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Cultural diversity in the USA, essay
Melting pot united states
Melting pot
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The United States is considered the melting pot of the western world. It boasts many different cultures. People from every part of the world have chosen to live amongst others. They can either assimilate within the cultures; Italian Americans, or maintain their own cultures; Greeks. With such diverse cultures being represented, it is hard to fathom individuals being denied basic human rights. In other areas of the world, humans are being tortured, raped, and killed. These human rights violations are being protected under the muse of tradition, or culture. Cultural rights are being elevated by the notion that only people within that particular society can moderate their own culture. This is called cultural relativism. Although, cultural relativism states cultures cannot be judged by outside societies, individual human rights should outweigh cultural ones.
Cultural relativists promote the rights of cultures to dictate what is morally accepted within one’s own society. Cultural relativism is defined as the view that an action is morally right if one’s culture approves of it (Vaughn). This ideology is formed to prevent ethnocentrism, or the belief that one’s culture is superior to another. Though in theory this sounds plausible, it does little to promote an understanding of different cultures. Since the society makes up the laws that dictates and protects its own people, universal laws of protection may not be applied. Cultural rights are important in that they protect individual cultures against the majority states and communities. (Donnelly 219). If it were not for cultural rights, the smaller cultures would cease existing along with their traditions and beliefs.
Tradition, therefore, may be a front for continued prejudices within...
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...ant, basic human rights are inalienable and universal. These rights cannot be disregarded for traditions or customs.
Works Cited
Abusharaf, Rogaia Mustafa, ed. Female Circumcision. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
Ball, Olivia and Paul Gready. The No-Nonsense Guide to Human Rights. Oxford: New Internationalist Publications Ltd, 2006.
Donnelly, Jack. Universal Human Rights in Theory & Practice. 2nd. Ithica: Cornell University Press, 2003.
Jones, Adam, ed. Gendercide and Genocide. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004.
Phillip. "Human Rights." 2008. Oxford Reference Online. 4 September 2011 .
The Desert Flower. Dir. Sherry Horman. 2009.
The Stoning of Soraya. Dir. Cyrus Nowrasteh. Perf. Mozhan Marno. 2008.
Vaughn, Lewis. Doing Ethics. 2nd. Castle House: W.W. Norton & Company Ltd., 2008.
Cultural Relativism is a moral theory which states that due to the vastly differing cultural norms held by people across the globe, morality cannot be judged objectively, and must instead be judged subjectively through the lense of an individuals own cultural norms. Because it is obvious that there are many different beliefs that are held by people around the world, cultural relativism can easily be seen as answer to the question of how to accurately and fairly judge the cultural morality of others, by not doing so at all. However Cultural Relativism is a lazy way to avoid the difficult task of evaluating one’s own values and weighing them against the values of other cultures. Many Cultural Relativist might abstain from making moral judgments about other cultures based on an assumed lack of understanding of other cultures, but I would argue that they do no favors to the cultures of others by assuming them to be so firmly ‘other’ that they would be unable to comprehend their moral decisions. Cultural Relativism as a moral theory fails to allow for critical thoughts on the nature of morality and encourages the stagnation
Before any legislation could be implemented, a definition of human rights had to be compiled and accepted. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was approved in 1948 by th...
Condé, H. Victor. A Handbook on International Human Rights Terminology Human Rights in International Perspective; V. 8 Lincoln University of Nebraska Press, 2004.
"Universal Declaration of Human Rights." Amnesty International USA - Protect Human Rights. 19 May 2009 .
45 Oona Hathaway, ‘Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference?’ (2003) 112 Yale Law Journal
Universalism contends that human rights are a common cause which allies all peoples together, regardless of culture
There is such a thing as universality of human rights that is different from cultural relativism, humanity comes before culture and traditions. People are humans first and belong to cultures second (Collaway, Harrelson-Stephens, 2007 p.109), this universality needs to take priority over any cultural views, and any state sovereignty over its residing citizens.
Indeed, human right is never just a legal matter as it also involves moral principles to justify its inalienable and non-transferable status. UDHR preamble states that human right is the “recognition of the inherent dignity”. That means we are entitled to human rights because we have inherent values to be pursued and realized. Human rights are originated in ourselves, but not conferred by law or others. If a society does not recognize those aforementioned justifications, human rights would be unsupported and a...
113-117 Human Rights: Politics and Practices. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
While on one hand there is a growing consensus that human rights are universal on the other exist critics who fiercely oppose the idea. Of the many questions posed by critics revolve around the world’s pluri-cultural and multipolarity nature and whether anything in such a situation can be really universal.
Rights have been and continue to be violated across the world on both massive and miniscule scales. With rights violations being a constant issue, it is necessary, although it may be difficult, to determine which violations are human rights violations. Two aspects are crucial in this process: universality and paramountcy. Although practicability is also set forth as a criterion by Maurice Cranston, it is not as crucial when determining which acts violate human rights, or when they came into existence. This is due to the fact that when trying to distinguish between rights and human rights, almost all rights, not just specifically human rights, can, in some way, be practicable. For this reason, practicability, for the purpose of this essay, is
The doctrine of human rights were created to protect every single human regardless of race, gender, sex, nationality, sexual orientation and other differences. It is based on human dignity and the belief that no one has the right to take this away from another human being. The doctrine states that every ‘man’ has inalienable rights of equality, but is this true? Are human rights universal? Whether human rights are universal has been debated for decades. There have been individuals and even countries that oppose the idea that human rights are for everybody. This argument shall be investigated in this essay, by: exploring definitions and history on human rights, debating on whether it is universal while providing examples and background information while supporting my hypothesis that human rights should be based on particular cultural values and finally drawing a conclusion.
In explaining Cultural Relativism, it is useful to compare and contrast it with Ethical Relativism. Cultural Relativism is a theory about morality focused on the concept that matters of custom and ethics are not universal in nature but rather are culture specific. Each culture evolves its own unique moral code, separate and apart from any other. Ethical Relativism is also a theory of morality with a view of ethics similarly engaged in understanding how morality comes to be culturally defined. However, the formulation is quite different in that from a wide range of human habits, individual opinions drive the culture toward distinguishing normal “good” habits from abnormal “bad” habits. The takeaway is that both theories share the guiding principle that morality is bounded by culture or society.
…rights which are inherent to the human being ... human rights acknowledges that every single human being is entitled to enjoy his or her human rights without distinction as to race, [color], sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. [To add on, human] rights are legally guaranteed by human rights law, protecting individuals and groups against actions that interfere with fundamental freedoms and human dignity (Human rights for
Cultural relativism is the term given to the idea that there are no universal moral values that apply to all mankind and that every culture has its own set of moral principles. This set of principles varies from culture to culture, and it is extremely rare, if not totally impossible, to find a moral principle that is followed by all cultures. For example, the idea of arranged marriages, which is the concept of two families marrying their son and daughter even though they don’t particularly know each other, is fairly common in Indian culture but non-existent in American culture. Cultural relativism is the opposite of moral objectivism, which states that there is a set of universal moral values that should be followed by all people of all cultures