I remember my
parents taking me to the Buster Brown Shoe Store when I was little, maybe four
or five. It was in downtown Albany, probably on or near Central Avenue, and I’m
not sure why they brought me there as usually my shoes were bought at the nearest
big box discount store, not Wal-Mart back then, but similar.
The shoes we
bought were Mary Jane’s, and they were for Easter. The salesman walked behind
the counter to ring up the shoes, and he told me I could come on back and
choose a plastic egg with pastel beads inside of it from the glass case beneath
the counter.
I squealed, ran
behind the counter, pulled out an egg with a clear top and blue bottom, and
clutched it to my chest. My excitement and urgent determination made the salesman
laugh, and I felt my cheeks warm, embarrassed that I had shared my emotions
with a stranger.
Today, I’m that
same person, shy of temperament but teeming with emotion. I can’t help but
communicate it. When I speak or write about race, culture, injustice, and the
human condition, I feel the urgency, and I want to share it in spite of my fear
of strangers. Afterwards I feel different emotions: remorse for burdening
others with our sometimes painful experiences; sadness that I cannot reach more
people; hope that I’ve opened the eyes of even one person; frustration that change
is slow; anxiety that I’ve revealed too much; desire for solitude; longing for
connection; doubt feeding my insecurities; and fear roiling my insides.
If I listened to
my fears, I would not have accomplished one thing in life. They scream at me.
They predict failure, danger, and death. I cover my ears, try to calm my breathing, focus only on the
next moment in time, and keep going.
I used to tell
myself that I could do anything temporarily, for seconds, then minutes, then
longer, and that helped keep me going, too. I keep my goals in site: go to
college even though neither parent graduated high school; don’t go back home
where I feel abandoned and unloved; meet and marry a man whose race is different
from mine and know this fact will cause many people to question my sanity,
directly impact our life through racism (affecting our economic and
quality of life opportunities), and socially spurn us; have children when
others express the irresponsibility of bringing mixed race children into a
racist society; choose to leave the comfort of academia and move into the
corporate world to grow my career, contribute substantially to the family
finances, and become well-known in my field as an expert, leader, and trainer; speak up
and fight when injustice, racist actions, or prejudice affects our family or
others; choose to be dissatisfied with middle-age weight gain, lose 50 pounds,
and keep it off for over ten years; start a master’s degree at 45 and finish a
second one at 53; move to another state where we know no one; and start a blog
that relies on personal experience to talk about race, gender, and culture.
Every person has
stories of triumph, failure, and moving through fear to obtain goals. I love
hearing people’s stories. Usually within a short time of meeting people I’ve
asked enough questions to learn what stories are important to them and define who
they are.
In a marriage and
family counseling class that I took during my first master’s degree, the professor
asked us to introduce ourselves in a few sentences. I said, “I live a multicultural and interracial life. I’m
Italian and Irish-American. I bill myself as a passionate martyr.”
It was a nod to my
interethnic upbringing and how it shaped my view of the world and my place in
it.
My introduction
caused many classmates to laugh. Pretty good for a woman who had a panic attack
outside the classroom of the first counseling class I registered for a few
years before then. Back then I
wondered why a middle-aged woman, secure in her career and job, would think
about going back to school with students who were about the same age as my
daughters. Could I contribute anything of value to the classroom discussions? I
discovered I wanted to know more about myself, about our multicultural world,
and about people in general, and this was one way to gain the skills to do
that.
I am that
passionate martyr.
(Excerpt from essay Creating a Cultural Context in American Memoir)
Many Americans are
not aware they are surrounded by a cultural context that uniquely molds them
and colors their perceptions of their experiences and of others. This is
particularly true of white Americans. They may say, “I’m not ethnic, I’m
white,” for example, but what does being “white” mean? Every individual has an
ethnicity, the heritage and social/cultural customs, beliefs and values of a
particular group, and has also been influenced dramatically by “social class,
religion, migration, geography, gender oppression, racism, and sexual orientation,
as well as family dynamics (McGoldrick, Giordano, Garcia-Preto, p.1).” Add
personality and temperament to the mix, and no two people are exactly alike.
Every American
came from somewhere else. Some traveled over a strait that connected the
continents thousands of years ago. Others traveled to escape oppression in
their home countries. Some were brought here by force. People settled in areas
they felt comfortable in, maybe choosing to live with people like themselves,
or near places of worship, or certain topographies that felt familiar, or a
particular climate, or where the jobs were. Some people were forced to live on
the plantations they labored at, or on reservations, or in urban ghettos, or in
rural isolation. These circumstances created a cultural context in which people
lived and developed and learned about themselves and others.
Monica McGoldrick
emphasizes in her book, Ethnicity and
Family Therapy, how important the legacy of migration is when she says,
“All Americans have experienced the complex stresses of migration. And the
hidden effects of this history, especially when it goes unacknowledged, may
linger for many generations. Families’ migration experiences have a major
influence on their cultural values (p.19).”
