The Immigrant Advantage

Courtship Arranged Marriages and the Romantic Meaning of Love
The primary theme of The Immigrant Advantage by Kolker is that immigrants to America bring something with them in their cultures and communities that Americans can learn from. They have certain traits or habits that Americans could benefit from having if they stopped long enough to learn from their immigrant neighbors. Kolker highlights these good traits and shows how they work for immigrants. For example, she focuses each chapter on a specific lesson that immigrant groups provide through their own cultural experiences. The first chapter shows how to save money and uses the Vietnamese immigrants in America as the case study for this good habit. The second chapter focuses on how to take care of one’s parents and looks at the Hispanic-American culture for this lesson. The third chapter looks at the courting rituals of South Asian immigrants in America and shows that Americans could learn a lesson in courtship by reading about this group. The fourth chapter looks at how one can learn and uses the stories of Korean and Chinese afterschool programs in the US for the basis of this lesson. In short, each chapter analyzes something positive that the various ethnic immigrant groups in America bring and what Americans could learn from them if they only gave them a chance. This review will focus on lessons from these chapters to show how immigrants can teach Americans something important.
The custom of the Vietnamese to pay dues to a club by using peer pressure to make sure members save money is described in the first chapter. Kolker explains that this is a custom that is not unique to the Vietnamese but that helps the people to achieve the goal of saving each month to pay their dues. The hat is passed around the room and everyone is expected to pay in cash, and that cash is then given to a different member each month. That member pockets the cash. As everyone pays in, everyone gets a payment before long, and the use of peer pressure—everyone watches and everyone knows who is not paying in—helps the process to work smoothly. This custom gives the Vietnamese a tool for success in terms of saving because it uses the power of community and peer pressure to make sure everyone is doing it.
The custom of South Asian immigrants regarding marriage is another important lesson. As Kolker points out, Americans could learn a lot from this population because they do not have many romantic notions about love being a thunderbolt. They are far too practical and mature to think of life-long partnerships in terms of feelings and emotions, which are too often ephemeral and ethereal. Kolker states that “in the South Asian view, shared background—shorthand for religion, caste, income, and aspirations—makes up the basic equipment any couple needs for a chance at happiness” (85). For a courtship to proceed, the couple is matched up according to the characteristics of shared background. It is a simple matter of arrangement from that point forward. Logic and reason are used to facilitate the arrangement, instead of emotions and “chemistry,” which is the American notion of two people hitting it off and feeling a spark of love that they nourish and grow into something wonderful. The South Asian view of marriage helps this group succeed in terms of courtship because it matches people based on how well they are likely to get along given they share the same background, beliefs, class, and so on. It is a simple affair and one that would help Americans get out of their romantic notions of marriage being the culmination of the spark of chemistry catching fire.
The custom of sheltering multiple generations of one family under one roof is shown to be a success with West Indian families in America because they share a “mutual understanding of goals” (Kolker 119). Multiple generations of Indian families will live together without getting in one another’s way because they all understand the importance of working towards the goal of making it in America. They all also have a shared cultural understanding of their obligation to one another: children understand their obligation to their parents and parents understand their obligation to their children. There is no confusion on this matter. For Americans the system might seem problematic because we delay “adulthood” status until the child is 18 or 21. For West Indian families children are deemed adults as soon as they can comprehend their familial obligations and duties. No one is babied in a West Indian family. For this reason, the people mature more quickly and are more readily accepting of the duties they must face.
These three customs—the practice of saving among the Vietnamese, the practice of courtship among South Asians, and the practice of sharing space among the West Indians—all show a remarkable sense of how a shared identity and common culture can help a community to come together and make sure that it survives and carries on and that each person is doing his or her part to maintain not only themselves but also the whole. In my opinion, these customs are fantastic and should be emulated by Americans. The problem for Americans, however, is that they have no shared sense of culture or community on the scale that one sees among these immigrant populations. These people in these groups know one another. Americans, on the other hand, are so insulated and isolated that they often never even meet their own neighbors much less share a word with them.
The custom of using peer pressure to save money is a good one but it would never work in America. Americans are too individualistic and skeptical to trust this sort of arrangement. The custom of courting by arranging matches based on shared background is something that Americans could possibly embrace, but it would require having people who come from the same group. The problem here is that Americans do not have much in the way of class, education or belief system that one can find in common with another person. Religion has been downplayed in America: people believe a variety of different things about God without having any defined dogmas or customs that they share with others. Their class experiences are likely to differ based simply on where they grow up as class is a highly relative phenomenon in America. Their education is the same way. Americans are also far too romantic about love and marriage and most of them do not even want to marry anymore because they come from divorced families and do not want that risk. There are more and more civil unions in America than before and more and more single parent homes because no one takes marriage seriously. This is because there is no underlying religious or social culture that puts demands on people to pursue marriage and maintain it. Both men and women have been taught by first, second, third and fourth wave feminists that having children is not fulfilling and that what is fulfilling (at least for women) is getting a job alongside men in the workplace. In this manner the whole idea of marriage being linked with procreation and family-building has been devalued in America. That linkage will not come back without a total overhaul of the culture.
The idea of sharing space as shown by the West Indians is probably the one most Americans could get behind because like it or not they are going to have to start sharing space. With the US shutting down the economy and forcing people out of work because of a flu virus, people are going to be moving back home and will have to figure it out. The problem here is that there is not much shared sense of common goals among the generations. That would be something American families would have to address. Maybe by addressing that, the other two issues could also be addressed.
I find all these customs useful and appealing in my own life. I come from a Catholic family so I can appreciate the idea of sacrificing for the greater good. In my family there is respect for the individual but also for the duty one owes to others, and I like the idea of courting based on shared background and applying logic and reason to it instead of suffering through the confusion of dating looking for that spark of romance or chemistry. At the same time, it is kind of simplistic to deny that romance exists. People do fall in love; the problem is that they think they always have to have that feeling of being in love. Being in love is as much a mental state as it is an emotional state—probably more so over time in fact. I would like to apply that custom to my life more than the others. I do not think I would like to feel peer pressure about saving money for dues. I am good enough with saving money on my own to feel like I need that, though I appreciate the custom and I like the communal aspect of it. The idea of sharing space with family is also one that I would not mind—so long as there is enough space. I grew up in a small home with a lot of brothers and sisters, though, so I know how hard it can be.
In conclusion, Americans can learn a lot from immigrants in terms of their cultural customs and ways of doing things. Whether it is saving money, engaging in courtship or sharing space with family members, there is something to be said for these methods. I would like to see more Americans taking culture seriously and finding ways to make these ideas work for them.
Works Cited
Kolker, Claudia. The Immigrant Advantage. Free Press, 2011.