"Just ask yourself, when was the last time you saw a public TV documentary on the family farm, small towns, or anything else in mainstream America?"1 Mainstream America: the term has certainly been being bandied about as of late. It seems a simple enough concept, yet its meaning is wrapped up with numerous assumptions, generalizations, and ambiguities. It is for this reason that it is necessary to delve into its meaning, and what implication this meaning has for American schools.
Mainstream refers to the primary, or dominant, tendency or trend, or, as an attribute, as that which is widely accepted. This definition is very important. It closes from contestation a meaning which is undefined to the extent that "mainstream" is the normative term. That is to say, that by using the label of "mainstream", one obscures what it is one is referring to, while de facto certifying it for mass approval. Furthermore, the implication of "mainstream" is the positing of its dichotomy with that which is "deviant". Since deviancy is, by definition, not "widely accepted" nor the "primary tendency", it is de facto removed from mass approval.
It is clear then that the term "mainstream America" needs to be unpacked, as the adjective connotes a value judgment without denoting any further attributes on which such a judgment could be based. If we look at just those titles that include the term "mainstream" and come up on a library holding search under "mainstream and America" and "mainstream and American", perhaps we can get a window on what is being referred to via "mainstream America."
Negotiating the Mainstream: A Survey of the Afro-American Experience. Black Life in Corporate America: Swimming in the Mainstream. Blueprints for Indian Education: Improving Mainstream Schooling. Crossing the Mainstream: Multicultural Perspectives in Teaching Literature. Speak Standard, Too: Add Mainstream American English to Your Talking Style. This is one-third of what came up. With the exception of the last, each is positing a contrast with the mainstream2. That which is part of the mainstream would not have to negotiate, swim or cross the mainstream. We could then presume that Black Americans and American Indians are not part of the mainstream. Nor any multicultural perspectives.
It seems the implication is that mainstream America is a norm positioned through the defining of Others, who deviate from the norm. Yet this positioning is vague, shadowy; rather akin to triangulation via moving points. Definition via negation, while logically useful, is psychologically dangerous when applied to identity. Negation moors identity to positions "independent" and "external", which if they move, would stretch, twist, buckle or rend "self-concept". To maintain an identity thus placed on a Procrustean bed of its own making, requires fixing the mobility of conceptual Others.
Thus the term mainstream America seems more one of delimiting an interior and an exterior, as opposed to defining either. That this is the case should not suprise, given the implied dialectical between "mainstream" and "deviant" mentioned at the start. Yet if we are to unpack the concept, we must get inside that border, and survey the terrain. The exterior, being defined as including Blacks, Native Americans and "multicultural" groups, suggests an interior that is white and "monocultural" (though even this requires knowledge of the white/black dichotomy which runs through American discourse.)
Mainstream America is white and monocultural? That doesn't square with Ravitch's assertion that the mainstream includes Oprah and Louis Armstrong, Spike Lee and Malcolm X. "If a potentially alien force could be seen as unserious, and therefore beneath notice, it could be allowed to fill a gap in the national pattern without disturbing the pattern. It ran free in WASP backyards as fun (the fate of jazz)."3 We have two definitions here; Ravitch's and a confrontational one. The confrontational one, white and monocultural, can import pieces of the Other (see the term "alien force") inside as tools, without permitting the redefinition of the boundaries.
WASP. White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Is this, and only this, mainstream America? According to Bob Dole, family farms and small towns are part of mainstream America. But let us recall the definition of mainstream, as the predominate trend, or what is widely accepted. Therefore, it is important that implicit in "mainstream America" is a conceptualized America subscribed to, as well as a chronological direction. Leaving aside whether most Americans subscribe to "family farms" and "small towns", neither are the dominant trend, but are holdovers from the past.
If mainstream America is contiguous with WASP, then that must also be unpacked. One might try to dissect each piece separately; however useful that may be, it does not get to the interior. The reason it does not is because WASP, like "mainstream America" is constructed in opposition to everything that it is not. It is "not non-white", "not non-Anglo-Saxon" and "not non-Protestant". Yet it does have an attribution meaning. The WASP speaks English; has no cuisine; is emotionally reserved; and reckons value in monetary terms. Intellectually, the WASP considers himself the heir of Greece and the Judeo-Christian Tradition, but prefers thought "pitched to the level of college sophomores, which is about as high as WASPs ever feel the need to go..."4. Traditionally, the WASP has been vaguely pink, or ashen.
Are WASP and mainstream America equivalent? Both have been linked to "white", so it is possible. But how are we to consider "monocultural", which we posited as an attribute of mainstream in opposition to "multicultural" which exists outside in the realm of Other? A monoculture, in agriculture, means depending on a single crop, which is usually planted in large continuous fields. A more subjective reading of the term of "monocultural" would be "the one culture".
"[T]he real meaning of these slogans is that the power of the existing mainstream society to determine its own destiny shall be drastically reduced while the power of other groups, formerly marginal or external to that society, will be increased."5 This is but one statement against multiculturalism. Yet it is apparent that there is a feeling of conflict, between an "existing mainstream" and an overwhelming, undefined horde. Yet how could that be if mainstream America is subscribed to as the primary trend?
WASP is not mainstream America. WASPs are rather within the mainstream, and are trying to maintain their imagining as the definitional meaning of the subscribed concept, "America". Multiculturalism necessarily exists in a contestational relation with this prior imagining. Because both WASP and "mainstream America" were defined contraposed to an exterior they are the interior of, they can be toppled by the conceptual reorganization of the Other. Clearly, it is a struggle for power, the power to define, and it is a struggle being waged in America's schools.