The legacy of
ethnicity is passed from one generation to the next, sometimes clearly, as in
speaking a native language or practicing traditions. Other ethnic clues are
passed down subtly: maybe the turn of a phrase or an unattributed tenet or a
story shared from one generation to the next. Sometimes traditions and language
are lost over the generations, perhaps through forced or voluntary assimilation
into a dominant culture or through physical distance from one’s origins.
Stereotypes are
negative generalities that become internalized by the people they are about and
by the people who construct them. Their intention is often to hurt, oppress and
segregate ethnic or cultural groups. They may be grounded in a bit of truth,
but their intent is dishonest and disingenuous.
But there are
generalities about ethnicity, race, culture and gender that can enlighten and
normalize. These generalities are never meant to define a person, because so
many forces in life shape a unique individual, and each of us is unique. Yet
knowing that a certain ethnicity or culture tends to think in similar ways,
shares a common belief system and historical legacy, or acts in collective
synergy, can lend understanding or the ability to step into the shoes of
another and experience the world through his or her point of view. The more an
individual can learn about the unique lens through which he or she views the
world, the more such knowledge can engender tolerance for other perspectives
and people and a better understanding about oneself.
McGoldrick
describes stereotyping this way:
Although
generalizing about groups has often been used to reinforce prejudices, one
cannot discuss ethnic cultures without generalizing. The only alternative is to
ignore this level of analysis of group patterns, which mystifies and
disqualifies the experience of groups at the margins, perpetuating covert
negative stereotyping, as does the failure to address culture explicitly per
se, considering socioeconomic, political, and religious influences more
important. Others avoid discussion of group characteristics altogether, in
favor of individual family patterns maintaining, “I prefer to think of each
family as unique” or “I prefer to think of family members as human beings
rather than pigeonholing them in categories.” Of course, we all prefer to be
treated as unique human beings. But such assumptions prevent us from
acknowledging the influence of cultural and group history on every person’s
experience (p. 13).
As a memoir
writer, I think it is even more important to understand one’s cultural legacy.
A memoirist is writing a particular story from a particular point of view and a
particular perspective. The story is singularly unique yet it resonates beyond
the writer.
I do not believe
every story must be written from a cultural perspective, but acknowledging that
it is one lens through which a life is experienced enriches the depth of story.
For example, I was raised in a bicultural family. My father was a first
generation Italian-American, and my mother was a war bride of Irish descent
from Australia. Being raised in a family with recently immigrated parents
definitely had an impact on how I experienced mainstream American culture. In
fact I often felt on the fringes, an outsider, with many of my peers. When I first began to study the ethnic
tension in my home life, I did not account for the legacy that my Irish
heritage contributed. I only thought about the cultural aspects of being
Australian and Italian, but a deeper search revealed that my mother being
Irish-Australian mattered just as much to my story.
When I read the
following in McGoldrick’s book, Ethnicity
and Family Therapy, as I studied toward a master’s degree in counseling, I
felt a sense of understanding for my mother I had not experienced before:
The Irish people
are a people of many paradoxes. While having a tremendous flair for bravado,
they may inwardly assume that anything that goes wrong is the result of their
sins. They are dreamers but also pragmatic, hard workers… They are good
humored, charming, hospitable, and gregarious, but often avoid intimacy. They
love a good time, which includes teasing, verbal word play, and sparring, yet
are drawn to tragedy. Although always joking, they seem to struggle
continuously against loneliness, depression, and silence, believing intensely
that life will break your heart one day (p. 595).
This simple
paragraph, perhaps feeling stereotypical to some, felt as if it were
specifically talking about my mother.
When my husband
and I met freshman year of college, a new cultural and racial construct contributed
to the perspective through which I view the world. My husband is
African-American. His family is descended from Africans brought here against
their will to be used as slaves. It’s important to note that his historical
legacy sets him apart from African-Americans who immigrated to the US by
choice, and how new they are generationally to the US. His family also migrated
from the South to the North. This had a cultural impact as well. Interracial
marriage, though more common, is still statistically rare. “Factoring in all
racial combinations, Stanford University sociologist Michael Rosenfeld
calculates that more than 7 percent of America’s 59 million married couples in
2005 were interracial, compared to less than 2 percent in 1970.”
[1]
McGoldrick has
this to say about intermarriage:
Although, as a
nation, we have a long history of intercultural relationships, until 1967 our
society explicitly forbade racial intermarriage, and discouraged cultural
intermarriage as well, because it challenged White supremacy. But traditional
ethnic and racial categories are now increasingly being challenged by the
cultural and racial mixing that has been a long submerged part of our history.
Intimate relationships between people of different ethnic, religious, and
racial backgrounds offer convincing evidence that Americans’ tolerance of
cultural differences may be much higher than most people think (p. 26).
She goes on to
say, “Couples who choose to ‘marry out’ are usually seeking to rebalance their
own ethnic characteristics, moving away from some values as well as toward
others (p. 27).”
When we had
children, we created yet another cultural, racial and ethnic dynamic. My
daughters straddle race and culture in a way neither my husband nor I ever
could.
