can leave and the Russians always will live on the doorstep of the Middle East. The duel between Saudi Arabia and Iran seems manageable. Russia wants to contain U.S. power, and manipulating the situation in the Middle East certainly will cause the Americans substantial pain. But whatever short-term advantages the Russians may be able to find and exploit in the region.

2007-01-20T06:15:00.000-08:00

War on Terror or War in New Red-Skinned Territory

Javad Alipoor

Abstract

War on terror like other sociopolitical terms is a tool for misusing ad propaganda by powerful actors, today. All the world people know that leader as George W. Bush have no humanitarian purposes of this war, and they only follow his individual and national interest. But, these policies and behaviors originate from ethno-racial feelings and groups. Also, these aren’t inevitable that we see many cases in world history. This essay try to examine how ethnic and race power influence to this polices.

American administrations have a principle strategy for keeping hegemony and domination in glob. It requires to power, velocity, fluidity, and legitimacy. This strategy divided to 4 parts; political strategy, cultural strategy, economic strategy, and military strategy. Each of them has its own goals and programs that uphold each others. Political strategy should act in bargaining and negotiate sphere for influencing and changing mind of political leaders and intellectuals. Cultural strategy exercises in public spheres for influencing, changing, and preparing public opinion for unilateral, hostility, and even inhumanity operations. These two strategies, in fact, legitimize American operations and policies in domestic and external public opinions as well as in international system and multinational institutions. Other two strategies are American threat and force instrument. Economic strategies like sanctions are third United State step in its own international policies for more and more domination.

Today, military strategy is very crucial for America, because this country started and involved itself with an erosive war. Significant question is here that why did/ does United States involve it in these wars. This question has many different answers. For instance, some scholars reply through political economy as oil recourse, others argue that this war really is due to humanitarian actions, just as bush said that we want o democratize and liberalize Middle East and North Africa, but the other rest of Africa and other third world why not? Answer to the question is as difficult and hard as answer to this question that why the colonists like Britain did not want to liberalize, democratize, and educate the others colonies people same as African, Chinese, East Asians, and else? Why did they want to civilize Indians and Negro in new world, only? I think these questions have one main answer; economic goal that originate from ethno-racial powers.

First of all, I should define ethnic group; an ethnic group is a human population whose members identify with each other, usually on the basis of a presumed common genealogy or ancestry (Smith, 1986). Ethnic groups are also usually united by common cultural, behavioral, linguistic, or religious practices. In this sense, an ethnic group is also a cultural community. The concepts of nation and nationality share many aspects with ethnic group and ethnicity, but are distinct in their connotation of a political community. People of the same ethnicity or ethnic origin may live in or come from different nation-states and therefore be treated as members of separate nations. The state system is a crucial arena for nationalism and most states claim to represent a nation. But not all nation-states are homogeneous. Some nation-states contain more than one nation, and in these cases members of the smaller nations may request greater autonomy within the state (e.g., Catalonia in Spain, Quebecois in Canada, Native Americans in the US), or independence from it (e.g., Yugoslavia). Some nations are dispersed among several nation-states (e.g. Palestine, Gypsies/Roma), and this may also result in claims for independence. Collectivities of related ethnic groups are typically denoted as "ethnic". Most prominently in the US, the various Latin American ethnic groups plus the Spanish are typically collectivized as "Hispanics". The many Asian ethnic groups are similarly lumped together as "Asians", so too with the many indigenous American groups. The term "African American" can include the various African ethnic groups in the US who are not descended from African slaves in the American continent. Even the racial term "white" is typically used in an ethnic sense, lumping all the various European groups together, although in the past those of Southern European origins (Portuguese, Spanish, Italian etc.) weren't considered "ethnic whites" or "non-whites" due to common swarthy complexions and Roman Catholic faith.

However, that time, 3 or 4 hundred years age, Irish, Poland’s adventures, and Frances believed that they are civilized, educated, and supreme races or ethnicities, and they have a Godly and motional mission to civilize American native and nature peoples. Really, they have a gold, economic, and material goals that pushed and motivated them to New Territories. That time colonists emphasize to their racial and ethnical supreme that they used White vis-à-vis Black or the Whites versus the Blacks. They believed that Irish are nature, uncivilized, uncultured, savagery, and possible of civilization and education. But the Whites mean specific culture, civilization, law, social order with religious civilizing process. They wanted to promote them to English culture. For Instance, Shakespeare wrote; the English claimed that they had a God-given responsibility to inhabit and reform so barbarous a nation and to educate the Irish brutes. They would teach them to obey English Laws and stop robbing and stealing and killing one another. They would uplift this most filthy people, utterly enveloped in vices, most untutored of all peoples in the rudiment of faith. Thus, although they sow Irish as savages and although they sometimes described this savagery as natural and innate, the English believed hat the Irish could be civilized and improved. This paragraph veils any historian facts.

