What does “Hyphenated culture” mean?

Im reading this artical written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and he is talking about ethnicity and culture and the line he says,

“So it’s only when we’re free to explore the complexities of our hyphenated culture that we can discover what a genunely common American culture might actually look like”

1. What is the signifiance of the terrm, “hyphenated culture”? What does the term convey to readers?

Thanks.

Top 2 Answers

A few days ago

GeneL

Favorite Answer

Perhaps he also alludes to a society which has lost respect and regard for the sanctity of traditional marriage where now, in today’s world, the wife refuses to relinquish her own family’s name and identity, insisting instead to hyphenate her name so as to, on the one hand, maintain her pre-marriage identity while, at the same time, recognizing the partnership of the marriage contract by simply adding on or, hyphenating, the new name she, by law and custom, acquires from the union.

The metaphoric example shows that her pre-marriage name was, for example Ms. Mary Smith, and now with the marriage to Mr. Jones, she becomes legally and officially Mrs. Mary Smith-Jones, thereby satisfying and embracing both the old, as well as the new, traditions.

A few days ago

Anonymous

He means things like ‘afro-american’ and ‘italian-american’ and so on.

People don’t seem to be content to just be ‘american’; they want to differentiate themselves and form into cliques and so on.

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