Notes Of A Native Speaker Summary

Are members of a minority group obligated to assimilate into the dominant culture of their society? Asian Americans and Latinos do feel an obligation to assimilate themselves into the American culture but they are not obligated to give up their entire culture which includes their language, their pride, and the people that they surrounds themselves with. There was a time when assimilation did quite strictly mean whitening in America but times had changed. In the essay written and tiled Eric Liu’s “Notes of a Native Speaker” states, “You "made it" in society not only by putting on airs of anglitude, but also by assiduously bleaching out the marks of a darker, dirtier past.” which conveys the path to succeed or measure up in a dominant

society is to remove the minority culture like Asian American and Chicanos and replace it with the dominant culture like “whites” in America.
How does a minority group give up their culture through assimilation? There have been many cases a person or victim has been punished with assimilation into the dominant culture. Eric Liu and Richard Rodriguez were victims of assimilation and were sort of pushed or nudged toward the direction of white American society. Eric Liu goes on a big ramble on ways you could say that he is "white". He states,” I listen to National Public Radio. I wear khaki Dockers. I own brown suede bucks. I eat gourmet greens. I have few close friends "of color." I married a white woman….” which continues on but in the first two sentences after his ramble he announces himself by stating, “I never asked to be white. I am not literally white.” and truth be hold he is actually an Asian American living in the United States. Eric Liu was raised, in short, to assimilate and was not told, lectured, or to be a white man but it was certain that he would find his own way by the culture that encircled Eric like a dome. The culture that dominated and surrounded Eric showed conflict in his life by himself stating,” Now I want desperately to see my face, to see what time has marked and what it has erased. But I can find no mirror except the people who surround me. And they are mainly pale, powerful.” by his parents coming to America to become citizens of a new country and walking the path of an assimilist, and so did their young boy who followed that path. In Richard Rodriguez case the focus was based on bilingual education which can mean any use of two languages in school by teachers or students or both for variety of social and educational purposes. As a young child he spoke Spanish at home and Rodriguez recalls his older siblings returning from school which was the location where they were learning English. At home they would use their "family language" or Spanish but when he went to school he was allowed only to speak English which is known as the “public language”. These two languages contradicted each other by which Rodriguez states, "Plainly it is not healthy to hear such sounds so often. It is not healthy to distinguish public from private sounds so easily. I remained cloistered by sounds, timid and shy in public, too dependent on the voices at home." but there was a deep intimacy with his family at home, so at odds with the painful feeling of public alienation and loneliness by which he asked his parents to speak to him in English at home as well. As he became certain of himself he learned to speak English and feel comfortable in the language. After being certain with himself he used English a lot more as his primary language in both public and family.
Is the minority group required to diminish all of their culture? Eric states, “I came to suspect that there was an order to things, an order that I, as someone Chinese, could perceive but not quite crack. I responded not by exploding in rebellion but by dedicating myself, quietly and sometimes angrily, to learning the order as best I could. I was never ashamed of being Chinese; I was, in fact, rather proud to be linked to a great civilization.” by Eric Lui’s words of showing pride in being linked to a great civilization. He did not neglect his culture by stating, “I know also that college, in the multicultural era, is supposed to be where the deracinated minority youth discovers the "person of color" inside. To a point, I did. I studied Chinese, took an Asian American history course, a seminar on race politics. But ultimately, college was where the unconscious habits of my adolescent assimilation hardened into self-conscious strategy.” which conveys taking consideration of his culture and how it was meaning full to him at Yale University. Eric Liu didn’t care who he hanged out with or where his friends are from by stating, “I didn't avoid making Asian friends in college or working with Asian classmates; I simply never went out of my way to do so.” which was his aspects of who he hanged out with. Close to the end of his paper he says that he has allowed his Chinese ethnicity to become diluted which diluted means to be toned down or weakened. His final statement delivers the final blow that a minority culture does not have to assimilate their whole entire culture for another. However, it was speaking Spanish that allowed Richard Rodriguez to preserve his own culture. When his parents start speaking English more frequently the family connection grew further and further apart. Although it is necessary for someone to learn a language that is more spoken in that region or culture, that culture can continue to maintain some of their native culture within another entwined together. Richard Rodriguez could have kept part of his Hispanic heritage and still become Americanized.
Is “assimilating” from a small group minority culture to a dominant culture a good thing or bad even though you are able to obtain success out of it?

Both Eric Liu and Richard Rodriguez both felt that they were betraying their culture while they were being more accepting to white or outside American society. Richard Rodriguez felt this feeling when he was learning and using the public language which in his case did not come without a cost. There was a certain sense of betrayal he felt and that was intimated by relatives that he had somehow committed a sin by learning and eventually only speaking this so called "public language". He was given the nickname “pocho” which is someone who is becoming an American and forgets about his native society. Eric Liu was also given a nickname by his own people terms a “banana” which is on the outside of a banana it is “yellow” but if you look in the inside it is “white” which in his state he has assimilated into white American society. Stereotypes that he took in consideration also created a path for him to follow that leads up in a long range of regrets. He states, “As I had done in high school, I combated the stereotypes in part by trying to disprove them. If Asians were reputed to be math and science geeks, I would be a student of history and politics. If Asians were supposed to be feeble subalterns, I'd lift weights and go to Marine officer candidate school. If Asians were alien, I'd be ardently patriotic. If Asians were shy and retiring, I'd try to be exuberant and jocular. If they were narrow-minded specialists, I'd be a well-rounded generalist. If they were perpetual outsiders, I'd join every establishment outfit I could and show that I, too, could run with the swift.” which is probably a path that he wouldn’t have fallowed if he accepted his own culture. He also continues to ramble on about his three adjoining arenas which are his looks, his loves, and his

manners.
Minority groups are obligated to assimilate themselves into the dominant culture of their society. This obligation can also be defined as cultural appropriation. Imperialism is the creation and maintenance of an unequal cultural, economic, and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination. In the case of cultural appropriation, culture is treated as a “natural resource” to extract from People of Color. Even though it is an obligation it is also not healthy because it promotes racism like stereotypes, genocide like the Lewis and Clark exploration, and oppression like these two great writers have felt throughout this process.