What about today? And war on terror? I believe that war on terror is repetition of those thoughts and ideas. Just, words, concepts, and area. Today, American leaders attribute fundamental, no-democratized, and terrorist-educating vis-à-vis uncultured, uncivilized, and natural that the English attributed to Irish. Also, Middle East and North Africa are instead of North America. Currently Bush said that our nation, United State of America is the best nation in total history, and we have a mission to democratize and liberalize the Middle East. Interestingly and ironically, he says these peoples have a good potential to democratize and we should help them. Also, he use religious concept when he said God bless America and God smile America. Who are we? And who are they? We mean west, capital liberal-democracy, layer of peace, stability, and welfare, and they man weak political systems, layer of terrorism and war. We have mission to eliminate the layer of terror and war for making peace, prosperity, and welfare. War on terror is a term to legitimizing the expansionist policies of American empire, because main goal is global hegemony.

Conclusion

Middle East is a new red-skinned territory, Greater Middle East, that America started wars as war on terror within it for exploring black gold and keeping Israel security. Supreme race and ethnicity is motivation of this war. But, President Bush and others should know that they aren’t supreme race or ethnicity. Currently, they have powerful military weapons against powerful Moslems ideas and values. Despite of Fascism and racism failure, but, we observe race and ethnicity implicitly are playing significant role in modern and globalized era.

Acknowledgment

Great Thanks to Dr. Ameli, the head of our institute and Dr. Marandi, the dean of American studies, that invited Dr. Slocum to our institute and so great thanks to Dr. Slocum that accepted their invitation and came to Tehran.

2007-01-20T05:58:00.000-08:00

Racial inequality even in top Medicare plans

Older blacks more likely than whites have uncontrolled medical problems. Older black adults are less likely than whites to have their blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar under control, even if they belong to a high-quality Medicare plan, researchers reported this fact.

The findings, published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, show that racial disparities are common throughout the Medicare system. "This is not a limited problem within a few health plans," said lead study author Dr. Amal N. Trivedi of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. "It's something they'll all have to address."

The extent to which patients have their blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar under control is considered a key indicator of health plan quality. Studies have long pointed to health disparities between white and black Americans, but the new research shows that this is not because black Americans are more often stuck in lower-quality health plans.

Of the 151 Medicare health plans Trivedi's team analyzed, racial disparities were seen within individual plans, including "high-performing" ones where a relatively high percentage of patients had their high blood pressure, cholesterol or blood sugar in check. Overall, the proportion of African Americans who had these conditions under control was 6.8 to 14.4 percentage points lower compared with whites.

"We know that people who have their blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar controlled are less likely to have a heart attack, stroke or die prematurely," Trivedi told Reuters Health. So it will be important to address the racial gaps this study uncovered, he said. One of the obstacles, Trivedi noted, is that although the federal government requires Medicare plans to report data on overall quality of care, many plans do not collect information on the race and ethnicity of their members.

So many of these plans may be unaware they have racial disparities. Trivedi and his colleagues suggest that the federal Medicare program work with individual plans to develop ways of monitoring racial gaps in care.

2007-01-17T06:48:00.000-08:00

Ethno-racial Power and Social power in American Society

Javad Alipoor

Abstract

Social psychologists have long been concerned with conceptualizing and measuring identity, with white racial identity no exception. Social identity theorists treat white racial identity much like any other dominant group identity; it forms in relation to the other actors in an environment and is constantly subject to change (Ellemers et al. 2002). Biologists believe that race is a biological element and has no relation or depend to social superiority. The differentiation of an in-group from an out-group implies a need to maintain the superiority of one’s group over the out-group (Tajfel & Turner 1985); this is clearly evident in the history of discrimination against blacks practiced by whites (Sidanius & Pratto 1999). However, race superiority believers have misused and are misusing of this idea that caused and cause many criminal and inhumane practices in world. The United States is not a exceptional toward this issue. This essay wants to examine how ethno-racial power led/leads to social preponderances, and how one racial group subjugates another group(s).

The creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures. No other national story has such tremendous lessons, for the American people and for the rest of mankind. Academic historians in particular often impose a double straitjacket on U.S. history: first, that economic issues have been paramount in shaping American politics; and second, that government intervention in the American economy has been necessary and benign. The creation of the United States of America is the greatest of all human adventures. No other national story has such tremendous lessons, for the American people and for the rest of mankind (Paul Johnson). These 2 significant subjects have remarkable effect on ethno-racial classifications in American history.

Discourse formation is very important in social sciences and social practices.After Columbus entrance to new world, a discourse was shaped that Europeans are better, civilized, and cultured than Indians. This discourse remains today, and it is a tool for intervention and political goals. When race loosed its influence, was added other attribute, ethnicity. As a ‘hybrid category’ that entered ‘the ethno-racial imagination of American social life’ just over a quarter of a century ago, the classification ‘Hispanic’ remains as pliable as the very texture of race has proven to be (Goldberg, 1997: 64). Thus, in the current discursive atmosphere surrounding the debate on race and ethnicity no existing knowledge or truth claim commands such authority that it can categorically prohibit the proposal of a fusion of race and ethnicity as units of analysis. For instance, Latinos cannot escape the preponderance of race in the United States. The history of the discourse on Americanness and national belonging consists largely of episodes featuring the dominant white core racializing marginal groups and the latter responding in varied ways (Silvio Torres-Saillant, 2003, 123-151).

