Essay - Cross-cultural Issues for African Americans Chapter Three: the Chapter on...

Cross-Cultural Issues for African Americans

***** Three:

***** chapter on African Americans primarily discusses three main cross-cultural issues. The first and most obvious one is the physical difference between white and black *****, which is more pronounced than between Caucasians and any other minority group. This leads to an immediate, visual acknowledgment of ***** and the predominance of severe racism that keeps people from being promoted, thinks they are less worthy, and makes them work harder for the same recognition. The second main cross-cultural issue seems to be one of group guilt. The chapter ***** to suggest that *****s see individual whites as individually responsible for *****ir actions, but whites seem to see blacks as responsible ***** the actions of all other blacks, seeing them not as individuals but as a profiled group. In addition, if some blacks are incompetent or criminal, ***** are all seen ***** way. The third ***** most cultural of the ***** issues is one ***** behavior. Much ***** made about "acting black" and "***** white." This is the hardest issue ***** pin down, ***** deserves the most attention. Unfortunately, it seemed to receive considerably less attention that issues of perceived worth, genetic skin tone, and group perceptions.

What exactly is "acting black?" From the chapter, it appears *****: "sociologists have attributed several cultural tendencies to this group: directness and spontaneity, expressiveness, sense ***** community, ***** a great regard for family and religion. Although there may be disagreement by some ***** specialists regarding these attributes." (Blank ***** Slipp) So the next question must be, ***** this article and from my experience, what do black people feel that ***** people (and what do white people) ***** about ***** traits? Only a few of them are actually mentioned in the article. The article discusses how directness and expressiveness in male African-Americans is looked *****wn upon by many ***** restrained white business men, or treated as instances ***** unacceptable aggression. The article also *****uches briefly on a sense that ***** people who like to sit toge*****r and have "community" ***** ***** as segregating themselves. However, nowhere in the article is their any evidence that act*****g black by having a high regard for family or religion is a problem. I had to stop ***** ask *****self if I had ever known an insistence where a high regard for these things had led to *****y cultural tension, and ***** couldn't find any. So I suppose the big issue here is candor and expressiveness: "Telling it like ***** is."

*****, I ought to digress for a moment and say that I was really pleased by some of the truth-telling in ***** *****. I have honestly had many experiences w***** I *****iced such racism. For example, as a co-worker on a very p*****rt time job in a grocery store, ***** noticed ***** whenever several employees were standing around doing nothing, the boss would come up and particularly upbraid the one black person in our midst and send him off to do clean-up or