The School Papers: Native American Stereotypes

In this assignment, we were asked to write about our earliest memories of Native American culture.

My early childhood introduction to Native American culture was a weird blend of stereotype and reality.  My Grandmother, a first generation Swedish woman who had grown up in Chicago and relocated to the small Wyoming town of Lander in the early 1980’s took care of the stereotype aspect nicely.  Lander bordered the reservation where members of the Shoshone tribe lived. A fair amount of the native craft work made its way to the local craft bazaars and subsequently, in to my Grandmother’s living room, bed room, spare room, basement and craft room.  She recreated oil paintings of majestic big horn sheep gazing off into the distance, eagles, wolves and the like.   All of the animals the Native Americans stereotypically  revered  seemed to make their way into my Grandparents’ home. For instance, one could never forget the charming antler chandelier my Grandparents had fashioned and appointed to the entry of their classic late 70’s split level home.   My Grandmother acquired lamps made of skulls, weird skins of formerly furry things, not to mention the ubiquitous moccasins and beaded earrings.  The moccasins and beaded earrings were constant gifts, so much so that when my eldest daughter was born, one of the first things Grandma did was ship off a tiny pair of baby moccasins for my newborn.  This contributed to Lily's "native American name": Lily Whiteass Firehair.

The reality came from members of our church congregation in the form of the Thunder sisters.  I was fascinated by them

 simply because their last name was Thunder.  This was infinitely cooler in my 4 year old mind than my last name of

 “Steele” which I’d already determined was silly because it wasn’t our real last name; Smeele was.   When I asked them

 about their name, Debbie, the older of the two explained it was because they were Indian.  They had the prettiest black

 hair and were ridiculously nice to me, and the idea that they were Indian meant little because they seemed to be “just like

 me”.  The “just like me” piece changed when we drove them home one night.  Lander isn’t the most beautiful town, largely

 red rocks as memory serves, but I do remember the landscape becoming uglier the farther north one drove outside of

town, which is where the Thunder sisters lived.  After we dropped them off, I asked my Mom why they lived out here when it

was ugly.  “Because they’re Indians.  And Indians live on reservations.”   “But why?” I asked.  “Because,” was her answer. 

That was all she had for me at age 4.

The School Papers: Tourism

It’s only been in the last two years that I’ve been able to travel outside of the United States.  Prior to meeting my husband, I’d been all over the United States (and to Canada, once).  My primary exposure to the business of tourism had been during the summer before I turned 21, when I had worked on a very small cruise vessel for nine weeks in Southeast Alaska.  I had intended the trip as a working vacation however I ended up moving to Seattle, as a result.  When I met Shawn a decade later, his profession of poker dealer had enabled him to take cruise vacations at a reduced price, while still earning his weekly wage.  A small tour company called Card Player Cruises marketed international cruises that offered their clients the ability to cruise the world while playing poker, and Shawn had signed up to deal poker.  The first cruise we took together would be a return trip to Southeast Alaska aboard one of the smaller ships in the Royal Caribbean fleet. 

My crewmates had always spoken somewhat derisively of the bigger ships.  Our boat was only 150 ft. long, and sold “adventure cruises” that promoted nature based excursions such as kayaking and hiking.  Passengers traveled in a small group, had the choice each night at dinner between chicken and fish, and on the last night, enjoyed the Captain’s Dinner featuring Prime Rib and an electrifying proximity to the Sawyer Glacier, while our boat rotated around its anchor.  We followed the same route as many of the large cruise lines, and often times we’d see a large ship pass us by and brace ourselves for the wake our small, flat-bottomed boat was about to ride.  “I hope they enjoy watching the glaciers calve from their staterooms,” one of my naturalist crewmates commented, once. 

While my return trip to Southeast Alaska was a deeply personal milestone, I was also able to see what the naturalist had meant.  Ports of call and shopping opportunity within those ports of call were the highlighted attraction, not the opportunity to observe nature.  I was blown away by the level of what I call bombardment capitalism employed by the cruise line. Whether out and about within the faux village they’d ingeniously created within the ship’s centrum, or on the television in my stateroom, I was being asked, told, cajoled, or manipulated into spending money.  It also became quite apparent that the cruise line had a rather interesting relationship with the diamond industry, a connection that made me exceptionally uncomfortable given my even limited understanding of the human rights issues surrounding diamond mining.  The apparent formula in use was simple- get the people on the ship, take them somewhere novel, sell them diamonds on the ship, then funnel them into diamond shops in port.  Never mind those beautiful mountains or the rich cultural life, buy, they’d whisper, buy diamonds. 

During one excursion in Skagway, the tour leader commented that he’d had a tourist ask him if the residents of the town were “real people.” “What do you mean, real people?” he’d asked.  “You know,” the tourist replied, “Do they, live here, or are they actors?”  Staring out the window of our tour bus, watching the little town pass by and noticing the heavy curtains in the windows of the residences to keep out the gaze of tourists, I laughed a little.  It would be this mind-set that later inspired my husband and I to suggest loudly that perhaps the reason we didn’t see as many waterfalls this trip was because the cruise line hadn’t paid the bill, and they had been shut off. 

The next cruise we took was to Mexico. I was horrified.  I couldn’t believe Mazatlan was actually sold as a vacation destination, as though seeing it was something worth saving up for, or perhaps more accurately, charging toward future repayment. The poverty I saw was profound and crushing.  The face of every street merchant I saw made me want to cry.  I’d watch the other tourists bargain for their wares, the serapes, sombreros, silver jewelry, pot pipes, sarongs, friendship bracelets, cowboy hats, and the masks the wrestlers wear.  One woman on the beach was about 8 months pregnant.  Another woman on the street had her toddler in tow.  One man stood below the open-air dining area of our restaurant selling marionettes.  He stood in one place on the hot beach for over an hour. Loopy on tequila, I focused on an imaginary point on the line between sky and sea so I wouldn’t see everything else. 