The 1790 Naturalization Act restricted citizenship to white landowning males. When they ceased to be property, blacks became a problem in the United States. Public policy condemned the vast majority of blacks to generations of poverty and excluded them from ‘the industrial activity taking place in the rapidly growing cities of the North and West in the aftermath of the Civil War,’ even while European immigrants found here a land of opportunity (Steinberg, 1981, 198). For the so-called persons of color, to speak about race in the United States has meant necessarily to locate oneself in relation to normative whiteness (Silvio Torres-Saillant, 2003, 123-151).

Communities of color in the United States have fought to attain full citizenship, and we cannot belittle the fruits that their effort has yielded. Lynchings and Jim Crow prohibitions no longer figure in the menu of sorrows that blacks in this country have to endure. The overall society no longer condones public aggression against minority groups to the degree that it did forty years ago (Silvio Torres-Saillant, 2003, 123-151).

Racial minority groups prove their ability and power in social, sports, and artistic opportunities. Native Americans, for instance, have had to contend with suffering questions stemming from the legitimacy of mixed-bloods or cross-bloods in matters of cultural and communal belonging. Native Americans have occasionally had to deal with issues of blood quanta to establish reservation membership eligibility. African-Americans have made the political gains they currently possess because of a racial self-assertion that galvanizes the community, lending them a sense of wholeness. Their sense of a common history and a shared destiny often extends to black immigrants whose ancestors experienced their slavery past elsewhere (Silvio Torres-Saillant, 2003, 123-151). For example, I could recall for a moment the big night of 29 February 1940, when the Academy Award to the Best Supporting Actress for the role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind went to Hattie McDaniel, making her the first black person ever to win an Oscar (Silvio Torres-Saillant, 2003, 123-151).

Formulations of community’s ethno-racial identity by Latino spokespersons often boast a superior understanding of the complexity of racial codification, stressing the extent to which our historical experience challenges the black–white binary that has informed thinking on race matters in the United States. Latino scholars often claim that ‘while ‘‘race’’ distinctions and prejudice exist in Spanish America, they do not, nor ever have they, taken the form of institutionalized discrimination as in the United States’ (Kanellos, 1998, 178). One gathers from the distinction herein proclaimed a marked interest in stressing the exceptionality of Hispanic racial thought. But, however, meaningful we may find the distinction for inquiries into the epistemology of racial classifications (Silvio Torres-Saillant, 2003, 123-151).

By the same token, the New York-based Puerto Rican leadership that launched the Young Lords Party constructed Latino subjectivity based on a very deep sense of self-differentiation with respect to American society’s dominant white core (Silvio Torres-Saillant, 2003, 123-151).Part of the impasse exhibited by the current conversations on ethno-racial identity has to do with the difficulty of harmonizing the often fractious rapport between the concepts of race and ethnicity. Already ‘a great deal of scholarly attention has gone into studying both race and ethnicity,’ but, as Manning Marable contends, ‘too often the discussion has been mired in old debates and definitions,’ which leads him to recommend ‘a new and critical study of the relationship between race and ethnicity’ (Marable, 2000).

Sociologists have long focused on white ethnic identity; considerations of white racial identity are more recent. White racial identity is commonly portrayed as a default racial category, an invisible yet privileged identity formed by centuries of oppression of nonwhite groups. Whiteness has become synonymous with privilege in much scholarly writing, although recent empirical work strives to consider white racial identity as a complex, situated identity rather than a monolithic one. The study of white racial identity can greatly benefit from moving away from simply naming whiteness as an overlooked, privileged identity and by paying closer attention to empirical studies of racial and ethnic identity by those studying social movements, ethnic identity, and social psychology (Monica McDermott and Frank L. Samson, 2005, 245-261).

Although the main story to tell about white ethnic identity during the past 30 years has been its declining distinctiveness and importance, there are nonetheless some counter-examples, primarily from small, relatively isolated communities of recent European and Middle Eastern immigrants to the United States. Arab Americans are an especially interesting example, as they are officially considered white by the U.S. Census yet often have stronger identification with their countries of origin than with a white racial identity (Monica McDermott and Frank L. Samson, 2005, 245-261).

Conclusion

Today, with the death sentence that the scholarly community has pronounced on the concept of race, the widespread interrogation of the idea of nation as a stable arena within which to configure one’s identity, and the general awareness of the fragility of ethno-racial ontology in light of the disruptive impact of hybridizing crossings, we have little justification for hoping that a sustained exploration of the relation between race and ethnicity will break new productive ground. The time may have come for us to desist from the effort to distinguish between the two and to accept their conceptual fusion. Using race and ethnicity synonymously may lead us out of the epistemological and political impasse.

While we may agree that some basic differences exist ‘between the way that nonwhites view race and the way that race is viewed overall in the United States,’ we might fail to detect any salutary implications in the claim that the construction of race in American country ‘has been more fluid, transcending ‘the binary division adopted in the United States. Racial paradigms in America, we are told, follow a continuum with no fixed demarcation between categories, and US ethno-racial groups, coming from a culturally and generally mixed racial background, had to enter “a biologically based biracial structure” that featured European Americans at one end of the polar and African Americans at the other, with Native Americans and Asian Americans occupying “ambiguous gray positions vis-à-vis the dichotomy” (Rodrı´guez, 1994: 131–132).

