--- Jeroen van Baardwijk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> At Stardate 20030621.0817, Jan Coffey wrote:
> >We are the melting pot of the world.
>
> I remember a Geography book we used in school (over twenty years ago) ...
came out of the bottom
> unchanged.
That's sick!
> My point here being: just like whoever wrote that book, I don't believe
> your melting pot exists anymore. If it were, you'd have a homogenised
> society, where everyone has become "American" and has adopted the same
> values, culture etcetera. Yet that is not correct: values and cultures
> differ greatly throughout your country, even within cities and
> neighbourhoods.
>
> Like it or not, the US is very much a multicultural society.
>
You don't get the whole melting pot thing. And you are not giving enough
credit to the individualism. Yes we are multi cultural in that there are
people from different cultures and with different cultures and different
cultural norms living side by side. We do NOT have a ethic of "frelling
eachother gray". (although most of us ~are~ muts).
If you need the analogy to be closer you could use the words mixed stew or
something. You could still call it multi cultural if you like, but you have
to admit that ~our~ multiculturalism is very very different from other multi
cultural areas. (Canada being the easy example)
The point isn't that we all become homeginized that would be boring, and if
that happened then the reason I was discussing this to begin with (cultural
friction for Americans in other countries) wouldn't exist.
We are also very individualistic, and that has a lot to do with our approach.
When you are in the US you get the benifit of the doubt. If something happens
between two people of differnt cultures which could causes conflict between
them they first give eachother the venifit of the doubt, they thing "this
person seems to be differnt than me and they are acting inapropriatly to my
culture, I suppose that there is some reason for this, let me find out before
I get upset." Then after a while you meet enough of a particular group and
you form a model so say, a simple example that everyone should understand,
you an anglo is not offended when a Japanese friend begins slurping at the
table, or when their chinese friend puts their boal to their mouth and scoops
in the rice. An Indian thinks nothing of it when an anglo friend puts books
on the ground as a make shift steping stool, of puts his legs up on the desk
so that the souls of his feet are visible.
It's not like their isn't a break in period. We call it "Americanization"
when a person or family get's to the point where they can operate without the
bagage of their culture of origin. It takes up to 4 generations or more some
times, but I know those who have done it in 1.
It's not like their is no tension, it's not like it isn't sometimes painfull
for the comunity or the individuals, but it does happen. We have a Frech area
of our country just like Canada, but unlike Qubec the New-Orleans area does
not speak French, and has retained much of it's frenchness but nothing like
Qubec.
I livein the Bay Area, the most multi-cultural part of the US. Still, my
group of friends are people who all have simmilar intrests even though we all
have different cultural backgrouds. You see groups of Hong Kongers,
Vietnamese or Indians, or other -recently arived- cultures "clumping" up but
give them a few generations.
Some parents of a couple of my vietnamese or Indian friends would prefer that
their children have a same culture comunity of friends. The Russian comunity
especialy has a lot of this. But it doesn't work that way. Eventualy the kids
find that their freinds are all different kinds of people who all like the
same stuff.
We put up with eachother and are tolerant of eachothers differences.But that
doesn't mean that we try not to be ofencive to anothers culture. It means we
are not offended when another does something that would be offensive in our
culture.
Offense is actualy ture, but at the same time too strong of a word. Thowse of
us who grew up here take this idea as a given, it's just what nice good
people do. So when we are out in another country and someoen get's offended
over something silly, we get offeneded that they are offended. I bet that
looks _arogant_ ~and~ suprisingly -intolerant- IF you don't know what is
going on.
One of the biggest jokes here right now is the Frech "smile" campain. They
are trying to bring back american tureism. The French government seems to
think it is becouse they don't smile as much. But that's just silly. It's
becouse they have such a closed culture. They are unwilling to open to the
world becouse they think that it means they will loose their "Frenchness".
That is what bothers us and annoys us into going somewhere else for vacation.
Specificaly becouse that environemnt makes us uncomfortable. That attitude is
to Americans unethical, and it really does tick us off.
I was at a friends girlfriends house one time for a barbeque on memorial day.
Her mother and father were shocked when she kissed my friend on the cheek and
they put an end to the party, yelling a screeming in their native toung. But
she just left with us and the last thing she said to her parents was "If you
didn't want me to grow up to be an American, then why did you bring me here?"
I was infinatly suprised (and actualy quite pleased) by the look of horror on
her parents faces.
That is what you don't like, but that is the way the world is going. You
can't stick your head in the sand and pretend that the american version of
multi-culturalism isn't spreading. And you can't say that this isn't the best
thing the world could have for peace. You can't have it both ways. Otherwise
you get lots of internal bickering like they have up in Qubec.
=====
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Jan William Coffey
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