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| Editors: | |
| James Blasingame | James.Blasingame@asu.edu |
| Lori A. Goodson | lagoodson@cox.net |
Reflections on Multi-culturalism and the Tower of PsychoBabble
As a former English teacher, therapist, and young adult author, Iexperienced living in a multi-cultural society even before the term wasappropriated by mass culture. Like the term "post-modern," "multi-cultural"seems to have taken on a life of its own, meaning different things to differentpeople. To some, it's all inclusive. To others, it's exclusive. Us againstthem. To still others, it's simply confusing.
Regardless of how one defines the term, however, for better or worse, itexists. More importantly, people are beginning to ask questions of themselvesand others that they may not have thought to ask in the past. In the followingpaper, I would like to explore my own observations and the impact on me, bothpersonally and professionally of, at least, asking the questions, even if Ican't always answer them.
In order to complete the course work for my master's degree in psychology, Iwas required to take a class in multi-cultural counseling. I was interested inthe reticence of the class to come to terms with their own possibleshort-comings in dealing with people of other cultures and to admit that theyharbored any kind of prejudice against those of other ethnic origins ornationalities.
Even at the end of the quarter, most students clung to their perceived notionsof themselves. When the professor asked for a show of hands to indicate if anyof us had any prejudices, I was the only member of the class to raise mine,admitting that when I don't censor myself, there is one group to which Iautomatically react negatively.
I went on to admit that it is a group with whom I am almost entirelyunfamiliar, and that when I have actually engaged in conversation withindividuals from this group, I've found them as interesting or dull, honest ordishonest, humane or inhumane as individuals from any other ethnic group.Recently, it also occurred to me that, while I count many black and Latinowriters among my favorites, I have never read anything, other than politicalcommentaries, from the particular group to which I tend to respond negatively-- even though they have a rich literary history.
This, of course, led me back to something I've always believed -- thatliterature can be a powerful force, and that it is through the use ofliterature that we can explore, not only ourselves, but the so-called other.
Rather than using textbooks for Multi-Cultural Counseling, which the entireclass regarded as biased, many of us suggested that reading the literature ofthe African-American, Asian-American, Native American, and Latino cultures westudied would give us more valid insights into those cultures. Even when wesaw tapes of therapists from minority cultures counseling their own people,what sometimes became evident was that the minority therapist had oftenassimilated, had adopted the point of view of the dominant culture, and hadlittle understanding of his or her client.
One tape in particular comes to mind. A Native American female therapistcounsels a Native American male. As he tells her his story, we see how painfulit is for him. He has come to counseling because he slapped the woman he'sseeing in front of her small child, and he is devastated by his action. Duringthe conversation, the man, a successful contractor, mentioned that, when he isin the desert painting, he feels at peace with himself. When he is in nature,with nature, his anger dissipates. The therapist, however, was so determinedto teach him that anger is inappropriate that she neglected to really listen towhat he said and skimmed over the fact that he had been duped in business by awhite man. She discussed ways of curbing his anger without exploring the longhistory -- spanning generations -- during which that anger has rightfullygrown. She totally ignored the man within the context of his culture, eventhough they shared the same background.
Many in the class talked about the man's anger, just as the therapist had inher discussion of the case. What I saw was a gentle man, who had made amistake and who longed for a way back to his true self.
Perhaps it is I who misperceives the man, and not the class or the therapist,but I can't help thinking that had we read the work of Louise Erdrich, ourclass would have had a much better understanding of the entire dynamic -- thewhole man, cut off from his history and his roots. What we see in Erdrich'sfictional characters is the impact on a people of the land who for generationshave been deprived of their mother. Psychologists have studied the negativeeffect on children separated from their mothers. They see the devastatingeffect it has on them, even if mothers are present, but unavailable. InErdrich's novels, we are invited to carry the metaphor beyond its literalmeaning and to accept the American Indian's view of the land as mother. Wefeel the disorientation of Erdrich's characters, bound by a culture that barelyexists for younger generations, and the mechanization that the dominant culturehas both imposed upon them and deprived them of at the same time.
In other words, the fictional characters, though sometimes deeply flawed,become real people with whom we can sympathize; and it is through their storiesthat we get a glimpse into that particular culture, a glimpse much more potentthat any textbook examination can afford us.