"In elementary school, nothing challenged the impressions I had been gathering. Instead, I was conditioned not to notice who wasn't there. My school books, from Dick and Jane through eighth grade geography, showed people who looked just like me."6 It is possible that forty years later there may have been a black child in the Dick and Jane books of my childhood; but neither Dick nor Jane were. What we learned about Native Americans was small, and relegated to fourth grade social studies. The implication was probably not far from "Indians permeate American mythology, but they are a sideshow of American history."7
This is what schooling according to mainstream America has been: eliding its way through material that might challenge the subscribed imagined community, presenting a homogenized and pasteurized content. Conceptually, such a curriculum is lacking in substance, failing to provide means to grasp the issues of the day. So far, "mainstream" has been the center of the argument. But "America" must also be explored, and positioned cognitively.
"America" is a function of history and people; it is more than just terrain. In one sense, there are as many Americas as there have ever been people to consider it. The "America" of public school text books is but one, or rather, one series of "America"s, within a clutch of other Americas.
These multiple Americas are differentiated via who, and what, is included and excluded. Who the actors in history are, and what stories they tell: these define "America" by constituting the community who imagines together. Any given "America" is a discourse, synthesized from an interacting matrix of communicants. In these parleys, the past is not dead and buried, but speaks. Imagining communities can be small or large; inclusive or exclusive; weak or strong; unified or divisive. The WASPs were a group who were able to control a discourse such that their "America" was the accepted and received America. This America was taught in schools and was the basis of public policy. In it, whites were the main actors, acting upon others soon to be relegated to the dustbin of history. Multicultural education challenges that hegemony.
Where does this leave "mainstream America"? It is one "America", subscribed to as "widely accepted" by an imagining community that considers itself representative of the "predominant trend". This definition is in a dialectic with an exterior, that which is not mainstream America. But the definition itself cannot be made via that exterior; it would be tautological, as the exterior is exterior for not being interior. Because the definition is by subscription, the fluidity of others in the exterior does not automatically impinge on the interior.
"Rap's ability to be righteously, uncompromisingly black yet speak to mixed audiences proved to me the power of undiluted African American thought, both as a celebration of our people and a critique of the whitebread mainstream."8 "If America's multiculturalism means respect for actual difference, we should uphold and encourage this reality against the white-bread, golden-arch version of Disneyland America."9 "Integrating African Americans into the mainstream will benefit everyone in the long run, and is the only practical solution to racism."10
If we take these quotes to begin to build-up a definition of mainstream America, we see something white, mass-produced, middle-brow, and, most likely, suburban. It is to be noted that white here mostly refers to a normative concept; whites are being largely held to partake nominally of the WASP characteristics noted earlier: culinarily limited, emotively restrained, aesthetically provincial. Pigmentally, mainstream America is no longer restricted to pink and beige skin tones.
Why is mainstream America so... bland? It is too late to attribute it to the English inability to cook. It rather is the result of a denaturing process which has marked joining the mainstream. This process of acculturation has been encouraged via the schools, which have played a strong role in enforcing and disseminating normative styles of dress, speech and food choice. The concept of the "melting pot" was an expression of this "Americanization" view. The rise of mass-production during the twentieth century has exacerbated this process, standardizing much of American life to the lowest common denominator. As the twenty-first century approaches, the past is being declared irrelevant, removing even that texture from mainstream America. In this, the imagined community of "America" is shrunk to include fewer communicants, as the past is banished from the present, and place no longer speaks its silent volumes.
If the schools are to address America, they must take part in an imagining of community. They should not content themselves to a simple parroting of "mainstream America", not as the limited definition that has been teased out here stands. History, in all its complexity, controversy, and contextuality needs to take a place in America's public schools. Students need to stare deep into the eyes of those who have gone before, need to grapple with the Americas that have been, need to ask themselves and others the hard questions. Students need the past, a rich and vital past, if they are to understand the present. Cardboard cutouts, a few names, dates and acts, do not a history make. Without a sensible past, the present becomes an ever-present now, and the future loses cohesion.
"There has been so little positive research done on the subject of white ethnic groups that one hesitates to state conclusively that ethnic identification and loyalty might be a positive asset for promoting social change in the city. Unfortunately, the rigid theoretical limitations of the official model have made it difficult to persuade funding agencies that such research might be appropriate."11 The term mainstream America is bandied around without definition, and, without much contention. I could find not a single book or article that was primarily focused on the issue. Yet it remains part of a national forum. My suspicion is that "mainstream America" is being used as a strawman to rally acceptance.
"Mainstream America" as a purely surface term does not have a place in the formation of school curriculum. Nor should the narrow definition of mainstream America be the contour of education. As Greeley notes above, more research is needed. It seems difficult to envision the public school curriculum that could be built around considerations such as: "Soft-Boiled Dicks"; "The Year of Living Sensitively" or "Guerrillas in the Mist: Wild Guys and New Age Tribes."12 Yet these entitle essays complied in White Guys: Studies in Postmodern Domination and Difference . As Greeley notes, "...if black is beautiful (and it is) then so is Irish, Polish, Italian, Slovenian, Greek, Armenian, Lebanese and Luxembourger."13 The American schools must incorporate these and many other groups into the American tapestry. Only with such a curriculum can a mainstream America constitute an imagined community and not a communal fantasy.