I returned from that trip glad to be tucked under America’s safe wing of prosperity and clean streets.  God Bless America, I remember thinking, despite my overarching lack of belief in either concept.  I never wanted to go back.  I remember wondering why Mexico couldn’t just get it together the way the US had.  How had the United States managed to do so well, when other countries hadn’t?  And as if by cue, the Universe sent me back to school.  Literally.

I didn’t mean to take Central American History and Culture per se, I just needed the credits and the class fit my schedule.  But within that class, I learned why the United States had done so well economically and why Mexico and its neighbors in Central America, hadn’t.  The following quarter I would learn about how a fair portion of the western US states had been stolen from Mexico amidst the spoils of manufactured war.  In this time, my own culture had been shifted- I’d left my grating professional life behind, and taken up the low-status job of cocktail waitress within a casino environment that was largely Asian and Asian-American.  In short, I’d learned to interact with people differently.  I’d learned to look closely at the interaction between culture and kinds, to see similarities and differences and most importantly, just see.  I learned to speak broken English.

Our next cruise would be onboard the biggest cruise ship in the world, bound for the Western Caribbean.  Actually, it was 6 inches shorter than the biggest cruise ship in the world, which was the Allure’s sister ship, the Oasis of the Seas.  I boarded the ship this time aware of what I was participating in.  I’d always been interested in the experiences of the crew based on my own experience as crew on an infinitely smaller vessel.  But one major point of difference was that my crew had been comprised of Americans in exclusivity.  The crew on the Allure wasn’t just multicultural, it was multi-national.  Even then, there appeared to be a form of segregation.  Most of the service workers were from the Philippines or China and appeared to be evenly mixed between male and female.  It said so on their name tag, along with a little picture of their country’s flag.  Cruise ship service employees seem unfailingly friendly, helpful and patient.  I wondered how these traits were selected for during their interview process.  I wondered if their attitude was genuine. I wondered how they felt about their jobs, if this job was about their personal quest for independence or about sending money home to meet family obligations.  I wondered how they felt about us, given the way I feel toward my own customers. On the flip side, the workers who attended to the ship’s dazzling number of hot tubs and pools were exclusively Jamaican males.  They did not bother to smile at me when I passed them late at night, and I silently applauded them for the likely rebellion. 

We would visit Haiti on that cruise.  The cruise ship doesn’t work very hard to make this fact known to their guests.  In fact, it would almost seem that they try to conceal it.  Labadee, the Caribbean amusement park is the marketing angle.  It would be like visiting Disneyland, if Disneyland were located in the most socio-economically compromised neighborhood in Los Angeles.  Labadee, Caribbean is also how the port is marketed on the glossy brochures and endless stateroom television commercials.  It features a nearly-mile long zip line over the beach.  The beach looks to be made of the created rock compounds that zoos use to create habitats for penguins and polar bears.  I suspect this is to prevent beach erosion. The whole thing is sold as a private island, even though it’s just fenced off from mainland Haiti.  Shawn and I sit under a tree and drink rum drinks, “Haitian Breakfast Smoothies” as we dub them, while watching the Americans move over the landscape like ants. 

I left that cruise with a desire to fit the cruise industry, and its parent business of tourism into a neat category of either “good thing” or “bad thing”.   I read Sharon Bohn Gmelch’s article entitled Why Tourism Matters found within the course text out of personal curiosity at the beginning of the term. Within the article, Gmelch calls tourism a unique form of globalization, and I would agree.  She points out that the tourism industry as a whole has an interest in preserving the culture of the places being visited, so as to market those unique attributes as incentives to visit.  She goes on to suggest that that “…tourism does not necessarily destroy cultural differences.” (358).

I think about this when I visit Falmouth, Jamaica.  As an export hub, Falmouth had once been the wealthiest-and busiest- port in Jamaica.  Trade ships would swarm the harbor, sometimes twenty to thirty of them, dropping off African slaves and picking up rum, sugar cane, and bananas.  I learn this from our tour guide, Trisha.  She describes the country’s history with a remarkable level of detachment.  She repeatedly tells us that “Columbus discovered Jamaica in 1494,” and I wince.  She tells us about Harry Belafonte being native to Jamaica.  She sings us the song with the familiar refrain, “daylightcomanIwannagohome,” in a flat tone with her thick Jamaican accent and I think about slave songs.  The song tells the story of workers in the banana fields, harvesting in the night.  They ask the tallyman to come count their harvest, because daylight has come and they want to go home. 

Slavery was abolished in Jamaica in 1838, Trisha tells us.   It would seem the English had no responsible use for Jamaica after that, based on the hallmarks of poverty that appear along the road.  We see a fairly endless distribution of concrete block homes in various states of construction.  The rebar sticks up from the concrete forms taking shape on the round, grassy hills.  She explains the Jamaican system for acquiring home ownership.  It involves bidding on land, a process that can take over five years.  Then, the owner pays for the land.   Then they start to build their homes as they acquire the funds.  Based on the number of incomplete homes, one suspects this can take a lifetime to actually accomplish.  Little towns spring up along the main highway as we travel toward our tubing destination.  Open air complexes, small shanty-like communities and people on foot characterize each town.  Trisha explains that gasoline is over six dollars a gallon US. The sign says 119.70 in Jamaican currency.  I see a country without a credit system.  It occurs to me that the majority of the US may not look so much different than Jamaica, if we didn’t have the ability to finance our future.  It occurs to me also that large parts of the US don’t look that much different than this, they’re just missing the beautiful Caribbean backdrop.

