In the early 1990s, when I was 16, I participated in a youth
leadership training to be a part of a “Multicultural Panel”. From what I can
remember, the training was developed by Friends University and included a day
or two long workshop that assisted youth to contemplate, describe, and learn
about their own cultural experience. Say what?! Learn about your own culture
first? Yep. Our job was to be able to ad-lib a 2-3 minute talk on our culture
and respond to questions by the audience about the various cultural experiences
of the panel. At each presentation, the panel would represent about 5-6 types
of cultural diversity including race, gender, class, and physical abilities.
My expectation of the class was to learn about everybody
else’s culture, because what did I, a white girl from Kansas, have to
contribute? My culture was The Andy Griffith Show mixed with Full House
sitcoms. I entered with the assumption that my culture was so overexposed to be
non-existent. I felt guilt and shame for being part of the privileged masses. It
took quite a while and some petulant teenage angst to acknowledge that my cultural
experience had complexity and value. Instead of asking the privileged white
kids how they are scared of or adapt to differences, the facilitators taught us
how to name our own value in a way that did not de-value someone else. Not only
did I learn positive and enriching language and conversation skills, I also learned
listening and interrelational skills with those different than me. I discovered
solidarity in a group not because of race, gender, class, but because of a
common openness and ideal. I learned more about stereotypes and assumptions within
myself, groups, and society than I had in any other context. I also shed much
of the shame of my own differences, whether as a representative of the
majority, of geeky science girls, or of children living with poverty. Before, I
saw the community I grew up in as boring and my identity in it as a freckled Irish/German
American Kansas girl with glasses as being a dime a dozen. I valued any
difference from my normative experience as more valid, interesting, and
meaningful. I felt invisible.
What I discovered is that my peers had never had bierocks
and had no idea what a Volga German was. I learned that my family history
mattered and that I knew very little of it. And as I worked on reforming my
family and cultural narrative, I discovered my family history had experiences
of marginalization and oppression, some not so long ago. I realized that I had
embraced the caricatures created by St. Patrick’s Day and Oktoberfest without
truly understanding my own heritage. My family was no longer an assimilated
melting pot with no cultural identity but what the media promotes. I no longer
fell for the biggest lie our society and media feeds us.
In 1881, Irish caricature:
2012, t-shirt:
found on: http://imgur.com/gallery/FXugjVI
The experience with that Multicultural Panel revealed I was connected to and a part of a universal, global, human story expressed in unique communities and individuals. By embracing my own difference, I realized that my neighbor’s difference was valuable as well. I cannot claim that I embraced my value as a female so young. In fact, I kind of ignored it as long as possible. However, a first step to understanding occurred there.
This reflection bubbled up while preparing for my re-entry
into academia. As I read essays that repeatedly stereotype European American
and Western thought, I felt the resurgence of guilt and shame for being lumped
into such a category. There is more discomfort while reading these pages than I
thought there would be. Who am I supposed to identify with if I am a complex
unique individual who exists with both privilege and marginalization? Perhaps if we even have one
area we feel tossed aside, not important, or directly attacked, we should be
able to recognize a similar struggle in someone else. Even if our struggles do
not match in content or even degree of oppression, perhaps there is still a way
for us to relate to, sympathize with, and value each other.
I have many other thoughts related to this, including pre and
post modernity and caricatures of scientific thought, gender value, and how can
this white woman learn about her heritage and history of women and pastoral
care in the church and society.
