Ed. Note: History professor Walter Moss sent this to me the other day to post to EMUTalk.org. Of course, I always welcome contributions of various sorts, and it is even better when the contributions are things I agree with whole-heartedly. Thanks, Walter!
Recently students in my History 103, Twentieth Century Civilization, class handed in papers dealing with culture. Among other points I asked them to address the following:
In a paragraph or two indicate how culture has affected your own life and how you think your EMU experiences have or will change how culture affected you prior to coming to EMU.
I was pleasantly surprised to read that so many of my students valued the exposure to ethnic, cultural, and religious diversity that they experienced at EMU. Many of them wrote of coming from small towns or high schools that were fairly homogenous—“99 percent white” one student wrote–and being struck by all the EMU racial, ethnic, and religious differences. Some related how at first they had stuck to others most like themselves, but then gradually came to interact more with those from other subcultures, as they became more open and tolerant of the cultural diversity they observed that came from many sources including racial, national, religious, and sexual differences and orientations. In addition, some papers commented on how various EMU courses in subjects such as history, philosophy, anthropology, and literature had contributed to their growing openness to other subcultures, cultures, and viewpoints. Many students stated that they believed their exposure to cultural diversity at EMU would help them after graduation as they went “out into the world” to start their careers.
I graduated from college in 1960, the year of John Kennedy’s election. In his autobiographical Dreams from My Father (1995), Barack Obama wrote of the hopes of the period between that election and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. I lived in Washington D. C. in the last three years of this period, one that included Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech” at the Lincoln Memorial. In D. C. and beyond it was a time, as Obama wrote, of “the seeming triumph of universalism over parochialism and narrow mindedness, a bright new world where differences of race or culture would instruct and amuse and perhaps even ennoble.” It was in this period that Obama was born in Hawaii, an area that his white mother, her parents, and her African husband hoped was “the one true melting pot, an experiment in racial harmony.” Like many hopes and dreams, they were often pricked by cruel realities in the days that followed. In the last few years, however, such dreams and hopes have reemerged. Obama has often spoken of the need for appreciating diversity and making it a positive rather than divisive factor. In June 2006, he said “given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.” During his successful presidential campaign he often spoke of uniting “white and black, Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old,” male and female in a common national effort. And many young people responded to his words and helped elect him, as polls indicated that youth were more open to racial, ethnic, and religious diversity than were older people.
In the midst of our economic and other problems, especially in Michigan, I found it heartening to read that so many of my EMU students shared a goal of the Obama campaign and so many of us on the faculty, that of overcoming provincialism, increasing tolerance, and better preparing young people to face the challenges of an increasing globalized world.