We notice the trash littering the streets in some of the smaller, more impoverished towns.  Shawn asks me how much money it takes to just pick up the trash.  None, I tell him, it just requires a person to care.  Trisha tells us that the garbage is collected and burned in Jamaica.  She also shares with us some of the favorite expressions in Jamaica, like “No problem.”  “We say this in Jamaica, because here we have no problems, only situations.”   I watch the countryside unfold from the window of our bus and think about this way of framing perception.  When so much is largely out of one’s hands, it seems a clever way to make something hurt less, a variation on the theme of a slave song.

It will be a long, beautiful day for us in Jamaica.  After our tubing trip run by locals, we will drink a rum drink so strong I’ll suspect I could light my breath on fire.  Then we’ll climb Dunn’s River Falls.  I notice one of our fall guides wears a wedding ring, and I nudge Shawn.  “How do you suppose his evening routine goes?” I ask.  “Hi honey, how was your day!?” I say, imitating the stereotypical American wife. “Oh you know,” I answer myself, “just another day leading the white American tourists up the waterfall over and over.  But I made $75!” 

I think about Gmelch’s assertion that tourism doesn’t necessarily destroy cultural differences.  In this environment, she’s absolutely correct.  Here, I see cultural differences reinforced. Here, amidst the giant port and bauxite stained mills, it looks like history, on replay- perhaps a modernized retelling of the same, exact story.  It seems to me that the relationship with tourism is more of a modern day slave trade, because while it provides something, it doesn’t appear to provide enough.  It’s a theoretical enslavement this time, a potentially forced dependence upon external direction and standard.  It’s the is-ought fallacy being acted out, on a global scale-  the political, social and institutional suggestion that that which is, is that which ought to be.   And so, the cultural difference being upheld is that between the haves and the have-nots, more than anything else.  

But it is, inarguably, too late to turn back.  History has been written and now modern tourists enjoy the benefit of what was left after colonialism had its turn with the people and the region.  But it’s hard to see that in exclusively negative terms, despite the history that lead us to this place.  I asked myself, repeatedly, “if not this, then what?”  If the people of the popular Caribbean islands didn’t have tourism to support themselves, no matter how meagerly, what would they do instead?  In Jamaica, for example, bauxite is one of the primary exports, along with bananas.  However, bauxite production has been in decline, I learn from the CIA World Fact Book.  Additionally, for a young woman like Trisha, I’m certain being a tour guide to Americans is preferable to working in a mine.  I know which job I’d rather have, at least. 

It remains difficult to classify tourism as an entirely good or entirely bad thing, despite my desire to do so. The only conclusion I’ve been able to reach is I need more information about the significant impact tourism clearly has.  It seems reasonable to think that tourism is something that can be conducted responsibly if we find a way to maximize the positive impact of the practice, while minimizing the negative impacts.  In the end, responsible tourism lies with the tourist, and highlights the need, as Gmelch concludes her article to, “Be a good global citizen and care” (363).

The School Papers: Cultural Anthropology Final

On the first day of class, we were asked to make a list of attributes of our culture.  At the end of the term, we wrote an essay connecting our initial impressions of our culture to what we learned. 

 

"My culture… as what?

-          White American

-          Female

-          Heterosexual

-          Married

-          Parent

-          Non-believer/athiest

My culture is under personal examination at the moment. These are the attributes of my culture that come to mind when prompted. Having spent some time contemplating race and identity, I’ve determined that both of these come down to dominant culture more than anything else. I see this as an opportunity for redefinition."

Reflection:

I did not start this class embroiled in a deep love affair with my culture.  When asked to reflect on it on the first day of class, these were the words that came to me. I didn't identify myself as a writer or reader, as a student, as a lover of random and inappropriate things.  Nor did I identify myself as a fan of beer, music, or of the History Channel.  I didn’t mention that I like to travel -although I worry about its implications for the places being visited- or that I am perhaps unreasonably preoccupied with matters of race. There was no idiosyncratic culture in my initial description. Instead, I identified myself by skin color, broad geography, gender, sexual orientation, basic kinship and my lack of religious affiliation.  The reason for the broad overview was fairly simple, and remains true:  when I think of culture, I think of society around me, not my own personality traits.  I think what I was trying to say was that I’ve inherited the culture of a white middle class American female, but it doesn’t fit.

I suppose this class was largely an exercise in connecting the dots among all my favorite subjects studied during my long haul through community college. When I identified myself as a white American, I was admitting my benefit from a sad history for which I have no direct responsibility, yet feel compelled to acknowledge. This history is written by the economics of industry, centralized government and a little institution called Christianity, which gave supernatural approval to social stratification and oppression. That’s the white part. It is a history written through the frequent overlapping of insanity and ideology, and one that guarantees my right to offer my criticism and own a gun.   That’s the American part.

But as the quarter unfolded, I was really struck by the naïve realism I had regarding the female gender.  I have issues with American women because I think many of our cultural traits are a bit silly.  For instance, some American women will simultaneously talk about how strong and capable they are, while looking for a man to carry a 15 lb. box from one end of a room to another.  Some American women “get their nails done”, a process that involves mixing ghastly chemicals together and gluing them to one’s finger tips, in the name of being pretty.  I was neither raised, nor did I grow to be this type of woman.  I was raised to be capable, intelligent, strong and self-sufficient. Therefore, I tend to think that all women possess these traits and any glorification of those traits through cultural means is really unnecessary.

