American values1

Key American Values America’s population reflects remarkable ethnic diversity. More than 20 percent of the population of two major cities, Los Angeles and New York, were born in another country. In some other major cities (including San Francisco and Chicago) more than one of every ten residents is foreign born. Non-white people outnumber whites in several large cities. Newspapers commonly use such terms as “Asian American,” “Italian American,” and “Arab American” to reflect the persistence of various ethnic heritages within the United States. There are people whose skin is labeled white, black, brown, yellow and red. America’s population includes Catholics, Protestants of many denominations, Jews of several persuasions, Muslims, Buddhists, animists, and people who believe in no supreme being or higher power. There are people who have many years of formal education and people who have nearly none. There are the very rich as well as the very poor. There are Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Socialists, Communists, Libertarians, and adherents of other political views as well. There are lawyers, farmers, plumbers, teachers, social workers, immigration officers and people in thousands of other occupations. Some live in urban areas and some in rural ones.Given all this diversity, can one usefully talk about “Americans”? Probably so, if one is careful. How Americans See Themselves Americans do not usually see themselves, when they are in the United States, as representatives of their country. They see themselves as individuals who are different from all other individuals, whether those others are Americans or foreigners. Americans may say they have no culture, since they often conceive of culture as an overlay of arbitrary customs to be found only in other countries. Individual Americans may think they chose their own values, rather than having had their values and the assumptions on which they are based imposed on them by the society in which they were born. If you ask them to tell you something about “American culture,” they may be unable to answer and they may even deny that there is an “American culture.”At the same time, Americans will readily generalize about various subgroups within their own country. Northerners have stereotypes (generalized, simplified notions) about Southerners, and vice versa. There are stereotypes of people from the country, people from the city, people from the coasts, people from inland, people from the Midwest, minority ethnic groups, minority religious groups, Texans, New Yorkers, Californians, Iowans, and so on. Individualism and Privacy The most important thing to understand about American is probably their devotion to “individualism.” They have been trained since very early in their lives to consider themselves as separate individuals who are responsible for their own situations in life and their own destinies. They have not been trained to see themselves as members of a close-knit, tightly interdependent family, religious group, tribe, nation, or other collectivity. It is this concept of themselves as individual decision-makers that blinds at least some Americans to the fact they share a culture with others. They have the idea as mentioned above, that they have independently made up their own minds about the values and assumptions they hold. The notion that social factors outside themselves have made them “just like everyone else” in important ways offends their sense of dignity. Foreigners who understand the degree to which Americans are imbued with the notion that the free, self-reliant individual is the ideal kind of human being will find it easier to understand many aspects of American behavior and thinking that otherwise might not make sense. Many Americans do not display the degree of respect for their parents people in more traditional or family-oriented societies commonly display. They have the conception it is a historical or biological accident that put them in the hands of particular parents. Parents fulfill their responsibilities to the children while the children are young, and when children reach “the age of independence” the close child-parent tie is loosened, if not broken. Closely associated with the value they place on individualism is the importance Americans assign privacy. Americans assume people “need some time to themselves” or “some time alone” to think about things or recover their spent psychological energy. Americans have great difficulty understanding foreigners who always want to be with another person and who dislike being alone. Equality Americans are also distinctive in the degree to which they believe in the ideal, as stated in their Declaration of Independence, that “all men are created equal.” Although they sometimes violate the ideal in their daily lives, particularly in matters of interracial relationships, Americans have a deep faith that in some fundamental way all people (at least all American people) are of equal value, and no one is born superior to anyone else. “One man, one vote,” they say, conveying the idea any person’s opinion is as valid and worthy of attention as any other person’s opinion. This is not to say Americans make no distinctions among themselves as a result of such factors as sex, age, wealth, or social position. They do. But the distinctions are acknowledged in subtle ways. Tone of voice, order of speaking, choice of words, seating arrangements-such are the means by which Americans acknowledge status differences among themselves. Informality Their notions of equality lead Americans to be quite informal in their general behavior and in their relationships with other people.People from societies where general behavior is more formal than in American are struck by the informality of American speech, dress, and posture. Idiomatic speech (commonly called “slang”) is heavily used on most occasions, with formal speech reserved for public events and fairly formal situations. People of almost any station in life can be seen in public wearing jeans, sandals, or other informal attire. People slouch down in chairs or lean on walls or furniture when they talk, rather than maintaining an erect bearing. The Future, Change, and Progress Americans are generally less concerned about history and traditions than are people from older societies. “History doesn’t matter,” many of them will say. “It’s the future that counts.” They look ahead.This fundamental American belief in progress and a better future contrasts sharply with fatalistic (Americans are likely to us that term with a negative or critical connotation) attitude that characterizes people from many other cultures, notably Latin, Asian, and Arab, where there is a pronounced reverence for the past. In those cultures the future is considered to be in the hands of “fate,” “God,” or at least the few powerful people or families dominating society.