THE IMAGE OF RACIAL MINORITIES AND THEIR REPRESENTATION IN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: AFRICAN- AND NATIVE AMERICANS
THE IMAGE OF RACIAL MINORITIES AND THEIR REPRESENTATION IN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY: AFRICAN- AND NATIVE AMERICANS

Summary/Abstract: The rights of the minorities to assert the individuality of their own cultures is now flourishing in various forms in the United States. These newly empowered minorities may also be led to display the hegemonic tendencies generally exhibited by the established culture. Thus, cultural independence cannot be preserved for the subordinate, racial or ethnic minorities under the dominant white culture, because society is always structured in dominance. There is, at least, structural inequality based on race or ethnicity (Billington, 1993:87-99). The dominant culture brings about the threat of inequality based on the minority in this sense. The cultural devices of American subordinate, ethnic, native or non-native groups, while creating an image of cultural diversity, are involved in a dangerous process of assimilation as group members are habituated to their ethnic identity. In order to evaluate the significance of generations of immigrant settlers, native or non-native people as factors in the formation and development of the United States, there should be taken into consideration the definition and construction of differentiated social collectiveness as important elements of not high nor dominant, but of a common culture which participates in activities in which both subordinate and dominant groups have exchanged. Thus, democracy in any country is the power of the public only if it is based on humanistic principles and serves equality and human dignity. This paper attempts to examine the implications for America’s version of democracy of a thoroughgoing recognition of comprehensive cultural representation for its constituent racial groups: African- and Native Americans.

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