On Diversity, Labeling, Hospitality and Gratitude (Being a Short Treatise and Encapsulated Rant upon the nature of Difference among Peoples)

For your leisurely perusal:  A list of the people and organizations who hosted Xander and I in America this summer, in chronological order.  (In parentheses; religious affiliation, where applicable)

• A graphic designer and a writer, with one child; currently talking care of their mother with Alzheimer's. (agnostic / whatever?, culturally Jewish)
• A geography professor and a freelance blogger, with two kids (Jewish)
• A guest house for families of hospitalized children, run by a charity arm of a multinational corporation (Capitalist)
• A children's hospital run by the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (The Shriners), a Masonic fraternal organization.
• A German / American couple - an archivist and an IT specialist, I think..? - currently living away from their home in Berlin and volunteering for the Mennonites, two kids.  (Mennonite / Protestant)
• A (Catholic) doctor and an (Episcopal) priest, two kids.
• A healthcare management professional, currently laid off, and an administrator at a nonprofit agency, three kids (Catholic) 

I would draw your attention to the labels involved.  All fairly ordinary, right?  And fairly boring, come to think of it.  They're all also fairly arbitrary.  Consider the following list of people, who we likewise encountered:

• A Polish-American soccer coach and beer distributor.
• A Vegan activist who recently adopted a poodle/terrier mix.
• Two lesbian Republicans with Libertarian Ayn Rand-inspired leanings,  heading a bi-racial adoptive family.
• Predominantly white males in their late fifties and early sixties, who are mostly known for wearing red fezzes and driving miniature cars in parades.
• An expert in the history of milk in turn-of-the-century Chicago
• Two gay men in a committed long-term relationship. One from the Canary Islands with a passion for gardening, and one a former architecture student who was, at one point, making a pipe organ in his basement.
• A salesman of orthopedic hardware, recently relocated from Florida.  Single, mid-fifties.
• A former East German draft dodger, who was once arrested while trying to escape on a train to Sweden.

Much more interesting, no?  But here's the thing: most of these descriptors actually apply to the same people in list one.  And most of these labels, while factually true, are utterly useless when it comes to describing the people I want to describe.  (Unless I want to pat myself on the back for knowing such a diverse group of people - but that's condescending, to both them and me.)  No, the labels are useless because they ignore the most important commonalities, namely that:

• All of these people went out of their way to help us in some way
• All of them have a belief in something much bigger than themselves
• And most importantly, all of them have taken that belief as inspiration to do something to make their small part of the world a little bit better.

And that's the thing about labels - they mean everything and nothing.  Everything, because, wow, if I try to imagine any of the people above without those characteristics, they wouldn't be themselves, would they?  Each phrase represents some essential part of a person's identity.  And, pardon me while I go all patriotic here, one of the best things about being in America was savoring that richness of all of those different lives.

And of course, the labels also mean absolutely nothing.  I'm sure that my friends who recognize themselves on the list are inwardly cringing right now.  "What do you mean, I'm a traditional English folk dancer who can repair accordions and is now working in the IT department of a law firm?  Is that all that I am to him??"  Well of course not.  A label, by its very nature, is a gross oversimplification of something far more complex.  Labels are simply tools that we use to make sense of a world that is far more complicated than we can wrap our little minds around.

Diversity and labeling have been on my brain lately, as I'm back to being on campus in (fairly provincial) China.  There's a new crop of freshman wandering around, which may explain why I'm hearing exclamations of “外国人, 外国人!" (Waiguoren, waigouren! = Foreigner! Foreigner!) all the time lately.  And no, there is no revival of a certain seventies pop band over here - that's me they're talking about.  Just this morning in fact, while crossing the little bridge on the way to Ysa's kindergarten, a clump of several girls walking by exclaimed "Waiguoren!" three times.  In unison.  

And you know, my reaction wasn't angry, or defensive, or hurt, like it sometimes is.  But neither was I interested in being very sympathetic to them.  It was more like feeling sadly embarrassed for somebody's total ignorance.  Like when your dad would walk around in plaid shorts and sandals with socks.  Black gold-toe socks.  And sunburned knees to boot.  But this was the opposite, generationally speaking, and I tried to throw in a little sip of optimism, because, hey, you never know, those kids may learn something about the rest of the world at some point in their lives, right...?

