Posts Tagged ‘cultural identity’
The changing face of America
America is changing. Always. It’s part of the deal in this country of immigrants. And yet, for all of the ways in which immigration has in the past forged new concepts of nationhood, nothing really compares to the present. The United States has become a stunningly multicultural place and is becoming more so with each passing year. [...]
How the French see America
It’s no surprise that the French have a complicated relationship with the United States. One that is certainly reciprocated, as the Americans and the French seem to both love and detest what is most unique about the other’s country. This love-hate dynamic is uniquely examined through the prism of politics in a recent essayby Steven Erlanger in the [...]
The character of cities
I’ve always been intrigued by the character of different cities. Every urban environment, it seems, has a different vibe, a unique feel. The coffeehouses of Seattle, the universities of Boston, the Latin beat of Miami. Each place has such unique traits that it’s not possible to mistake one for another, and individuals who love one [...]
How multicultural Hawaii shaped Obama
U.S. News and World Report has a story this week that explores how the multicultural nature and “aloha spirit” of Hawaii helped shape the beliefs of Barack Obama as a young man. It’s a glimpse into the culture of one of the most famous but perhaps least understood states in the U.S. An excerpt from [...]
The idea of Russia
It’s been two weeks since Time magazine named Vladimir Putin its “Person of the Year.” Now that the holiday craziness has ended, I finally got around to reading that issue of the magazine. In it, there is a fascinating portrait of Putin, but also an intriguing article about Russia itself (“In Search of Russia’s Big Idea”), which is the [...]
The question of Latin America
Is Latin America an integratedÂregion, or a diverse group of peoples and cultures? There are those, such as Simon Bolivar and Che Guevara, who have dreamed in the past of unifying all the peoples of Latin America. That sentiment was given expression again in the 2004 movie The Motorcycle Diaries (a nice travel movie, by the way), when the character of a [...]
Contemplating American culture
Happy July 4th, Americans! Today seems like a good day to contemplate some of the many facets of American culture. First, an article from the Journal Star of Lincoln, Nebraska, that examines some of what it means to be an American: Unlike many other countries where blood and birth define citizenship, America is a nation of [...]
America within the Americas
There was an interesting column recently in the Los Angeles Times by Richard Rodriguez in which he discussed what he saw as the birth of a Latin American consciousness in the United States. He suggested that in the future the U.S. was more likely to see itself as an integral part of the Americas. Here is an [...]
Immigration and national identity
It goes without saying that immigrants are central to the U.S. identity. But that doesn’t mean that Americans have always agreed about the issue of immigration. Far from it. Descendants of the early U.S. settlers struggled to assimilate the southern and eastern Europeans that came after them, such as the Italians and the Poles. Today, those immigrant groups are equally [...]
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Bob Riel is a writer and a traveler. Go here to read more about Bob, his work and the Travels in the Riel World blog.
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