This glimpse offers us a way to understand and identify with a different way ofbeing without denying our own. In the past few years, however, I have becomeaware of the ethnocentric divisiveness that sometimes dominates academia,rigidly proposing not a philosophy of "both and" but a dogma of "either or" onits proponents.
Please, don't misunderstand me. I applaud the efforts of marginalizedminorities -- women, blacks, Latinos -- to demand that the literature of theirpeople be not simply acknowledged, but taught. But I also feel strongly thatthis literature be made available to all students, and taught not onlyin college classrooms but from grade school on up.
I understand the need of disempowered people to jump-start the engines of theirvery particular trains of thought in order to gain recognition and validity.They must sound the trumpet and wake up the living dead who long ago canonizedonly that literature which they considered worthwhile.
But why contain African, Latino, and Asian literature in courses limitedprimarily to students of those cultures? How will this affect the dominantculture? Perhaps the answer might be that the disenfranchised no longer careabout that.
I understand the need to separate and assume the power that has been strippedfrom minority cultures. I understand that taking back their culture is anessential part of healing the very soul of their collective identity, but Ialso feel it is important to share this identity with people from othercultures, dominant and minority, as well. And to point out our similarbeginnings.
One assigned reading from Joseph Campbell might go a long way. Campbell tracescommon myths among diverse cultures. How wonderful for a child to learn thatalmost every early civilization had a flood story, much like the biblical storyof Noah and the Ark.
Recently, Harold Bloom published The Western Canon, which, unlikeearlier, generally accepted canons, does include women and minorities.
Bloom's new book seems to have been written in response to younger, moreradical members of the Modern Language Association, who, too, have tried torigidly impose their "either or" perspectives. But they have also forced us toconfront many questions about literature that academics like Bloom ignore: Whohas the right to speak? Who is considered an expert, and why is he or she anexpert? An expert in what? For whom is the writer speaking? Is the writerreflecting a certain constituency or forcing roles upon this constituency? Dothese roles exist because of the way people in a marginalized culture perceivethemselves, or because their way of being is filtered through the eyes of thosewho dominate?
We must keep in mind the impact of the literature to which we expose ourstudents. Who is writing what about whom? There is a vast difference betweenthe observer and the observed. The French philosopher, Michel Foucault,changed his perspective on life and cut short his study of psychology when hesaw the impact that the traditional one-up position of the psychologist has onthe client/patient. While working in a French prison, he concluded that ahierarchy of observation exists beginning with the prison commander on top ofthe building, who watches the prison guards, who watch the prisoners. Witheach level of observation, some aspects of humanity are violated, andeventually, often the individuality and dignity of the prisoner cannot bereconciled with the humiliation he feels because he is always and foreverobserved.
Foucault goes further, drawing parallels between modern society and thePanopticon, a 19th century prison where one guard at the top can see into allthe prison cells without being observed himself. Since the prisoners neverknow if they're being seen, or not, they eventually behave as if they arealways under observation.
Foucault suggests the same thing is true for us. Because we are continuallyunder surveillance by government and other bureaucracies, or by the tyranny ofa belief, (even one such as political correctness), we, too, begin to policeourselves.
If we extend this notion to all levels of society, it becomes a metaphor forthe way in which minorities and people under colonial rule are subjected tomore than a loss of their rights. When one begins to see one's self throughthe eyes of the beholder -- if that beholder is from a dominant culture towhich one does not belong -- the question is not only whether one takes on theattributes designated by the dominant culture, but how it, in fact, changesone's self-image.
In other words, when a child reads about himself as he is seen by the dominantculture -- if he reads about himself, at all -- what is that like for him?
The young Japanese writer Kazuo Ishiguro, who was educated in England, answersthese questions brilliantly in The Remains of the Day. The book is toldthrough the eyes of the butler, so captivated by the position of his employerthat he cannot see that the man is a Nazi sympathizer. It's not his place tosee because he feels himself undeserving of a separate identity, of separatethought, unable to accept the love offered to him by the housekeeper because hesees himself only through the eyes of the observer, his employer. And as hisemployer does not recognize that love, neither can he. The price he pays fortotal acceptance by the lord of the manor is no less than loss of Self, with acapitol "S."
