Why We Fight Wars are sometimes necessary to maintain and preserve our American values, way of life, liberty, and freedom. Most wars have been to preserve these American values, but some wars seem to have been fought other reasons. As American’s we fight to spread liberty and democracy. Our nation wants to prevent terrorism from happening in the United States. Our government fights wars because it is familiar. It is what we know as a nation. Throughout history, we have fought wars well being well equipped and well trained having a large military.
History keeps repeating itself—war after war after war. We as a nation do not strive for an existence of non-violence, non-fighting, no war. We don’t stand by or stand for the principle-peace. We surrender to violence, fighting, letting war win. We don’t stand by peace, teach peace to future generations or strive for it by avoiding war or finding other solutions. We as a nation are stubborn. We give in too soon to the idea of war. It is easy to start a war. It is easy to take part in a war.
It is easy to stay in a war and let it linger. Our nation is limited by its inability to use our words to problem solve, to negotiate, and to cope at the level needed to maintain peace and avoid war. Peace begins within our own families, our own lives, our communities, our schools, our place of work, the choices we make each day, the words we choose to use, the actions we take each day. We teach war to future generations, war after war after war. How many people can say they lived during a time when there wasn’t a war.
It is something we know within our own families, someone in our family history has fought in a war. Our nation can say wars are fought to support liberty and justice for all, democracy, freedom, but these words and war don’t seem to go together. We have to kill and be killed to achieve this. We have to wipe out another country, another way of life to do this,–so much for liberty and justice for all. When 9/11 happened, I think the majority of people thought that’s why the Iraq war started.
It was portrayed by the government that the Iraq war was a result of 9/11. A few years later, there was no proof that the war in Iraq was necessary. Osama Bin Laden was ultimately responsible, but how many other people died to get to this conclusion. Was this war necessary or was it retaliation, anger, hatred, hunger to get revenge, what we knew as a nation, poor coping and negotiation, poor regard for life, thinking there were no other options, history repeating itself again, inability to problem solve, giving in too soon, easily starting another war.
Was it really to preserve liberty and freedom and our way of life? We are a nation of immigrants, early or later. We are all immigrants who want to preserve our liberty, way of life, and freedom. We all have the desire to protect what is ours and to protect what our families came to the United States in search of years ago or yesterday. We all have a patriotism that guides us whether we acknowledge it or not. We can change the pattern of the future, by learning from past history, past wars, and keep wars in the past.
Insert surname2 Professor’s name Student’s name Course title Date Argumentative Research Essay
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Argumentative Research Essay
One of the grant challenges in the society is eliminating prejudice, bias, stereotyping, and discrimination and their deleterious effects towards the victims and the perpetrators. The United State is the most diverse country in the world. In the recent decades, increased communication and globalization has led to people from different ethnic groups around the globe to come to America. American dream has drew millions of immigrates to this wonder land during 1990s and early 20th century. Nowadays, educational institutions are the first stop for many immigrates; People from different ethnic groups study and work together in universities and research institutions. These ethnic groups can range from Russians, Nigerians, Asians, Hispanic, and Native Americans. There is the existence of practically every ethnic group around the world. It cannot be assumed that every person shares the same beliefs and norms. Each ethnic or racial group tends to have distinct characteristics, heritage and ancestry. That’s why people think and behave differently (Miller, 425).
Ethnic diversity has positive effects to society in various approaches; one of them is stimulating collision of ideas which potentially promote innovations. However, ethnic diversity also impacts our society with negative consequences such as racism and stereotyping. People with different beliefs and ways of behaving may create misunderstanding and conflicts, especially in schools, where we communicate and work with people from all over the world. As an international student myself, I experience both positive and negative aspects that my ethnic characteristics impact me. I suffer from language barrier while studying. I also have to face racial discrimination when people make jokes about my ethnic identity. The Census Bureau has projected that by the year 2100, the minority population right now will account to 40% of the total United States population (Ely, 260).This means that issues associated with culture and racial diversity are going to increase as years pass by. Due to this, benefits and problems have been recorded overtime that relate to culture diversity mostly in higher institutions of learning. For this essay, my argument is that ethnic/culture diversity has more negative consequences than positive outcomes in educational institutions. Even so, if there are more people who can abandon prejudices and embrace ethnic diversity, the benefits can overweight adverse effects.
Positive aspects
Cultural diversity creates communities that are better and tolerant to differences among themselves. Due to globalization that has led to increased workforce in the United States, industrialization has grown tremendously. Ethnic diversity has stimulated the economy by creating more jobs and promoting consumption. Having different racial groups also benefit educational institutions. People evaluate everything around them using culture as their lens (Linn, 40). Students use their own cultures and experiences to evaluate what they consider right or wrong. Culture diversity is a crucial element, because people, especially students, can create opportunities to learn from each other. Learning from diverse cultures assist as to view the world indifferent perspectives, hence creating togetherness among students at school and our society.
