I am always reminded that I don’t belong in the culture in which I currently find myself. Always. Sometimes I make the mistake of thinking I am more or less Western until I am forcibly disabused of this notion as well. The most recent occasion was staring out at the view of our city through the as-yet unfinished third floor of our apartment building. Foreigners, of whom I am one, seem to take one look at it and fall in love with the apartment. Immigrants, of whom I am also one, would glance out the window, ask the price, the relative accessibility to resources (like, oh, let’s just choose one at random - water), and evaluate whether a move would be worth it in terms of cold, hard benefit. Foreigners, from which class my international organization prefers to disassociate itself, seek privacy, security in separation. Immigrants tend to seek others of their kind, others who understand, and congregate in families – with a preference for an inner sanctum that only real family can access, because blood is thicker even than patriotism.
I fall on the immigrant side of this more than the foreign.
The reason for today’s rambling is this tension.
Butters gives me books sometimes. So I blame him too.
They’re usually non-fiction and force me to think. So all this is really his fault.
I mean, this time he gave me a novel thinking I’d love it. But he is culpable.
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an sweet, sharp journey through the lives of a young couple who are separated by their ambitions to learn, do, be something outside their countries, and how they find each other again in Nigeria.
I was horribly uncomfortable through most of it – reminded of some words from Orson Scott Card’s Pathfinder series (which, of course, I saved and then somehow lost) about how humans spent so much time talking about race and how it didn’t matter that it was obvious it mattered very much. [Note: If you ever think Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels don't address the same issues as non-fiction, you are very, very wrong. They just do it subtly, removed from our labyrinthine trap of culture and society and colour and politesse, and are all the more piercing for it.]
I was sharply reminded also of the night Butters introduced me to Broad City. Too embarrassed to make it through more than than an episode and a half, one scene stuck in my mind: when Abbi asks Llana to do silly impressions of various European nationalities, but is hurriedly shamed when she asks for a Chinese one. “Are you kidding? No! It’s 2016, dude.”
And that one hilarious tongue-in-cheek scene sums up my criticism of racial awareness and political correctness in today’s world. There are things you’re allowed to make fun of and things that are not up for laughter. There are questions you can ask, and those that are glaring faux pas. There are opinions that you are allowed to have in polite society as a woman in her late 20s, and ones that are just stupid.
I love Bible studies and my church family. I pray to a triune God. I don’t support gay marriage. I don’t enjoy dating unless it’s with a view towards marriage. I’m pro-life to the fullest – from conception to birth to food to childcare to education to abundance. I believe women can preach if they have been called to do so by God. I would welcome LGBTQIA, rich, poor, broken, perfect people into my church, my home, my life without question, as I would hope they could accept a shy, proud, lying, thieving rebel into theirs. These are all out-moded statements that don’t indicate a personal view and a faith in a God who also accepts everyone as they are but does not leave them there; they indicate hate and a preference for a dark past of shame, horrific abuse, and division.
Adichie addressed these ‘acceptable’ opinions and words head-on – specificially those about the myth of colourblindness and not feeling black until she left her country (a sentiment Pastor has also voiced).
My Korean boss once asked me if I had better vision than Koreans.
That’s stupidity.
Telling those born in America that they speak English so well! – that’s stupidity.
Saying Oh, you don’t need sunscreen – that’s stupidity.
But it’s harmless stupidity. It can be answered easily, clearly, directly.
Pretending it doesn’t exist, or being afraid to talk about it creates fear, shots in the dark, and sheer, blind ignorance.
Ignorance that results in telling people to Go back to where they came from. Ignorance that results in laws to keep others out, to force others to accept me, to keep myself safe, to silence dissent as though it doesn’t exist because the voices are saying something I don’t want to understand right now.
And this is the world we’re creating in the name of tolerance.