How is it, we might ask, that a Japanese man writes so knowingly of this veryBritish butler? Perhaps the answer lies, once again, in metaphor. If weassume that the butler can also be viewed as the alter ego for Ishigura, weunderstand that this is the way he, an Asian, more particularly aJapanese-Englishman, sees himself in relation to the dominant culture ofEngland -- because this is the way he is seen by that culture. We cansubstitute any minority for the butler and read a similar story. It takestremendous effort and, yes, imagination, to move from observed to participant.And perhaps it's necessary to become a participant in one's own culture, amongthose who share particular traditions and ways of being, before one can meet astruly equal and truly separate, before one can throw off the yoke of theobserver. But how long can we afford to wait?
I can tell you from personal experience that it can be devastating to belong toa minority, to have very little knowledge of my culture, and to sit in aclassroom where 99% of the other students were Protestants from northernEuropean backgrounds. I can still remember studying The Merchant ofVenice in high school. There was no preparation by the teacher, nohistorical background, no explanation for Shakespeare's portrayal of Shylock.Furthermore, Shylock was the very first Jewish character I had ever come acrossin literature. Was this what Jews were really like? I asked myself. I becamevery conscious of the way others perceived me, and at times I went out of myway not too fulfill what I now understand as a stereotype. To this day,however, even though I am much more aware of my own cultural heritage, eventhough I rationally understand that this comes from an old reaction to the viewof the other, I experience guilt around issues of money and have a difficulttime charging my clients what would be considered the going rate for atherapist.
Do I advocate eliminating Shakespeare from high school curriculum because he'sa dead European male, or because he created a character who, today, would beconsidered anti-Semitic? No, I don't. Shakespeare, in many ways, was thefather of modern psychology. Long before Freud, he recognized the power of theunconscious, and he saw into the hearts and minds of men and women what fewpeople saw before him and few people since have understood.
But -- Shakespeare wrote many plays, so why teach The Merchant ofVenice? And if one must, then why not temper the impact with one of themany plays or novels by a Jewish writer?
Knowing that this incident still affects me now and being well aware that Jews,at this point, have assimilated into American society more than most otherminorities, I can only imagine what an African-American student or a Latinostudent, or an Asian-American student feels sitting in a classroom where onlythe literature of the dominant culture is taught.
Richard Rodriguez, the child of Mexican-American immigrants, writes about hiseducation. The first sentence of his biography is "I have taken Caliban'sadvice. I have stolen their books."
By taking their books, Rodriguez was educated to become an Americanchild of the dominant culture. Unfortunately, it wasn't until many years laterthat he acknowledges the loss of the hyphen, the Mexican part of his heritage.Even now, he is ambivalent about his own studies when he writes about bilingualeducation. He states, in very moving language, that he is absolutely againstit and calls it "a scheme proposed by Hispanic-American social activists, laterendorsed by a congressional vote."
"What I needed to learn at school," he says, "was that I had the right and theobligation to speak the public language of the gringos."
It is only as a postscript that he admits it would have easier had he beengreeted at school in his own language. He would have felt more comfortable,less afraid. But, he says, that would have prolonged his entrance into publiclife. One can't help but ask how much this entrance cost him.
Perhaps a compromise could be reached today. Not all schools are equipped forbilingual education, and I'm not entirely convinced that it works, but it seemsthat with the wealth of Spanish literature available, a whole new world can beopened up to all students. Hopefully, these students will conclude that thefeared "They," in fact, adds to the heritage of our country, rather thandetracts. As Pete Hamil wrote in a piece in Esquire, "multi-culturalismis an oxymoron. Culture is multicultural."
When I was teaching, many Latin-American writers were part of my curriculum --even though I never had a Latino student in my class. I would like to thinkthat studying the culture, the literature of these great writers, had an impacton my students and forever changed their perception of Latin-American andMexican people.
One of my current clients, a twelve-year-old girl whose mother is Bolivian andwhose father is Mexican-American, talks about her feelings of being the other,even though she goes to a school with a large Latino population. She gave mepermission to use two poems she wrote that beautifully sum up her feelings --and I think the feeling of many who are "other."
Kids
Why so isolated in a big house?
Why so confused in a small head?Kids
Why so cruel,
Why so prejudiced?
Black, White what is the difference?
Yellow, Brown there is no difference.
We all have 2 ears,
We all have 2 legs and 2 arms,
And 2 eyes -- so what is the difference?
