Proud to Be an American--Almost

Lately, Kira has been asking a lot of questions about whatever happens to be on the radio when she and I get into the car for adventures on the mornings Nicole teaches. Apparently, she's got a pretty good memory for what she learns: in the evenings before I get home from work, she's been lecturing Nicole and her Barbies on things like the impact of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on fishermen and the fears of regional economic ripple effects.

Today, the voices in the radio were explaining why the U.S. really has no choice but to push for stronger economic sanctions against Iran. Kira asked me if this had anything to do with the "emergency in the ocean by Florida." I said no. She asked if it was about another emergency. I said sort of, and explained that a country sort of by India "probably wants to build a dangerous weapon, and our country doesn't like that." She asked why they would do that, and I explained that Iranian leaders are "probably afraid we want to fight them." She asked why some more, and what about this and that some more, until I found myself explaining that when her mama was born, Iran was ruled by a mean king who sometimes put people who said bad things about him in prison and poked them with sharp sticks (how do you explain SAVAK to a five-year-old?), and that some of them died. I then explained that when her mama was still a baby, the people decided to fight the king, and won--but ended up with another scary guy in charge who also did bad things to people he didn't like. Kira said she didn't like that, and said that people there don't either. She asked what language they speak, and I told her it's called Farsi, and that the best Farsi poems are supposed to be some of the most beautiful on earth. She asked if I spoke Farsi, and I told her no, but that her uncle Matt had taken a Farsi class.

She stopped asking questions, then, and just processed for a moment. I thought about the many countries in the world where it's been normal, at this time or that in recent history, for people suspected of dissidence to just disappear. And I felt incredibly grateful to live in the United States, where things like that don't happen.

But then tonight, I read the news. Apparently, in 2002 the United States detained a Syrian-born Canadian named Maher Arar who had made it onto a terrorism suspect list based on shoddy, inaccurate evidence. Instead of deporting Arar back to Canada, the United States decided to deport Arar against his wishes to Syria, where he spent the next 10 1/2 months being tortured--which may be exactly what our government wanted. Eventually, he made it back to Canada, where he was cleared by a government probe and formally apologized to. The United States, however, is keeping Arar on its terrorist suspects list and refusing to disclose why or admit any wrongdoing.

Now, it is theoretically possible that the U.S. has good evidence that Canada is wrong, and that Arar is a terrorist. It is also theoretically possible that Arar was sent to Syria as a simple clerical error, and not as a way of outsourcing torture. I think it's more likely, however, that he is the innocent, regular guy Canada now publicly states that he is, but the United States prefers to hide behind the alibi of "state secrets" rather than explain in public what wrong we may have done.

I still think that America is a great country, but it's hard to be as proud to be an American tonight as it was in the car this morning. Are we always just a step or two away from being another country so paranoid it's willing to let people "disappear"?

Digital and Ethnic Identity (My Response to Heather)

Thanks to Heather, who is taking a class from one of my thesis committee members, for commenting earlier today on this blog and for referring me to a recent post of hers about online identity. Her post makes the intriguing suggestion that because the internet is a sort of new world, maybe there are instructive similarities between second-generation immigrant/minority identity formation and online identity formation. Specifically, she's interested in the ways that both situations encourage the developments of multiple identities which are also a new, single sort of hybrid identity.

While I think her idea is interesting, I'm going to focus in this post on the differences between ethnic identity formation and online identity presentation in my experience.

--

Dear Heather,

You asked about whether the different parts of my identity I explore in my three blogs are mostly separate or more unified.

The answer built on the inside of my body is that they're more unified. After all, I only have one brain and if I understand correctly, all the synapses in there are networked somehow together. I don't have one brain for satirical ideas, another for Mormonism, and a third in which I'm an American from a minority background. All my experiences are interpreted by and stored in a brain in which the various elements I try to describe in my blogs are all present.

Identity, though, as I'm sure you know, is not only a product of what goes on inside the body. Identity also has a lot to do with our social selves: the way we appear to others. Identity formation, maybe, is a negotiation between external social dynamics and the internal dynamics of thought and memory. Those negotiations are very different in real life and online.

