I see that people identify cultural norms as "white", because that is what most people assume is the right and ideal way. We live in a country where the majority who have always ruled have been white.Even though the "whites" have ruled, it is still a country that is growing everyday more and more of different cultures.
I would say the white society has not had to go through the same obstacles that other races have had to overcome to be accepted in this country.So it is easy to say that "cultural norms and values" are often considered "white". I think slowly but surely values will not be classified by a specific race being the ideal, because this is a country that is booming with variety of people and will continue to.
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I agree, Isabel, that this country is being forced by changing circumstances in the international economy to confront a new reality where people with many different cultural values, social experiences, and religious, language and other traditions exist and function. When we look today at these changes, for some, the response is to reject this variety and these many differences by retreating to a sense of what is "normal." When we look closely and compare the experiences of twenty-first century immigrants to that of nineteenth-century (and even twentieth-century) immigrants, we should notice something else--that there is a historical process of acculturation that made people from Ireland or Germany or France or Spain or Poland Italy or other parts of Europe into "white people" over the course of family generations. Why shouldn't today's immigrants maintain (at least some) of their language and traditions now, when so many of these white ethnic groups know little or nothing of their cultures of origin? Or must becoming American require that Spanish speakers or Yoruba speakers or any body else lose their language in order to assimilate?
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