While the idiosyncratic cultural traits listed above are representative of some American women, one cultural trait I think we may all share is that of taking for granted the fact that we are American women. I’ve never studied the social movement of feminism, because I’ve never had to contemplate my own marginalization based upon my gender, especially because of my race and nationality. There have been plenty of times in life when I’ve felt the sting of being discounted on the basis of my gender.  However, I’ve never been relegated to the level of unwilling participant or traded commodity. 

I found myself responding strongly to the description of Taiwanese family life in Margery Wolf’s ethnology.  Having recently married and joined a new family myself, I can relate to some of the challenges presented.  But my challenges have been nothing like those for a Taiwanese woman.  Through my American eyes, it looks as though a Taiwanese female is told from birth, “you’re no one, really. The only use we have for you is through the sons you bear.”  There is no sense of belonging that I see, although I do have to entertain the notion that perhaps these women don’t feel that way about the process at all.  After all, it doesn’t appear to occur to American women to feel collectively dismal about the pursuit of marriage through love, a concept that has its obvious drawbacks for anyone who has ever undertaken the task. It’s just the way it’s done.

Another cross-cultural connection I saw through the eyes of gender was that of motherhood.  The role of motherhood is one that I am, as an American, supposed to fulfill with a mix of tender nurturance and territorial ferocity.  Yet I represent neither of those attributes.  My children are raised equally by myself and my husband, my children’s father and his wife.  Although I birthed these two amazing little creatures, I raise them as part of a team.  We are all part of a truly blended family.  When considering the different types of kinship structures, I was amused to find that none of them really described the pattern followed by my family.  It has been a challenge to find the right combination of holding on and letting go while incorporating all of the dynamics of our group.  This American challenge is almost rendered invisible however, when compared to the women found in Nancy Scheper-Hughes ethnology about the women and infants of  Alto do Cruzeiro.  Due to profound poverty, these women did not fight what they saw as natural selection.  Their relationship with life changed at some point, while they attempted to find the right combination of holding on and letting go. Most American women will never be faced with a situation like that faced by women of the Alto.

The challenge I ran in to was maintaining cultural relativism. While evaluating the matrimonial and social state of the Taiwanese woman or the laying aside of starving infants by the women of the Alto, I was repeatedly struck by how much I would not want these things for myself.  And a rather guilty sense of gratitude came into my perspective that, barring some colossal change, I would never have to know these realities of varying injustice because I’m an American woman.

I started this class feeling culture-less in a sense because American culture is like a never ending commercial for something I'd never be able to afford, even if I wanted to buy it.  The trappings of a post-Industrial culture hold little interest to me.  In fact, I tend to think that if whiteness was an economic commodity, I wouldn’t be able to afford it, either. The myopic push of capitalism and the assigned meaning of occupational identity seem to lack any redemptive value if one doesn't wish to become a home owner or a boat owner, or work toward expanding their shoe collection. In fact, I'm largely unconcerned with my status or acquiring personal property, in general. 

But I’m still an American woman, and that means that I can do what I want. I get a say in who I am and what role I fulfill.  I can be educated, own property, choose to be partnered or unpartnered and have a full say in the manifestation of either concept. I can get married, I can get divorced, I can have a baby by myself or with a partner of either gender. I can use birth control to avoid becoming pregnant. I can vote.  I do not worry about being raped on my way to the grocery store.  Not only can I do all of these things, these choices are mine by birthright. These are all attributes of being American that I do like, and I do value.  At the beginning, I was looking for a redefinition of my culture. I didn’t find it.  But I did find a sense of redemption in my rights as a female to exercise choice. Those rights are a direct result of my American culture.  

The School Papers: Multicultural History Final

During this class, I often reflected upon my own experiences with race and multiculturalism. I spent grades 2 through 5 in a diverse classroom environment. Among my friends were Vietnamese, Thai, and African-American kids. We had a number of Russian and Romanian families living in our apartment complex as well. Even when my family moved to the suburbs, our religious affiliation connected us to immigrant and disabled communities that occurred only incidentally within our neighborhood. Diversity and other ways of being were not new concepts introduced upon adulthood. I often wondered then, how I could have slid into a racist relationship with Asians quite so easily as an adult. It would turn out that my question, like many questions surrounding race, would not be resolved with a simple, straightforward answer. Instead, it came in the form of a journey, both personal and academic, that resulted in what anthropologist Allan Goodman referred to in Race: The Power of an Illusion, as a paradigm shift, wherein an old way of seeing a race was destroyed, and a new way of seeing people emerged.

The Asian first came to me as a voice in a headset while employed as a Telephone Banker at the now defunct Washington Mutual. It was female, it was demanding, and it repeated itself. The Voice had an accent that made it hard for me to understand what it wanted- the fact that it was upset was quite clear, despite the language barrier. Compounding the matter, the Voice didn’t appear to understand my explanation of the issue at hand. A few years later, I found myself working as a cashier in a Japanese-family owned market that boasted the most impressive selection of Asian foods within a “normal” grocery store. Now The Voice had a Face. The Face wanted to know why I charged it so much for produce that was on sale, in the same demanding tone it had questioned me about “sehvace feee” while working at the bank. This would prompt a very professional but very forced review of their bill. “See? The promotion is 4 for $5. That’s $1.25 each. The system applies the discount after I ring all of the peppers in.” “But peppah on sale?!” They’d reply, and I’d repeat my explanation a few more times, noticing that the simplest one was the one they finally understood. This lead to the broad overgeneralization that Asians were also stupid. Stupidity as a trait within people was something I’d learned to tolerate. But, beneath the tolerance I displayed was a seething and growing resentment of all people who looked like this person. I began to see all Asians as an unblinking-register watching face, bound and determined to make my life miserable with a 4 minute, lather rinse, repeat-style explanation that yes, the peppers really are on sale. Repeat this scenario over a hundred times, and I had an attitude toward the Asian that was quickly escalating. While I knew that prejudicial behavior wasn’t acceptable, it wasn’t long before I found myself justifying my experiences as fact. My family and friends helped this along by contributing their own similar experiences and together we cemented our notion that we could go on disliking an entire race of people, despite the voice in the back of my mind that suggested quite the opposite. But what did that mean?