Off the top of my head, I can think of four times I've been asked by police to explain what I was doing walking in a certain place in the middle of the day. If I was fourteen or older the first time--I can't remember for sure--I already was 6'6" and wore a beard. I do remember it was summer, and that I was shooting hoops alone at an empty school playground near my house in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. They wanted to know if I'd been in or near the school. The second time I was seventeen or eighteen. I was in Columbus proper clearing discarded shingles from the yard of a family friend to make some money. A police car pulled up. The officer asked me several questions, and then watched me work for quite a while before driving away. Our family friend got home later and explained that there'd been some crimes in the neighborhood and one of her neighbors probably called the police about me. The third time was in November of 2001 in Utah (I was eighteen and had a long beard), where I was visiting my sister. I mentioned to some of her friends one evening, when they asked how people reacted to me post-9/11, that pre-9/11 I'd been questioned twice by police basically for being outside. The next day I was walking near the campus creamery when a policeman pulled over to ask me if I was lost. I said no, and he asked me where I was going. I told him I was just wandering around, and he asked a few more questions until one of my sister's friends from the night before happened to walk by and tell the officer that I was with him. The officer drove away. The fourth time I was twenty-one. I dropped my mother's car off by the elementary school where she worked at about 3 pm to walk to the high school where I worked as the after-school drama club adviser. This time, I was intercepted at my destination by both the elementary school principle and a city detective. Apparently, some girls at the school had reported that a scary man with a beard had been following them. Luckily, the principle had recognized me as Vilo Westwood's son and followed me on foot and was able to get the whole thing cleared up quickly, even taking me to meet the girls so they could find out that I was not so scary and was not following them, just walking to work at the same time they were walking home.

I don't share these stories to suggest that police are bad or bigoted--in at least two of the cases, maybe all of them, they were responding to citizen calls, which is something I'm glad police do. I share these stories because my feeling is that they took place because my physical presence is the dominant immediate aspect of my real-world identity. Neighbors across the street or girls walking home from school take in only the expressions of identity contained in my physical presence. And--let's face it--being tall with a face and hair roughly the color of Osama bin Laden's and a beard to match comes across as threatening to many perfectly normal Americans. My most obvious identity is my physical body as perceived in the local cultural context.

In a broad American cultural context, "foreign-looking" beards are often associated with danger. In my own brain's context, though, a beard is associated with Sikh and Jewish spirituality and orthodoxy, values which in turn mean a lot to me as a Mormon. A beard is also associated for me "on the inside" with my father, with good looks, with extended family members, with history. If I shave in order to avoid a certain externally perceived identity, I'm also denying a very different internal identity. If I grow my beard to express more dimensions of my internal self, I do so at the serious risk of being radically misunderstood in an external American context. Whichever choice I make, I'm stuck with the ways people react to my physical presence.

Maybe that's why I so vividly remember my first visit, sometime in my teenage years, to Jackson Heights, a neighborhood in Queens with a predominantly South Asian population. Within a few minutes of getting off the subway, I'd seen several taller, lighter Sikh men who look A LOT like me. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before, and a part of me ached to live there, if only to experience a whole different way of physically being in the social world. A part of me believed that in Jackson Heights, there'd be a lot less obvious tension tied up in my identity, and a part of me desperately wanted that.

The way I sometimes feel torn between the waning influence of old cultures in which I would look fairly normal and an "overwhelming presence" of another culture, the one I live in, is the kind of experience I would guess Rocio Davis is talking about in the quote you use in your post. I live in America, I am very American, I wouldn't want to leave America for good. And yet--I'm obviously not "average" American in terms of physical appearance, inherited memory, or cultural outlook. So I have to form inside and outside identities through which I can negotiate all that.