Ignorance is how the desperately poor and the generously rich can live in the same cities. Ignorance is why harmless stupidity results in racial violence. And that’s why Americanah was beautiful – pieced together like stained glass, it walked the dark veins that shot through each colourful piece of the American Dream. It was the view of a Nigerian immigrant who left her culture to be on the outskirts of an American one, only to return and find herself again at odds with her own people and their way of life. I can’t say I agreed with everything Ifemelu felt or did (most notably where she specified that there as no ‘United League of the Oppressed,’ but black people definitely fared the worst, regardless), and was generally depressed by the parade of broken lives that seemed to crack deeper and harder the further I read. However, the feeling of the book still haunts me – this desperate desire to belong, felt by everyone, and the myriad ways we try and fail to assuage it.
You search for a connection, ask a question, ask a history, and it is seen as racism, a reminder of not-belonging, a subtle slight. You point out your own displacement, your own history, and you are told it’s not the same. In return you lock out those you don’t understand, even if they are trying just as desperately to belong. All of us – in search of an identity that fits perfectly. But it doesn’t exist. No matter how many laws you add – hasn’t the apostle Paul said something like this?
In the East, you belong by going to church, getting a good education, getting married, having children, taking care of your parents, following the right track because it’s always worked before.
In the West, you belong by going out, partying, using the right Instagram filters, dating, volunteering, donating, accepting, forging your on path and leaving others to forge theirs.
We have so many paths that we forget we’re locked in a maze of our own culture with no escape.
But sometimes you do – you escape. Into another. And this maze is more fun because you’re an invincible foreigner, you can’t be harmed by the beasts that roam within. Sometimes it’s more frightening – as with refugees or immigrants trying to adapt. But all these parties are locked out.
Always.
Both from the maze into which they were transplanted, and from their original labyrinth. Never again will they be able to find their way easily through either of their lives.
And they choose that themselves. My parents did. I did. Carrottop and BFG did, and I hope even our local teammates did to a certain extent. We are lost in in the cultures in which we find ourselves. But I hope it is this loss, this sense of not belonging to ourselves that will help us escape.
How?
Find hidden keys. Take a look into secret gardens. Invite others into yours. Share grace. Learn to walk with others. Ask questions. Answer gently.
My life in this country is not the same as yours. No, we have not had the same experiences. No, I can’t possibly understand. But I am here. No, that does not make us the same. But it’s all I have to offer.
For goodness sake, do not be content with feeling your way through the darkness of your own maze forever.
For goodness’ sake.
I fall on the immigrant side of this more than the foreign.
The reason for today’s rambling is this tension.
Butters gives me books sometimes. So I blame him too.
They’re usually non-fiction and force me to think. So all this is really his fault.
I mean, this time he gave me a novel thinking I’d love it. But he is culpable.
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an sweet, sharp journey through the lives of a young couple who are separated by their ambitions to learn, do, be something outside their countries, and how they find each other again in Nigeria.
I was horribly uncomfortable through most of it – reminded of some words from Orson Scott Card’s Pathfinder series (which, of course, I saved and then somehow lost) about how humans spent so much time talking about race and how it didn’t matter that it was obvious it mattered very much. [Note: If you ever think Sci-Fi and Fantasy novels don't address the same issues as non-fiction, you are very, very wrong. They just do it subtly, removed from our labyrinthine trap of culture and society and colour and politesse, and are all the more piercing for it.]
I was sharply reminded also of the night Butters introduced me to Broad City. Too embarrassed to make it through more than than an episode and a half, one scene stuck in my mind: when Abbi asks Llana to do silly impressions of various European nationalities, but is hurriedly shamed when she asks for a Chinese one. “Are you kidding? No! It’s 2016, dude.”
And that one hilarious tongue-in-cheek scene sums up my criticism of racial awareness and political correctness in today’s world. There are things you’re allowed to make fun of and things that are not up for laughter. There are questions you can ask, and those that are glaring faux pas. There are opinions that you are allowed to have in polite society as a woman in her late 20s, and ones that are just stupid.
