Deculturalization In the White Man’s Image

Deculturalization is one of the most inhumane acts one can partake in. It refers to the stripping away of people’s culture and replacing it with a new culture. Segregation, isolation and forced changed of language are some of the many methods of deculturalization. Inserting one’s own culture in place of someone’s pre-existing culture is the basis of ethnocentrism or the belief in the superiority of one's own ethnic group. By analyzing this ethnocentrism, one learns the importance of sustaining different cultures in the society. (Spring, 1994)

Deculturalization can be seen in the film titled “In the White Man’s Image”. This features the experiment to change acculturates Native Americans into mainstream white culture with the creation of the Carlise School for Indians. In this film, critical eye is cast on the early efforts by Congress to civilize Native Americans through the process of homogenization which required the removal of Native American children from their homes and placing them in special Indian school (American Experience: In the White Man's Image, 2006. Deculturalization were exhibited when Native American children were forced to stay for years in the said school at a time without returning home and required them to avoid their own language and culture and instead forced them to learn the ways of the white man (American Experience: In the White Man's Image, 2006). Culture discrimination as exhibited through the homogenization process and ethnocentrism characterized by the effort of the Congress to rid the culture of the Natives and promoting of their own white culture were demonstrated by this film.

Another film similar to the first film that tackled deculturalization is the “Rabbit Proof Fence” which tells the story of fourteen year-old mixed-race Aborigine girl who escapes with her sister and cousin from a Western Australian settlement at Moore River. It also tackles the issue of Australia’s ‘stolen generation’ represented by the Aboriginal children who were separated by the State from their parents (Rabbit-Proof Fence, 2006). It presented the issues of deculturalization when children were forcibly removed from their parents for mandatory education and for the State and Church’s aim of re-socialization in the modern society (Pendreigh, 2006). In the same way, to advance them into the white society, children were forced to disregard their own culture in place of the new culture imposed by the State and the Church.

Unchained Memories is another movie, similar to the two films that deal with deculturalization. This depicts the experiences and the lives of slaves during the era of domestic slave trade and slave auction. Hundreds of thousand of slaves throughout the South experienced the humiliation, the fear, the uncertainty and the psychological shock that accompanied the domestic slave trade and even for slaves who did not experience the slave trade, the slave auction cast a painful shadow over their lives (Gates and Crew, 2002). Correspondingly, children and their families who suffered from slave trade were alienated from their own culture since they were exposed to the other new culture particularly to the white culture. Moreover, their skin color and their culture as a whole which was very different from the white gave them the inferiority complex from those whites.

Moreover, the lose of cultural distinctiveness of voluntary immigrants such as the White, Asian, Hispanic and Latino groups under the mainstream compulsory assimilation upon arrival in the United States is another piece similar to the three films already discussed. Their cultural uniqueness gradually gone since they had to adapt to the culture of the whites to face the discrimination of the Americans for which they lived as well as to be accepted in their society (Williams, 1994). Thus, they had to disregard their own culture and go with the flow of the white culture. Consequently, cultural conflicts arise because of the difference in the values and norms and the culture itself of the immigrants compared to the white, thus, resulting to immigrants’ deculturalization.