Racism and its practitioner, racist, are two small but hefty words within American culture. The classic understanding of racism suggests a demonstrative state of prejudice on the part of one toward a member of another race. Barbara Trepagnier author of Silent Racism explains that defining racism is challenging for multiple reasons, one of which is that white Americans still operate on the the pre-civil rights definitions of racism. Racism was based on the concepts of prejudice and discrimination (2). It follows then that a racist was a person who actively demonstrated prejudice and discrimination. In my mind, since I wasn’t acting on my dislike for Asians my feelings were allowed to exist in a land of limbo.

I saw the system as it had been set up for whites and blacks and had been desperately concerned with the concept of white privilege for a number of years. A literal interpretation of this situation meant I would elect to hire a black person instead of an Asian one. It is important to note that this choice will be based, according to the theory of race, on skin color alone or in my case, by the shape of a person’s eyes. But I wasn’t in the social position to do something like that, or to really influence the life of an Asian person at all, for better or worse. It never occurred to me that they might be in a position to influence mine.

And then there was the night I walked in to the Roman Casino in Skyway, WA to apply for a job. It had every indication possible of being someplace I ought not be. Compensating for the fact that it was located in the “rough” part of town, the parking lot was bordered by some vicious looking barbed wire fence. Some of the largest black men I’d ever seen opened the mirror-glazed doors on our behalf when we approached the entrance. As I stepped into the room and sized up my surroundings, I heard my Mom’s voice in my head, asking in the same tone used when I’d been caught at mischief, “Um, what are you doing?”. Housed in what looked to be a “double” strip-mall space, The Roman reminded me of a Spirit Halloween store that had been painted over to look like a Roman den of inequity. And everywhere I looked I saw them. Asians. Everywhere. The urge to back away slowly had become the urge to turn and run by the time my husband grabbed my hand and said “Come on, babe.” I tried really hard not to get that job at The Roman, but as life and a persistent husband with professional connections would have it, I was hired as a graveyard cocktail server.   My first week’s schedule was written on a coaster and I was told to dress “as sexy as you want.” Three months earlier, I had been the one explaining the company dress code to a group of call center new hires, and advising them of the opposite, while handing out color coded excel spreadsheets of their schedules.  

There had been a few other instances before The Roman wherein I’d experienced what it felt like to be what Takaki terms the “Other- different, inferior and unassimilable” ( 4) . But this was a unique confrontation, one as palpable and indivisible as a crowd. Perhaps made worse by having spent an hour and a half attempting to tease, powder and slick myself into a version of sexy (a concept outside of my comfort zone anyway), I stepped out onto the casino floor on my first night excruciatingly aware of myself. I was white, they were Asian, and I was sure we didn’t like each other. At first, it made me feel somewhat better than they didn’t appear to like me, because it provided balance for my dislike of them. But I realized that this attitude wasn’t going to actually accomplish anything, and I was going to have to assimilate.  

It would be three weeks of a Multicultural Communication course that helped turn Asians into Asians, which was the first step along my path. Asian, as said by my inner voice came with a derisive sneer and a host of derogatory associations. Asian was now simply a group of people representative of a particular culture, which I discovered I knew absolutely nothing about. It helped me decipher the points of difficulty in my interactions with Asians. It also wasn’t long before I realized that most of my customers were immigrants who did not speak much if any English, which meant that every single one of them had a story automatically richer than my own. I realized that I had been born in the place they’d ended up, and that they presumably came here for the same things I valued about being an American. I found a new form of respect within that realization, and things began to turn around.

Just as Multicultural Communication assisted in developing a basic understanding of the people whom I was serving, Multicultural History facilitated a deeper understanding of the long and tenuous relationship between Asian- and Anglo-Americans. Not long after my attitude improved toward my customers, I started to develop regulars which lead to the realization that The Roman wasn’t just a casino, it was a community center.  While reading Takaki’s chapter Searching for Gold Mountain, I realized that my now-former customers were in much the same state as they had been in the 1800’s. They had no doubt left their home lands in the hope of making more money in America, raising their families and achieving something more than was previously possible. I saw parallels between the Chinese laundry of the 19th century and the ubiquitous convenience mart of today- a work undertaken out of practicality and social allowance, not passion (Takaki 185). In the story of the Japanese Internment camps I read of people who looked Asian, but identified as American. A group of people who were rounded up and stashed away in the desert because of the shape of their eyes and what that could mean to the safety of our precious America (Takaki 344). Many white people file that piece of American history under “it was different then.” I’m not so sure it’s always different today.

And then, the paradigm shift. I realized that there was no such thing as Asian. A group of people from the same quarter of the world could not be so neatly described, when there were such rich cultural differences defining them. This came to me the day I was at the local convenience mart, run by the Wilson family, who are Korean-American. I had noticed their son’s wedding invitation on the side of the beer cooler, and used the dull moment waiting for my debit transaction to ask Mrs. Wilson about the wedding.

“It was very nice,” she said.

“Was it traditional?” I asked, meaning of course, traditionally Asian, with red envelopes and big feasts and traditional ceremony. What I didn’t realize was that I had simultaneously mixed together the marriage customs of multiple Asian cultures.

