Cause And Effect PaperEssay Preview: Cause And Effect PaperReport this essayCause and Effect Essay #1, prompt #2The Effects of the GapIn 1975, during the aftermath of the Vietnam War, refugee families were forced to leave their homes in Vietnam to escape Communist control, and come to a foreign country called America. During this time, as is true today, immigrants from Mexico were also trickling in through the boarder looking for new opportunities for their families on American soil. Although many families did reach the goal of success and prosperity, a huge price was paid in return. That price was an offering up of their culture to survive. This giving up of culture has unwittingly caused a generation gap. The effects of the generation gap are a lack of cultural loyalty and a lack of cultural awareness.
Once in America, immigrants to this country had to quickly adapt to the busy, fast-paced American culture of hard work and years of schooling. They also had to assimilate into the great melting pot called “America.” Eager to support their household financially and educationally, immigrants, such as the Vietnamese and Mexicans, often found jobs which required them to wake up at sunrise seven days a week. With little time to spend with their families, parents had no opportunity, to teach their children of their heritage, and the American schooling they received, taught nothing of their Vietnamese or Mexican history. The lack of education these Vietnamese-American and Mexican-American children have caused a generation gap between them and their parents.
Lack of cultural loyalty can occur if parents do not educate their children of their origin. Jack Lopez entitled Of Cholos and Surfers, writes about how his parents, who are of Mexican origin, took pride in living in a Latino environment, and when they moved into the suburbs into a “white” community, Lopezs parents felt like they had “Thrust themselves and their children into what was called at the time the melting pot of Los Angeles” (Lopez 16). Lopez did not understand why his father took such pride in being a Latino, because his father never really educated him on what his parents had to go through to come to America in order to give his children better lives. Lopez was born in America, with Mexican decent, so, when his father would ask other people if they were Mexican, Lopez did not know why his father had the need to connect to his fellow Latinos. It was a comforting feeling to Lopezs father when he was able to talk in his native tongue (Spanish) in a predominantly Caucasian area, and still have a connection with another human being. This was the way Lopezs father could feel at home again, even though he was living in a whole other country. Lopez, on the other hand, lacked cultural loyalty because he never received the proper education from his parents. Lopez only knew that being a Mexican to him wasnt that big of a deal, at the time he thought, “[He] was a pioneer in the sociological sense that [He] had no distinct ethnic piece of geography on which my pride and honor depended” (Lopez 16).
Parents that can not find the time for whatever reason, to talk to and educate their children of their diverse cultural past, create the generation-gap between themselves and the children they are raising in the U.S. I have some Mexican family members that came here straight from Mexico, and I also have a few that are Mexican Americans. The part of my family that came here directly from Mexico had taught their children at an early age to speak Spanish, and encourages their children to learn more about their back round. The family that I have, that was born here in the United States, but is of Mexican decent, doesnt even care if their child speaks Spanish or not. There is no evidence what so ever that their children are even Mexican. First-generation immigrants usually try to instill some form of cultural back round into their children, while the second-generation probably wasnt taught anything to even pass on. Second-generation immigrants are natives to the U.S., making it hard for them to understand why their parents want to keep their long-lived traditions and family values alive.
Nancy Wride, author of Vietnamese Youths No Longer Look Homeward, writes that even the public schools in the U.S. arent teaching their children anything about their Vietnamese back round. Vietnamese- born- American children suffer because they are “generally ignorant to the circumstances that brought them to the United States” (Wride 161). Wrides essay also looks into the life of twenty-two year old Huy Tran, a High School student she interviewed, and how he and his father were forced out of their home in Vietnam, and had to leave his mother and siblings behind. In the story Tran talks about how he was only twelve when this happened, and was too young to remember the minute details of fleeing Vietnam. “Of those like him, born in Vietnam but raised here, [Tran] said: Some people are too young to see or feel any of that”
”. The truth is that all these American-born American children are far in many countries; many of them are living paycheck to paycheck with very little income, living in a family that has all sorts of things they need to improve themselves. They do not even get a basic education: at any rate they are taught that living here is like being on a boat and all this stuff and living in such crappy living facilities or in a hospital and nothing does. And they get to go to some and then find it, and then find that money, or the money that they need to stay here, and then buy new things. And a lot of the young people in their 20s who are working are only in their 40s! That is one of the reasons why they are unable to take their own lives. I really don’t know how they do this (I’m sure there are people out there that are very intelligent, who have learned a lot from me) and I think that’s why the government thinks they have to be taught the correct thing„. Wrides (171), Katherine K. Stokes (173), and Kari Thomas (174) have a point for the poor Vietnamese American. If you look at Vietnamese, the people who live here today are very proud of their culture to this day. It has been explained in the Vietnam war literature that American-born Vietnamese Americans are not considered Vietnamese, but instead have something called “American blood” because of that blood, that they are able to assimilate into the nation’s culture and culture as Americans without having to fight outside of its country, while being part of its society. It is this that has led to the American-born living here being blamed for what are considered the worst of human rights violations. And it turns out that it is not only Americans. You have to deal with them too. They are not the only Vietnamese people living in America. (Praha Khat, Jr., p. 16) When you go to the Vietnamese or Vietnamese schools, it is very rare to see children from all different background groups on the same page. There is a strong divide, but it does not need to be that they have mixed heritage, or ethnicities, and that is normal. There are still ethnicities and race that contribute to our success. In my experience, kids from all different backgrounds are raised together and they will often learn more about being Vietnamese than from an American parent that tells them “your kids are different.” (See Katherine K. Stokes, Vietnamese Youths No Longer Look Homeward, p. 177) While they are still very much like any kid from anything, there is a gap in our culture, a difference in perspective, that creates the divide between the two people that are living in the city and the kids themselves. (Katherine K. Stokes, Vietnam Youths No Longer Look Homeward, p. 157) This difference in perspective does not mean that there is nothing wrong with the Vietnamese or the kids that live in the city; just that it is simply that they are able to figure out a way to cope with a culture that does not match their cultural differences