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Diversity
October 31, 2004
In my post about sex/gender and the creation of forms, there was quite a bit of stuff happening in the comments, so I decided to address one commenter’s concerns in the longer form of a post. I’ll just quote him in entirety so I don’t butcher his meaning with a paraphrase:
Look - I am kinda conservative. I have had gay friends, I work with gay people, and I like some and I don’t like others.
Just like when Southern Ca starts on an initiative to have dual languages as a law - it insults me. We’re american. Can’t we take pride in Mom, Apple Pie, and the english language? Not spanglish, Eubonics or some other thing.
When does it stop? When do we stop diluting our culture in some inferiority complex way? When do we stop compensating for the greatness that we have? When do we recognize that an opinion (center stream opinion at that) is not a bad thing to have?
Rather than ask what flavor of gender a person is - perhaps ask if they cross dress? Or if they have Transgender issues? Why muddy the waters with Male, Female, Transgender, Shemale, HeFemale, Dog, Poodle, etc…
Did I just alienate everyone here?
This is a very complex issue, for certain, but what I’m going to hone in on is the stuff Kevin brings up around Americanness. Sit tight for some nerdy stuff, as I veer away from sex for a moment.
Yes, we can take pride in mom, apple pie and the English language. However, “some other thing” is also very much a part of what it is to be American – in addition to the aforementioned, not instead of. This is an argument that has come up time and time again in American history – a good example is the incredible influx of immigrants into the U.S. and New York especially between the 1880s and 1924, when new immigrant quotas were established. During this time, there were groups of Native Americans that cropped up, espousing the great American ideals of homogeneity. This is a different and now very antiquated use of the phrase “Native American” – nineteenth century self-proclaimed Native Americans were of mostly British and Dutch descent and thought of themselves as native, real Americans, not immigrants. As the different waves of immigration happened within this time period – Germans and Irish in the early nineteenth century, then Chinese (until the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act), Eastern European Jews, southern Europeans and Sicilian Italians – the presence of each new group brings up questions about what it means to be American and who should be included, and who gets to make that decision.
This past summer, I spent a month traveling in Europe by myself. I kept meeting young lefty Americans who said they were ashamed to tell people that they are American, so they would lie and say they’re Canadian. Although I’m not proud of what my country has been up to of late, I was proud to tell people that I’m American, because I’m a different kind of American, and I think its good for people who have a small perception of what Americans are to meet me, and be puzzled.
So: When do we stop diluting our culture in some inferiority complex way?
Though of course this is (infinitely) debatable, I think that diversity is not necessarily a dilution of American culture, and that it doesn’t connote an inferiority complex. In thinking about the minutiae of identity politics, I think its best to remember that while deconstruction of cultural representations and meanings is useful, at some point things need to be put back together and made liveable. So, it is interesting to “muddy the waters” with a variety of things, but that is only useful in my mind if something happens next, if once the deconstructive homework is done, it does/is something.
I don’t really have concrete answers here, but I do think it’s useful to continue to interrogate the concept of what it is to be American, on both personal and cultural levels. The debate between the “center stream opinion” and various fringes is always potent, and it’s worth giving voice and respect to difference – even (or perhaps especially) if you disagree.
Posted by Dacia at October 31, 2004 10:41 AM
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