Two epiphanies I had today

[sqbr]

First, a rant:
I came across a post today with white americans whining about having no culture, because they're a bunch of immigrants with mixed backgrounds, a dark history they feel ambivalent about, and an emphasis on both conformity and individuality and consumerism. Other cultures, on the other hand, are distinct and uniform and well defined and have a wholly positive effect on people's lives.

Now as someone from a culture with similar issues who finds american culture distinct and rather alien (in an interesting, sometimes cool sort of way) I find this annoying (Australians may whine about not having any culture too, but we don't tend to act like it's a Special Unique Pain Noone Else Understands)
It's like the question of "How do non-white/non-American people feel about their cultures, and what does it have in common with how we feel?" doesn't even register.

For a start, afaict pretty much every non-American in the world has angst about the difficulty of being "modern" without becoming American, of defining ourselves without relying on rigid outdated jingoism. And no culture is an unchanging monolith, everyone has to balance tradition and change, personal preferences with accepted social mores, multiculturalism with flattening and uniformity. Every choice along those continuums has both benefits and costs. And pretty much every culture has dark patches in their past, unethical social practices(*), and just plain unappealing expectations that make it difficult for a lot of people to embrace their "people" unselfconsciously and without caveats. Afaict being a POC makes this more complicated, not less, since you have external and internalised racism to contend with telling you your culture is worthless.

The second is a bit advanced, and is only really annoying (to me!) when I see it from, say, feminist bloggers who should know better. Or myself :)
Hopefully a lot of people have gotten their head around the fact that only people who experience Xism are qualified to say if something is Xist or not. But a lot of people who get that have trouble understanding that even if you do notice something someone did is Xist all by yourself that doesn't mean you get to judge whether or not they apologised well enough for it. On seeing an apology for Xism of a sort you don't experience but still found personally offensive, your first priority should not be "Do I think this is good enough given how offensive I found their behaviour?" but "What do the people who experience Xism and were hurt in the first place think?".

And now I feel better :)

(*)According to ones own personal ethics, whatever they may be

Comments

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

I don't really care how Americans feel about their culture.

For me, my culture, is, sadly, defined by a negative, my culture is 'I'm not American'. This 'I'm not American' is a culture that is common in the world, Kiwis (who probably also define themselves as 'Not Australian'), Canadians, British) any white, especially english speaking nation, defines itself by the fact that it's not American.

That's how bloody dominant American culture is. It's almost to the point sometimes where I wish I was French, or German, because at least they are protected by their language.

American culture is so dominant, that I've spent most of my time travelling around the world, telling people 'No, I'm not American' because everyone always assumes one is. It gets a bit old, but heh, that's the world we live in right?

ETA: I did also spend most of my travels in South-East Asia with a Chinese-Canadian (almost third generation Canadian, who could not speak Chinese to save her life) who spent a lot of time explaining she wasn't Chinese, which just goes to show how cultural dominance does shift from place to place, but 'being perceived as American' gave me protection/freedom that 'being perceived as Chinese' in many parts of Asia, didn't. Because as long as I was considered American, my independence was excused because American girls are wild sex fiends, but my friend, was just a big slut/prostitute who slept with American men. And she was threatened a couple of times because of it. I only got propositioned a few times. Perception is a bitch.

[seaya.livejournal.com]

I have never seen (and I've traveled in mixed groups of anglophones in Latin America, Europe, and Asia) anyone ask an Australian if they are American or assume that. Canadians sure, because their accent and manner is quite close.

Australians have a pattern of tourism that is reviled all on its own.

[danamaree.livejournal.com]

For the most part, I did travel by myself (although I did meet up with people now and again), and TBH I mostly got that when I was living in Korea, although I did get some of that in Laos and Vietnam as well.

This was back in 1995-97 period, Laos and Vietnam had just started being opened to tourists and 99% of foreigners in Korea were American soldiers based in Seoul.

Australians have a pattern of tourism that is reviled all on its own.

Was one of the biggest reasons I travelled solitary ;)

[seaya.livejournal.com]

That makes sense then.

[alias_sqbr]

Mm, I think countries which are more obviously not American have a different set of issues with american cultural imperialism than relatively similar english speaking countries like us. I've encountered enough grumpy english-as-a-second-language speakers to get the feeling it's pretty frustrating, though.