Not that it's my intention to start feeling smug about my culture's fine and noble sense of Diversity and Tolerance for Others.  I mean, after all, I did grow up in labeling central, rural Illinois.  And then there are articles like this one (seems like the FBI is schooling their agents to pigeonhole an entire religion. Good work, guys) that keep popping up all the time.  And don't get me started on the current political climate (this is where we've chosen to focus our national discourse?  Seriously??) in the Land That I Love.

But here I've spun off track a bit.  It was originally about gratitude, and about how here, there, and everywhere, I've been incredibly blessed to find amazing people.  Of all sorts and kinds, and I'm all the richer for it.  This may sound like a canned soapbox speech from the Obama campaign (hey, everyone, remember when he was actually inspiring?), or a Coke commercial from the seventies, but no, it's been my life, for real.  And any time I forget that fact, I find that I regret it sooner or later.

As for all that labeling that I was ranting about?  Take a close look.  Regardless of your political, social, religious or ethical affiliation(s).  Are you doing it to anyone?  No?  Good.  It's just embarrassing.  Really.  Stop it, already. 

I mean it.

It is what it is

Many Chinese restaurants have large glass jars of flavored baijiu (a very strong hard rice liquor) sitting on a counter somewhere up by the cash register. They are usually flavored with fruit or Chinese herbs marinating in the bottom of the jar, in much the same way that some brandies or fancy vinegars are flavored in Western countries. I was a bit surprised last summer, when a Chinese friend of ours translated this label as...



...many penis liquor. (Ingredients: grain alcohol, bull penises, ram penises, dog penises.) And yep, sure enough, floating on the bottom of that particular jar was a layer of shrively brown mushroom-looking things that, upon further examination, appeared to be the real deal, so to say. (And no, I haven't sampled any, thankyouverymuch...)

Aside from my personal aversion to penis-infused alcoholic products, I've been a bit reluctant to post this picture for other reasons as well - chief among them being the "Hey, wow, look at the funny things these foreign people eat" phenomenon. After all, Western culture is filled with all sorts of delicacies (bleu cheese, raw eggs, escargot, to name a few) that other cultures find disgusting. And I'm sure that there are plenty of animals' privates floating around in the American foodstream as well, though not as immediately recognizable as such.

But still, a lingering question. When can we try to understand a practice that may be strange to us, and when is it Just Plain Wrong? Relativism versus absolutism, to put it into academic terms.



So are dog penises okay to eat? Farm-raised Chinese alligators? (wild population, ca. 300) Scorpions? Tube worms? Seahorses? (My answers: No; Ummm, no; None for me, thanks; Go ahead, if it floats your boat, but I'll take a pass on that one; and Most Certainly Not.)

I know the whole "culturally relative" vs. "moral absolute" debate is nothing new, but it takes on a whole new tone when you are invited to an expensive seafood restaurant and see a couple of moray eels swimming in the tank next to the lobsters...

The Colony

Recently, I ran across this short documentary about Chinese immigrants living in the West African nation of Senegal.



All across Africa, Chinese entrepreneurs are setting up businesses, attracted by the availability of resources and the (relative to China) low level of competition. The film follows a few of these Chinese businessmen, and also gives equal weight to the Senegalese reaction to the Chinese newcomers.

The story is a typical immigrant story in that each side views the other group of people as extremely strange. The immigrant community, often distrustful of the local population, bands together and avoids interaction with the locals. The locals, meanwhile, starts to resent the immigrants because they are seen to be competing with the locals for jobs. It's made more complicated by the fact that China, with a growing population and finite resources, is looking to Africa as a source of raw materials for its expanding industry.

All in all, a very good film to show my students this week as we start talking about ethnocentrism, prejudice, and stereotypes. It was interesting to see my students' reaction to the film - lots of smiles of recognition as they saw the life that the Chinese immigrants had set up for themselves in Africa, and some gasps of astonishment when they heard the Africans' resentful remarks about the Chinese. (After all, these are kids who haven't been exposed to very much, if any, media criticism about their country or culture before.)

So, is China colonizing Africa? That was the question that I posed to my students after I made sure that they understood both sides' point of view: we'll see what answers they come up with next week.