As international communication professionals, we are often tasked with the responsibility to enhance relationships between a nations leaders and its public. Within this relationship building, lie integral factors such as culture and ethnicity that if left unacknowledged, can impede the process. Considering those factors, communication professionals have a unique role in accurately aligning the nations interest with its citizens and on the other hand, aligning the interest of its citizens with the nations agenda. This complex task is further compounded when one seeks to include citizens of a Diaspora.
According to Karim H. Karim’s, Re-viewing the ‘national’ in ‘international communication’ Through the lens of diaspora, individuals belonging to a diaspora share common ancestry and are “also often viewed as [citizens of] nations that have become deterritorialised.” Within nations, diasporas play a critical role in unifying groups of people by establishing a common connection through shared history, heros, language, and food among other things. Take the Latino community in America for instance, a controversially dubbed diaspora which at 43 million, makes up the largest minority group in the country. Though several academicians have argued whether or not Latino Americans can be justifiably called a diaspora, one thing is clear: in 2011 the majority of US Latinos maintain cultural ties that connect them to their ancestral land.
Despite an avid push to maintain ancestral linkages, years of assimilation, acculturation as well as daily socialization makes cultural preservation challenging. In the case of Latino Americans, the racial discrimination members of this group face leads some to attempt to assimilate to the race of the majority.[1] When analyzing the goal of nation-states overall, it can be assessed that the overarching goal is to have groups-especially those belonging to a diaspora- forgo their connection to their ethnic roots and instead adopt the cultural homogeneity of the nation. As Karim writes, “[historically] states played a key role in eliminating differences and imposing one culture. Whether through state sponsored institutions (schools, military service, national holidays) or private and civic associations” or through state sponsored discrimination (Arizona SB1070) it is apparent that America is working to strengthen its national identity and unite citizens under one homogenous umbrella.
[1] Outcomes of Assimilation and Discrimination: The Case of Hispanics in America at the Dawn of the 21st century by. Emily P. Estrada, B.A
I think you bring up a very good point of what the "melting pot" can do to diaspora communities, when the need to assimilate into one community leads to the deterioration of your former community.
ReplyDeleteI would also like to point out how being classified as a "latino" community also melts people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds into one unit. For example I consider myself to be a product of the Guatemalan diaspora; I am the first generation to live in the US and if the term diaspora is only reserved for tragedy then I can site the civil war which only ended in 1996 to fulfill the requirement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_Civil_War
It seems as if when you arrive in America you are melted in a "latino" culture, that often requires you to let go your ties to your individual country. I am often times confused by this lumping together, that happens in the US.
I have traveled to several other "Latin" countries and I can see the huge cultural differences, and I was still identified as an foreigner, yet in America its as if because we have a common language (Spanish) that automatically qualifies us as a sub-nation within the United States.
I think you make a very good point about the homogenous umbrella used to assimilate into American culture, but the umbrella used to define the latin community is also another way of lumping people of different cultures into one category.