I have been thinking a lot about culture lately. I don't know why, I just have. Last night I saw a piece on illegal immigration in Colorado. It was interesting, because this one place in Colorado has a bunch of illegal immigrants, and they are willing to have the jobs no American wants to do, like construction work. I don't really like the immigration debate, because sometimes it gets too political for me. But the most interesting part of the story to me was when they interviewed a white woman with kids in the public school. They were talking about how this school does bilingual instruction for everyone, with part of the time in English and part in Spanish. This woman was happy that her kindergarten son knew some Spanish, but she felt uncomfortable about the future, because her son was in the minority. She basically said she didn't want him to lose his culture and was in essence worried about her son becoming more confortable with the Hispanic culture. How ironic! It's funny, because I would be excited to have my kids learn more about another culture! I think it's great to experience different points of view - makes you more aware of your own culture. And yet here she was, a white woman in the US, afraid because her son was in the minority. Interesting irony.
I was a minority growing up, and faced "reverse discrimination" at the tail end of the time my family was in Houston. Strange though, because as a kid I just saw everyone as people, as my neighbors. But they were black and I was white, and so there was a difference.
Today I had an interesting conversation with a Russian guy at work. He was talking about how he has a hard time in English because of all the articles like a, an and the. Apparently in Russian, there are no articles. Although everything has a gender. So I was telling him if he had a hard time with English, he should try Spanish! Not only are there articles, but you have to get the right masculine and feminine articles for everything! So then we were comparing the gender of various inanimate objects between Spanish and Russian. It would be interesting to do a complete word study and figure out the differences in the gender of inanimate objects between languages. There has to be an interesting reason why "table" is feminine in Spanish and masculine in Russian. Then again, maybe no one really cares.
On the way home from work, I was listening to the news on the radio. There was some quote by someone talking about Iraq. It's been said a million times before, but for some reason I actually heard it today. Whatever important "knowledgeable" source was talking on the subject of troops in Iraq. And they said "the Iraqis need to want to take over the security of their nation. They need to want to take control of their country and quell the sectarian violence. They need to step up and take initiative for securing their own country". Basically this would be so we could get out of there. Say WHAT? The Iraqis need to want to secure their country? As if they are sitting around sipping tea and coffee all day, oblivious to the fact that hundreds of people die each month. As if they are waiting for us to say - oh, you can take care of securing your country now, it's fine by us. What about the fact that we came in, bombed the **** out of their country a few years ago, they are faced with a new way of life and a new way of thinking, they don't know to trust and who not to trust (I'm talking about Iraqis), they fear for their daily safety, and that it's going to take TIME to accomplish all of this? True, I don't want any American troops to die. But I think it's arrogant for us to say - we came in, left your country in disarray, and now we want to walk away from it! Of course the Iraqis want to be able to run and secure their own country. But going back to culture, let's acknowledge that it's a matter of different cultures and there needs to be some room for that. Let's acknowledge that democracy is a new thought for these people, and it's going to take some time for that to sink in. Let's acknowledge that maybe our way of seeing things and doing things isn't always the only way of seeing things and doing things. And maybe we can learn more by being in the minority and being uncomfortable rather than trying to rearrange our lives so we are always surrounded by "our own kind". Maybe we can learn something from our differences.
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