Multiculturalism

[Ebony Elizabeth Thomas]

>From the main list...

Rita wrote:
I wrote:
>
> > Forced multiculturalism is not authentic IMO and useless
> > in teaching children how to live. (snip) I really like the way
> > Rowling handles ethnicity--she mentions it, then lets the
> > kids act like all the other kids instead of venturing into
> > dangerous ethnic stereotypes like too many writers do.

Rita wrote:
>IMHO race is a matter of physical appearance and pedigree, while culture is 
>a learned system of thought and behavior. I therefore am disturbed by the 
>modern use of 'multicultural' to mean 'multiracial', as in Crayola coming 
>up with a set of crayons in human skin, hair, and eye colors and naming it 
>the Multicultural pack
>
>I imagine that British wizard-born students are all from the same
>culture, British wizarding culture, regardless of their race, but the
>Muggle-born students might come from different cultures, 'mainstream'
>cultures of region and social class, immigrant and 'minority' cultures.
>
>I don't know about UK, but in US, a writer is in a double-bind: if she
>portrays the black or Asian characters as just the same as the white
>characters except for their appearance and names, she is condemned for
>ignoring their unique African-American or Asian-American culture and
>turning them into Oreos/bananas. But if she tries to show the white,
>black, and Asian characters acting according to their different cultures
>(e.g. the white guests arrive too early for a multi-racial party thrown
>by a black hostess), then she is condemned for stereotyping.
>----

Well, I can't really talk about any other culture besides my own with any 
authority.  But I do know that it *is* stereotyping to suggest that in 
general blacks have a laissez-faire attitude towards punctuality.  <g>  It's 
a variable that definitely varies according to region.

Which brings me to another question.  What *is* an Oreo or a banana?  A 
black kid who speaks correct English and listens to rock music?  An 
Asian-American girl who dates white guys?

Labels are harmful.  Not to mention pointless.  I never knew how pointless 
until I attended a historically and predominantly black university for 
undergrad.  It changed me--and I never actually analyzed that change until I 
started graduate school and a professor pointed out something interesting.

I think I would have agreed with Rita before I spent four years having every 
single idea I had about the cultural and spatial politics of blackness being 
shattered.  I arrived on the campus of Florida A&M University (12,000 
students--huge for an HBCU, midsized for all colleges) *very* arrogant about 
my self-identity as a black woman.  After all, Detroit is statistically the 
"darkest" major city in the U.S.--of course I felt I was an expert on the 
matter.  ;-)

Then I went to school with black kids from all 50 states of the union 
("you're from NORTH DAKOTA?"), what seemed like every island in the 
Caribbean ("what do you mean, you don't identify with American blacks?"), 
and every continent ("you're fluent in Japanese?  And do you mean to tell me 
you've NEVER had soul food?").  I met black kids from England (the 
editor-in-chief of the school newspaper), black kids from C'ote de Ivoire 
who would speak in rapid-fire French before classes, and many, many black 
kids from the South who had their own stereotypes about the great Northern 
cities ("it's not *that* bad up there!  And yes, we do have family 
values!").  I met an Egyptian girl, a devout Muslim, who I talked religion 
and politics with as we waited on the campus shuttle.

I had housemates from Georgia, Delaware, Florida, Massachusetts via Texas, 
and Tennessee--and I *know* that we came from  different contexts, because I 
got made fun of.  Take food as just one example.  I got laughed at for 
mulling cider and crisping cake doughnuts right before Christmas finals.  
And eating oatmeal.  And thinking that a chili dog was a delicacy (it is in 
SE Michigan!).  And making homemade biscuits for breakfast, then drowning 
them in maple syrup instead of gravy.  I won't even get started on music, 
slang, political views, ideas about race relations, and cultural 
subtleties--I was amazed at how many misunderstandings arose because we 
couldn't understand each other!

The result was that I was presented with so many different facets of the 
African Diaspora that my world was opened wide.  White people are not 
assigned to some monolithic identity... they are allowed to be individuals.  
Yet and still we are told that if black does not look and act a certain way, 
then it is not authentic blackness.  I'm sure that members of other "ethnic" 
groups feel the same way.

I like Rita's defs of race and culture... but black culture is so varied 
that it really defies labeling.  As my seminar prof said this winter, "what 
it means to be black in Wichita is a bit different than what it means to be 
black in Newark, which is even more different than what it means to be black 
in Amsterdam."

The reason why a blanket identity has been forced upon blacks is because of 
historic oppression.  Some embrace the stereotypes--for instance, the more 
negative aspects of hip-hop culture.  However, most blacks are neither thugs 
nor the Huxtables.  They're just regular people living regular lives, as 
Tupac says, "trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents."  You cannot get 
an accurate view of people from the media, from books, or from knowing a 
handful of them... which is why I always tell students I know absolutely 
nothing about East Asian culture.

It seems to me that commonalities among those of African descent become most 
important when dealing with residual issues from the past.  Like racial 
profiling, which is NOT imaginary... when I asked my students to raise their 
hands if they were ever in the car when mom and dad were pulled over by the 
police... *every* single hand flew up.  That is *scary*--I teach in the most 
affluent school in the city of Detroit, where half of our students' parents 
have professional or terminal degrees!

Or the fact that I can get offline after talking to you guys, hop in my car, 
and go to a bookstore that offers great prices but where no one EVER speaks 
to me.  Even at the register.  Even when I say hello.  No, they're not 
deaf-mutes... when certain others enter, they're accosted by a flurry of 
chatter.  Or the change I see on the faces of some whenever I open my 
mouth--this has happened all my life, whether on a job, in the classroom, or 
at a museum.  You can SEE what people think of you by default--and then when 
you open your mouth, it's like, "Oh!"... and you are moved into the 
Exception to the Rule category.  Which I *hate*... neither of my parents 
finished college, but they spoke standard English and taught us to do the 
same not because it was proper English or white English... just because it 
was *English*.

Group think is all well and good, but there comes a point when it serves to 
further oppress those who it is designed to liberate.  This is why the Jesse 
Jacksons and Louis Farrakhans and Al Sharptons fail to inspire the young the 
way hip-hop music does--their tactics are outdated.

--Ebony AKA AngieJ
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