Diversity in schools and at work place drives innovation at a faster rate. Most students benefit from a diverse classroom setting. Researchers at the Harvard University have proved that culture diversity has unlocked innovation spirit among students. It has intensified efforts in students to find solutions to different problems based on their cultural and ethnic background. They can integrate each other’s distinct idea to come up with a thoughtful solution. Diversity in leadership among students not excluding employees is also a positive outcome of culture diversity. Diversity creates an environment where people are able to think outside the box (Joux, 43). They are not constrained to the norms and cultures of their distinct ethnic groups. In a Forbes survey done last year, almost ¾ of the respondents admitted that diversity is crucial for businesses after one has graduated. In fact, most of them said that they will direct more resources to leverage culture diversity at their workplace and educational institutions.
Studies have also show that kids that are exposed to an environment that is culturally diverse are more aware of how to solve problems faster and easily. Our nation keeps on changing and institutions of higher learning should reflect this. Communities of color are the future leaders and embracing culture diversity creates a positive outcome for everyone (Banks, 30). It is the responsibility of every American citizen to try and see the benefits of having a community that is culturally diverse. Learning with people that come from different diverse places fosters collaboration and innovation among the students.
Another positive aspect of being culturally diverse is having broader perspective and deeper ideas. Collection of people that consist of varying backgrounds and different life experiences are likely to hold views from different angles. They have the opportunity to discuss more ideas among themselves especially in universities. Most institutions of higher learning have students all over the worldwide. From Japan, South African and many more who come with different life experiences to share. By increasing the quantity of perspectives, the quality of a decision is optimized. Although many people are reluctant to embrace the ideas of others, this is a crucial element in expounding people’s mind. Psychologically, people are inclined to propose ideas once they feel they have been accepted regardless of their cultural backgrounds and ethnic origin (Miller, 421). Cultural diversity supports the clever idea that every human being has a unique and special contribution to the larger society.
Negative Aspects
As discussed above, we cannot deny that cultural diversity has plenty of positive aspects. It brings a lot of contribution to the society mainly in terms of innovation. However, there are also plenty of negative consequences that come with is phenomena. Information gathered from different scholarly resources has backed this idea. If culture diversity is not managed well there can be devastating effects to the society. The significance difference in religion and ethnic background creates a lot of problems (Jox, 40). These negative aspects include communication barriers, racism and stereotype.
Language barriers in university are as a result of students being intensely cultural and racial diversified. Communication barriers directly reduce the productivity of a person because there is minimal understanding of a concept (Ely, 272).Communication challenges also make students to be less interactive with others. This will lead to less innovation in students as opposed to previous researchers who stated that diversity facilitates innovation.
Language barriers create social tension especially in students that have extremely low self esteem (Banks, 200). Social integrations occur when people that speak two different languages learn, live, and work at the same place. As a result of this, many countries around the world have made it clear that is important for immigrants to learn their official language before one come to their countries. The United States have not been excluded from this requirement. Formation of cliques in schools and at work places is a natural process that is difficult for someone to control. Although there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, cliques reduce and even hinder effectiveness and efficiency in a person especially students.
The next major aspect of culture diversity is discrimination. Culture discrimination refers to the exclusion of a group based on their cultural values and beliefs. Students that have not been born in the United States and have come in this country for the sake of education are the ones that are highly likely to be discriminated based on their culture. This discrimination can be direct or indirect and the victim always surfers psychological torture (Linn, 41). Tribalism and racism are the most known form of discrimination among students in universities. This cultural discrimination can manifest itself in unfair hiring and unfair grading of students. Globalization in education has also contributed to these phenomena of culture diversity.
UNESCO has noted that cultural discrimination is mainly directed to minorities in the society. They majorly include Africans and Asians who have come from their mother land. This concept can also manifest itself in politics at the universities and at the national level. University students are now forming groups based on their ethnic background. The majority communities tend to rule for a long time and this has discouraged many minorities’ potential leaders from vying for a sit. It is important to respect the different cultures that every single person comes from. The widely fixed image or idea on a person based on their ethnic background constitutes racism (Linn, 42). This is the major problem that still faces the United States both at work place and at school.
Cultural resistance is also another aspect of culture diversity. Josh Greenberger, president of Alpha Measure pointed out that in workplaces and school settings there is resistance in cultural change (Joux, 42).It becomes difficult for people including students to engage with another. Accommodation of other people’s culture becomes harder as more ethnic groups keep arriving in the United States universities. The natives feel that they are threatened and that causes them to discriminate against others. Students and the institutions should note that if diversity is not managed well then the nation will experience problems related to this.
Stereotyping is another common phenomenon related to racism that is based on culture that somebody may be associated with (Banks, 52).An example is when somebody says that all white people are obese and lazy because they are used to nannies. The television series the Simpson is a classic stereotype of this concept. This can create conflict among people especially during group work assignments or team work projects at workplaces. From the article by Devey, “just who loses?” the paper argues that there have been many cases of discrimination regardless of the efforts made to embrace diversity.