Online identity formation strikes me as fundamentally different in that no one calls the police about me online. My physical presence doesn't come directly into play, meaning that the focus is more on my words: I get a more active chance to influence your view of my identity online than on the street. Also, no one is concerned about a stranger commenting on their neighbor's blog in anything like the way people can easily become concerned about a stranger hanging out on their neighbor's lawn: meaning that online identity happens largely in more interest-driven spaces, while real life identity forms in a more broadly public contact zone. Finally, I can put out a lot more information online before anyone has to react to me: you can follow the hyperlinks in one blog to another, find out as much about me as I and others have given you, before you have an obligation to interact. In the real world, someone might only find out I'm Mormon first and have to instantly recourse to their stereotypes before discussing any religious or political topic with me. Online, that person can examine examples of my religious and political thinking and have artifacts in the place of stereotypes.

This is not to say, of course, that the internet is some kind of paradise and the real world is terrible. There's a lot of richness possible in real-world, real-time interaction: the best of such interactions are, I feel, worlds better than the best digital interactions. But the internet is a very different space for formulating an identity than a country in which your physical appearance and family traditions set you far from the mainstream. It won't help us understand multiplicity in digital or minority culture identity formation to think of the two as closely related processes.

Good Conversation

I was washing my hands in a BYU bathroom today when the guy next to me asked if I was a Sikh--he'd noticed my kara, apparently, and recognized it. I told him I wasn't, but that my grandfather had been raised Sikh and I had a deep respect for the tradition. Then I asked him how he knew Sikhs. He said he'd met a few during his military service. Then he told me how he respected Guru Nanak's teachings about the oneness of God (he quoted the Guru's famous line "There is no Hindu; there is no Muslim"), about family, and about service. We had a good talk.

He went off again to study and I went off again to work.

And now I'm left thinking: the people who sit in authority and enforce rules here are apparently too busy to look up what a Sikh is, but the guy in the bathroom is always asking questions of the people around him and, as a result, has learned to see little details more deeply than others see.

And I take hope in the idea that all over the world there are people like this guy who are interested in and open to the stories others carry inside.

Kira Plays Wedding

Kira's cousin Natasha is over today to play. About fifteen minutes ago, they decided to go in the living room to dance. Kira asked Nicole where a Bhangra CD was, put it in, and turned it on. A minute or two later, Nicole heard Kira explain to Natasha, "You have to take off your shoes, 'cause we're in a gurdwara."

Nicole smiled and said to me, "Apparently, for Kira, whenever you're listening to Indian music, you're in a gurdwara."

As it turned out, though, there was more than Indian music involved. A few minutes later, we heard Kira telling Natasha, "You need to cover your head for the wedding." When I went out to check on them, Kira looked like this (use your imagination to correct for the poor cell phone picture quality):



My guess is that gurdwara manners are wedding-specific in Kira's mind. Since she's only been to gurdwaras for weddings, it's possible that she thinks weddings are the only things that ever happen in gurdwaras.

I am very glad that she's practicing different customs in her play. My guess is this works sort of like Kira's limited home experience with other languages: playing with different manners and customs could help make her a more sensitive, aware, and ethical person. Exactly the kind of daughter I want to raise.

Guest Post from the Smallest

In Church today we were talking about family history. Everyone was handed a little sheet of paper and a pencil to write down a story about an ancestor. And somewhere in the space between my paper and pencil, there was a thought.

I thought about the stories that came from the people before us. I thought about how often they seem like a validating part of us. Like when you're little, just a kindergartner, let's say and you find out that your great-great-great grandmother was Pochahontas. As a kidergartener you run all around the school yard, the playground, even in your class and stand up and declare imperiously that you are related to Pochahontas. It dazzles everyone. You even make some new friends, just because they wanted to be with the Indian Wild Princess Girl. Just so they can go home and show off to their big brother that they have a friend who is Pochahontas.

But just because she's your great-great-great grand mama, doesn't make you any cooler. It's not like it gives you super powers where you can now talk to trees and little animated racoons. Ghandi's great grand son is just another person. His life is his own to make something of, it isn't like he gets free cookies for being a descendant of Ghandi, right?