2007-01-17T06:43:00.000-08:00

Why do African-American women experience the longest delays in getting diagnosed with breast cancer?

Statistics in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that African-American women experience the longest delays in getting diagnosed with breast cancer. The statistics also found that they begin treatment later—despite the fact that they have higher death rates from the disease compared to white women (even though white women have the highest incidence).

The major result was that African-American women experienced a greater diagnostic, treatment and “total clinical delay” than women of any other race. Diagnosis delay began from the time the woman first saw her doctor about any sort of breast problem, or from the time of her annual breast examination, to the completion of the biopsy. Then we measured the time between definitive diagnosis from biopsy and the start of treatment. After that, we simply added the times together for the total clinical delay in both diagnosis and treatment.

Black women are more likely to die of breast cancer than women of other races or ethnicities. Delay of treatment can increase the risk of death. We were interested in how long it really takes to make this diagnosis—and to begin treatment. Was there really a time delay for different races and ethnic groups? African-American women were 40 percent more likely to have a diagnostic delay beyond two months and 64 percent more likely to have a treatment delay beyond one month. Overall, they had more than twice the clinical delay in the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer by comparison to white, Hispanic or women of any other race or ethnicity.

The implications are that African-American women could have higher-staged tumors—those that may be larger, may have spread to one or more lymph nodes or to other parts of the body. They have a greater chance of dying from the cancer at later stages.

2006-12-23T00:02:00.000-08:00

Film review

By Javad Alipoor

Introduction

Title: Drums along the Mohawk
Year: 1939
Genre: drama
Director: John Ford
Running Time: 104 minutes
Main Stars: Claudette Colbert, Henry Fonda
Other Stars: Edna May Oliver, Eddie Collins, John Carradine, Dorris Bowdoin, Jessie Ralph, Arthur Shields, Robert Lowery, Roger Imhof
Written by: Lamar Trotti, Sonya Levien, based on the novel by Walter D. Edmonds

Plot Summary

Before the Revolutionary War farmer Martin brings bride Magdalene the Mohawk Valley where they are burned out by Indians.Drums along the Mohawk is an historical novel of the American Revolution written by Walter D. Edmonds. Published in 1936 and extremely popular, it was made into a film in 1939. The setting is the Mohawk River Valley during the American Revolution, which was subjected to numerous raids by the British, American Tories, and their Iroquois allies. Included in both works is a fictitious representation of the siege of Fort Stanwix. It was the basis for the 1939 John Ford film starring Henry Fonda, Edna May Oliver and Claudette Colbert. The film was nominated for two Academy Awards including Best Supporting Actress (Edna May Oliver) and Best Cinematography (Ray Rennahan and Bert Glennon).

Character

In a story told by the two main characters' grandson, Gong Li plays a girl who is sold as a wife to an old leper who owns a winery. On the way to her new husband, the man in charge of carrying her litter (Jiang Wen) rescues her from a bandit's rape attempt in the middle of a field of sorghum. Later, after a distressing wedding night with the old man (whom we never see) the girl returns home for a visit with her father, only to be raped, now by the litter-carrier who has fallen in love with her. (It appears, however, that she is happy about this, since the man is young and virile.) In her absence, the husband is murdered, presumably by the litter- carrier, and the girl inherits the winery. She then rallies the workers with the help of the winery's foreman (Ten Rujen), and they continue to make wine, but the return of the litter-carrier to claim her hand causes tensions.

This was Zhang's first film as director, and it became an international success. It's easy to see why. The widescreen pictorial composition and color schemes are marvelous. Zhang uses the color red to signify both the passion of love and the violence of war (the story takes place prior to, and during, the Japanese invasion). The moving shots through the sorghum fields add poetry to the action. And the story's darkness and moral ambiguity increase the film's power and appeal. In comparison to Zhang's later work, the film seems rather schematic, and lacking in social critique. This is to be expected from a first film, I suppose. Set safely before Mao's victory, the picture in its latter half turns into a rousing story of heroism against Japanese oppression. A scene where Japanese soldiers demand that an expert butcher flay a Chinese prisoner alive is a grim and unflinching reminder of the cruelty suffered in China during the war.

Drums Along the Mohawk is a lesser effort from Ford, told in a series of stand-alone scenes of frontier life. Newlywed farmer and his bride Gilbert and Lana (mismatched Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert) adjust to life in an isolated cabin in the Mohawk Valley. Lana discovers the pride and joy of harvesting crops and procreating, and Gilbert grows from timid boy into rugged American individualist. Ford clearly enjoys his All-American Myth Building, as farmers and frontiersmen toughen up into a firm militia to do battle against savage Indians and faceless Redcoats. His Yankees show a can-do resilience against all odds and epitomize the pluck and strong work ethic of Americana combined with a love of God and country that borders on obscene zealotry. As always, Ford creates some stirring pictures. Set against the backdrop of mountain sunsets, one gets the impression Ford never met a horizon line he didn't like. But the landscapes aren't varied enough to make up for the underwritten characterizations and ho-hum action scenes.

