A Small Part of a Big Engine, Essay Example

In some ways, a big city can be compared to an engine; a giant engine with many small parts that needs routine maintenance and occasional repairs. Each function relies on another to make the whole work properly and some parts are more vital to the continued function that others. When every part is functioning perfectly, it is the best piece of machinery around. But forget to add oil, change the spark plugs or put in the right mixture of antifreeze during the winter months and the whole machine comes screeching to a stop. Just the same, a big city relies on the people that inhabit it to keep it going, some more than others. Those with governing jobs, such as the mayor and those that staff city hall, and those charged with protecting the rest, such as police officers and firefighters, could bring the city to a screeching halt if they suddenly walked away from their jobs. But other parts of an engine are not so vital. When these less imperative parts malfunction, the vehicle powered by the broken engine can limp along for miles, sometimes indefinitely, operating with limited functionality. And this, in my experience, is how big cities most often operate, as frameworks of a great engine, with a few malfunctioning inner workings, persisting because they cause just little enough of a problem to demand immediate repair. In this city, I am that anomaly, that cog in the machine that just doesn’t fit right with the others. I am the minority.

As a black minority member I find myself acquainted with the theories of acculturation and of cultural relativism in actual practice. Cultural relativism is the practice of judging cultures on their own terms. Acculturation is the term used to describe absorption of culture, a change in cultural behavior and thinking from close contact with another cultural group. Such as what happens to an infant as it is raised by its parents, or to a middle eastern roadie who spends all his time on a van with a Caucasian rock band. My experience is more like the latter, without the eastern character, cross-country travel, or hearing damage.

I’ve been told each city is different. I only know my own, but it has a rhythm made of the traffic and the store bells, the swish of coats as people pass by one another and the pat of shoes on cement as they travel up and down the sidewalks. It is wonderfully flawed and I would not trade my experiences in it for anything. But that does not mean my experiences in the city are all wonderful. While at first consideration cultural relativism seems like a good thing, there is a danger in it. Judging a culture on its own terms can lead to stereotyping of that culture. People develop an idea of what that cultural group is like and then apply it across the board to every member, without taking into consideration individual nature. What this means is, that people with a stereotyped view of a particular cultural group expect every member of that cultural group to behave and think in certain ways. In high school, I knew I wanted to attend college. So the classes I took were all college track courses. As a result, many times I would be only black student in the classroom. This is a sad situation, but often a true one in public school classrooms across the nation. The reasons for this are often common ones, but the situation of poor educational achievement for black minority students is not the focus here. It is enough here to say that I was often the only black student in a college-track classroom full of white students, who, because of the particular cultural relativism passed on to them from their parents and society, knew exactly how I was supposed to behave and think. The problem came into play when I did not meet their expectations. For many, I think it started innocently, though ignorantly, enough. In an attempt to relate to me, some of my classmates showed interest in topics they knew were popular within my cultural group, such as rap and hip hop music, certain clothes and cars, and particular kinds of food. And in fact I did share some of these interests. But I did not share all of them.

When my classmates found out that I did not meet their previously set expectations, some of them reacted badly. Some began to bully me. This too, at first, may have been an attempt to get me to respond in the way they felt I should. When I didn’t respond with violence of my own, the bullying got worse. On several occasions I went home with a black eye or fat lip. My books were routinely scattered down the hall and once they were stolen. In an attempt to alleviate the bullying, I began to try to act more like them. First, I began to speak like those doing the bullying, then to dress like them. I would mimic their behavior and walk the way they did, use the same body language. Initially, I did this only around those who actively bullied me. But when I tried it out around the rest of my Caucasian classmates, I found that they accepted me much more easily. Of course, it wasn’t exactly me. Eventually, I had not only stopped the bullying process, but been accepted by the students who perpetrated the abuse in the first place. Of course, to accomplish this last meant acting like them in ways that I am not proud of today.

I had willingly put myself through the process of acculturation. In doing so, I found that I behaved in ways not in alignment with my previous accepted ways of behavior. Of course, it wasn’t until later that I had these realizations and knew that I was able to act in these ways because how I thought of the actions and my original standards of right and wrong had been altered from close contact with the bullying group. As I began to imitate my classmates and became comfortable with their behavior and way of thinking, it was an easier jump to imitate my attackers’ behavior. Not all instances of cultural relativism and acculturation represent this negative side. My personal experience has taught me that it cannot be ignored. Stereotypes resulting from cultural relativism can be dangerous and acculturation always means giving up part of one’s self.