But I then I think of the Hanukkahs, which I have been celebrating as long as I can remember. I think of the Passovers, and the nights spent in a living room full of all my older siblings dancing to Banghra music. And I decided, hovering somewhere there in the air inbetween the paper and my pencil, that the stories and ancsestors only shape us as much as we embrace them as a part of ourselves.

I did not wake up in the mornings in India and eat rotis for breakfast and go to work in the fields. But as I fold the dough on the counter and roll it out for my brother Stephen to cook on a hot pan, using only his hands, I can imagine and connect to the people who did. I can feel them running through me, through my veins.

And I don't know all the stories, certainly not as many as James, who is much taller and therefore has more room inside him for such things as stories. I just have distorted and fragmented peices that sort of drift through me and weave and set into place in my life, amongst my own stories that I am painting.

I have my own stories, of edgy reckless climbing and learning to make waffles by listening for them to speak to me to tell me that they are done. I have stories of magnificient, laughable stupididy, of plane rides alone to foriegn places and they go on and on......

But within them there are the peices of other people that give me direction; for example my history lead me to India, to see this country that I have only felt before in my brother's beard and the beat of music, only seen in my grandfather's eyes. It lead me to read or rather stumble over the four questions in Hebrew at a Seder held on the floor of an apartment in Thailand. It lead me to teach a group of Christians how to dance the Horah, and to teach a Thai woman how to cook tortilla soup.

But this thought is getting to big for the space alloted; it only has a tiny space between a 2B pencil that is closing in on the sheet of white paper, so I jot down a story involving Jews in Romania and hand it in.

And I end my Ramblings.

Pani Agua Water

While washing her hands a few minutes ago, Kira began to sing softly to herself--something she often does. This time, though, the words of her song were "pani agua water" repeated over and over.

Nicole and I smiled. "Pani" is the Punjabi word for what English calls water, "agua" is the Spanish. We often give Kira the choice between the three at dinner after she asks for juice. You'd think that a kid would get upset by that sooner or later, but for now at least, she seems to like the choice. She'll actually pick "pani" or "water" or sometimes "pani and agua mixed"--the sense of satisfaction at knowing an extra name is apparently as good as the extra sugar and flavor in juice.

And now she's singing them.

Besides being incredibly cute, what does growing up like this mean? Although Nicole gives certain commands in Spanish, it's not like we're actually planning on teaching Kira fluent Spanish in the home (my mother tried hard to teach us Spanish when I was little, and not one of us ever got good at it). And although I know a little Punjabi, not even I can carry on a conversation in it: I'm lucky to get out a coherent sentence.

So what, in the long run, does Kira get out of learning non-English words at home?

A few possibilities come to mind:

1) Even without fluency, language brings a sense of connection. I really believe that something as simple as having sung about agua as a five-year-old will help Kira more easily access and appreciate the diverse cultural backgrounds of people she meets and works with. And knowing words like pani now definitely helps her connect with her sense of being an Indian, of wanting to know stories about that part of her familial past.

2) Learning bits and pieces of different languages will help Kira become a stronger analytical thinker. She and I had an interesting brief conversation, for example, about whether pani was "really" water: she was sort of fascinated to think about the fact that water and pani are both names for the substance and not just for each other ("pani" serving as a sort of code-word for what is truly named "water.") Playing with language is helping her consider how systems might work. The extra practice organizing and reorganizing knowledge almost certainly has value in more areas than just cultural identity.

3) By learning bits of multiple languages, Kira is developing a heightened awareness of sound as well as meaning in language. I'd imagine that this affects her sense of English as well as of Punjabi, Spanish, and whatever else she happens to absorb at home. Being able to more keenly appreciate language on the level of sound certainly makes life more beautiful. It may also contribute to a love of literature later in life, something which I think has numerous benefits. And it may ultimately serve to make Kira more persuasive, since the sounds of what we write and say affect people sometimes as much as the content.