Review

Based on a bestselling novel by Walter D. Edmonds, this historical drama of Colonial America has an epic feel thanks to the sweep of its narrative and the opulent production, including glorious cinematography employing the old Technicolor process. The story of pioneering farmers in New York’s Mohawk Valley during the Revolutionary War, Drums stars Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert as a newly married couple determined to build a home and family despite the dangers posed by nature’s hardships, hostile Indians, and British agitators. When their first house is burned, the young couple finds refuge with other settlers, and a militia springs up to meet the challenge of marauding Indians in league with Tory loyalists. Director John Ford (The Grapes of Wrath) seamlessly blends romance, adventure, and comedy in this expertly made spectacular, which ranked among 1939’s top-grossing movies. Stirring and evocative, Drums along the Mohawk brings a fascinating period of American history to vibrantly colorful life.

John Ford directed this outdoor adventure set in the American Colonial period. Gilbert and Lana Martin (Henry Fonda and Claudette Colbert) is a young couple trying to make a home in New York State's Mohawk Valley, but repeated attacks by Indians drive them, along with other settlers in the valley, into a nearby fort, where they watch helplessly as the natives lay waste to their farms and cabins.

He's more willing to allow the character actors, like Oscar-nominated Edna May Oliver, who plays a feisty widow, to indulge in some theatrics. Despite the hardships the farmers must endure, the film's bright look signals an optimism characteristic of the director during this period, perhaps addressing his Depression-era audience about the grit and cohesiveness required to survive in difficult times.

For some reason, this era of American history has rarely translated well into film. This picture, however, is one of the happy exceptions. It was the director's first color movie, and the photography couldn't be better. Ford, as usual, shows an uncanny ability to put the camera in the right place at all times--the uses of long shots during the battle scenes are especially effective. That the film doesn't attain the first rank in the Ford pantheon is due partly, I think, to the uneven and episodic nature of the source (a popular Walter D. Edmonds historical novel, adapted by Lamar Trotti and Sonya Levien) and to Colbert's somewhat rote performance--her tendency to overplay a line is less hidden in a straight-ahead period drama like this, than in a comedy or drama with a modern feel.

Conclusion

As a director, John Ford was many things, but revisionist wasn't one of them; his films, for better or worse, embody the values of manifest destiny, and that couldn't be clearer here. In John Ford's America the white man's burden is a moral obligation—good Christian people are on the side of right, and it's their job to conquer the bloodthirsty natives, no matter how much carnage it takes. Drums Along the Mohawk is just the sort of picture against which movies like Dances With Wolves rebels; its politics may seem old-fashioned at best and offensive at worst, but it's still an entertaining tale.

All of the able-bodied men in the Mohawk Valley are packed off to General Washington's army, though Ford never gives us any glorious battle scenes. The director gives such humanity to the white people that his portrait of the natives becomes that much harder to take. The few other natives, all of whom have been Christianized, are made the butt of jokes because of their uneasy grasp of English. So if you're reflexively unable to watch something that's so obviously politically incorrect, you'll want to steer clear; but taken warts and all, it's a pretty kinetic if structurally ungainly piece of filmmaking.

The first of much collaboration between director John Ford and Henry Fonda, this fine, typically Fordian vision of community life also features the director's first use of the then recently developed Technicolor process. A visually appealing slice of Americana, the film places a youthful, yet stoic Fonda in a series of iconic poses as he and his new wife, an incongruously soigné Claudette Colbert struggle to maintain their farm during the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in the Indian-infested Mohawk Valley. As the farmers fight off Indian attacks, with the well-born Colbert learning to adapt to a difficult new environment, the director links self-sacrifice with heroism.

2006-12-02T00:06:00.000-08:00

American Indians

Indians are the main owners of American territory, but today they are the minority group in American society. They were/are deprived from many humans right in the land and symbol of freedom. Winds of change are blowing through Indian Country, improving prospects for many of the nation’s 4.4 million Native Americans. The number of tribes managing their own affairs has increased dramatically, and an urban Indian middle class is quietly taking root. The booming revenues of many Indian- owned casinos seem the ultimate1 proof that Indians are overcoming a history of mistreatment, poverty and exclusion. Yet most of the gambling houses don’t rake in stratospheric revenues. And despite statistical upticks in socioeconomic indicators, American Indians are still poorer, more illness-prone and less likely to be employed than their fellow citizens. Meanwhile, tribal governments remain largely dependent on direct federal funding of basic services funding that Indian leaders and congressional supporters decry as inadequate. But government officials say they are still providing essential services despite budget cuts.

It’s not a fancy gambling palace, like some Indian casinos, but the modest operation run by the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska may just help the 2,300-member tribe hit the economic jackpot. Using seed money from the casino, it has launched 12 businesses, including a construction company and an Internet news service. Projected 2006 revenues: $150 million. “It would be absolutely dumb for us to think that gaming is the future,” says tribe member Lance Morgan, the 37-year-old Harvard Law School graduate who runs the holding company for the dozen businesses. “Gaming is just a means to an end and it’s done wonders for our tribal economy.” Indian casinos have revived a myth dating back to the early-2Oth-century Oklahoma oil boom that Indians are rolling in dough. 1 While some of the 55 tribes that operate big casinos indeed are raking in big profits, the 331 federally recognized tribes in the lower 48 states, on the whole, endure soul-quenching poverty and despair.