From the scholarly article “The effects of Cultural Diversity in the Workplace” by Dr. Gillian martin states that cultural diversity at the workplace has both negative and positive effects. From the article we can see that negative consequences seem to overweigh the positive ones. Loss in productivity, dysfunctional conflicts and difficulty in achieving harmony are some for the negative consequences to note. The articles however state that with proper management, the negative outcomes can be changes into positive ones.
Reducing problematic aspects related to culture diversity
Culture is something that shapes us, it influence the ideas we have and how to interacting a given setting. Both Hispanic and Russian each have its distinct ways of acting or approaching different scenarios when interacting with others. Having knowledge of how to accommodate the beliefs of others without judging them is important for creating peace in universities, workplaces and also countries at large (Ely, 51). Each race encompasses a multiple of different ethnic groups in them and it is important to understand them.
The first step to overcoming this challenge is to first recognize that there exist abundant classes of cultures in individuals. Acknowledging and validating other people’s ways of doing things is important in every institution’s program. Once people become tolerant of other people’s beliefs and norms, then less of discrimination and stereotyping will be seen in public institutions and universities. The rights of minorities must be respected. The rights of belonging to ethnic group, and linguistic minorities like enjoying their cultures, to profess and practice own religion and also using their native language without discrimination.
Empowering individuals to accept themselves and others is an important step in reducing culture diversity problems (Ely, 57).Celebrating cultures rather than tolerating them will assist in achieving this objective. There is maximum potential in productivity when people become interested in other people’s cultures. Through shared ideas, innovation will be accelerated especially among students. The contribution of diverse groups in to a project will promote togetherness. The people are not the only the ones to benefit but the economy at large. Celebrating culture leads to more innovations, more jobs and hence increase in growth in the economy of the United States.
Other recommended steps to reducing culture diversity resistance is incorporating training programs in different courses that student are undertaking. Institutions of higher learning should all have seminars that exclusively talk about culture tolerance and celebrations. The major disadvantage with this step is that there will be increased cost when managing these problems (Miller, 39). This can either be direct or indirect cost. The cost of increased tolerance is an indirect one and the amount of money spent for the training to occur is a direct one.
There should be culture competence in schools and workplaces and this will increase the ability for people to interact effectively. This ability will however depend on the level of awareness of people’s cultural overview. The more the culture difference presence the more training and awareness should be done to improve the tolerance (Joux, 43). Communication is also an important aspect that will help reduce culture intolerance. This is particularly important when the level of prejudice is high in schools and there is need for immediate corrective measure. Team building that helps in communication will facilitate this step.
Conclusion
Race-base discrimination can have negative impact both to targets and the perpetrators. This can lead to considerable economic and social costs. To reduce such discriminations, Each and every person should acknowledge that there is a problem and see how to work on fixing it. Education is a strategy which every learning institution must take part in addressing the issue, public leadership and legislative actions and improving human right protection should be put in place.
From the above discussion we can see that the differences in cultures in the US have helped shaped the general country’s culture. White Americans, Hispanics, African Americans are all different cultures that we experience in our everyday life. The positive aspects of this diversity in culture are increases in innovation and stimulation of the American economy. This is because more jobs are created through this diversity. However the main and worrying thing about this diversity is the negative aspects of it. My argument is that there are more negative consequences that relate to diversity than the positive aspects. It has been proven that to some extend intolerance in culture diversity causes the economy to dampen. This is due to the increases in racism, stereotyping and communication barriers. Cultural racism for as long as anyone can remember has become a major issue in this country. Judging people based on their beliefs and norms has directly affected people especially from the minority communities. Stereotyping which is also a form of culture racism has had a hand in it. However students and the country at large can accept that this is a major problem and different steps should be taken to reduce them. The major recommendation is just to increase awareness in people.
Work cited
Ang, Soon, and Linn Van Dyne. Handbook of cultural intelligence. Routledge, 2015.
Banks, James A. Cultural diversity and education. Routledge, 2015.
Cox, Taylor H., and Stacy Blake. “Managing cultural diversity: Implications for organizational competitiveness.” The Executive (1991): 45-56.
Diller, Jerry. Cultural diversity: A primer for the human services. Nelson Education, 2013.
Ely, Robin J., and David A. Thomas. “Cultural diversity at work: The effects of diversity perspectives on work group processes and outcomes.” Administrative science quarterly 46.2 (2001): 229-273.
Joux, Alexandre. “The regulation of cultural industries to the Internet age and the challenges for cultural diversity: The case of french radio quotas.” GLOBAL MEDIA JOURNAL-CANADIAN EDITION 9.1 (2016): 37-50.
Milliken, Frances J., and Luis L. Martins. “Searching for common threads: Understanding the multiple effects of diversity in organizational groups.” Academy of management review 21.2 (1996): 402-433.
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Parekh, Bhikhu. “Rethinking multiculturalism: Cultural diversity and political theory.” Ethnicities 1.1 (2001): 109-115.