From: underdog@leland.Stanford.EDU (Dwight Joe)
Subject: Re: Asian American culture (was Re: Some clarification)
Organization: Miners for a Heart of Gold
Distribution: na
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 92 08:00:39 GMT

In article <1992Sep15.045753.4558@oakhill.sps.mot.com>
jpak@manute.sps.mot.com butts in abruptly:
>...
>Only if you're foolish
>enough to say that culture is only defined when EVERY SINGLE PERSON partici-
>pates in that particular thing.  That's utter nonsense.

Perhaps, Mr. Pak should repeat that statement for the benefit of Mr.
George Wu (gwu@nujoizey.tcs.com).  He seems to think that in order
for something to be part of Chinese-cu culture, that something _must_
be believed and practiced by all who claim to be culturally Chinese-cu.
Consider infanticide.  I condemned Chinese-cu culture for its inclusion
of infanticide, but Mr. Wu claims that to be a racist condemnation
because not every culturally Chinese-cu person practices infanticide.

Go figure a Chinese-cu.

>...
>If you don't believe me, then please tell me what American culture is.  What's
>an example of it?  I say there's no such thing.

The core of each culture is a language.  That is the one element that
is constant for all members who are part of a cultural group.  Language
is a necessary but not sufficient constituent of a culture.

So, a person who is part of American culture must necessarily speak
English.  Different languages provide a wall of isolation between
different cultural groups.  Within a group, ideas are mixed and shared
into a semi-homogeneous mixture, but the infiltration of these ideas into
another cultural group is impeded simply because the language is different.
As a result, there is differentiation between cultures.

Clearly, Japanese culture is not the same as Chinese-cu culture; the
languages are fundamentally different.  The language difference
allowed ideas that are unique to each culture to incubate without
transmission to the other culture.  Only an idiot would think that
Japanese culture is somehow a subset of Chinese-cu culture; by the way,
there are such idiots.

So, if one eliminates the language of a cultural group, the cultural
ideas of that group are severely weakened to the point of extinction.
The ideas are weakened in the sense that the transmission of those ideas
to the children of the members of that culture are hampered if the children
can only speak (for all practical purposes) a different language from
the one that their parents know best.  This, of course, can prove useful
in certain circumstances.

(Of course, there's absolutely nothing wrong with eliminating a culture.
I see no tears for the loss of Latin (as a living language) and its
accompanying culture.)

>...
>>>This group really does have some shared culture: every
>>>culture in East Asia has some Chinese influence, whether they
>>>acknowledge it or not.
>>Do you mean to say that Asian Americans need to partake of their ancestral
>>culture?  This is a rather controversial claim.  I suspect this is neither
>>reasonable nor widely acceptable.

I agree.  It is highly unreasonable.

>Who said ALL Asian Americans need to partake of something to make it a valid
>part of Asian American culture?  If a significant sub-group of Asian Americans
>partake in it, then it's part of Asian American culture.

True, but there is a universal constant:  English.  A person who cannot speak
English is not culturally an [Asian-American]-cu.

>Tell me, what's American culture?  Does it exist?

Yes.

>[strange curiosities deleted to save bandwidth]

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