Arizona’s 1.8-miffion-acre San Carlos Apache Reservation is among the poorest. The rural, isolated community of about 13,000 people not only faces devastating unemployment but also a deadly methamphetamines epidemic, tribal Chairwoman Kathleen W. Kitcheyan, told the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in April.

We suffer from a poverty level of 69 percent, which must be unimaginable to many people in this country, who would equate a situation such as this to one found only in Third World countries, she said. Then, speaking of the drug-related death of one of her own grandsons, she had to choke back sobs.

“Our statistics are honific,” says Lionel R. Bordeaux, president of Sinte Gleska University, on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. “We’re at the bottom rung of the ladder in all areas, whether it’s education levels, economic achievement or political status.”

National statistics aren’t much better:
• Indian unemployment on reservations nationwide is 49 percent 10 times the national rate.
• The on-reservation family poverty rate in 2000 was 37 percent four times the national figure of 9 percent.
• Nearly one in five Indians age 25 or older in tribes without gambling operations had less than a ninth- grade education. But even members of tribes with gambling had a college graduation rate of only 16 percent, about half the national percentage.
• Death rates from Alco holies and tuberculosis among Native Americans are at least 650 percent higher than overall U.S. rates.
• Indian youths commit suicide at nearly triple the rate of young people in general.
• Indians on reservations, especially in the resource- poor Upper Plains and West, are the nation’s third-largest group of methamphetamines users.

2006-11-17T23:25:00.000-08:00

Medicine's Racial Gap among Blacks & Whites

Two new studies find that, when it comes to health care, minorities just don't fare as well as whites. The Institute of Medicine may not seem like a revolutionary body. But in 2001, it issued a challenge to the nation—to strive for equal health care for all citizens, regardless of gender, ethnicity, geographic location and socioeconomic status. The impetus was clear: Too many studies were showing that African-Americans were receiving poorer medical care than whites. Five years later, how are the US administrations doing?

Not so well, according to a pair of new studies. The first one, appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at 334,204 black and white members of 151 Medicare plans—and found that only one plan was delivering equally well for blacks and whites, and even this plan was making the grade on only two out of four measures. The study didn’t aim to assess care in the doctor’s office per se, according to Dr. John Ayanian, associate professor of medicine and health care policy at Harvard Medical School and senior author of the study. Ayanian and Dr. Amal Trivedi of Brown University already put that issue under the microscope in an August 2005 study in the New England Journal of Medicine. The earlier study found that between 1997 and 2003, there was “substantial improvement” for black Medicare recipients in “simple processes of care”—in other words, whether or not the physician performs the appropriate tests and makes sure patients receive the right prescriptions.

The new study went beyond office care to see how patients are actually faring. Are those with diabetes successfully controlling blood sugar and also keeping cholesterol levels in check? Are people with hypertension keeping their blood pressure down? Are patients who’ve suffered heart attacks or had heart surgery managing their cholesterol? On those four measures, the results were sobering. For the most part, the racial gaps were just as great in high-scoring plans as low-scoring ones. “Many plans eliminated racial disparities on a single measure,” says Ayanian. “But only one achieved both high quality outcomes and small disparities on two of the measures. No plan achieved those goals on three or four measures.”

But why should that be, if the overall quality of medical care is improving, as shown in the earlier study? There are many possible reasons. More often than whites, African-Americans find they cannot afford expensive medications, such as cholesterol-lowering statins. Their communities tend to have more limited options for exercising and eating right. Those problems don’t lend themselves to quick fixes. But the study did point to one approach that could help. Medicare plans receive monthly payments from the government to meet the needs of enrollees. Ayanian says more of that money may need to be directed toward social support programs, such as meetings with nutritionists and health educators or more follow-up appointments with the physicians themselves for patients who are having trouble controlling blood sugar, cholesterol or blood pressure. That may sound expensive, but as he points out, it’s cheaper than the consequences of doing nothing—namely, treating resulting heart attacks, strokes or kidney failure.

The JAMA study looked only at black and white participants in Medicare plans. Another new study in the journal Ethnicity and Disease looked more broadly at white, black, Hispanic and Asian adults throughout New York City. Luisa Borrell, assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, combed through New York City data zip code by zip code and found that in highly segregated neighborhoods—specifically, those with the highest concentration of black residents—people were 10 percent more likely to report their health as poor. “We know that there’s a correlation between how people rate their health and greater mortality under the age of 65,” she says.

The findings apparently weren’t due to explicit racism. Everyone in the minority-dominated neighborhoods—white, black, Hispanic and Asian—tended to give their health lower marks. “It relates to the poverty level, the quality of food, the quality of life, the quality of health care,” says Borrell. “In poorer areas, there are fewer green spaces to play in, fewer shops selling fresh fruits and vegetables, more cigarette ads. We’re not blaming the victim. We’re blaming the social structure.” Grappling with social issues will clearly take time. The question is whether changes in the medical system itself can make enough headway to help compensate—and meet the IOM’s challenge.

2006-11-10T10:16:00.000-08:00

Arab-American group sues U.S. government

Organization files lawsuit to gain access to immigration violators’ names. An Arab-American civil rights group filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the federal government in a bid to access information about the nationalities of more than 230 people arrested for immigration violations. The suit, filed by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in U.S. District Court, names the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit as defendants.

