UCLA simmers over ‘melting pot’ debate

UCLA simmers over ‘melting pot’ debate

Students examine cultural identity in diverse society

By Jennifer K. Morita

Collecting baseball cards was the first thing Iranian immigrant
Omid Beheshti did when he began sixth grade in the United States in
1986.

"I didn’t even know what they were," said Beheshti, a fifth-year
UCLA electrical engineering student. "I thought they were a silly
concept, but I wanted them anyway."

Without ever having played or even seen a baseball game before,
Beheshti said he saw the other American boys collecting and trading
those small pieces of cardboard and he wanted to do the same.

"The first thing I did when I got here was what any other
six-grade American boy would do," said Beheshti.

American is exactly what Beheshti wanted to be, he said.

In the past, the key to success for many immigrants in the
United States has been acceptance through assimilation, or
absorbing the American culture, language, beliefs and customs.

"Practically all of the Iranian Americans are the first
generation in America," said Saeed Sadeghi, president of the
Iranian Student Group and a U.S. resident for 10 years. "Excuse me,
1.5 generation. We were born in Iran but came here when we were
young."

While recent immigrants seem to show a strong sense of retaining
their cultures, Sadeghi believes assimilation is inevitable.

"It’s something that you just can’t help," he said. "The farther
away you are from your homeland and the more years that pass, it
will simply happen. How can I expect my child, who will be born
here, to really relate to a country that he really has no concept
of except for a name?"

For his own generation, though, he believes in maintaining the
Salad Bowl approach, where various ethnic groups retain their
distinct cultures and traditions while coexisting with one
another.

Yet assimilation is almost complete for Iranian Americans,
Beheshti reasoned, with most Iranian American UCLA students
speaking, reading and writing English better than their native
language.

"I think that’s an identity for them that they consider
themselves more American than Iranian," he said.

Both Beheshti and Sadeghi began rebelling from their Iranian
values and beliefs during their teenage years and it wasn’t until
they came to UCLA that their interest in retaining their own
culture was sparked.

"Our generation, when we first came to America, wanted really
badly to assimilate into American culture and we did," said
Beheshti. "Now that we’re at universities we see that we have our
own culture that’s separate and there seems to be an almost ‘going
back.’"

Sadeghi and Beheshti have a pendulum theory. After swinging back
and forth between retaining their own culture and assimilation into
an American one, they eventually settle somewhere in between into
what Sadeghi calls a "pseudo-culture."

"Although they are ‘going back,’ they aren’t going so far as to
reject assimilation," said Sadeghi. "They would still love to be
assimilated. Even for someone like me, who considers himself more
Iranian than American. I’d be the first one to admit that there are
certain ideologies that are purely Western and purely American and
yet, I believe in them and accept them."

However, other UCLA students reject the notion of
assimilating.

"We hate it. We hate the word," said first-generation Chicana
Veronica Cabral, a second-year history and communications student.
"But as much as we want to deny that we assimilate, we do. Of
course some of the American culture seeps into us, but we want to
keep our own cultural values as well."

Assimilating means becoming white because it is the dominant
culture, Cabral pointed out.

"People would like to think that by assimilating we all become
this one culture, but I think of it as becoming the white culture,"
she explained. "Retaining my own culture is really important to me.
It’s something I’ve grown up with and value and if I lost it, so
would my children and future generations. I don’t want to think of
it as ending."

So to keep from totally assimilating, Cabral said she makes an
effort to stay close to her community and help empower her
people.

She also does little things that she says may seem insignificant
to others but are significant to her. Cabral speaks Spanish
whenever she can and makes homemade tortillas with her mother,
things she says come naturally to her.

"As hard as we try to push away from assimilating American
mainstream culture, from media to education, it is so European and
so white and that’s what we grow up with," she said. "Now, I’m at a
university, and I can finally say I’m tired of learning about them.
I want to learn about me."

Beheshti sees things from an individual perspective, rather than
a group, and says assimilation is the result of an individual
developing.

"In grade school you want to be just like everybody else," said
Beheshti. "Regardless of race, everyone wants to fit in. Then once
an individual has grown and gained confidence as a secure person,
it becomes a matter of finding a niche for himself."

Paul Mitsui, vice president of the Nikkei Student Union, said
looking around UCLA he sees students making efforts to keep ties to
their cultures.

"It’s very separated into ethnic identities," said Mitsui, a
second-generation Japanese American. "It does seem to be very
divided amongst different ethnicities, so much so that it doesn’t
seem to be a melting pot."

Several campus groups, like the Nikkei Student Union, provide a
means for people to understand and accept different cultures
whether for Japanese Americans themselves or anyone else who is
interested, he said. Yet Mitsui also questioned what the American
Culture is.

"Is it a culture in itself or is it made up of many cultures?"
Mitsui asked.