THE MELTING POT MYTH

We will always have stereotypes because it is a human attempt put into categories. to remember and understand.
The concept, like so many other important ones, was missed by the limited scope of the 'experts'.  They missed that ethnicity involves both conscious and unconscious processes which fulfill the need for security, identity and a sense of historical continuity.  The language and customs of a culture determine that which gets labeled as a problem.  Police are not taught to distinguish, or in fact to even question this, as they are too concretely bound to maintain laws which are rigid and leave little room for exceptions or interpretation.  Thus, sociologists were wrong with the melting pot theory and were destructive to families by not looking at the belief systems brought by different cultures and their religions.

Freud had early psychologists focusing for too long only on the parenting...more often only to mothering. Many more parameters are needed.  Some of the parameters to be explored along with ethnicity are religion, country of origin, language, class, color, socio-economic, and intelligence/educational level.  One must not forget the differences within groups and that is no such entity as 'the black family', 'the Jewish family',. 'the poor family' or 'the rich family.'. Yet people continue to try to make diagnostic and descriptive labels.



When children are caught between the value system of two opposing dictates, normal to their family is often considered not normal outside the family...especially to those mental health professionals who have the presumption to define 'normal' for us all.  At times these value systems conflict with the laws of our land.  We had an example of a young woman in Florida a few years ago who insisted on covering her face, refusing to have her picture taken for a driver's license.  Since the picture ios required by law for identification, her cultural dictate was disallowed if she wanted to drive a vehicle.

to be continued......

MEDIA NEWS: IT'S JUST MORE ENTERTAINMENT

While I have frequently written that I think the media has been against Hillary, the other day I was reminded just how nasty they have become. There has been much talk about how her continuing to campaign is hurting the Democratic party. I was shocked to hear (on MSNBC, Keith Olbermann), that she should be given the 'hook'. To me that proved that they are equating something as serious as our choosing a U.S. President with Vaudeville. I was as shocked as any American interested in bettering this country and correcting bad elections could have been.

Infuriated, I went to the MSNBC site. There used to be email contacts available for the major entertainers (I choke trying to call them anything else) but there is no longer anywhere I could find on the site to do so . If there is a place on their site, they have made it too obscure for me to find it. So I wrote to CNN (who still allows email to their people) and asked if Wolf Blitzer will pass on a message to the clueless Chris Matthews and MSNBC staff that there is a difference between race and ethnicity. Why Tweety has been permitted to make this error continuously for months appalls me but I am not surprised that people don't seem to speak accurately or use proper English on TV any more. I am reminded of the blue collar comedians saying, "There is no cure for stupidity!"

The station's sexism shows as women spit out the news in the daytime but the men hold fort during the prime time hours. The women, for the most part read the news. The men make more prejudicial comments with great assertion, as though their opinions mean more.

With most of the news channels on my 'do not watch' list, I spend more time running around the world for news of America. What a different view the world has of us than we, ourselves, try to convince others.