Deculturalization is the process by which an ethnic group is forced to abandon its language, culture, and customs. It is the destruction of the culture of a dominated group and its replacement with the culture of the dominating group. Deculturalization is a slow process due to its extensive goal of fully replacing the subordinate ethnic group's culture, language, and customs. This term is often confused with
assimilation and
acculturation
Acculturation refers to the psychological, social, and cultural transformation that takes place through direct contact between two cultures, wherein one or both engage in adapting to dominant cultural influences without compromising their essent ...
.
Methods of deculturalization
*
Geographical segregation
Geographical segregation exists whenever the proportions of population rates of two or more populations are not homogeneous throughout a defined space. Populations can be considered any plant or animal species, human genders, followers of a certai ...
* Forbidding education to the dominated group
* Forceful replacing of language
* Superior culture's curriculum in schools
* Instructors are from the dominant group
* Avoiding the dominated group's culture in curriculum
Deculturalization in the United States
African Americans
The enslavement of
African Americans
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa ...
during the 18th and 19th centuries in the United States is a form of deculturalization.
Slavery in the United States
The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of List of ethnic groups of Africa, Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865 ...
made the African Americans dependent on their owners allowing for the owners to exploit them. The owners removed their African names, did not allow them to read, and did not allow them to practice their culture and language. Deculturalization of African Americans stems back to When the African American slaves were forbidden access to education due to fear of a slave revolt against the slaveholders. A series of court cases occurred in the United States helping deculturalization of African Americans as wells as there were cases that went against deculturalization. For example, the addition of the
14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, the
Dred Scott v. Sandford decision,
Brown v. Board of Education
''Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka'', 347 U.S. 483 (1954), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that ruled that U.S. state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, even if the ...
,
Plessy v. Ferguson, and countless others. After the
Civil War (United States) segregated education continued and was a struggle to integrate fully and completely. While integration was achieved, the textbooks that the African American students learn from are bias and contain material from the dominant, Anglo-American culture.
Latin Americans
The deculturalization of
Latinos
Hispanic and Latino Americans are Americans who have a Spanish or Latin American background, culture, or family origin. This demographic group includes all Americans who identify as Hispanic or Latino, regardless of race. According to th ...
can refer back to the Mexican–American War and
The Treaty Of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Once the United States won California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado Mexicans who were living in these areas were removed from their lands. Their identity in the United States changed constantly from Mexican to White and vice versa until the word Hispanic was created to refer to these Mexican Americans. By simply using the word Hispanic to refer to the Mexican Americans and later the Latin-American immigrants refers to the conqueror's culture-the Spanish culture. Latinos in the United States also had segregated schooling. In schools they were given second-hand material from the wealthy, Anglo schools. When Latinos were being integrated, they as well as the African Americans, were being taught from bias, Anglo-cultured, Anglo-praising textbooks. Latinos did have a win to have bilingual education. While they were allowed to have bilingual education, the primary, enforced language is the English one. In some schools Latinos were corporally punished for speaking Spanish in the classroom. In some universities, Latinos were also forced to take many speech classes in order to remove the accents of the Latinos when they spoke English. While that is not seen evidently in schools anymore, the education system continues to enforce English, Anglo-American customs, culture and language as the dominant one.
Asian Americans
Asian Americans
Asian Americans are Americans with Asian diaspora, ancestry from the continent of Asia (including naturalized Americans who are Immigration to the United States, immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of those immigrants).
A ...
began to be deculturalized by not being allowed to be naturalized, the Chinese-Exclusion Act, Japanese Internment, forbidding land ownership, and enforcing the Anglo-culture onto them. The
Naturalization Act of 1790
The Naturalization Act of 1790 (, enacted March 26, 1790) was a law of the United States Congress that set the first uniform rules for the granting of United States citizenship by naturalization. The law limited naturalization to "free whi ...
did not allow for the Chinese along with other Asians to become naturalized, because the naturalization process was limited only to the Anglo community in the United States.
In terms of schooling, in some cases Asian Americans were denied an education entirely. It was not until the 1900s when Asian Americans were allowed to receive an education through the implementation of certain provisions. In 1855, the Chan Yong case fortified that the Chinese are not "white" therefore ineligible for citizenship due to the Naturalization Act of 1790. Also, in 1922, the court case Ozawa v. United States, the Japanese man understood he was not allowed to be naturalized due to the former act, but asked for the Japanese to be considered white, but was denied the request.
The Ozawa v. United States shows how some Asians would rather refer to themselves as white than as Japanese or their individual ethnic group, because of the advantages that being "white" bring. The enforced Anglo-American culture upon the Asians and using them during the Cold War as a model minority that the United States is not racist, it is the individual's fault allows for deculturalization to be successful.
Jade Snow Wong is a Chinese-American writer who was used by the American government to travel to the Asian world and show how an Asian can succeed in America.
Indigenous Americans
Once the first settlement in Jamestown 1607 occurred, the
Pre-American deculturalization process began. When the English came to America they looked to the
Native Americans as "pagans" and "savages". Native Americans believed that the land was not property, a thing to be claimed and owned. Once the English settlers arrived this was one of the major culture difference that needed to be extinguished. The idea of private property and ownership was enforced upon the Native Americans. While even those who accepted it, because they understood the consequences, their lands were taken away. They wanted to impose the traditional "Christian" nuclear family as well among the Native Americans. In order to gain success the colonists made Native American Educational Programs. Christian missionaries such as John Eliot learned the Native American language in order to convert them into Christianity began the segregation among the "pagans" and the "holy".
The Native Americans were exploited. There was a cultural genocide and simply genocide against the Native Americans. From the Trail of Tears to the appropriation of their designs in order to gain capital, corporate gains.
See also
*
Cultural genocide
Cultural genocide or culturicide is a concept first described by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, in the same book that coined the term ''genocide''. The destruction of culture was a central component in Lemkin's formulation of genocide ...
*
Forced assimilation
Forced assimilation is the involuntary cultural assimilation of religious or ethnic minority groups, during which they are forced by a government to adopt the language, national identity, norms, mores, customs, traditions, values, mentality ...
*
Institutional racism
Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of institutional discrimination based on Race (human categorization), race or ethnic group and can include policies and practices that exist throughout a whole society or organizati ...
*
Americanization (immigration)
Americanization is the process of an immigrant to the United States becoming a person who shares United States culture, American culture, values, beliefs, and customs by Cultural assimilation, assimilating into the American nation. This process ...
*
Acculturation
Acculturation refers to the psychological, social, and cultural transformation that takes place through direct contact between two cultures, wherein one or both engage in adapting to dominant cultural influences without compromising their essent ...
*
Linguistic discrimination
*
Language death
In linguistics, language death occurs when a language loses its last native speaker. By extension, language extinction is when the language is no longer known, including by second-language speakers, when it becomes known as an extinct langua ...
References
{{Culture
Cultural studies
Ethnicity