Conflict Between The Traditional And Modernity example essay topic

Ben Huynh January 26, 2003 Literature of Minority Prof: Levi Americanization and assimilation are not uncommon to many of the immigrants in the US. The conflict between the immigrants with the dominant, mostly, or with the older of American generation, is not only happen during the third teen Colonies, but also until today. People migrated to the USA from all over the world, with different culture background, language, and physical. All these differences in the new comers and the "already there" are often caused conflicts.

These conflicts are often resolved into harmony ways, and they are assimilation, integration, and segregation. The people are still treating the new comers unfairly and more often push them in segregation. For example, Native American is pushed to live in the most isolated area and this matter has cause a hardship in their living. In the movie shown in class, the main theme is about the conflicting between the traditional and the modernity. The husband is Americanized, who is almost assimilated into American culture as I would said, is having problem with his wife who came from Russia and who is traditional. For example, the husband dressing style is American style.

He called himself a Yankee and teaches his son to play baseball. In the other hand, the woman, who is his wife is dressing in traditional style, with her hair braided, with the appropriate in a traditional kind of way, and everything of her is in such a amazing secretive traditional Jewish kind of way compared to the so called modernity of American. The conflict between the traditional and modernity resolve in a divorce for this marriage. The husband left his wife for the American woman who the felt more comfortable with her because he got Americanized, he fall in love with American culture and got no more joy from his Jewish culture. The conflict in the modernity and tradition is a real issue to the new immigrants. For the new immigrants in the United States of America as myself, I experienced many of the conflict with the new society, school, and family.

This is not long ago, when I first boarded to the United States, the "Promise Land", I felt completely minority in this country. I got to a different school where I am not familiar to the one I used to go to in Vietnam, where the Teachers and classmates speak the language different than mine. I didn't do very well in school and some times got pushed around by the students who did not like the way I look, the way I act or something about me that they don't like. As a new comer, I am scared to encounter with any kind of conflicts and often got myself push back into the cell. Uh, back then, I didn't like the American food, I was so hard to swallow and it definitely needed to add a lot of salt and flavor into it. I am very segregated from the rest of my classmates; I got bad grade in my English class and good grade in math class.

Back then I did not feel bad for my bad grade for my English paper because I did not know any. At that time I believe that I was in the phrase of segregation. Time does go on, I learn how to speak and write in English, which I am still learning right now. Right now I think I am in the Americanized and Integrate phrase and my parent are still mostly in the segregated phrase. Because of the different in the traditional of my parent and some of the modernity that I adapted from the new society sometime got us into conflict.

For example, my parent usually complains about me wearing shoes and hat in the house. In American culture people wear shoes in house, but in Vietnamese culture in not polite. We often having conflict in the way I dress, the way I eat, the way I study, and most of everything. I think the best way to resolve or at least reduce the conflict is by integrating the culture, which I mean at home I should follow my Vietnamese rule and outside I follow American rules.

The traditional and the modernity is a case also for the American society. In school, I remember back in high school in 1999, my school required that all students must wear proper cloth; young teenagers often refuse to obey such rule. I think this conflict between the school district with these teenage girls because of the modernization. The school teachers are fall behind in cloth fashion and that they try to accomplish their superior of traditional way over modernity way.

From the examples I experienced, tradition and modernity are dominant one over another in different cases. Assimilation is mean when the new groups of immigrants adapted a new culture and forget all about their old culture. Integration is mean when the new group of immigrants is adapted a new cultures in the new world and also keep their old cultures. Segregation is when the immigrant are isolated themselves from the new culture and keep their old culture. Out of the three terms of changing the people are living together in the new world, the integration is the best and the least causing conflict within each group of immigrants.