The lawsuit was filed under the Freedom of Information Act after two years of unsuccessful attempts to learn the nationalities of individuals arrested in 2004 under a law enforcement operation intended to disrupt of potential terrorist threats before the presidential elections.
The Washington-based group believes the operation improperly used a government database created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that tracks visitors, students and immigrants from 25 countries to profile Arab and Muslim visitors to the United States.

The registration system required males from 24 Arab and predominantly Muslim countries and North Korea to register with immigration authorities. The registration requirement has since been phased out, but the database of information still exists. The Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency said in November 2004 that in a one-month period, 237 people had been arrested.

“It was simply an effort to target immigration violators who may have posed an elevated public safety threat in the weeks leading to the presidential election,” said Dean Boyd, an ICE spokesman. Boyd said race, ethnicity and religion played “absolutely no role” in the operation.

The Arab-American organization wants to find out if the 237 people were disproportionately Arab and Muslim. The federal agency said the registration databases as well as two other databases were used, including one of student visa holders. With the national elections approaching, the group fears the registration database is being used to target Arab and Muslim men for general law enforcement purposes.

“Our fear is that since it happened during the last national elections, is something like that going to happen again soon?” said Kareem Shora, the Arab-American group’s national executive director. In the complaint, the group does not seek names of the people being held or how they were sought out. It only requests their nationalities. In a letter responding to the FOIA requests, federal officials said the information is exempt from the act because it was collected for law enforcement purposes and is an ongoing investigation. The civil rights group argues that getting just the nationalities of those arrested would not jeopardize any law enforcement operation.

2006-11-10T10:09:00.000-08:00

No sign of Hispanic voter boom despite rallies

During the spring protests that brought hundreds of thousands to the streets, Hispanic immigrants chanted a promise and a threat to politicians: “Today We March, Tomorrow We Vote.” So far, however, there is no indication that such a potent political legacy is developing. An Associated Press review of voter registration figures from Chicago, Denver, Houston, Atlanta and other major urban areas that saw large rallies shows no sign of a historic new voter boom that could sway elections.

Even in Los Angeles, where a 500,000-strong protest in March foreshadowed demonstrations across the United States, an increase in new registrations before the June primary was more trickle than torrent in a county of nearly 4 million voters. Protest organizers — principally unions, Hispanic advocacy groups and the Roman Catholic Church — acknowledge that it has been hard to translate street activism into ballot box clout, though they insist their goal of 1 million new voters by 2008 is reachable.

It’s impossible to count exactly how many new registrants were inspired by the new movement because counties typically do not ask race or ethnicity. But while new registrations were higher this year than last — not surprising since Democrats and Republicans are struggling for control of Congress — the numbers are well below 2004 and do not indicate the watershed awakening that advocates had envisioned.

The emotional response was a reaction to federal legislation that would have overhauled current immigration policy, including the criminalization of the estimated 11 million immigrants who are here illegally. While that legislation is effectively dead this year, immigration remains a campaign issue. And Hispanic voters remain a pivotal voting bloc, especially with their numbers projected to grow significantly in coming decades.

Hispanics have long voted in numbers far below their share of the population, in part because many are under 18 or not U.S. citizens. A study by the Pew Hispanic Center found that while Hispanics accounted for half the nation’s population growth between the 2000 and 2004 elections, they represented only one-tenth of the increase in votes cast.

A lack of political experience helps explain why the flow of new registrations has been halting. Some activists acknowledge that their groups have yet to master the nuances of voter registration drives — a typically face-to-face task more complex than mobilizing a march. Others complain that political parties with the most to gain haven’t financed registration efforts.
“It’s a hard sell,” said Avelino Andazola, a field organizer with the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project who rounded up only a dozen new registrations at a spring immigration rally attended by several thousand people in southern Los Angeles County.
The numbers say, For this story, the AP reviewed new registration numbers in metropolitan areas over several years. The areas included Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose, Calif.; Chicago; Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz.; Dallas and Houston; Atlanta; Denver; and Jacksonville and St. Petersburg, Fla. The time frames included both January-through-July periods dating to 2004, as well as periods before statewide elections, when registration efforts are most intense.
The data provide a wide-angle look at new registrations, but do have limitations. Any significant shift in registrations overall would stand out, but voters are not specifically identified by race or ethnicity.

Gains in new registrations were highest in 2004, when political parties spent lavishly to enroll new voters ahead of the presidential election. New voter registrations increased in virtually every city between 2005 and 2006 — but that would be expected because of congressional primaries and elections. The 2006 numbers were below the 2004 numbers in every city, often significantly.

In Harris County, Texas, home to Houston, new registrations through July tallied 55,657 — an increase of 16 percent over 2005 but well below the 71,402 from 2004. And in rare cases, registrations declined. New registrations in San Francisco were significantly lower in the 100 days before this year’s June 6 primary than over the same period before a statewide special election in November 2005. In Chicago and surrounding Cook County, registrations in the first seven months this year jumped about a third over 2005, but were far below the same period in 2004.

