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doctorcroc | 7 years ago
I too am a "third culture" child in some ways. Born in India, raised in a conservative state in the USA, moved to a liberal state in the USA (which feels like a different country at times). I've even had a liberal acquaintance mention to me after the 2016 election that she "couldn't imagine how much worse [I] felt". Why? Because I am a ethnic minority, I need to be extra upset at the result? I resist this trend of treating any "group" as a monolith that all of its members has to adhere to, otherwise be labeled an apostate.
The one area I kind of disagree with you on is that you come off as very individualistic, which is admirable. But at its extreme, it can become a caricature, much like an Ayn Rand novel. Every human willing or not is part of a community, and the effects of its treatment in that community will reflect on its psyche. I referred to the book on trauma because it shows that psychic experiences can become embedded in physiology (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics_of_anxiety_and_str...). And not every individual has the self-determination you do to craft their own identity and resolve their traumas without some level of communal support.
In the case of African descendants of slaves, I'm not arguing that they don't have control over their destiny. Rather, that ignoring hundreds of years of stress and persecution is a myopic way to address historic imbalances. In order to control your future, you have to know your past, and yourself. I think a good example of this in modern life is Kendrick Lamar, who has a beautiful song "i" which is about self-acceptance and the freedom to determine your worth. He even got in trouble for arguing that Black Americans should look inwards first and resolve their internal struggles before trying to change the world (https://www.npr.org/2015/12/29/461129966/kendrick-lamar-i-ca...)
I too am worried about people polarizing based on superficial qualities like race or sexuality. Where does it stop, and why draw the line there? Why not a "asymmetrical face" group or a "under average height" group? Both those groups also probably experienced institutionalized discrimination, but have no torch bearer yet. But we don't fix this problem by yelling at people to be more self deterministic (they would say you have some form of privilege and ignore you anyway). We fix this problem by acknowledging their grievances and usher them into the greater community so that power mongers don't divide and conquer.
nurspouse|7 years ago
Nah, I was mostly hijacking your comment to bring the perspective forward for discussion. Reading the rest of your comment we're pretty much in agreement.
>I've even had a liberal acquaintance mention to me after the 2016 election that she "couldn't imagine how much worse [I] felt". Why? Because I am a ethnic minority, I need to be extra upset at the result?
Yes, I too have lived in both conservative and liberal places. And people in liberal areas are annoying this way. Living in such a place right now, I often joke that the worst part of Trump's election is that it has made all the local liberals even more insufferable.[1][2] Joking aside, this is a serious issue I've seen amongst left leaning folks, and although it's mostly not been directed to me, I've found it incredibly condescending, not to mention quite biased. Elif Shafak gave a fantastic TED Talk[3] which touches on this. When I lived in a very white conservative state, I never witnessed the locals treating others differently because of their appearance/ethnicity. In liberal areas, it is almost the norm - they are much more likely to interact with me based on my race.
Of course, that was years ago, and I don't know how the people are in those cities in the age of Trump. And of course, conservatives had their own set of issues (opposition to good health care, etc).
>The one area I kind of disagree with you on is that you come off as very individualistic, which is admirable. But at its extreme, it can become a caricature, much like an Ayn Rand novel. Every human willing or not is part of a community, and the effects of its treatment in that community will reflect on its psyche.
I'm aware of this, which is why I said I had reversed my position after extensively reading up on the topic. I can't deny the damage such actions do, and I am fortunate to have been somewhat immune from it. My comment is that one should not dump all of it on the history.
Case in point: Recently there has been a flareup between India and Pakistan. On Reddit's front page was a thread from the India subreddit with something like 6000+ comments. One of the top ones: "Let's not forget that the real culprit is the British and the manner they divided the country."[4] Really? Over 70 years after the British have left, it's somehow still there fault? I always have a metric for maturity: You become a mature adult when you stop blaming your parents for your problems (even if there is truth to it). It's when you realize that whatever the cause of your problems, you can't expect others to solve them. 70 years later and Indians still have not grown up.
And trust me: Even without trauma, I know it totally sucks to be in a community where you cannot find like minded folks. I've been halfway there, but not all the way. My brother, OTOH, did not come to the US and at some point had to move back to his "home" country - a country he had never lived in. His home country is very monolithic an homogeneous, and it completely sucks for him. His personality would be quite normal here in the US, but over there multiple people have suggested he has a mental illness and often treat him differently simply because his values differ, and the locals don't have the ability to comprehend that it can be different. No amount of individualism can shield you from that.
>Rather, that ignoring hundreds of years of stress and persecution is a myopic way to address historic imbalances. In order to control your future, you have to know your past, and yourself.
I'm not advocating ignoring history. I am disagreeing with the second sentence. I do not believe that one must know their own (distant/ancestral) past to have a fruitful culture. It's certainly one way, but not the only way, and IMO, not even a particularly good way. It's just a way. I honestly think this is more of an artifact - it's fairly natural that people pass on their culture to their kids in this manner, and when the past has been taken from you, you naturally feel disadvantaged.
>Both those groups also probably experienced institutionalized discrimination, but have no torch bearer yet. But we don't fix this problem by yelling at people to be more self deterministic (they would say you have some form of privilege and ignore you anyway). We fix this problem by acknowledging their grievances and usher them into the greater community so that power mongers don't divide and conquer.
I completely agree with you, as I have been on the receiving end of institutional biases, and have often in the past complained that a lot of these biases are ignored simply because they do not neatly fall into the gender/race/sexuality/age mental models. I don't see this being coupled to the other points in the comments.
[1] In 2017, a (very liberal) friend of mine cut off ties with a sporting club he was involved in, and implied it had to do with the politics of the organizers (conservative). I imagined scenarios where they openly made derogatory remarks akin to the extreme Trump voters, or otherwise ridiculed them for being on the losing side, or something. But no: The reason was that they were not "active enough" in the ongoing protests in the city against Trump's misogynistic remarks. My friend was essentially trying to say "Hey, I can be cool with you being conservative, but you have to prove you're the right type of conservative by taking part in these protests." How the tables had turned, when just a decade ago liberals criticized conservatives who demanded Muslim Americans make an explicit show of being loyal to the US.
[2] The January after the election, I attended a workshop series on soft skills. The person running the workshop started the series with comments along the lines of "I know you're feeling depressed at the outcome of the election", etc - without any qualifiers. It was just a given that no one in the workshop voted for Trump. It was otherwise a great workshop, but I've never recommended it to others because of this behavior (several similar occurrences in other sessions of the series).
[3] https://www.ted.com/talks/elif_shafak_the_politics_of_fictio...
[4] You get similar sentiments in African countries about both the English and the French.