American, in its term might be defined from how long of time they spend
their live in United Stated. Actually we need to analyze further more about
definition of American, because sometimes it term makes confusing.
In many cases caused of the type of American and continent of America,
the use term of American just for represents or labeling
someone who lives in United Stated, all at once makes easy the use
word American, not United Statesian.
Description of American is something to be an
important matter considering the generalization of them, nevertheless the use
word “generalize” might be not received by some people. Because, all Americans come
from different immigrant and refugee groups (Levin, Adelman: p.7). So that,
they also have heritage that come from cultural diversity from those refugee.
It means, in America there is multiculturalism style. Refers to the condition
in Indonesia, we can take the sample how multicultural Indonesian is. It can be
adequate with American condition that is built from diversity cultures of
refugee, just like from Mexican-American, Canadian-American, and so on so
forth. But, in Indonesia, the diversity cultures might be does not come from
the refugee at all, but it is caused from the variation of regions or the socio-cultural
condition in this country (Azyumardi Azra: 2007). Here, we can take the
important point here about the congruity in multiculturalism.
The multiculturalism sometimes delivers more like melting pot or
more like mosaic. Those terms represent the conceptualizing way
diversity in multiculturalism. Then has defined as the condition where the
cultures diversity fuses or not when they exist together. In America, there are
two view points of it. In the middle of 1900s, they were described as melting
pot. While, in the 1970s and 1980 was described as mosaic (Levin,
Adelman: p.8). In this era, the terms of Mexican-American,
Asian-American, Arab-American, Jewish-American, African-American has
fit together and proudly display their distinct cultures without throw away
their cultures identity.
The stereotypes in America explained about beliefs and images of American and will be generalized as the view point of American in the world. But, sometimes it might be possible and impossible to generalize the culture of American. It depends on the condition that we find in the reality. However, we have to aware that not all people fit within the generalization. Just like in sample, nowadays, mass media shows African-American as entertainers, athletes, or criminals. And in Arab, mass media shows them as wealthy sheik or terrorism (Levin, Adelman: p.10). But, it depends on paradigm of society. Sometimes those stereotypes become unproved when we come to the real condition in those countries. Not all of them do the same way in their life. In American case, we need to increase our sensitiveness to many ethnic groups.
From those stereotypes, mainstream Americans values draw so many
behaviors. But, before it, we need to understand Americans values to understand
Americans behavior. American values just like personal control over the
environment, changing, control the time, equality and egalitarianism,
individualism and privacy, and more other values also has contrasting value
which we do not really know in the reality. In other words, we do not judge
them as the rigid value, because in many times American values might be
different from the stereotypes that were shown by mass media.
We can pick one of them in the case of individualism and privacy,
those values affect many aspects of typically American behavior
and attitude that might become foreigner does not understand how American defines
the privacy itself (Levin, Adelman: p.14). Individualism itself, Americans define
it as the freedom to choose their own way, makes their own decision, based on
their own criteria, as well as the responsibility to accept consequences
personally (Cathy Douglass, 2002). Just like American values,
the privacy also empashized because everyone feel need to be respected by
others.
References
Books
Azra, Azyumardi. 2007. Identitas dan Krisis Budaya,
Membangun Mutikulturalisme Indonesia. Depok: FE Universitas Indonesia.
Levine.R.Deena and Mara.B.Adelman. 1993. Beyond Language:
Cross Cultural Communication. 2nd Ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall
Regence.
Additional sources:
Douglass, Cathy. 2002. Examining America's Culture Values:
Individualism at http://www.nayajeevan.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=25:examining-americas-cultural-values-individualism&catid=3:articles&Itemid=8