2006-10-20T21:28:00.000-07:00

American-African race and American Culture:
(Third Constructive Element of American Culture)

Traditional pattern for allocating the American-African history is a route from bandage to freedom. Some historians like Nathan heukinze believe that pattern of continued campaign for representing the historic experience of American blacks. History and race relationship of American-African investigate not only considering political, economical, and social situation, but through expand cultural perspective. Establishing modern and global slavery system differed by place, time, race background and European or African formation. In eighteenth century, North American colonies had more population of slavery. Main question is that how the very variety of African people with different believes, behaviors, and language could create the society and culture of modern black world.
First slavery group including twenty Africans entered to James town port with a Poland's ship in 1619. Frequently blacks added to other immigrations in North America, especially Virginia, South coralline and Georgia that had very emergence need to labors.

2006-10-13T11:21:00.000-07:00

Constructive of American Culture(2)

Before Discovering American Continent by European Adventures, there were several ethnics, but after that some ethnics added them, and after two centuries American became a multi- ethnic continent. Then United States declared independency, and frequently expended to his original territory by war, purchase, annexation. But principle source of variety had been immigration from any where, especially Europe. Potential of this people to acceptance other culture created one of significant constructive of American culture and identity. America is a territory that its history derivates its people from having a common forbears.

Hector St. John de Crevecouer in his book, “letters from an American Farmer” (1782), mentioned that “I can indicate a family that their grand father is from England with Poland’s woman, his son got married with a French girl, and their four sons got married with four diverse nations. He is an American, who left his traditional behaviors and prejudices, and choused new behaviors and ideas. These treatments, ideas originate from new way of life, government, and social positions. Here, individuals from any nations melting within a new race that in future their attempts will bring important changes in globe”.

Revolutionary war led to American independency. It was first successful anti-colonial attempt in contemporary history. Winners built a nation that had not the common, conventional pre- conditions of nation-building. United States had not natural territory, history with unique religion versus European countries. There weren’t Narrative, ancient poem, folklores, and forefathers of one race.

Since the begging of immigration to United States, English’s were major group and cant ignore significant of English language, English law, religious ideas, thinking, theoretical and thinking ideals and principles of English in construction of America and American culture. In spite of these issues, English race don’t account native race of American people. English were half people that lived in America in 1790 and African were second category with 20 percent. Answer of constructors of this new country was ideological. They introduced American as new human beings who created based on new ideas, new principles, and new thinking methods. However it was an only way to state about this young country in world.

2006-10-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

Constructive Elements of American Culture

When we talk about American culture, values, or specific manners, we mean values, manners, and characters of white mid-class. However, we should emphasis to mid-class in American cultural studies. American culture has constructed of five main elements; 1- individualism and equality 2- immigration and cultural disturbance 3- American-African race and American culture 4- Puritanism 5- expansionism

In this session, we discuss about first element. Individualism and equality are to element that sometimes seem antonym, and sometimes complementary to each other. Nonetheless, they create significant part of American culture and identity. Both of them have had many agreements and critiques in American history. Scholars emphasis to individualism and equality. These are important constructive elements of culture, society, and government in the United States of America.

Alexis de Tocqueville believes that individualism is avoidable result of equality and democracy. Because, every person in equal circumstances follows their ideas, in this situation, all of their sentiments concentrate only on their interests. Individualism differs from the selfishness.

Individualism is visible in many layers of American society and history. American society and land mixed with individualism. Individualism was the pattern of rural settlement, that in which one house located among miles of lands and separated from others houses and villages. Individualism has effected in shaping of American cities. Also, individualism is observed in American high education system and religious patterns.

These were positive aspects of American individualism. But without doubt, it has negative aspects; inattention to keeping the structure and form of city, leaving the farm lands and old buildings without attention to environment problems and immigration to original lands, inattention to poor peoples. According to these issues, uncivilized individualism was being popular.

2006-10-01T06:02:00.000-07:00

American Cultural Studies & Ethnology

American culture and ethnicity are two major issues in American studies. Out of America, especially in Asia, Middle East even Europe, people believes that American culture is subordinate of European culture because of overwhelming immigrants. English language as a first and formal language of America strengthens this idea. Also, it is a leading reason for dominant of European culture. But, when we investigate cultural behavior of U.S. society exactly, we understand that American culture have basically different from European culture. European culture constructed part of American culture like language.

Constructive elements of the US culture and American characteristics separate American society from Europe and other world countries, even American neighbors. This distinction becomes clearer with comparison of America and Canada. Both countries were established by European migrants, but Canadian culture has more similarity with European culture. In one hand, American culture is consequence of reaction and interaction between European cultural elements and American geography. On other hand, contact between different cultures of European and non- European culture, particularly African culture. America ethnicity is collection of many migrants ethnic. It is mix of diversity race and ethnic. Plurality and unity is one of important element of American culture.

Emerging of national identity and culture shaped before people conscious. Collection of values system, norms, history, geography, and immigration created a new way of life that I called American culture. American society is like a pot that various things were added and out put of this pot has principle difference with primary things.

As a result, understanding American culture and society needs to studding of human process and geography parallel European culture. In this semester, we will study cultural theories and American culture and ethnic. I try to study specific aspect of American culture or ethnicity.