“I don’t know, she’s Vietnamese and we’re Korean, so I don’t really know how traditional it was.”

Just like that, it hit me. Under the label of Asian fits a huge group of people who have varied culture, varied history, varied values.   Although we live by it, believe in it and navigate around it socially, there really is no such thing as Asian, no one unifying trait that makes them all the same. In retrospect, the issues I had with my phone and grocery customers were about communication and culture, not the value of one person over another and certainly not about any one’s intelligence.

I only worked at The Roman for three weeks, but it was enough time to facilitate a significant personal change. The casino I work in now features more Asian-Americans, individuals with connections to both cultures. Each night around 2:30, the Chinese and Vietnamese menus become unavailable to our casino customers, and this is known to the staff as “Last call for Asian.” This leaves me wandering the room, calling out “Last call for Asian… last call…”. It was one evening amidst the standard snickers and questions “What kind of Asians? All Asians have to go?!” or, “You hear that So, last call for Asians,” that I stopped. “Ok guys. Last call for Chinese food… Last call for Vietnamese soup…   Is that better?!”   The players at the table laugh at me and say, yes.

The night goes on and I smile that I happen to know the difference. 

Thoughts and Explanations...

So, I've gotten some solid feedback from several of you and the common consensus is that my sentences can get a little... out of hand. More than one person mentioned that they had to read sentences a couple of times, which is not what I'm going for. So, I thought I should explain what I'm trying to do, and maybe you guys can help me figure it out.

My concern over heavy sentences is from a reader's perspective. There's a writer whose name I forget who wrote a couple of really awesome books- in concept. Too bad I couldn't read them in their entirety because her thoughts, sentence structure and arrangement of thought were so heavy that I felt like I needed a beer and a nap after two paragraphs. Needless to say, I appreciate what she was going for, but I don't anticipate returning to her work until say, a natural disaster strikes and I can't leave my house. Meanwhile, I'll keep the books because they make me look hipster-smart.

The other comment I've heard a few times is the need for humor. Which I acknowledge whole-heartedly. I can be a funny writer, and would definitely like to be. The problem with this, is that I tend to draw to the darker, more emotional sides to a story. I want a reader to have a feeling that matches the situation being described. For instance, the day I decided to quit my job was not a funny day. It was awful. And many of the days that came after it were distinctly not funny, either. In situations like that, the best I can often manage is sarcasm, or dry descriptions of ordinary scenes. Humor tends to occur in the context of the unexpected. Like, the way you don't expect a little kid to let out a string of curse words.

As for the form of the blog itself- I have to apologize that this last post ended suddenly. I basically ran out of time to round it out, but wanted to get it posted. Sometimes things will be out of context, but I'll do my best to put them all in the right order. Also, the next segment of this story potentially involves the details of my exit from my job. I'm conflicted because, as my Mom pointed out, people can sympathize with the desire to leave a corporate environment. True. On the flip side, I have to ask myself how much of that particular story is worth telling. Does re-telling the story give some sort of value or credit to the so-called people I was dealing with? What's worse- to be spoken ill of or not be spoken of at all? So, I'm toying with that idea... one idea I had was to write it with their spoken dialog and my internal dialogue. I think that could be funny... Think the movie High Fidelity- the scene where Tim Robbins comes in to John Cusack's record shop and there is this repeat montage of various acts of imagined violence-one scene, they pick up the phone and hit him in the face with it, next one air conditioner, and so on. The end of the scene is John Cusack simply telling the guy to "get your goddamn patchouli scented ass out of my record shop."

Thoughts?!

Fits and Starts...

Imagine a suburban office park. Tree lined streets curve randomly through a collection of look-alike office buildings. The middle aged slim-fast set out are out for their morning walk in their socks, sneakers and universally unappealing peasant skirts, but with the morning sun shining through the trees, it’s a pleasant scene. As office parks go, it’s really quite nice. Inside the windows of the look-alike office buildings one finds people doing office work. Some of them have charts and graphs, and others lists and files. Inside some of the windows, people answer the phone. Constantly. Much is made over this simple process. Stress is incurred, numbers have to be collected and analyzed in order for improvement to be made. It’s an earnest attempt at counteracting the apparent daily surprise that people are calling. Right now.

One February day, behind the windows of one building in particular, this exact scene plays before brightly painted walls. The people answering the phone are talking, their heads bent, some with their eyes staring at an imaginary point on the horizon or their cubical wall for lack of anything better to look at. Some have toys, nerf guns, beach balls, the like. An email was sent recently asking the reps to please, keep it professional and therefore, stop throwing paper airplanes. Apparently, the tipping point on departmental professionalism was reached when the customer service representatives started throwing paper airplanes.
Some things you won’t see are pens or paper. It was decided that the phone reps would no longer be allowed to use pens, pencil and paper after one particular employee allegedly absconded with a customer’s personal information. This also included crayons for the sake of consistency and perception, even though just about anyone can attest to the profound uselessness of the crayon as a writing instrument. The reps used to color, some with a charming artistry, carefully layering Crayola colors over each other to create Fairy scenes, or neat homages to Sponge Bob. This decision was made because it was the “right thing to do.” ”And,” I was told, “they do it in India,” which is of course just about all of the reason you’d ever need to do anything. I pointed out that a person could just use the notepad feature on their computer, print the text and delete the notepad- which would actually be a more efficient way of doing such a thing. This suggestion was not appreciated. Anyway, They were reasonably sure he used his phone to record the information, but just in case pens and paper were banned.