I love Bible studies and my church family. I pray to a triune God. I don’t support gay marriage. I don’t enjoy dating unless it’s with a view towards marriage. I’m pro-life to the fullest – from conception to birth to food to childcare to education to abundance. I believe women can preach if they have been called to do so by God. I would welcome LGBTQIA, rich, poor, broken, perfect people into my church, my home, my life without question, as I would hope they could accept a shy, proud, lying, thieving rebel into theirs. These are all out-moded statements that don’t indicate a personal view and a faith in a God who also accepts everyone as they are but does not leave them there; they indicate hate and a preference for a dark past of shame, horrific abuse, and division.
Adichie addressed these ‘acceptable’ opinions and words head-on – specificially those about the myth of colourblindness and not feeling black until she left her country (a sentiment Pastor has also voiced).
... “I was waiting for her to ask, 'Was it the one with two eyes or the one with two legs?’ Why didn’t she just ask ‘Was it the black girl or the white girl?’ "
... “Because this is America. You’re supposed to pretend that you don’t notice certain things.”
[Members of the African Students Association] sat around eating, talking, fueling spirits, and their different accents formed meshes of solacing sounds. They mimicked what Americans told them: You speak such good English. How bad is AIDS in your country? It’s so sad that people live on less than a dollar a day in Africa. And they themselves mocked Africa, trading stories of absurdity, of stupidity, and they felt safe to mock, because it was mockery born of longing, and of the heartbroken desire to see a place made whole again.
[Everyone at the party] understood the fleeing from war, from the kind of poverty that crushed human souls, but they would not understand the need to escape from the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness. They would not understand why people like him, who were raised well fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction, conditioned from birth to look towards somewhere else, eternally convinced that real lives happened in that somewhere else, were now resolved to do dangerous things, illegal things, so as to leave, none of them starving, or raped, or from burned villages, but merely hungry for choice and certainty.
- Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Americanah. Anchor, 2014.
Where are you from? is apparently incredibly offensive to a person who is not Caucasian and lives in North America. It is not an opportunity to open up about your history or give a simple answer like, “My family is originally from X, but I’ve grown up in Canada.”
It is certainly not an honest question, perhaps because the questioner thinks you are beautiful or hears an accent or would like to know more about you. It is an indictment – a brutal demand to prove belonging.
On the other hand, there are white – very white – people, who cling to coloured pasts long gone by: Proud First Nations, Metis, Indians... Isn’t it funny how human beings are so desperate to meet in the middle that Asians would deny their roots and Caucasians uphold theirs? And one approach is applauded and the other condemned?
You can’t pretend to escape the dark colonial past belied by your skin colour, but I have every right to deny the ancestry that proclaims itself in the way my eyes are shaped, and the sights that have shaped my way.
It’s obvious that color exists, that differences exist. There’s no point in denying that you look different or that you have a certain background – whether you admit it or not, it has shaped the way your parents raised you, shaped the things you have sought out and enjoyed, and perhaps even shaped those you sought out or who sought you out.
This doesn’t mean that your experience, or that of those around you is flawed and dangerous and hateful. It means it is a part of life and you should be aware of it. This also doesn’t mean that you are exempt from being stupid or racist at times. I once asked a girl on my short-term mission team whether she didn’t eat meat because of her religion.
We were on a short-term mission trip together. I knew her parents. We went to the same church.
If she’d been white, I might have asked if she were vegan, but religion slipped out of my mouth first.
It is certainly not an honest question, perhaps because the questioner thinks you are beautiful or hears an accent or would like to know more about you. It is an indictment – a brutal demand to prove belonging.
On the other hand, there are white – very white – people, who cling to coloured pasts long gone by: Proud First Nations, Metis, Indians... Isn’t it funny how human beings are so desperate to meet in the middle that Asians would deny their roots and Caucasians uphold theirs? And one approach is applauded and the other condemned?
You can’t pretend to escape the dark colonial past belied by your skin colour, but I have every right to deny the ancestry that proclaims itself in the way my eyes are shaped, and the sights that have shaped my way.
