How do people negotiate their cultural identity with national citizenship?
“Full cultural citizenship is attained when legal and political citizens have experiences that enable them to feel socially accepted by others within the US nation state.” As some of our authors emphasize, whether or not such a feeling of belonging results is largely contingent on what Claudia Rankine provocatively describes as “historical” racial selves interacting “with the full force of [their] American positioning.” The articles in this issue explore the uneven and sometimes dangerous nature of these interactions and their implications for cultural citizenship and belonging.”
- Gary Totten, Editor's Introduction in the latest issue of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States.
Image credit: “Urban, Commute” by Gabriel Santiago. CC0 via Unsplash.
Hope you can join us February 3rd, 7:30pm at the Regas Building Gathering Place for our next PubTalk!
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A few thoughts to consider, from The Belhar Confession, on why this topic is not only relevant but vital:
“We believe that unity is, therefore, both a gift and an obligation for the church of Jesus Christ...
“...that this unity must become visible so that the world may believe that separation, enmity and hatred between people and groups is sin which Christ has already conquered, and accordingly that anything which threatens this unity may have no place in the church and must be resisted...
“Therefore, we reject any doctrine which absolutizes...the sinful separation of people that...hinders or breaks the visible and active unity of the church, or even leads to the establishment of a separate church formation...
“[we also reject any doctrine]...which explicitly or implicitly maintains that descent or any other human or social factor should be a consideration in determining membership of the church.
“We believe that the church as the possession of God must stand where the Lord stands, namely against injustice and with the wronged; that in following Christ the church must witness against all the powerful and privileged who selfishly seek their own interests and thus control and harm others.”
-From the Belhar Confession, born out of the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. First drafted in 1982 by the Dutch Reformed Mission Church it was formally adopted in 1986. The Prologue notes that “It addresses three key issues of concern to all churches: unity of the church and unity among all people, reconciliation within church and society, and God’s justice.”
One factor that makes interaction between multi-ethnic groups of women difficult and sometimes impossible is our failure to recognize that a behaviour pattern in one culture may be unacceptable in another, that is may have different signification cross-culturally … I have learned the importance of learning what we called one another’s cultural codes.
An Asian American student of Japanese heritage explained her reluctance to participate in feminist organizations by calling attention to the tendency among feminist activists to speak rapidly without pause, to be quick on the uptake, always ready with a response. She had been raised to pause and think before speaking, to consider the impact of one’s words, a characteristic that she felt was particularly true of Asian Americans. She expressed feelings of inadequacy on the various occasions she was present in feminist groups. In our class, we learned to allow pauses and appreciate them. By sharing this cultural code, we created an atmosphere in the classroom that allowed for different communication patterns.
This particular class was peopled primarily by black women. Several white women students complained that the atmosphere was “too hostile.” They cited the noise level and direct confrontations that took place in the room prior to class as an example of this hostility. Our response was to explain that what they perceived as hostility and aggression, we considered playful teasing and affectionate expressions of our pleasure at being together. Our tendency to talk loudly we saw as a consequence of being in a room with many people speaking, as well as of cultural background: many of us were raised in families where individuals speak loudly. In their upbringings as white, middle-class females, the complaining students had been taught to identify loud and direct speech with anger. We explained that we did not identify loud or blunt speech in this way, and encourage them to switch codes, to think of it as an affirming gesture. Once they switched codes, they not only began to have a more creative, joyful experience in the class, but they also learned that silence and quiet speech can in some cultures indicate hostility and aggression. By learning one another’s cultural codes and respecting our differences, we felt a sense of community, of Sisterhood. Representing diversity does not mean uniformity or sameness.
- bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (pages 57-58)
The following first appeared on Xenia's personal blog, To Know This Place for the First Time as "Identity: Bridges", June 2014.
Earlier in the year, I’d been questioning whether or not God has been calling me to His vision of diversity. Over the course of the last couple of months, there have been many a time where I’ve been tempted to call it quits.
“It’s too hard, God.”
“People don’t want it.”
“It’s so hard not to take things people say like a personal attack.”
“Send someone else, God. Someone who has thicker skin and who’s better at bridging.”
My community is in this place where some of us recognise that ethnic identity is a crucial part of being, and that the way we have been raised – like anything else – is a lens through which we interpret faith and the world, thus influencing how we interact with the world – a paradigm, if you will. The tricky part is that when we talk about culture, it’s often reduced to two things: food and language. My culture inclines me to prefer certain foods, and provides me a means to communicate with the world, but culture is not simply the sum of these two parts.