When other employees of the company heard about this, they would question it almost exclusively in eyebrow gesture. “So you guys,” they’d say, head leaning in, one eyebrow raised, “don’t have pens and paper anymore?” By the end of ‘anymore’ both eyebrows would be raised before furrowing down into the “is that right?” look of questioning. I in turn, would raise my eyebrows, tilt my head to the right and nod. “I know.” I’d leave it at that. Their eyebrows would knit up and their faces would scrunch, lips pulled to one side. It’s the face for “what the fuck?” one of the few expressions successfully interpreted across cultures and languages, in my personal experience. “I know,” I'd say. “That’s like an American right!” Sometimes it looked like they just traveled back in time for 3 seconds to remember reading “1984” in high school. “I know.”

Not to be underestimated in their zeal for relief from the idle, repetitive torture that call center life provides, the reps ensured that the beach balls arrived not long after the crayons departed. Small wood puzzles sprung up, too.  I admired the phone reps ability to assemble the puzzles by decoding the tedious, slightly insulting instructions involving 132 little pieces, alphabetized and diagramed by an under-stimulated Chinese engineer who was undoubtedly practicing for the day he would work for Ikea.

Some of the reps stand, while others sit, leaning in to their computer as though it were the person themselves. If you walk by a rep actively engaged a conversation, you’ll likely feel looked through. They are connected to their phone by a long swirly cord, and sometime the pacing of the especially high strung members of the population will twist the cord up into a figure 8 of frustration, in both the making and unraveling. I’ve always considered this to be an unfortunate sign, akin to the tigers pacing listlessly at the zoo.

The pacing is understandable. Customers have the reps by the ears and more or less, the brain. They have something the customer wants, generally whatever was lost or “stolen” from the customer and they will use whatever tactics necessary to shake it out of “You People”, an entity for which the customer service representative happens to serve as a voice. The methods of conversational terrorism adults will utilize can be both dazzling and disappointing. Should you ever find yourself with an over-abundance of faith in humanity, working in a call center is an easy way to shake it. Despite this, most of the people look happy to be there, although that could be happiness to have a job regardless of its nature.

Beyond the reps and around the corners, in the little room off the lunchroom with an unreliable automatic light and the only privacy window in the building, you’ll find me, having just walked into an office.
"Your hair has gotten so long!" she said. She calls herself the department director, whatever this means. Her title is customer service manager. Among the things I believe to be true: if a conversation starts with a compliment or comment on one’s hair, it is unlikely to end well for both parties. I learned this in food service, of all places.

"Yes, it does that over... Time, it grows," I managed to reply. In retrospect, I don't know how good I am at hiding contempt, even within non-accusatory phrasing. Hair comments are reserved in social context for those one hasn’t seen for a while. She hadn't seen me in a while because she hadn't been to work in a while. She was glib like that, flaunting whatever exception or liberty was either being extended in her favor or flat out taken.   In her case, it seemed a general exception for the practice of coming to work or serving any real function whatsoever.

The door closes, and I sit obediently as I have a habit of being. Hands folded, I wait. It is one of those split moments in time that are so shocking that one tastes pennies for a moment before flight or fight  hormones kick in. Then the little voice inside says "Oh! Of course," as one realizes that this moment is simulatenously unsurprising and rather predictable.  This combination renders one a bizarre calm on the outside, but like a tea kettle on the inside, quickly approaching it's boiling point. I felt like a little kid, about to get the belt.

"So Melissa,” she starts, “L and I talked this morning. And I understand that you two met yesterday," she paused, waiting for my agreement that this occurred. I’m tempted to deny it for fun, while I envision the “meeting” they must have had about 15 minutes ago.  It likely happened in the parking lot over several cigarettes and a recanting of each other’s personal details as they each roll in to work. "It's so hard for a sociopath to find love these days," I imagine them lamenting to each other.

But yes, L and I had met yesterday and I had been honest regarding my feelings on recent events.  Something else I believe to be true: honesty is not a universally respected currency.  In fact, it's mostly seen as a form of weakness to be exploited.

"Yes."

"Well you know Melissa," she had this cutting way of saying one's name as an insult, as though their parents first spoke it after wincing. "We've had our differences in the past."

It’s hard to know how to tell this part of the story. Because for the number of times I’ve told this story, I’ve found no satisfaction in the telling. The vindication never comes. I wouldn’t expect this telling to be different.

I could relate the long list of reasons why I felt I was wronged. I could probably write at least 6 pages on the vague and shifty concept of perception. I could tell you all about the profound level of mismanagement and compromised ethics I witnessed and participated in. It could be fun to tell it with my internal dialogue in place of the stupid silence I had to offer as I was told that day, but even that doesn’t change the outcome. I could render embarrassing and scathing descriptions of those with whom I worked, about the meetings that were wrapped up with "Ok, I've got to go take a shit." But none of that would undo the simple feeling of insult that the preceding two years had left me with. In the end though, I think it might be best said via quote, overheard in a poker room. “I’ve been insulted by better.”

Long story short, I quit and I didn’t have another job. I offered 30 days notice, and my employer elected to let me go after 7, with pay in lieu of notice. Simple as that, apparently.

A few weeks later I ended up on the phone with a state employee, explaining why I was filing for unemployment after having quit my job. The tone in which questions were asked lead to an almost desperate retelling of how awful I felt about working there.  I knew when I hung up that I had been marvelously successful at making myself look like a nervous wreck. In those few weeks, I also had a few phone interviews and managed to stumble through those as well, each time asking myself how I must sound to the person interviewing me, because I knew how I sounded to myself.

“So why did you leave?”