Although English was the only "complete" language I learned in the home, I think I benefited from hearing Spanish, some Navajo, and a little Punjabi around as a kid. And I think Kira will gain more than might be imagined from being exposed to multiple languages at home, even though she probably won't learn, in the home, to actually speak more than one.

A Home Cooked Meal

Guest Post by Vilo Elisabeth

A friend of mine is taking a world religions class. Recently, they studied Judaism. “You have a Jewish connection, don't you?” she asked me. I explained that I'm a quarter Jewish, on my dad's side (which is enough to give me citizenship in Israel, but since it's from my father's side and not my mother's, doesn't count in some circles). “Do you make any Jewish food?” I had to think about this, and the answer made me laugh internally.
“Latkes, which are potato pancakes, out of a box. Matzo ball soup, out of a box. Oh, and challah—the braided bread.”
“Yeah, we had challah in class” she said, and that was the end of the discussion.

But I kept thinking about it afterward. I had laughed to myself because typically, I don't make much from a box or mix. Growing up, my mom might get a cake mix for a birthday cake, unless we wanted a spice cake or the special cinnamon cake my dad loves. But she made cookies and sometimes bread from scratch. I didn't even know you could buy a mix for cookies until I was 17. (I did know about pre-made cookie dough, but I also knew it wasn't that great. It was mostly just for sugar cookies, anyway.) We did use a Japanese curry mix to make a curry sauce to go with potatoes, carrots, and chicken, until my dad decided it was too unhealthy and created his own curry recipe using yogurt and spices.

I learned to make challah in my 8th grade home ec. class. When I brought the recipe home, my dad told me that his grandmother, Ann Goldberg, used to make challah. He remembered that from visiting her as a child. This is the first time I remembered him mentioning visiting his grandmother, or really anything about what she had been like or done. I kept the recipe, and started making the bread as a way to feel connected to her.

Throughout my childhood, the main connection to Jewish food was on our visits to Grandpa Art, who lived in LA. Although Grandpa Art was Agnostic, he took pride in being Jewish—the culture, the food, the intellectualism. He often commented on accomplished Jewish figures, and loved to remind me that no Mormons had ever won a Nobel prize, while many Jews had. (My response was that the Jews had been around a whole lot longer, and there are more of them.) During our visits, we frequented several Jewish Delis, such as Junior's and Fromins, or whatever place he was currently enamored with. We would order rye bread, bagel and lox, cheese blintzes with fruit.

On one of these visits, Grandpa Art gave us a menorah from Israel. After that we celebrated Hanukkah every year, and my dad would make latkes and serve them with sour cream and applesauce. He usually made them from a box, but would often grate potatoes and onions to add to the mix. At some point during my teenage years, we started celebrating Passover as well. We bought matzo, the flatbread that represents the quick bread that the Jews made before fleeing Egypt—made without leaven, since there was no time to let it rise. Matzo resembles gigantic bland saltines. We made the haroset, the mixture of finely minced apples, raisins and nuts that represents the mortar for the bricks that the Jews made as slaves, and shows the sweetness even during suffering. Celery was our bitter herb, and sometimes horseradish sauce, but I never wanted to eat much. I don't remember what we served for the main dish.

Then one year we went to my dad's cousin Juli's house for Passover. Juli is an amazing cook. She put together quite the spread. Besides the traditional components of the Seder plate, she had crudities and Greek olives for us to munch on during the Haggadah. Her Seder plate also included an orange, to show women's involvement in religion, and besides a glass of wine for Elijah, there was a glass of water to represent Miriam's well. (Juli and her son had a lively argument over if she was making too much of women's contributions to Passover. My father later remarked on this, saying that it was refreshing to see such a spirited debate without their being rancor or hurt feelings on either side.) Juli grew and ground her own horseradish, which made me a convert. We took some home and happily ate it for days. Juli and her family also introduced us to the multiple uses of matzo—to make french toast, for turkey sandwiches, covered in chocolate. Passover has been a much richer experience for me since.

Here's the soup I made for my seder this year. The matzo balls were from a mix, but the soup I made myself. Purple cabbage made the broth purple!