Culture, as defined by Merriam-Webster, is a) the beliefs, customs, arts, etc., of a particular society, place of time, and b) a way of thinking, behaving, or working that exists in a place. Here’s an example I know brings ire to my friends (when I unconsciously slip into non-Western behaviour!): my seemingly non-committal answers to questions about preferences for food.
Friend: “Hey, where do you want to go out to eat?”
Me: “Oh, it doesn’t matter to me. Where would you like to go?”
My friends see non-commitment, or at the very least, someone who never wants to make a decision. Whereas for me, my unconscious decision to answer this way is a result of how I’ve been raised: communal values and a sense of allowing the other person first choice as a way of honouring them. In a typical conversation with my Asian friends or with my family, for example, we bring out suggestions until we reach a consensus.
I’m inclined to think that although language is an important part of culture, the lack thereof does not mean we do not act culturally appropriate to the way we were raised. A person who has been raised in an Asian home will know how to pick up the indirect cues sent out by their family’s body language; in a non-Asian setting, they may still pick up on the indirect cues sent out by their non-Asian friends, who have no idea they are sending out those signals. My Korean friends have a word for this: noonchi (눈치), which is one’s ability to read indirect communication well, or gauge one’s environment correctly. For example, if you said, “man, it’s cold” and the person you are with doesn’t offer their jacket or reply in another appropriate manner, one could say that they don’t have any noonchi.
I remembered when I first moved to Ottawa it drove me absolutely nuts interacting with my white friends, because I would assume things they had indirectly communicated when they had done no such thing – because they are primarily verbal and direct communicators. On the flipside of the coin, I drove my friends crazy because I would leave things out, unconsciously assuming that they would know from my indirect communication.
It is exhausting “speaking” two types of communication all the time; in April in Ottawa (or really, as I was dealing with culture shock in the last eight), I felt as if I was constantly flipping from one paradigm to another. I know at some point in my exhaustion I could no longer keep a steady grip on my Western paradigm, and only in hindsight my then-frustration revealed itself to be me communicating out of the Asian paradigm to people who have never seen things outside of a Western paradigm. These days, when I get really tired, I end up somewhere in the middle, and my housemates end up not knowing what I'm trying to say at all because I make no sense as either directly or indirectly.
I say this not because I want pity, but because I want to emphasise the difficulty in being a bridge person. And, as a friend says, the person who acts like a bridge is exactly that – a person who is stepped all over when people walk from one side to another.
But without the bridge, those two sides remain separated by a chasm: one of hostility, indifference, misunderstanding… the list could go on. Our society desperately needs bridge people, and who better than the Church?
In the last couple of weeks, I remained convinced that I am being called to Jesus’ call to go out to all the nations, but I am equally convinced now that I am not being called into this alone. And so, I am extending Jesus’ call for me to all of you.
Our calling is to the upside-down economy of the Kingdom, where we lay down our rights and privileges so that the Kingdom can go forward.
We are called to be the meek, the peacemakers.
We are called to end the dividing wall of hostility.
We are called to turn the other cheek.
We are called to walk the extra mile.
We are called to be the least of these.
None of these are easy things. All of these require extra effort.
But if we profess to be following in our Saviour’s footsteps, these are what we must aspire to be: bridge-builders in all walks of our lives, including across cultures.
* * *
For me, this means I need to lay down my right to be offended all the time. It means that, instead, I must be filled with His grace and wisdom as I seek to understand both sides. It means that sometimes, oftentimes, I will be hurt.
And it means running into my Saviour’s embrace, knowing that He’s gone before already, and is walking with me, every step of the way.
I love worship. I'm thinking mostly of that worship which is expressed through song but, really, any exaltation of or deliberate drawing near to God makes my heart and soul full.
Today, in a worship meeting, we discussed multi-ethnic/multi-cultural worship. What is it? What does it look and/or sound like? What is the role of worship leaders within a multi-cultural/ethnic church? How do we expand our musical inclinations so that everyone, at times, has a strong sense of connection to our musical expression of worship? And so on...
As always, I left with more questions than answers. This is something I appreciate about my church community - I am always pushed to wonder, to inquire, to be, in a certain way, unsettled. Anyway, that's beside the point.
There are plenty of questions to which I have no answer. I've some thoughts about each and have heard from a few folks but I'm curious what insights others might have to offer. So it is to you, blogosphere, that I pose the questions above.
