The problem of cultural identity and the ethnic ghetto

Abstract

There exists personal and group (national) identity, which is a separateness having its own value which is reflected in the social interaction and in the culture of a given individual and society. Culture denotes the quality of possessed needs and the ways of their satisfying as well as the resources of values (serving to satisfy those needs) acquired or produced owing to the possessed skills, in the context of the social life. In the USA the dimentions of the pathological phenomenon, which is a certain cathegory of uprooted persons, depraved of group and cultural identity, have been shown. Similar to the great value of personal identity in the social interaction, national identity also has its undeniable value in the international interaction, as far as the general development of human culture is concerned. The United States are an interesting example for a sociological analysis in this matter.

The present article presents the problem of the coexistence of the Polish ethnic group with the rest of the society, the problem of maintaining its cultural identity and integration with the whole society of the USA. The problem consists in maintaining the proper proportions between losing their own cultural identity and creating a ghetto. Retaining a ghetto is often imputed to the Polish communities. The article shows that insinuations of this kind are untrue and harmful for keeping their cultural identity.

Poles, who started to settle in great quantities in Detroit after 1857, after breaking the language barrier, strove for a full integration in all the fields with the whole society However, they met with religious discrimination (this is expressed by bishop C. Borgess's attitude towards the Polish priests: Rev. Wieczorek and Rev. Kolasiński), economic discrimination (in the times of crises Poles were dismissed in the first place) and political discrimination (they were not admited to the Civil Service). This discrimination did not allow the Polish community to properly join the social mechanisms ruling the American society. This did not, however, deprave the Poles of their own identity, although close housing estates disappeared and many Poles changed their names.

The problem of the place for the Polish community in the USA society is still current and can only be solved by the community itself.