Prejudiced kids can't answer that,
But normal kids can.
Why so cruel?
Feel so high like in a tree,
But somehow been brought down by some source.
Feeling so low and ignored
No matter what you do.
You are always the last thing on a person's mind.
Why so small?
People judge on height
Even when they don't even know you.
But news is, they don't even know the half of who you are.
Maybe you are a type of person they are.
They don't know that.
No matter what they say,
Just keep on believing who you are.
They
"They" is used to describe a person or race.
"They" is used to take someone's pride.
"They" is a harsh and immature thing to call a person or other
race.
"They" is used to hurt another race or kill their self-esteem.
People use "They" to hide their real fear of the other race or
person.
People say that to another person or race and the person or race
take it personal.
People do that to another race because they know. They know it
hurts.
But when the other race tries to fight back,
The other people tell, and the person gets into trouble because
we are too scared.Scared of Being "They"
I wonder what impact Michelle's poem might have on other students. Iwonder if Michelle would become a touchstone for those who feel disenfranchised-- Latino or not -- who understand what she's saying.It is through literature that we can celebrate not only our differences but oursimilarities. But we cannot do this unless the literature that truly anddeeply reflects the various cultures that make up our community become a partof every classroom. When the other becomes part of us, and we become part ofthe other, we all must, in some way, change.
Culture cannot be constant. If we are to survive, it must not be constant; forwhen we encounter other cultures, when we allow ourselves to take in thesmallest essence of that other culture, we shift our perceptions. There arethose who try to isolate themselves behind walls in order to keep the othersout, but the mere act of walking down the street or turning on a television setgives us instant access to a wide range of ethnic and racial differences -- andunconsciously to change. We are a multi-cultural society whether we like it,or not. Perhaps those too frightened to admit that can be eased into thenotion by introducing them first to their neighbor's literature. And the bestplace to start is in kindergarten.
In the midst of the terrible ethnic cleansing that is taking place in Bosniatoday, there is a group of young men and women who come together, not as Serbs,Croats, and Muslims, but as Sarajevians searching for truth and unity. Theyare willing to build make-shift scenery and rehearse in dank, dangerous placesin order to celebrate the literature of their being alive. In order tocelebrate their oneness, not their separateness. In order to bring somehope, in a hopeless land, that we can exist together.
And perhaps Bosnia has an even deeper lesson for us. Yugoslavia was a smallcountry, forced into existence in modern time -- traditional enemies who foughton different sides in World War II. Still, the three ethnic groups eventuallylived side and side and often inter-married. Certainly, racially, thepopulation actually had more in common than the various ethnic groups in theUnited States. How is it then that the Serbs were so easily led intocommitting such heinous crimes against others, and ultimately againstthemselves? Are these crimes against humanity the outcome of the Balkanizationof a society? Is this what we, too, can expect if we don't confront RodneyKing's very simple and very poignant question, "Can we all get along?"
While I was teaching in a private school, I was asked to take a mid-year classof ten boys who were failing English. As it turned out, seven of the ten wereblack, one was Korean, and two were white. The black students had beenrecruited because they were excellent basketball players. They didn't possessserious reading or writing skills, however. One white student was failingsenior English for the second time; one couldn't get along with his teacher;and the Korean student had had a misunderstanding with his teacher and refusedto go back to class. They worked at all levels, but what was clear to me wasthat the black students had been badly used by the school. They had beenpassed from grade to grade and had never really done much work. None couldwrite a paragraph.
I immediately threw out the curriculum, and we began by reading black writersand writing about personal experiences -- one sentence at a time until theycould build a five-paragraph essay.
What eventually happened in that class was the kind of learning experience Icherish most. As the result of a passage we were reading, one of the blackstudents leaped into an accusation against Jews. The other black studentsnodded their heads. I was struck dumb for a moment, then I quietly asked himwhy he felt that way. And he told me -- at length.
We then spent the next five days talking about stereotypes.
By the end of that quarter, those students, who had come in with littleunderstanding or respect for one another, left having been exposed to theculture and to the deepest feelings of their fellow students. There was nolonger any fear of the ubiquitous "They." This class had become a "We."
I can't help believing that this was possible partially because the literaturewe read not only introduced students to a different culture but also allowedthe black students to bask in their own reflections.