It’s obvious that color exists, that differences exist. There’s no point in denying that you look different or that you have a certain background – whether you admit it or not, it has shaped the way your parents raised you, shaped the things you have sought out and enjoyed, and perhaps even shaped those you sought out or who sought you out.
This doesn’t mean that your experience, or that of those around you is flawed and dangerous and hateful. It means it is a part of life and you should be aware of it. This also doesn’t mean that you are exempt from being stupid or racist at times. I once asked a girl on my short-term mission team whether she didn’t eat meat because of her religion.
We were on a short-term mission trip together. I knew her parents. We went to the same church.
If she’d been white, I might have asked if she were vegan, but religion slipped out of my mouth first.
That’s stupidity.
My Korean boss once asked me if I had better vision than Koreans.
That’s stupidity.
Telling those born in America that they speak English so well! – that’s stupidity.
Saying Oh, you don’t need sunscreen – that’s stupidity.
But it’s harmless stupidity. It can be answered easily, clearly, directly.
Pretending it doesn’t exist, or being afraid to talk about it creates fear, shots in the dark, and sheer, blind ignorance.
Ignorance that results in telling people to Go back to where they came from. Ignorance that results in laws to keep others out, to force others to accept me, to keep myself safe, to silence dissent as though it doesn’t exist because the voices are saying something I don’t want to understand right now.
And this is the world we’re creating in the name of tolerance.
Ignorance is how the desperately poor and the generously rich can live in the same cities. Ignorance is why harmless stupidity results in racial violence. And that’s why Americanah was beautiful – pieced together like stained glass, it walked the dark veins that shot through each colourful piece of the American Dream. It was the view of a Nigerian immigrant who left her culture to be on the outskirts of an American one, only to return and find herself again at odds with her own people and their way of life. I can’t say I agreed with everything Ifemelu felt or did (most notably where she specified that there as no ‘United League of the Oppressed,’ but black people definitely fared the worst, regardless), and was generally depressed by the parade of broken lives that seemed to crack deeper and harder the further I read. However, the feeling of the book still haunts me – this desperate desire to belong, felt by everyone, and the myriad ways we try and fail to assuage it.
You search for a connection, ask a question, ask a history, and it is seen as racism, a reminder of not-belonging, a subtle slight. You point out your own displacement, your own history, and you are told it’s not the same. In return you lock out those you don’t understand, even if they are trying just as desperately to belong. All of us – in search of an identity that fits perfectly. But it doesn’t exist. No matter how many laws you add – hasn’t the apostle Paul said something like this?
In the East, you belong by going to church, getting a good education, getting married, having children, taking care of your parents, following the right track because it’s always worked before.
In the West, you belong by going out, partying, using the right Instagram filters, dating, volunteering, donating, accepting, forging your on path and leaving others to forge theirs.
We have so many paths that we forget we’re locked in a maze of our own culture with no escape.
But sometimes you do – you escape. Into another. And this maze is more fun because you’re an invincible foreigner, you can’t be harmed by the beasts that roam within. Sometimes it’s more frightening – as with refugees or immigrants trying to adapt. But all these parties are locked out.
Always.
Both from the maze into which they were transplanted, and from their original labyrinth. Never again will they be able to find their way easily through either of their lives.
And they choose that themselves. My parents did. I did. Carrottop and BFG did, and I hope even our local teammates did to a certain extent. We are lost in in the cultures in which we find ourselves. But I hope it is this loss, this sense of not belonging to ourselves that will help us escape.
How?
Find hidden keys. Take a look into secret gardens. Invite others into yours. Share grace. Learn to walk with others. Ask questions. Answer gently.
My life in this country is not the same as yours. No, we have not had the same experiences. No, I can’t possibly understand. But I am here. No, that does not make us the same. But it’s all I have to offer.
For goodness sake, do not be content with feeling your way through the darkness of your own maze forever.
For goodness’ sake.
No comments:
Post a Comment
At the risk of sounding desperate - PLEASE WRITE TO ME!