Cause and Effect Paper - the Effects of the Gap

Cause and Effect Essay #1, prompt #2

The Effects of the Gap

In 1975, during the aftermath of the Vietnam War, refugee families were forced to leave their homes in Vietnam to escape Communist control, and come to a foreign country called America. During this time, as is true today, immigrants from Mexico were also trickling in through the boarder looking for new opportunities for their families on American soil. Although many families did reach the goal of success and prosperity, a huge price was paid in return. That price was an offering up of their culture to survive. This giving up of culture has unwittingly caused a generation gap. The effects of the generation gap are a lack of cultural loyalty and a lack of cultural awareness.

Once in America, immigrants to this country had to quickly adapt to the busy, fast-paced American culture of hard work and years of schooling. They also had to assimilate into the great melting pot called “America.” Eager to support their household financially and educationally, immigrants, such as the Vietnamese and Mexicans, often found jobs which required them to wake up at sunrise seven days a week. With little time to spend with their families, parents had no opportunity, to teach their children of their heritage, and the American schooling they received, taught nothing of their Vietnamese or Mexican history. The lack of education these Vietnamese-American and Mexican-American children have caused a generation gap between them and their parents.

Lack of cultural loyalty can occur if parents do not educate their children of their origin. Jack Lopez entitled Of Cholos and Surfers, writes about how his parents, who are of Mexican origin, took pride in living in a Latino environment, and when they moved into the suburbs into a “white” community, Lopez’s parents felt like they had “Thrust themselves and their children into what was called at the time the melting pot of Los Angeles” (Lopez 16). Lopez did not understand why his father took such pride in being a Latino, because his father never really educated him on what his parents had to go through to come to America in order to give his children better lives. Lopez was born in America, with Mexican decent, so, when his father would ask other people if they were Mexican, Lopez did not know why his father had the need to connect to his fellow Latinos. It was a comforting feeling to Lopez’s father when he was able to talk in his native tongue (Spanish) in a predominantly Caucasian area, and still have a connection with another human being. This was the way Lopez’s father could feel at home again, even though he was living in a whole other country. Lopez, on the other hand, lacked cultural loyalty because he never received the proper education from his parents. Lopez only knew that being a Mexican to him wasn’t that big of a deal, at the time he thought, “[He] was a pioneer in the sociological sense that [He] had no distinct ethnic piece of geography on which my pride and honor depended” (Lopez 16).

Parents that can not find the time for whatever reason, to talk to and educate their children of their diverse cultural past, create the generation-gap between themselves and the children they are raising in the U.S. I have some Mexican family members that came here straight from Mexico, and I also have a few that are Mexican Americans. The part of my family that came here directly from Mexico had taught their children at an early age to speak Spanish, and encourages their children to learn more about their back round. The family that I have, that was born here in the United States, but is of Mexican decent, doesn’t even care if their child speaks Spanish or not. There is no evidence what so ever that their children are even Mexican. First-generation immigrants usually try to instill some form of cultural back round into their children, while the second-generation probably wasn’t taught anything to even pass on. Second-generation immigrants are natives to the U.S., making it hard for them to understand why their parents want to keep their long-lived traditions and family values alive.

Nancy Wride, author of Vietnamese Youths No Longer Look Homeward, writes that even the public schools in the U.S. aren’t teaching their children anything about their Vietnamese back round. Vietnamese- born- American children suffer because they are “generally ignorant to the circumstances that brought them to the United States” (Wride 161). Wride‘s essay also looks into the life of twenty-two year old Huy Tran, a High School student she interviewed, and how he and his father were forced out of their home in Vietnam, and had to leave his mother and siblings behind. In the story Tran talks about how he was only twelve when this happened, and was too young to remember the minute details of fleeing