Culture Is Embedded in Context
To say that culture is embedded in context is to say that it invariably is influenced by the environment in which it exists. The culture of Japanese students in Japan is of necessity different from that of Japanese immigrant students in the United States or of Japanese immigrant students in Peru or Brazil. When culture is presented to students as if it were context-free, they learn to think of it as quite separate from the lives that people lead every day. It is what Frederick Erickson (1990) has described as the fragmenting of people’s lives “as we freeze them outside time, outside a world of struggle in concrete history.”13 Culture is commonly decontextualized. In the United States, decontextualiza- tion typically occurs in the school curriculum and in media images outside of school. A notable case is that of Native Americans, who customarily have been removed from their cultural and historical root- edness through images that eternalize them as either noble heroes or uncivilized savages, and typically as a combination of both.14 On the other hand, the history of oppression, dehumanization, resistance, and struggle of the many Indigenous Nations rarely is studied in schools. If there is any doubt about the image of Native Americans held by most non-Indian children in the United States, ask even six-year-olds and
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they will provide in precise detail the most stereotypical and ahistorical portrait of Indians, as Erickson noted, “outside time.”15 If these children happen to live in a geographic region where there are no reservations or large concentrations of Native Americans, they often are shocked to learn that Native Americans are still around today and that they are teachers, or truck drivers, or artists. Even when Native Americans are included in the curriculum as existing in the present, the idyllic images of them tend to reinforce common stereotypes. For instance, while we may be happy to show students pictures of powwows, we are less likely to discuss how reservations have been used as toxic dumping sites.
A further example of how culture is influenced by context will suffice. Puerto Ricans generally eat a great deal of rice in many different manifestations. Rice is a primary Puerto Rican staple. There is even a saying that demonstrates how common it is: “Puertorriqueños somos como el arroz blanco: Estamos por todas partes” (Puerto Ricans are like white rice: We are everywhere), an adage that says as much about rice as it does about the diaspora of the Puerto Rican people, over half of whom live outside the island. As a rule, Puerto Ricans eat short-grained rice, but I prefer long-grained rice, and other Puerto Ricans often made me feel practically like a cultural traitor when I admitted it. I remember my amazement when a fellow academic, a renowned Puerto Rican histo- rian, explained the real reason behind the preference for short-grained rice. This preference did not grow out of the blue, nor does any par- ticular quality of the rice make it inherently better. On the contrary, the predilection for short-grained rice was influenced by the historical context of Puerto Ricans as a colonized people.
It seems that near the beginning of the twentieth century when Puerto Rico was first taken over by the United States among the spoils of the Spanish-American War, there was a surplus of short-grained rice in the United States. Colonies frequently have been the destination for unwanted or surplus goods from the metropolis, so Puerto Rico became the dumping ground for short-grained rice, which had lower status than long-grained rice in the United States. After this, of course, the pref- erence for short-grained rice became part of the culture. As is true of all cultural values, however, this particular taste was influenced by history, economics, and power, which will be further elaborated in what follows.