How could they not have strived for the best in themselves when they had infront of them writers who said loudly, clearly and proudly -- I am.
Toni Morrison began her 1993 acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize forliterature by reciting the opening of a story that many different cultures tellin their own way. "Once upon a time there was an old woman. She was blind,but she was very wise." She goes on to tell about the young men from the citywho come to the countryside to seek the old woman out and make fun of her -- toprove to themselves, and to her, that they are different. "Old woman," one ofthe boys says, "I have a bird in my hand. Is it living or dead?" The old womandoesn't answer for a long time, then she says, "I don't know. I don't know ifthe bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is inyour hands. It is in your hands."
Morrison goes on to say that the old woman shifted away from the assertion ofthe boys' power to the way in which that power is exercised. She then draws awholly new interpretation, saying that she thinks of the bird as language andthe old woman as a practiced writer. The language in the hands of the youngboy may be a dead language, an unyielding language because it has been abusedby oppressors, by racists, by sexists, and therefore no new ideas can stem fromthis language.
And she admonishes the old woman for the boys, saying that her answer to themwas indecent in its self-congratulation. "Why didn't you reach out to us? Allour lives we have been told to be responsible. What does that mean? Stopthinking about saving face and help us save our lives. Tell us a story."
As she speaks to the representatives of the many nations who have gathered tohear her wise words, Morrison refers to the Bible, as she does in so many ofher books. She talks about the Tower of Babel and the accepted notion that itwas destroyed because God did not want the people to reach to heaven, so Godcaused them to speak in many different languages. But, like the new wave ofcritics, she asks, "Whose heaven and what kind is it?" The people were toobusy, perhaps, to try to answer those questions. And, she says, no one couldtake the time to understand the language of the others. If they had, theymight have seen that heaven is quite different from what they had assumed, thatit lay right at their feet.
I'm almost embarrassed to speak of my own small accomplishments after quotingToni Morrison, but I have tried, in several of my young adult novels, tointroduce children to the idea of searching out their own cultures and othercultures, as well, in order to get beyond their personal and private fears.
In my book, Fitting In, an American Jewish girl, raised in a totallyassimilated family, comes to understand that she is Jewish, after all -- atleast according to others -- when her car is vandalized by skinheads. HerRussian friend, who moved to the United States with his family, realizes thatmany of his pre-conceived ideas about Americans were wrong and that beyondethnic identity is personal integrity. Both teenagers suffer when they seethemselves through the eyes of the dominant culture. It is only when theyunderstand and accept who they are that they can reach out to one another.
I would like to conclude with the invocation -- and I use the word knowingly --that John Edgar Wideman wrote for Father Stories. The stories, writtenfor his son six years after he was convicted of murder and sentenced to lifeimprisonment, are individual and moving, but they are also universal andbelong, not only to his son, but to all of us, because they touch us on thedeepest, most profound levels.
One day neither in the past nor in the future, and not at this moment, either,all the people gathered on a high ridge that overlooked the rolling plain ofearth, its forests, deserts, rivers unscrolling below them like a painting onparchment. Then the people began speaking, one by one, telling the story of alife -- everything seen, heard and felt by each soul. As the voices dreamed, avast bluish mist enveloped the land and the seas below. Nothing was visible.It was as if the solid earth had evaporated. Now there was nothing but thevoices and the stories and the mist; and the people were afraid to stop thestorytelling and afraid not to stop, because no one knew where the earth hadgone.
Finally, when only a few storytellers remained to take a turn, someone shouted:Stop! Enough of this talk! Enough of us have spoken! We must find the earthagain!
Suddenly, the mist cleared. Below the people, the earth had changed. It hadgrown into the shape of the stories they'd told -- a shape as wondrous and newand real as the words they'd spoken. But it was also a world unfinished,because not all the stories had been told.
Some say that death and evil entered the world because some of the people hadno chance to speak. Some say that the world would be worse than it is if allthe stories had been told. Some believe that untold stories are the only onesof value and we are lost when they are lost. Some are certain that thestorytelling never stops; and this is one more story, and the earth always liesunder its blanket of mist being born.
Marilyn Levy is the author of a number of books for young readers, includingPutting Heather Together Again. Her latest novel, Run for YourLife, will be published by Houghton-Mifflin. She delivered this article as aspeech to the California Reading Association Convention in November of1994.