“Well…” and from here would progress some awkwardly spun description of the situation, something that from beginning to end could be fictionalized as a bad romance, if the names and places were changed. Each time, I withheld the true story so I didn’t look negative, or like a problem employee, or viral or any of the things one must counteract when dealing exclusively in perception. I did this a few times and then one day I realized: I was beat. I couldn’t effectively disguise or lie about the reason for leaving my job, and I certainly couldn’t tell the truth. I felt shell shocked.


Staring out the windows in the Man’s room, watching the winter clouds slide in across the bay, I wondered how it was possible to be right and wrong at the same time.

I tried to talk myself into a better attitude, but the questions remained. I wondered, in what world it would be seen as a negative to explain that I didn’t appreciate the ethics of the environment I was in. Or, to say that I don’t believe in rankism, and am therefore not interested in maintaining a sense of superiority over coworkers. Or, to say that I have certain expectations for leadership- specifically that you should be good at your job and you should, at the very least, understand what mine is. Or perhaps that I felt a lack of respect, and yes, that is something I’m looking for in a professional environment.

In the end it was fairly simple: in a corporate world these ideas are negative. Because they don’t show compliance, or an endless devotion to someone else’s goals. Health insurance, vacation pay and a 401k in exchange for your soul- and that’s a good job. Mind your credit and your savings, buy a boat and attend PTA meetings. Suck it up, play the game, blah de fucking blah, Nordstrom and Starbucks and a bucket list of the things to make you feel alive before you die. Not. My. Scene.

What I had on my hands was not merely a job hunt, it was an existential crisis. How it was possibly reasonable that I would ever compromise the basic things I believe in and wish to stand for in the name of money? I worked those figures and came up short every time.

I stared at the clouds for hours. I waited for answers, for email and phone calls.

I realized one day that I was trying out for a team I didn’t want to be in the hope that I’d get to play a sport I hated because that’s what I’m supposed to do. Because that’s what everyone else does, or wants to do. But not me.

At some point, as the clouds slid in for maybe the 40th day in a row, I decided that even if it didn’t make sense to anyone else, I believed that I had quit for the right reasons. I believed that my sanity, my perception and my happiness were good enough reason to walk away from my job, and that something would happen and that’d we’d be ok. Despite this, however the stress was growing surrounding my unemployment. More certain than ever that I didn’t want to return to corporate life, I was going to have to figure out a way to bring money in to the family.

So I did what anyone who needed money and didn’t want a job would do. I decided to go back to school.

So It's Time.

School is out next week, which means it's time for me to find something new to procrastinate over and avoid. It may as well be writing. Over the last several months, I've had a voice in my mind saying "it's time", in an impatient tone and I'm hoping that this combined with all of the notions renting space in my head, will motivate me to put fingers to keys.

The purpose of this blog is multifaceted. First, I have this crazy idea that I might be able to make a living as a writer. For more than a few years, I've received compliments and encouragement from those close to me who have read my thoughts commited to "ink", and told me they were good. While I have always been skeptical of their comments, given that many of the people I know and love are also very kind and encouraging, I figure that if my writing was awful, someone would have had the courtesy to tell me by now. The second aspect of this blog's purpose is to develop the habit of writing. I've noticed that while I can't escape my thinking, I can generally avoid writing. Except, this particular habit prevents number one from ever becoming a reality, hence, I'd like to employ peer pressure to form a habit. It worked for smoking, so I know the idea has merit. The third aspect, and the scary part for me is that my writing is a reflection of myself. I would describe myself as an essayist, as I have thus far only been capable of capturing myself and my own life in the right words. Therefore, these are my thoughts- very carefully arranged, mind you- and subsequently, sharing them- the ideas that generally live on the inside arranged with a sense of purpose- is scary. A natural question follows- scared of what? Judgement. I've recently worked out for myself that the only reason I worry over judgement is because I myself am judgemental. I know my thoughts and predispositions, stereotypes and opinions. I know what I think about other people, and I'm a little worried about what they might think about me, should I go through the effort of writing it all down. Combined with the fear of not being good enough- of having something that is the best example I can manage, disregarded- has proven to be enough to immobilize. It would again prove counterproductive that my preferred method of creative expression also work out as a phobia.

It follows that the same impatient voice that has been urging me along, is also louder than the doubts that linger over ability. So it's time.

The final purpose of this blog is to assemble a set of experiences I've had recently into a collection of essays. To sell, mind you, so I can have a nice house with a water view and host parties to which you'll all be invited. This being said, as you read, please tell me what you think. Tell me what you liked and disliked. Please be specific, even if you think it'll hurt my feelings. If you think something I say needs elaboration, point it out. Aside from critics, I need you to read- and as readers, think about what I have to say and share your perspective. This story runs along some sensitive lines, and I'd like to know what you think about them. I've decided to call this re-telling Broken English, for reasons that will hopefully be obvious in due time.

In summary, Broken English starts with my decision to quit my corporate job. This is something people don't generally do and get away with, at least not people like me- an idea which will be elaborated upon. But yesterday was 120 days, and I appear to have pulled it off. It wasn't without some tradeoffs, which is of course, where my story lies. I did find a new job, but in an environment that required me to come to terms with racism- my own, to be exact- and those racist opinions held by others, too. It also required me to shed my love of english, my obsession with using the right words at all times so as to convey the most perfect meaning possible, almost immediately. With my words went my sense of humor, which is also my method of rapport building and coping with ambiguity. Again, this is where my story lies. But between the two jobs I've held in the last 121 days and the term of school I've just completed, I've found a tremendous sense of understanding and value. This is combined with the desire to be part of the solution for the problems that lie before us as a culture, society, and our eventual blurb in history. My goal for our era is that at least it can be said that we tried.

This is the same for myself, perspective and voice- at least it can be said that I tried.

Stay tuned...